Not An Option: A Poem For Adam Clayton—By PJ

Green Adam (watercolor and acrylic) by Kelly Eddington, 2015.

Not An Option: A Poem For Adam Clayton

PJ DeGenaro

In May 2016, I wrote a poem for Bono’s birthday. So enamored was I of that grinning peroxide blonde stalking the catwalk on the I+E Tour that I just had to write about him. Every year since, I’ve written a birthday poem for Bono. I’ve written a few for Edge too, and one for Adam, and an actual haiku for Larry (because ya gotta grab him fast). You can read a sampling here. Yeah, three of ‘em got published somehow.

Here is a new poem for Adam, born March 13, 1960.

Not An Option

“The longevity of U2 is primarily based on the friendship of four men that have grown up together. Four men that respect and support and love each other. We won't let each other fail.” — Adam Clayton

We won’t let each other fail, 

The mother whispers to the fretful baby

She’s carried back and forth for half the night

Watching through the window

The snow blowing in the darkened street.

Both worn out, at odds as only two such people can be

Temporary enemies, inextricably bound

The weight of the unknowable future pressing down.

We won’t let each other fail,

The father calls over his shoulder, to the child he’s pushed

Through an opening cut in a barbed-wire fence

Or shoved over a wall into the into the arms of a stranger

We won’t let each other fail, okay? Even as his wrists are bound,

Even as he’s led away with something hard and cold 

Prodding the small of his back.

We won’t let each other fail, the Black officer whispers, putting his body 

Between the country and the armed mob. 

We won’t let each other fail, says the earth, turning its face in March 

Toward the sun.

We won’t let each other fail, you whisper down the phone

We won’t let each other fail, I type in the blue-black grid of space

These are the words we keep for one another,

And send up, frail as paper airplanes, into the nighttime sky.

We won’t let each other fail.

It’s not an option.