Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

In the Absence of Kindness


In the absence of kindness
Take one deep breath
And then let it go
Into the heat of confusion
Or an echoless emptiness
Where it may be swallowed up
Like a dove in a black hole
Listen as it coos gently in the dark


The next breath may disorient you
That’s a good sign
Go ahead
Lose your way
Your point
Your imitation
Of someone you don’t even
Recognize now

You’ve made a U-turn
And like a boomerang
Being struck by lightning
Random acts of kindness
Now seem as natural
As being breathed into Self
That One who has forgiven
Any part of the whole that
Might have believed
You were not enough


- Fran Carbonaro

OCCUPY SUGARLOAF
- a California State Park


As I hike the path that crosses
a sun-blanched meadow, meander
under oak shadow on the hillside trail,

I spot them, beginning to take over:
whip of slim snake, fin-flick of steelhead
black-tailed deer, encroaching grass.

Silence occupies the air.

Then the ravens' croaks,
the turkeys' glee. There's only
one more day

till the state locks the gate
to cars, campers, horses—
and those who know

no boundaries take hold:
quail, hawk, lizard
rain, sun, wind, seed.
- Jodi Hottel

Leaning In


Sometimes, in the middle of a crowded store on a Saturday
afternoon, my husband will rest his hand
on my neck, or on the soft flesh belted at my waist,
and pull me to him. I understand


his question: Why are we so fortunate
when all around us, friends are falling prey
to divorce and illness? It seems intemperate
to celebrate in a more conspicuous way


so we just stand there, leaning in
to one another, until that moment
of sheer blessedness dissolves and our skin,
which has been touching, cools and relents,


settling back into our separate skeletons
as we head toward Housewares to resume our errands.


- Sue Ellen Thompson

Footnote from the Brink

2/14/2013, Valentines Day

Black sky,
lots of glittering white stars,
brings back a memory.
I'm not moving,
but staying still,
still want to participate,
get involved.

Color coming into it,
reds and greens,
blinking yellow background
warning me,
get on to something else,
stay active with the thoughts of dying.

Din in background,
going off and on,
very important.
Activity,
just being,
the act of dying.

State of being,
the act of dying not affecting it.
Wonder what part, what part of what?
It is a situation that is getting confusing.
Why am I doing it?
I'm not curious about dying.
I just want to do it.
I am not afraid.

The din is leaving me,
evaporating.
I sleep.
I wake up,
not unhappy to wake up.
I accept it all.

Another day is coming on,
travel and family are still basic passions,
and dying is well taken care of,
coming around the bend.

Where did the words come from?

My friends are mostly gone,
and I'm going off to love music, jazz, opera,
and to hear Gregory's voice,
to see him.

Leaving is enough.
I can't feel sad,
what's happening is inevitable.
My time is your time.

I'm feeling incompetent,
unlikely to hold it together.
I did the best I could under the circumstances.

The circumstances of what?
Everything is interesting,
every little piece of evidence,
and I am not afraid.

I want to head into the unknown,
with my forehead first,
no hair to cover my eyes.
I want to go open, unadorned, plain and bare.
I see part light, part dark,
the light is ahead of me,
and dark on either side of me.

I'm traveling through the light and the dark.
And I am not afraid.


- Maxine Collin Williams
(Maxine died last week after 95 years on the planet)

ascension


for Jonathan Glass

the geometry
of distance annoys
is unfilled

countless shapes fly about
collide
change form
careen in other directions

when motion stops
what does the space contain?

do we require an answer?

it feels dangerous
uncertain
without movement

images and memories
slowly approach
are here
then gone

hands held
candles lit
chaotic feelings
rise and fall
within love
and loss

life's
ragged outline
becomes more clear
we must go on

so must you.


- Richard Retecki

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading - treading - till it seemed
That Sense was breaking through -

And when they all were seated,
A Service, like a Drum -
Kept beating - beating - till I thought
My mind was going numb -

And then I heard them lift a Box
And creak across my Soul
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
Then Space - began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here -

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down -
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing - then -


- Emily Dickinson

Dear Human:


You've got it all wrong.
You didn't come here to master unconditional love.
This is where you came from and where you'll return.


You came here to learn personal love.
Universal love.
Messy love.
Sweaty love.
Crazy love.
Broken love.
Whole love.
Infused with divinity.
Lived through the grace of stumbling.
Demonstrated through the beauty of . . . messing up.
Often.


You didn't come here to be perfect; you already are.
You came here to be gorgeously human. Flawed and fabulous.
And rising again into remembering.
But unconditional love? Stop telling that story.
Love in truth doesn't need any adjectives.
It doesn't require modifiers.
It doesn't require the condition of perfection.


It only asks you to show up.


And do your best.


That you stay present and feel fully.


That you shine and fly and laugh and cry
and hurt and heal and fall and get back up
and play and work and live and die as YOU.


It's enough.


It's plenty.


- Courtney A. Walsh

It Is March


It is March and black dust falls out of the books
Soon I will be gone
The tall spirit who lodged here has
Left already
On the avenues the colorless thread lies under
Old prices


When you look back there is always the past
Even when it has vanished
But when you look forward
With your dirty knuckles and the wingless
Bird on your shoulder
What can you write


The bitterness is still rising in the old mines
The fist is coming out of the egg
The thermometers out of the mouths of the corpses


At a certain height
The tails of the kites for a moment are
Covered with footsteps


Whatever I have to do has not yet begun


- W. S. Merwin

The World Was Old When We Got Here


we could see that, easy. Paint and birch
bark curling, dried up wells and leaky
faucets, weeping willows and bent windmills
shrieking in the breeze. Driven outside, we swung
our legs from the seats of rusted tractors tangled
in dead branches, crept into abandoned
houses graffitied by trees. We wove sticks
with bale twine to make shelters, fished
the hood of a car from the river
for a roof, used bricks from the crumbled
cookhouse for a makeshift wall.


Inheriting ruins,
we made ruins.


Blue jeans in the wash still came out dirty. The breath
of grown-ups fermented with things unsaid. Someday
we'd understand "farm crisis," foreclosure, FDIC. We'd see
people driving Cadillacs, rest our faces on the plush
white carpet of our own remodeled homes, remember
clover by the chicken pen, how each spring we rolled
in it, each spring it was new.


- Kara McKeever

In Praise of Worry


Think of it and it won't happen,
I've often thought. Too unlikely
to imagine the accident-you
in the car in the rain-then receive
the call. Too uncanny,
too much like a book.


In life, almost no one
recognizes what's important
when it's beginning-the comical bully
on his way to power, the shy boy
next door loading his gun, or the baby
in the barn, only the animals watching.


Then a few travelers arrive in the night.


Later, we can see the shape of the story,
or make one up, if we have to.


So you're driving home in a terrible storm.
Rain lashes the windshield, great trees
are collapsing, but you're safe
because the scene I'm picturing


won't happen if I think of it first.
That's what I keep telling myself
until the storm is over-
challenging the order of things
to show its hand, betting it won't.


- Lawrence Raab

Silence


I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea,
And the silence of the city when it pauses,
And the silence of a man and a maid,
And the silence of the sick
When their eyes roam about the room.
And I ask: For the depths
Of what use is language?
A beast of the field moans a few times
When death takes its young.
And we are voiceless in the presence of realities -
We cannot speak.




A curious boy asks an old soldier
Sitting in front of the grocery store,
"How did you lose your leg?"
And the old soldier is struck with silence,
Or his mind flies away
Because he cannot concentrate it on Gettysburg,
It comes back jocosely
And he says, "A bear bit it off."
And the boy wonders, while the old soldier
Dumbly, feebly lives over
The flashes of guns, the thunder of cannon,
The shrieks of the slain,
And himself lying on the ground,
And the hospital surgeons, the knives,
And the long days in bed.
But if he could describe it all
He would be an artist.
But if he were an artist there would be deeper wounds
Which he could not describe.


There is the silence of a great hatred,
And the silence of a great love,
And the silence of an embittered friendship.
There is the silence of a spiritual crisis,
Through which your soul, exquisitely tortured,
Comes with visions not to be uttered Into a realm of higher life.
There is the silence of defeat.
There is the silence of those unjustly punished
And the silence of the dying whose hand
Suddenly grips yours.
There is the silence between father and son,
When the father cannot explain his life,
Even though he be misunderstood for it.


There is the silence that comes between husband and wife.
There is the silence of those who have failed;
And the vast silence that covers
Broken nations and vanquished leaders.
There is the silence of Lincoln,
Thinking of the poverty of his youth.
And the silence of Napoleon
After Waterloo.
And the silence of Jeanne d'Arc
Saying amid the flames, "Blessed Jesus" -
Revealing in two words all sorrows, all hope.
And there is the silence of age,
Too full of wisdom for the tongue to utter it
In words intelligible to those who have not lived
The great range of life.


And there is the silence of the dead.
If we who are in life cannot speak
Of profound experiences,
Why do you marvel that the dead
Do not tell you of death?
Their silence shall be interpreted
As we approach them.


- Edgar Lee Masters

To Daffodils


Fair Daffodils, we weep to see

https://www.flower-gardening-made-ea...sus-suzy-1.jpg

You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain'd his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray'd together, we
Will go with you along.


We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.
We die
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
Like to the summer's rain;
Or as the pearls of morning's dew,
Ne'er to be found again.


- Robert Herrick

The Generations


We watch the young, rising early, determined,
going out to dig into the horizons their elders
heralded: the images and tokens of worship, the
paradises and unfenced boundaries prepared
before them that now must be seen through
their own eyes. There's no going back. There's
hope they will grow into the possibilities we were.
We want and often wait for and gravely expect
our children to fulfill our plotted desires. Often we
are blind or indifferent to their desires. More and
more we merge with the lives and deaths contained
in the time through which we passed.
Let us watch out for the winter's clouds we see as
loss, the withering of hope into judgement that can
come with age. Why trust in the whisperings of regret
when our precious days are ripening with the measure
of honest enthusiasms that, at last, we have earned?
The generation that follows, we pray, will not be burdened
with our history of distortions; they may be free of the
lament that recalls a world once better than it is. How
clear it is that those other worlds are here! We who were
children just a dream ago can offer the light that lets us
love in them their journey. Understanding this, we can
come to more respect our own.

- Rich Meyers

Two Giant Fat People


God
And I have become
Like two giant fat people
Living in a
Tiny boat.
We
Keep
Bumping into each other and
Laughing.


- Hafiz
(from The Gift - Translations by Daniel Ladinsky)

Difficulties


Friend, please tell me what I can do about this mud world
I keep spinning out of myself!


I gave up expensive clothes, and bought a robe
But I noticed one day the cloth was well-woven.


So I bought some burlap, but I still
Throw it elegantly over my left shoulder.


I stopped being a sexual elephant,
And now I discover that I"m angry a lot.


I finally gave up anger, and now I notice
That I am greedy all day.


I worked hard at dissolving the greed,
And now I am proud of myself.


When the mind wants to break its link with the world
It still holds on to one thing.


Kabir says: Listen, my friend,
There are very few that find the path!!


- Kabir
(translation by Robert Bly)

Passage Through The Center


It’s like swimming across a river
with our eyes closed, this passage
through the center of our life.
Sometimes we have to navigate
from the inside out -
when the stars hide their light
when we cannot see the bank
on the other side, when the hounds
of our past bark on the shoreline
braying their mournful song at our leaving.

It is a stillness like the heart of the fire
that guides—the voice of some angel of mercy
who has been sending us missives
since our birth. And when we look over
our shoulder - once, twice -
it is the fierce tiger of truth who howls,
You cannot go back, that place is gone now.

And for a moment, we freeze in the river
sure we will drown, forgetting which way
is up and down, forward and back,
as the roar of the tumbling current
pours through us with all the questions
that have refused to leave us alone,
with visions of the many roads
bursting into flames behind us.

And then something remembers itself,
lifts our shoulders above the swirling cauldron
of in between and we simply let go
of making our way, we let go of decisions,
and the tangled paradoxes flow on through
the river’s body, drawing us to the edge
of this new world that calls us to our knees
to give thanks for this fertile soil
seeded with dreams,
thirsty for our arrival.

- Laura Weaver

Point Reyes—wild oats in the wind
for JQ

As if it were the holy spirit
engulfing me,
as if I even knew
the nature of such a thing,
as if I might even be able to tell you
the mystery of a moment that pushed me
to the very edge of . . . of . . . something,
calling loudly without words for me to simply open up—all the way . . .

We stood together in silence,
in the midst of things,
on the headlands, high above the surf,
a dusty trail beneath our feet
crisscrossed from time to time
by slow moving, shinny black beetles,
while stationery, high above our heads
a hawk lay just beneath the cold gray blanket
that covered everything on this tiny slip of land
sliding northward, sliding always northward.
And everywhere it was wind—
the air moved, ruffled clothes and tousled hair,
made soft staccato pops and flutters in our ears
that almost hid from them
an exquisite, near silent song.

Had we not seen the wild oats dancing,
delicately dangling their tiny, hull-covered seeds,
atop straight golden stalks,
that bent down in the wind,
as if to say, namaste, to everything,
lightly touching one another, then,
like bows and strings—
had we not seen them dancing so,
we would have missed their music,
their heavenly music,
the intricacy of which,
the joy of which
went well beyond
what human hand
could make
or these human words
describe.

Oh, the wind and the song of the wild oats!


- Bill Denham

Ark

The mountain sleeps,
awaiting the arrival
of the next storm,
unmoved as only a mountain can be

Unlike the rest of us
anxiously eyeing
the hidden pearl of the sun
tucked away in the
dank oyster flesh
of the cloud

Or others of us,
heads down grazing into a wind
heavy with water and information
we do not want

Or still others
gathering kindling
that might float away from us
and save someone else

All of us occupied
with our useless preparations,
like Noah, who meant well
but should have left well enough alone
and slept and dreamed
he was a mountain.


- Greg Hayes

The Pope's Penis

It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate
clapper at the center of a bell.
It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a
halo of silver sweaweed, the hair
swaying in the dark and the heat -- and at night
while his eyes sleep, it stands up
in praise of God.

- Sharon Olds

Jesus Christ! ;-)

Gold, Green

Let it be
On a day in March
California;
When the grass is green
On the rolling hills
And the snow
Is deep in the mountains –

Let it be
On a day like this
That we plant a tree
California
For the years to come
For the little ones
and the lakes
Will be pure in the mountains –

Let it be gold and green
California;
That we touch the ground
That we heal the land
From the mountains to the sea.

- Gary Snyder

Envoi


O, child, where we stand
Is quicksand


This venerable crust
Dust


Move bravely on,
As if there were watchers.


- Barry Spacks

alchemy


the miracle is in
the capacity
of your eyes
to distinguish
an ordinary tree
from a sun-crowned
gently nodding
green cathedral.
to realize
a faucet
is a dispensary
of wet
braided
light.
to regard
your own
left hand
as an astonishing feat
of animation.
to turn
a rabid
gnashing world
into unending
gentle music.


- Natascha Bruckner

Daffodils


I wander'd lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.


- William Wordsworth

Sailing to Byzantium

I

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
--Those dying generations--at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.


II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.


III

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.


IV

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form a Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords or ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.


- William Butler Yeats

A Song Of Peace


I closed my eyes in darkness

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...e_dove.svg.png

and opened them in light,
and over the world,
like a flag unfurled,
was a sweet sound and a holy sight.

A dove spread wings of magic;
its shadow was golden and broad,
and the people of earth,
in a passion of birth,
had shattered an ancient sword.

Oh, why is my country hated
and made such a thing of scorn,
this fruitful place
with its varied race,
this land where I was born?

And why is my country darkened,
when the rest of the world is light,
and cloaked in fear
of things once dear,
and weak in its frightful might?

And why are the people silent,
and where is the ancient song
that mankind found
was freedom's sound,
to shatter injustice and wrong?

We'll not have our country hated!
Our country is strong and grand.
Oh, be not dismayed
by those who betrayed
the heritage of our land.

If a song can be made so simple,
if a word can become a creed,
then the sound of peace
will gently increase,
like the harvest from the seed.

Ask not why the land is silent;
let the people measure their toil,
and the human race
will share its grace
with the lonely folk of our soil.

Its grace is new and holy,
and peace is the dream of the world,
and the people of earth
in a passion of birth
will see their banner unfurled.

The banner is pure and sacred,
enough of the swine who destroy!
Enough of the night,
the world is bright-
and the future is filled with-joy.

Our cup is running over
with the graft and the lies and the hate,
and the renegade
is too well paid
with our broken dreams and our children's fate.


We'll open our eyes in the darkness,
and boldly look to the light,
and call to our side
with earnest pride
our people who dwell in the night.

And they'll see the dove so holy,
so pure and wide of wing,
wide as the earth
in its passion of birth-
with a joyful song to sing.

And the lilt will be made so simple,
and the word will become a creed,
and the song of peace
will gently increase,
like the harvest from the seed.

- Howard Fast (1914-2003)

Another Spring


The seasons revolve and the years change
With no assistance or supervision.
The moon, without taking thought,
Moves in its cycle, full, crescent, and full.


The white moon enters the heart of the river;
The air is drugged with azalea blossoms;
Deep in the night a pine cone falls;
Our campfire dies out in the empty mountains.


The sharp stars flicker in the tremulous branches;
The lake is black, bottomless in the crystalline night;
High in the sky the Northern Crown
Is cut in half by the dim summit of a snow peak.


O heart, heart, so singularly
Intransigent and corruptible,
Here we lie entranced by the starlit water,
And moments that should each last forever


Slide unconsciously by us like water.


- Kenneth Rexroth

Ten Years Later


When the mind is clear
and the surface of the now still,
now swaying water
slaps against
the rolling kayak,
I find myself near darkness,
paddling again to Yellow Island.
Every spring wildflowers
cover the grey rocks.
Every year the sea breeze
ruffles the cold and lovely pearls
hidden in the center of the flowers
as if remembering them
by touch alone.
A calm and lonely, trembling beauty
that frightened me in youth.
Now their loneliness
feels familiar, one small thing
I've learned these years,
how to be alone,
and at the edge of aloneness
how to be found by the world.
Innocence is what we allow
to be gifted back to us
once we've given ourselves away.
There is one world only,
the one to which we gave ourselves
utterly, and to which one day
we are blessed to return.


- David Whyte

Frivolous Spring

If one must have a mind for winter,
spring requires no mind at all.

Only a blue-eyed sky, long of day,
sweet of night,

or sprinkle of rain with muddysplash
walk in the park,

and gather of lupine, poppies,
a singing lark.

Spring is a garland dance in the woods,
a humming breeze with peppery zing
of pollensting,

a giddy of daisies flinging petals
to the wind, counting the ways
helovesmehelovesmenothelovesme!


- Patrice Warrender

Bush's War


I typed the brief phrase, "Bush's War,"
At the top of a sheet of white paper,
Having some dim intuition of a poem
Made luminous by reason that would,
Though I did not have them at hand,
Set the facts out in an orderly way.
Berlin is a northerly city. In May
At the end of the twentieth century
In the leafy precincts of Dahlem Dorf,
South of the Grunewald, near Krumme Lanke,
Spring is northerly; it begins before dawn
In a racket of bird song. The amsels
Shiver the sun up as if they were shaking
A liquid tangle of golden wire. There are two kinds
Of flowering chestnuts, red and white,
And the wet pavements are speckled
With petals from the incandescent spikes
Of their flowers and shoes at U-bahn stops
Are flecked with them. Green of holm oaks,
Birch tassels, the soft green of maples,
And the odor of lilacs is everywhere.
At Oscar Helene Heim station a farmer
Sells white asparagus from a heaped table.
In a month he'll be selling chanterelles;
In the month after that, strawberries
And small, rosy crawfish from the Spree.
The piles of stalks of the asparagus
Are startlingly phallic, phallic and tender
And deathly pale. Their seasonal appearance
Must be the remnant of some fertility ritual
Of the German tribes. Steamed, they are the color
Of old ivory. In May, in restaurants
They are served on heaped white platters
With boiled potatoes and parsley butter,
Or shavings of Parma ham and lemon juice
Or sorrel and smoked salmon. And,
Walking home in the slant, widening,
Brilliant northern light that falls
On the new-leaved birches and the elms,
Nightingales singing at the first, subtlest,
Darkening of dusk, it is a trick of the mind
That the past seems just ahead of us,
As if we were being shunted there
In the surge of a rattling funicular.
Flash forward: the firebombing of Hamburg,
Fifty thousand dead in a single night,
"The children's bodies the next day
Set in the street in rows like a market
In charred chicken." Flash forward:
Firebombing of Tokyo, a hundred thousand
In a night. Flash forward: forty-five
Thousand Polish officers slaughtered
By the Russian Army in the Katyn Woods,
The work of half a day. Flash forward:
Two million Russian prisoners of war
Murdered by the German army all across
The eastern front, supplies low,
Winter of 1943. Flash: Hiroshima.
And then Nagasaki, as if the sentence
Life is fire and flesh is ash needed
To be spoken twice. Flash: Auschwitz,
Dachau, Therienstadt, the train lurching,
The stomach woozy, past displays of falls
Of hair, piles of valises, spectacles
With frames designed to curl delicately
Around a human ear. Flash:
The gulags, seven million in Byelorussia
And Ukraine. In innocent Europe on a night
In spring, among the light-struck birches,
Students holding hands. One of them
Is carrying a novel, the German translation
Of a slim book by Marguerite Duras
About a love affair in old Saigon. (Flash:
Two million Vietnamese, fifty five thousand
Of the American young, whole races
Of tropical birds extinct from saturation bombing)
The kind of book the young love
To love, about love in time of war.
Forty five million, all told, in World War II.
In Berlin, pretty Berlin, in the spring time,
You are never not wondering how
It happened, and the people around you
In the station with chestnut petals on their shoes,
Children then, or unborn, never not
Wondering. Is it that we like the kissing
And bombing together, in prospect
At least, girls in their flowery dresses?
Someone will always want to mobilize
Death on a massive scale for economic
Domination or revenge. And the task, taken
As a task, appeals to the imagination.
The military is an engineering profession.
Look at boys playing: they love
To figure out the ways to blow things up.
But the rest of us have to go along.
Why do we do it? Certainly there's a rage
To injure what's injured us. Wars
Are always pitched to us that way.
The well-paid news readers read the reasons
On the air. And we who are injured,
Or have been convinced that we are injured,
Are always identified with virtue. It's that--
The rage to hurt mixed with self-righteousness
And fear--that's murderous.
The young Arab depilated himself
As an act of purification before he drove
The plane into the office building. It's not
Just violence, it's a taste for power
That amounts to loathing for the body.
Perhaps it's this that permits people to believe
That the dead women in the rubble of Baghdad
Who did not cast a vote for their deaths
Or the glimpse afforded them before they died
Of the raw white of the splintered bones
In the bodies of their men or their children
Are being given the gift of freedom
Which is the virtue of their injured killers.
It's hard to say which is worse about this,
The moral sloth of it or the intellectual disgrace.
And what good are our judgments to the dead?
And death the cleanser, Walt Whitman's
Sweet death, the scourer, the tender
Lover, shutter of eyelids, turns
The heaped bodies into summer fruit,
Magpies eating dark berries in the dusk
And birch pollen staining sidewalks
To the faintest gold. Bald nur--Goethe--no,
Warte nur, bald ruhest du auch. Just wait.
You will be quiet soon enough. In Dahlem,
Under the chestnuts, in the leafy spring.


- Robert Hass