Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

Finding What You Didn't Lose


When someone deeply listens to you
it is like holding out a dented cup
you've had since childhood
and watching it fill up with
cold, fresh water.
When it balances on top of the brim,
you are understood.
When it overflows and touches your skin,
you are loved.
When someone deeply listens to you,
the room where you stay
starts a new life
and the place where you wrote
your first poem
begins to glow in your mind's eye.
It is as if gold has been discovered!
When someone deeply listens to you,
your bare feet are on the earth
and a beloved land that seemed distant
is now at home within you.


- John Fox

[Larry Robinson]

Seasons


You know when
the first ruby buds appear
on the tips of winter trees
a season begins to take her
graceful bow

we may find annoyance in
the first sight
of the intrepid dandelion
but know the orange of a poppy
is sure to follow
filling in a space
with hope

or the way the sweet gum
is reluctant to drop
the last red leaf
risking nakedness
to a towering figure
its promise though
is in the seeds
which will remain
like it or not,
in every yard beneath it
a blooming, omniscient green
come summer

after all this
I am reminded of how easily
a marriage
might slip into focus
without knowing it
following its seasoned path
to trust
in an old, familiar way
the fall, after summer
to winter’s barrenness
only to begin
lush again.

- Danielle Bryant

[Larry Robinson]

MY CAMELLIA IN FULL, GLORIOUS BLOOM


What is it about
this tree
that gives it
the will
year after year
to burst forth
every spring
in full, radiant bloom
every bright pink
perfectly, elegantly,
shaped blossom
showing itself off
to anyone
passing casually nearby?


- Lilith Rogers

[ChristmasCarla]

Joy in tasting life
Thrusts the bloom to full glory;
Faith that beauty thrives.

MY CAMELLIA IN FULL, GLORIOUS BLOOM


What is it about
this tree
that gives it
the will
year after year
to burst forth
every spring
in full, radiant bloom
every bright pink
perfectly, elegantly,
shaped blossom
showing itself off
to anyone
passing casually nearby?


- Lilith Rogers

[Larry Robinson]

Castile

Orange blossoms blowing over Castile
children begging for coins


I met my love under an orange tree
or was it an acacia tree
or was he not my love?


I read this, then I dreamed this:
can waking take back what happened to me?
Bells of San Miguel
ringing in the distance
his hair in the shadows blond-white


I dreamed this,
does that mean it didn't happen?
Does it have to happen in the world to be real?


I dreamed everything, the story
became my story:


he lay beside me,
my hand grazed the skin of his shoulder


Mid-day, then early evening:
in the distance, the sound of a train


But it was not the world:
in the world, a thing happens finally, absolutely,
the mind cannot reverse it.


Castile: nuns walking in pairs through the dark garden.
Outside the walls of the Holy Angels
children begging for coins


When I woke I was crying,
has that no reality?


I met my love under an orange tree:
I have forgotten
only the facts, not the inference—
there were children, somewhere, crying, begging for coins


I dreamed everything, I gave myself
completely and for all time


And the train returned us
first to Madrid
then to the Basque country


- Louise Gluck

[Larry Robinson]

Defending Walt Whitman


Basketball is like this for young Indian boys, all arms and legs
and serious stomach muscles. Every body is brown!
These are the twentieth-century warriors who will never kill,
although a few sat quietly in the deserts of Kuwait,
waiting for orders to do something, to do something.
God, there is nothing as beautiful as a jumpshot
on a reservation summer basketball court
where the ball is moist with sweat,
and makes a sound when it swishes through the net
that causes Walt Whitman to weep because it is so perfect.
There are veterans of foreign wars here
although their bodies are still dominated
by collarbones and knees, although their bodies still respond
in the ways that bodies are supposed to respond when we are young.
Every body is brown! Look there, that boy can run
up and down this court forever. He can leap for a rebound
with his back arched like a salmon, all meat and bone
synchronized, magnetic, as if the court were a river,
as if the rim were a dam, as if the air were a ladder
leading the Indian boy toward home.
Some of the Indian boys still wear their military hair cuts
while a few have let their hair grow back.
It will never be the same as it was before!
One Indian boy has never cut his hair, not once, and he braids it
into wild patterns that do not measure anything.
He is just a boy with too much time on his hands.
Look at him. He wants to play this game in bare feet.
God, the sun is so bright! There is no place like this.
Walt Whitman stretches his calf muscles
on the sidelines. He has the next game.
His huge beard is ridiculous on the reservation.
Some body throws a crazy pass and Walt Whitman catches it
with quick hands. He brings the ball close to his nose
and breathes in all of its smells: leather, brown skin, sweat,
black hair, burning oil, twisted ankle, long drink of warm water,
gunpowder, pine tree. Walt Whitman squeezes the ball tightly.
He wants to run. He hardly has the patience to wait for his turn.
"What's the score?" he asks. He asks, "What's the score?"
Basketball is like this for Walt Whitman. He watches these Indian boys
as if they were the last bodies on earth. Every body is brown!
Walt Whitman shakes because he believes in God.
Walt Whitman dreams of the Indian boy who will defend him,
trapping him in the corner, all flailing arms and legs
and legendary stomach muscles. Walt Whitman shakes
because he believes in God. Walt Whitman dreams
of the first jumpshot he will take, the ball arcing clumsily
from his fingers, striking the rim so hard that it sparks.
Walt Whitman shakes because he believes in God.
Walt Whitman closes his eyes. He is a small man and his beard
is ludicrous on the reservation, absolutely insane.
His beard makes the Indian boys righteously laugh. His beard
frightens the smallest Indian boys. His beard tickles the skin
of the Indian boys who dribble past him. His beard, his beard!
God, there is beauty in every body. Walt Whitman stands
at center court while the Indian boys run from basket to basket.
Walt Whitman cannot tell the difference between
offense and defense. He does not care if he touches the ball.
Half of the Indian boys wear t-shirts damp with sweat
and the other half are bareback, skin slick and shiny.
There is no place like this. Walt Whitman smiles.
Walt Whitman shakes. This game belongs to him.


- Sherman Alexie

[The A Team]

I love Sherman Alexie, his novel "The Absolutely true diary of a part-time Indian" took my heart by storm. One of the best of all time.

[Larry Robinson]

Darling


1.


I break this toast for the ghost of bread in Lebanon.
The split stone the toppled doorway.


Someone's kettle has been crushed.
Someone's sister has a gash above her right eye.


And now our tea has trouble being sweet.
A strawberry softens, turns musty,


overnight each apple grows a bruise.
I tie both shoes on Lebanon's feet.


All day the sky in Texas that has seen no rain since June
is raining Lebanese mountains, Lebanese trees.


What if the air grew damp with the names of mothers?
The clear-belled voices of first graders


pinned to the map of Lebanon like a shield?
When I visited the camp of the opposition


near the lonely Golan, looking northward toward
Syria and Lebanon, a vine was springing pinkly from a tin can


and a woman with generous hips like my mother's
said, "Follow me."


2.


Someone was there. Someone not there now
was standing. In the wrong place
with a small moon-shaped scar on his cheek
and a boy by the hand.
Who had just drunk water, sharing the glass.
Not thinking about it deeply
though they might have, had they known.
Someone grown, and someone not grown.
Who imagined they had different amounts of time left.
This guessing-game ends with our hands in the air,
becoming air.
One who was there is not there, for no reason.
Two who were there.


It was almost too big to see.


3.


Our friend from Turkey says language is so delicate
he likens it to a darling.


We will take this word in our arms.
It will be small and breathing.
We will not wish to scare it.
Pressing lips to the edge of each syllable.
Nothing else will save us now.
The word "together" wants to live in every house.




- Naomi Shihab-Nye

[Larry Robinson]

They've Lost It


They've lost it, lost it,
and their children
will never even wish for it --
and I am afraid
that the whole tribe's in trouble,
the whole tribe is lost --
because the sun keeps rising
and these days
nobody sings.


- Aaron Kramer

[Larry Robinson]

AFTER FIVE DAYS OF RAIN


The sky is clearing today, and you can feel
a myth’s been re-enacted,
the Deluge, all of us here
plunged into grey for near a week,
all of us on a voyage on a great
ship with misty walls,
grey sea and sky and no
horizon line to tell the difference.
...
Bound together on this passage, all of us,
the old reassuring the young
(who began singing “Rain, rain, go away!”
as soon as the first drops hit our needy earth),
the young asking their elders,
“Will our school float away?”


The sky was clearing
its throat for the past day,
unable to make up its mind.


Small pinpoint in my locale,
I knew each wet, life-giving moment
discretely at first, came later to visualize
the massive weather pattern thaoccupied
much of the Pacific, moving
over us bit by bit.


Enjoying the ride,
I got used to the palette of grey,
which illumined so gloriously
the new greens of the coming season,
got used to this watering
of all our roots
for further growth,
felt my own consummation in
this union of Heaven and Earth
no matter how long it went on,
Could have stayed in the fertile
womb of days whether
or not any new birth emerged.


But this morning, you could tell.
The sky had made up its mind.
Everything was silent and expecting
the Sun’s return. Even the quiet trees
offered their grateful prayers.
The new green all around
was like the sprig
brought by Noah’s dove
from Mount Ararat.


Now, the new world is here,
birthed from its womb,
ours to find
our way in.


- Max Reif

[Larry Robinson]

Not All Is Lost


We've not all lost it-not all
some children sing,
an older child- I am
in song often.


This morning
in early light
song burst from me-


and my heart
which is really
the heart
of the world
sang forward
from a tribe
I am
one with
ancestry
one with
mystery
one with
Divine
companions
whom
All
sing
every
single
day


- Shelly Monte

[Larry Robinson]

What Do Women Want?


I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what’s underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I’m the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I’ll pull that garment
from its hanger like I’m choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin,
it’ll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.


- Kim Addonizio

[Larry Robinson]

My Health Care Plan for America


Have the poets become doctors.


Those Bards will know what to do
with a diaeresis or epanalepsis.
They’ll alliterate the appendix
with the rondelet, prescribe tropes
and tropes of chthonic for a nasty
limerick. They’ll scan meter
and brain matter, listening for
iambic pentameter through a
stethoscope. O apostrophe,
they’ll say, you’ve had your
odes, now is the time for surgery
on your sonnets. They’ll ban
the cruel practice of vivisecting
villanelles and no one will suffer
of enjambment
again!
They’re cheap - anapaests
can be removed for a couplet
of bucks. The vaccine for Haiku
flu has no side effects and save for
an epic case, a poem is much
less paperwork. Irony can
finally be eradicated, though lord
save us if there’s an outbreak
of anacrusis.


Call them quacks,
call them ryhmesters,
but the public loves the option
of a heart crushing ballad
or bone setting verse.


- Bradley Saul

[Larry Robinson]

Evening says to night:


“Are you always this beautiful under your clothes?”
Night says to the moon:
“All day I dreamed of you but I couldn’t bring myself to call.”
The moon says to sleep:
“There are doorways in the dark.”
Sleep says to dawn:
“As if forward were the only direction!”

Dawn says to early morning sun:
“Sing sung sun”
Morning says to noon:
“Trees also do research.”
Noon says to early afternoon:
“Builders and dreamers need to listen to each other.”
Early afternoon says to late afternoon:
“I am becoming possible.”
Late afternoon says to the setting sun:
“Tell me about the texture of fire.”
The sunset says to the twilight:
“In a circle there is no beginning or end.”

Twilight to the first star says:
“Thank you for your light.”
First star to evening:
“Thank you for your dark.”


- J. Ruth Gendler

[Larry Robinson]

Heavy at Times


It's been a dry winter and the fear of drought is starting to set in. After
weeks of teases and "slight chances," the forecast for the week predicted
rain, heavy at times. I waited.


sitting quietly
is that the rain on the roof
now I can just be here


That first of several storms was as heavy as predicted. As each weather
front came ashore, the creek came up and then receded just as quickly after
the front passed.


the creek in spate
even in the rain they wait
hungry towhees, juncos


At night, I opened the window, the better to hear the torrent.


when calm returns
the insurgent creek
is louder still


And this morning, after the sun finally came out above the redwoods,


as if to welcome spring
tulipa and trillium
put on their makeup


- andrew zarrillo

[Larry Robinson]

Common


Imagine being common, crow-common,
Lupine-common, an oak surrounded by dry
Wild grasses common.


One day, I cross a high school parking lot,
Common asphalt, meeting my common soles.
Before me, an explosion of gulls,
White as a bride's dress, shoot as one
Up, then spill over, a fountain pouring perfectly
Each bird, a bead of liquid life. Again,
They explode, shoot skyward and spill over
Again and again, threaded through by trails
Of blue-black crows, woven into the flying
Fabric by necessity, desire and instinct.


I comment to a man pushing a compost can,
Remark at the remarkable. He says, "Oh,
They do that every day. At lunch the students,
Leave behind bits of bread," treasures
From barely-noticed food, common fare eaten daily.


I want to be that common,
Common as the gulls, rising and descending,
And the crows, weaving their way
To the feast, that bread,
That common manna.


- Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

Sky


I like you with nothing. Are you
what I was? What I will be?
I look out there by the hour,
so clear, so sure. I could
smile, or frown – still nothing.


Be my father, be my mother,
great sleep of blue; reach
far within me; open doors,
find whatever is hiding; invite it
for many clear days in the sun.


When I turn away I know
you are there. We won’t forget
each other: every look is a promise.
Others can’t tell what you say
when it’s the blue voice, when
you come to the window and look for me.


Your word arches over
the roof all day. I know it
within my bowed head, where
the other sky listens.
You will bring me
everything when the time comes.


- William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

What Kind of Times Are These


There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.


I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.


I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.


And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it's necessary
to talk about trees.




- Adrienne Rich
(16 May 1929 – 27 March 2012)

[Larry Robinson]

talking about trees


for Adrienne Rich: what kind of times are these


yes, let’s talk about trees

sturdy old oak that once gave us shade
modeled stability with its long years
has turned to stone
mammoth obstacle impossible to
move or remove
though dying at its heart

gentle willow that once danced with the breeze
graceful ballerina of the verdant lakeside
now stripped of green
hanging leafless lifeless
helpless in the smoky tempest

apple pear and walnut
yielded to the grape
sacrificed to the tablemakers
nourish not the child
fed only corn and sugar

kudzu has no shade for our august days
but chokes the swimming holes of our youth

and saltcedar can protect
only the littered beachheads
of our horizons

yes, Adrienne, we will continue
to talk about trees

- Vilma Ginzberg

[Larry Robinson]

Stump Beach
After a long chain of personal existences, the soul returns to its spiritual
home. The happiness of the “beyond of existence” is experienced.
Dane Rudhyar
I write in a notebook while sitting on a beach.
The pen runs out of ink so I print with the sharp point.
Like in a game I played as a child
I’ll cover the letters with black crayon.
When I return home, I’ll scrape the darkness away.

I walk on the Moon Rocks, cliffs chiseled by wind and salt water
they rise from sea’s bottom like shapes of ice in a cave.
Etched with delicate patterns like sand
after waves wash the shore clean.
After the shore is imprinted with sandpipers’
dances before waves wash their language away.
Boulders lead to caves that swallow the sea.
Holes crusted with salt and lime green algae
reach the end of the dark purple sea.

Tom Smith, my Pomo friend’s grandfather
visited these abysses to speak with the ancestors.
When he surfaced bull kelp ringed his heart.
His face, smoothed by waves was a fish’s body.
Silver scales, prophesies he read to his people.

When I return to the beach my words are language
on the bottom of bird’s feet, patterns in sand.


- Pamela Yesbick

[Larry Robinson]

How Fascism Will Come
"When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."
- attributed to Sinclair Lewis
When fascism comes, it will greet us with a smile. It will get down on its knees to pray. It will praise Main Street and Wall Street. It will cheer for the home team. It will clap from the bleachers when the uninsured are left to die on the street. It will rally on the Washington Mall. It will raise monuments to its heroes and weep for them and place bouquets at their stone feet and trace with their fingers the names engraved on the granite wall and go on sending soldiers to die in the mountains of Afghanistan, in the deserts of Iraq. It will send doves to pluck out the eyes of its enemies, having no hawks to spare.

When fascism comes, it will sit down for tea with the governor of Texas. It will pee in the mosques from California to Tennessee, chanting, "Wake up America, the enemy is here." It will sing the anthems of corporatization, privatization, demonization, monopolization. It will be interviewed, lovingly, on talk radio. It'll have talking points and a Facebook page and a disdain for big words or hard consonants. It won't bother to read. It will shred all its books. It will lambast the teachers and outlaw the unions.

When fascism comes, it will look good. It will have big hair, pressed suits, lapel pins. It will control all the channels. It will ride in on Swift Boats. It will sit on the Supreme Court. It will court us with fear. It will woo us with hope. When fascism comes, it will sell shares of itself on the stock market. It will get rich, then it will get obscenely rich, then it will stop paying taxes. It will leave us in the dust. It will kick our ass. It won't have to break a sweat to fool us twice. It will be too big to fail.

When fascism comes to America, it will enter on the winds of our silence and indifference and complacency. And on that day, one hundred thousand poets will gather. In book stores and libraries, bars and cafes, in their houses and apartments, in schools and on street corners, they will gather. In Albania, Bangladesh, Botswana, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Finland, Guatemala, Hungary, Macedonia, Malawi, Qatar, crying, laughing, screaming. They will wrap the sad music of humanity in bits of word cloth and hang them, like prayers, on the tree of life.


- Terry Ehret

[Larry Robinson]

Note to Self


Take the picture
from the desk
and put it
in the drawer.
It was true
to a moment
that was before,
but now as
lightning unzips
the sky and now
as the moon
is wholly new
you are no longer
the one the camera knew
with smile aslant
and lashes half-mast
in dreamy fringe.
It's okay to cry,
to want to grasp-
it's so human to want
to frame the past
and then attach it
to the fridge or set
it shrine-like on the shelf.
It is not so sad,
tell yourself,
to put the image away.
Notice how
much more you
look out the window.
Notice how much
more you look
at the vase.
And who is
doing the looking?
If sadness comes,
invite it for tea
and drink the dark
cup together. Take
turns sipping, take
your time. You'll
reach the bottom
soon enough.


- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

[Larry Robinson]

Straight Talk From Fox


Listen says fox it is music to run
over the hills to lick
dew from the leaves to nose along
the edges of the ponds to smell the fat
ducks in their bright feathers but
far out, safe in their rafts of
sleep. It is like
music to visit the orchard, to find
the vole sucking the sweet of the apple, or the
rabbit with his fast-beating heart. Death itself
is a music. Nobody has ever come close to
writing it down, awake or in a dream. It cannot
be told. It is flesh and bones
changing shape and with good cause, mercy
is a little child beside such an invention. It is
music to wander the black back roads
outside of town no one awake or wondering
if anything miraculous is ever going to
happen, totally dumb to the fact of every
moment's miracle. Don't think I haven't
peeked into windows. I see you in all your seasons
making love, arguing, talking about God
as if he were an idea instead of the grass,
instead of the stars, the rabbit caught
in one good teeth-whacking hit and brought
home to the den. What I am, and I know it, is
responsible, joyful, thankful. I would not
give my life for a thousand of yours.


- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

The Man with a Hoe
Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back, the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And marked their ways upon the ancient deep?
Down all the caverns of Hell to their last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this--
More tongued with cries against the world's blind greed--
More filled with signs and portents for the soul--
More packed with danger to the universe.
What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of the Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time's tragedy is in that aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Powers that made the world,
A protest that is also prophecy.
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?
O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings--
With those who shaped him to the thing he is--
When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world,
After the silence of the centuries?


- Edwin Markham

[Larry Robinson]

Bowing


Before our time, before years that said no


when anyone passed a church and reverently


bowed, a soul somewhere might go


to heaven, just because of that bow.


And they all felt sad if a rooster crowed,


for something it reminded them of, a story


strong as the cables that hold up the world.


Nobody bows now if a rooster crows.





But maybe something you do, unknowing


or quick to react, without thought of gain’


or loss – maybe that act goes on


over mountains or oceans and finds the same


salvation for you that bowing does.


It is larger now, the church is, and the life


we are in. In it we bow to everything.


- William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

Easter Exultet

Shake out your qualms.
Shake up your dreams.
Deepen your roots.
Extend your branches.
Trust deep water
and head for the open,
even if your vision
shipwrecks you.
Quit your addiction
to sneer and complain.
Open a lookout.
Dance on a brink.
Run with your wildfire.
You are closer to glory
leaping an abyss
than upholstering a rut.
Not dawdling.
Not doubting.
Intrepid all the way
Walk toward clarity.
At every crossroad
Be prepared
to bump into wonder.
Only love prevails.
En route to disaster
insist on canticles.
Lift your ineffable
out of the mundane.
Nothing perishes;
nothing survives;
everything transforms!
Honeymoon with Big Joy!

- James Broughton

[Larry Robinson]

What Must Be Said


Why do I stay silent, conceal for too long
What clearly is and has been
Practiced in war games, at the end of which we as survivors
Are at best footnotes.


It is the alleged right to first strike
That could annihilate the Iranian people--
Enslaved by a loud-mouth
And guided to organized jubilation--
Because in their territory,
It is suspected, a bomb is being built.


Yet why do I forbid myself
To name that other country
In which, for years, even if secretly,
There has been a growing nuclear potential at hand
But beyond control, because no testing is available?


The universal concealment of these facts,
To which my silence subordinated itself,
I sense as incriminating lies
And force--the punishment is promised
As soon as it is ignored;
The verdict of "anti-Semitism" is familiar.


Now, though, because in my country
Which from time to time has sought and confronted
The very crime
That is without compare
In turn on a purely commercial basis, if also
With nimble lips calling it a reparation, declares
A further U-boat should be delivered to Israel,
Whose specialty consists of guiding all-destroying warheads to where the existence
Of a single atomic bomb is unproven,
But through fear of what may be conclusive,
I say what must be said.


Why though have I stayed silent until now?
Because I think my origin,
Which has never been affected by this obliterating flaw,
Forbids this fact to be expected as pronounced truth
Of the country of Israel, to which I am bound
And wish to stay bound.


Why do I say only now,
Aged and with my last ink,
That the nuclear power of Israel endangers
The already fragile world peace?
Because it must be said
What even tomorrow may be too late to say;
Also because we--as Germans burdened enough--
Could be the suppliers to a crime
That is foreseeable, wherefore our complicity
Could not be redeemed through any of the usual excuses.


And granted: I am silent no longer
Because I am tired of the hypocrisy
Of the West; in addition to which it is to be hoped
That this will free many from silence,
Prompt the perpetrator of the recognized danger
To renounce violence and
Likewise insist
That an unhindered and permanent control
Of the Israeli nuclear potential
And the Iranian nuclear sites
Be authorized through an international agency
Of the governments of both countries.


Only this way are all, the Israelis and Palestinians,
Even more, all people, that in this
Region occupied by mania
Live cheek by jowl among enemies,
In the end also to help us.


- Guenter Grass

[Larry Robinson]

From The Western Shore

As the full moon
peeks,
rises,
and then rises full
above the horizon,
we,
on the western shore
of the bay,
the lake,
the ocean,
even on the shore
of a bucket of water,
each of us,
sees that the moon’s reflection
points directly towards us.

It even follows us
as we stroll the beach,
a moonbeam across the water,
directly towards us.

This wonder
is a lesson
from love,
which,
like the full moon’s reflection,
flows directly towards us,
towards each of us.
No matter where we are,
or who we are,
love flows
unceasingly
towards us.

Love’s moonlight
bathes us,
always.


- Trout Black

[Larry Robinson]

A Jewish Cemetery In Germany


On a little hill amid fertile fields lies a small cemetery,
a Jewish cemetery behind a rusty gate, hidden by shrubs,
abandoned and forgotten. Neither the sound of prayer
nor the voice of lamentation is heard there
for the dead praise not the Lord.
Only the voices of our children ring out, seeking graves
and cheering
each time they find one--like mushrooms in the forest, like
wild strawberries.
Here's another grave! There's the name of my mother's
mothers, and a name from the last century. And here's a name,
and there! And as I was about to brush the moss from the name--
Look! an open hand engraved on the tombstone, the grave
of a kohen,
his fingers splayed in a spasm of holiness and blessing,
and here's a grave concealed by a thicket of berries
that has to be brushed aside like a shock of hair
from the face of a beautiful beloved woman.


- Yehuda Amichai
(Translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld)

[Larry Robinson]

The Work Of The Poet Is To Name What Is Holy


The work of the poet
is to name what is holy:


the spring snow
that hides unevenness
but also records
a dog walked at lunchtime,
the hieroglyphs of birds,
pawprints of a life
tiny but resolute;


how, like Russian dolls,
we nest in previous selves;


the lustrous itch
that compels an oyster
to forge a pearl,
or a poet a verse;


the drawing on of evening
belted at the waist;


snowfields of diamond dust;


the cozy monotony
of our days, in which
love appears with a holler;


the way a man's body
has its own geography––
cliffs, aqueducts, pumice fields,
but a woman's is the jungle,
hot, steamy, full of song;


the brain's curiosity shop
filled with quaint mementos
and shadow antiques
hidden away in drawers;


the plain geometry
of you, me, and art––
our angles at rest
among shifting forms.


The work of the poet
is to name what is holy,


and not to mind so much
the pinch of words
to cope with memories
weak as falling buildings,


or render loss, love,
and the penitentiary
of worry where we live.


The work of the poet
is to name what is holy,
a task fit for eternity,
or the small Eden of this hour.


- Diane Ackerman