Miley twerks,
Marilyn gathering in her dress,
a galaxy of stars gathered around Bradley,
a sailor kisses a woman in Times Square,
5 soldiers raise a flag at Iwo Jima,
Einstein sticks out his tongue,
a child face down dead on a Turkish beach.
Michelangelo might have carved
the wrinkles on his forehead,
veins on the backs of his hands,
the fingers slender in death,
knuckles, fingernails,
lids shut over spiritless eyes.
The rosary trickling down from
his fingers is an intrusion;
no renaissance here,
Dad is a statue now.
What you’ve never grasped
is your days are flying loose,
pages in the wind,
and you busy about filling them,
never catching them.
Happiness is sunlight
on the pages;
it flies with the days.
.
All of that twentieth century history
went in, piled up;
from childhood, it stacked:
the cold war, Bay of Pigs, coup d’etats,
dictators, famines, invasions,
Vietnam, Congo, Falklands, Belfast, Kosovo;
treaties, broken treaties, military exercises,
nuclear arsenals, on and on
and we got wise
and understood that nations are hungry
and savage;
there were always answers and we knew them
from a young age.
And the great page turned, twentieth to twenty first:
still they came: Darfur, Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan,
invasions, piracy, terrorist attacks, revolutions
until we know nothing,
and therefore
on it goes.
Trump's recent 'bloodbath' comment continues his pattern of being incendiary. This (not so delicately embedded in his speech-making) stoking of violence, the self-cultivated image of his own greatness, his demanding of loyalty to himself, the outrageous claims of his abilities to rid the world of ongoing problems, his narcissism are all so reminiscent of other dictators. Add that to his fondness of autocrats:
my question is how, with all the knowledge of history available to us, do we allow presidents, the people with the greatest potential to do damage, to act outside the checks and balances everyone else is subject to?
Bloodbath
Loyalty to a man or a country, even an organization
may lead to a bloodbath;
loyalty to humanity would not.
Humanity appeals;
the others order;
which, would you say, has its roots in freedom?
Plump juicy blackberries:
that’s where the Summer went.
Rosy-cheeked apples, damsons:
-- energy neither created nor destroyed --
Summer’s sun packaged for Winter’s want.
September, we stretched across the hedges,
beat the birds to the berries,
and filled our cans. All went into the pot;
the kitchen filled with clouds of steam;
the windows, opaque,
cut us off from the world.
Fresh bread thickly sliced and buttered,
slathered in blackberry jam
still warm and flowing; we ate greedily
while the jars, in ranks,
stood prepared to face the darker months.
Young beauty settled on your face,
extended its wings a moment,
then flew.
The skin over your bones slackened,
took the shape of your humours;
there was no concealing.
Finally, life, like traffic
over the snow-white landscape of beauty,
is your billboard to the world.
This poem has been with me for years in one shape or another. I've posted more than one effort in the past, but was never convinced. All versions go on display, but, like a photographer's work, there'll always be one photograph that has the edge; I think this has the atmosphere I've been searching for. There's a good chance I won't look back at this for a while in case I meet disappointment. Come another book though, I'll have to weigh it up.
Behind the Glass
Every day, sitting at her window,
looking out onto the street of her life,
empty now.
Her face, just her face, hanging
behind the glass;
a room untroubled by sunlight;
the darkness of a Rembrandt portrait
and wearing old age like a mask.
She's waiting for the street’s stories
but the street has nothing to say;
she continues, daily
staring into the space where her life was.
She fires words
spiky as hail;
I shoot them down;
they’re unwelcome in my heaven.
But the same words go off
over and over;
some see you out,
shovel in the clay.
Truth is words are clouds;
I don’t shoot them;
I shoot at them.
When their bodies are cold and stony,
we lay them among the boulders on the hillside,
a resting place within sight of their homes,
fields and children; in the company of their parents, ancestors.
We leave clothing, corn, arrows, bone knives by their sides
and align them with the returning sun.
Our prayers flutter on strings, clicking for the attention
of the gods who gave birth to the mountains,
rivers and stars; chattering till we, ourselves, arrive.
They expect us, and all the generations coming;
we are currents, the stones oversee our passing,
Knots on the wires untying themselves,.
rise into the sky
like crochets escaping staves.
September swallows, restless,
must shed nesting order
as commas might abandon sentences.
Their Autumn selves must unfurl,
wheel, sweep and swoop; for tomorrow
they will trace lines of longitude.
I've tried to get this right before, my father on his hospital bed after suffering a stroke. A moment that has stayed with me, poignant and beautiful. My wife arrived to see him and that's where the poem comes in.
When he was beyond talking,
close to dying, you visited.
For want of words he could not form
he hummed a tune,
unrecognizable, tuneless;
and never was a tune more beautiful.
