Sep 2, 2007 | Poetry, Sonnet |
O time, most dread of disciplines, who mendsnot what mars us, but to woe bears increase,as dull growth likeness unto likeness lends,marking limiting’s limit in surcease, upon your bank we draw ourselves in coinso airily minted that pain’s dark thrustmocks fitfully our minds, as to purloinof self the better stuff of truthful trust. Time, time, of tutors are you the supreme,for gripped in toil of your usury,we, paupered all, learn the seeds of doubting’s dream.Of nought stamps this banker men to harry. Yet faith, if it would be more than time’s fool,no coin may show, lest mere coin, estranged,...
May 12, 2007 | Poetry, Sonnet |
One lilac fragrant twilight of late springa pack of dogs surrounded me just whereUniversity’s flank joined the ghetto –slowly they began to circle watching My feet to see how I’d move – dogs yellow and brown and black and tan, their ribs sticking out from their chests, hunting me as ifthey knew their hunger’s business, how to kill Sweet the evening was, soft the fading lightas I wondered what it would be to feelthe fangs of these dogs, to fall and fade, die –then came explosion of sweet savagery As I roared, rushed, struck, stunned the largest dogSo they broke and left me in lilac...
May 12, 2007 | Poetry, Sonnet |
We’ve got our hands on the plans – DNAand RNA, histones and all the rest,but we don’t see where our folly nestles,how it is built so deeply in that what We do with what we think we know in thisgolden age of exploration is boundto be clumsy, insensitive and blind,so that when we wake from this spell our shame Won’t be enough to guide us in how toregret, repent, seek to atone, restorewhat we have disturbed, rescue what we’ve bent:future presence of mind is hard to find Our hands on the plans repeat old troubles,We become our own serpentine...
May 6, 2007 | Poetry, Sonnet |
In deep blue long gone huge afternoon byblue blue Indian sea under blue blueAfrican sky a yellow mongrel dogsleeping off the heat went in my blue eyes And never came out again – there he lieson the dark sand in a palm tree’s slim shadebowed like a pipe cleaner and sleeps and sleepsand mixes forgetting and remembering Just so wild pigments of my dreamscan steal from him true hues of love and loss,the times it went for me and against me,while waves rocked and stars climbed hidden ladders A yellow mongrel’s work who once was fleshAnd now is dogged in another...
May 6, 2007 | Poetry, Sonnet |
In a mud walled room with no furnitureI am still sleeping in a blue hammockthe color of earth.. a two year old comesto wake me, shakes me, saying, “Quero pao” I grunt, rise, walk up red laterite hillwith his tiny hand in mine, buy four loavesof bread still warm from the oven, for him,his seven brothers, sisters, his mother I’m twenty and it’s a summer’s escapefrom the colder north where I belong and not for thirty years do I recognizeLuciano’s my father who first knew Himself starving in wartime – the raptureOf his hand in mine I still have,...
