skin to liver to brain and
President Jimmy Carter
started to fall often, walking
in the peanut field, at church
on Sunday, at home. He wrote
Always A Reckoning. I wrote
The Elephants of Reckoning.
We exchanged our reckonings
in 1997 in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire.
I was assigned to the American
Embassy and sat down with Jimmy,
Rosalynn and Chip to talk
politics, health and environment.
The President visited to gather
facts in his fight against
river blindness, one of countless
maladies and challenges
he dedicated his life to resolve.
These included everything
he faced as president—
hostages, recession, first steps
to making America green
and sustainable—and every
election after as he traveled
the world to observe their
conduct, to help keep them
safe and free. Jimmy Carter,
you walk blessed, a life
of good deeds and
harvests and fighting
back against the blows,
approaching a century,
a marvel. Godspeed.
Thank you again
for the poetry.
Indran Amirthanayagam is the translator of Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia (Dialogos Books). Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant (BroadstoneBooks) is the newest collection of Indran's own poems. Recently published is Blue Window (Ventana Azul), translated by Jennifer Rathbun.(Dialogos Books). In 2020, Indran produced a “world" record by publishing three new poetry books written in three languages: The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press, New York), Sur l'île nostalgique (L’Harmattan, Paris) and Lírica a tiempo (Mesa Redonda, Lima). He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly and helps curate Ablucionistas. He won the Paterson Prize and received fellowships from The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund For Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions.