Jun 18, 2009 | Poetry, Sonnet |
Forty years ago in Litowa moonlightI saw myself a naked ape and laughed…Fever of unknown origins had held mefour days in its sweaty embrace and loosed my bowels innumerable times soI staggered from the hut in search of widegreen leaves and staggered weakly back again –this night as I returned I saw outline of my dim shadow in African dust,recognized the naked fellow aliveat the pleasure of chance as my own selfand began to laugh under the full moon alone near the border with Mozambiqueand how I laughed under that huge...
Jan 10, 2009 | Poetry, Sonnet |
Compromised Land Because promises can’t be relied upon,I’m trying to trade in the Promised Land for compromised land –I know glamor’s lesswith this kind of earth, but we’re so many… I will compromise with most anyoneabout most anything – even in thisI’m less than absolute, but let us nownegotiate night after night while stars that can’t hear bitter biting words progressthrough the heavens and the constellationschange so we can’t be assured where we are –let’s argue until the guns and tanks rust I’m ready to settle compromised land,let a new vocation find my right hand We Should Not Seek We should not seek instruction in crueltyfrom our enemies: they have much to teach,but the greater danger is that our joyis in what avid learners we can be How to turn away from such dread pursuit,how to make peace with needing to make peace,how to grasp how close glory and gorylive to each other, how to find splendor in giving up the magnificent hopesthat have let us feel that we might matter –cruelty and vanity, conspiratorsin glistening armor, old, old allies They urge that what’s slight in us, what’s tender,slights us, so we must be pride’s...
