Poem for the day from Larry Robinson

[Larry Robinson]

Willing

Let me listen.
Let me not know what to say.
Let me receive the world
as it slurs and shrieks,
hums and whispers,
speaks and bleats.
Let me lean ever closer in.
There are walls I have built
in my ears. There is so much
I would rather not hear.
Let me listen.
Let me receive with wonder.
Let all be worthy of note.
Let me be witness, eavesdropper,
spy.
Let me never pretend
to be deaf.
Let the world slip into me
and change me
as light changes a room.
Let me be silent, let me listen,
and in listening,
let me be new.


- Rosemary Wahtola Trommer

[Larry Robinson]

Screen Time

Mirrors are one thing
I am there for hair
or to apply emollient
with purpose
then move on –
brief self-assessment
and that’s it

And before these times
of distance and screens,
when I was with you
I looked only at you
into your eyes
could see the subtle signs
of your life lived

Now I spend hours
looking at a gallery
of people almost there –
I am one of them

Grateful for the chance
to see you at all,
I can’t complain,
at least not about you.
I try not to look at myself
looking at you

but it’s hard not to observe
that I tend to tilt my head
so I experiment
left, right or straight
which is best?

Back to focusing on you
I am listening, really I am
but I can’t help but notice my wrinkly bits,
that my face is more serious than I feel
and do I look pale?
Do we all look pale?

- Margaret Barkley

[Larry Robinson]

The Silence of the Stars


When Laurens van der Post one night
In the Kalihari Desert told the Bushmen
He couldn't hear the stars
Singing, they didn't believe him. They looked at him,
Half-smiling. They examined his face
To see whether he was joking
Or deceiving them. Then two of those small men
Who plant nothing, who have almost
Nothing to hunt, who live
On almost nothing, and with no one
But themselves, led him away
From the crackling thorn-scrub fire
And stood with him under the night sky
And listened. One of them whispered,
Do you not hear them now?
And van der Post listened, not wanting
To disbelieve, but had to answer,
No. They walked him slowly
Like a sick man to the small dim
Circle of firelight and told him
They were terribly sorry,
And he felt even sorrier
For himself and blamed his ancestors
For their strange loss of hearing,
Which was his loss now. On some clear nights
When nearby houses have turned off their visions,
When the traffic dwindles, when through streets
Are between sirens and the jets overhead
Are between crossings, when the wind
Is hanging fire in the fir trees,
And the long-eared owl in the neighboring grove
Between calls is regarding his own darkness,
I look at the stars again as I first did
To school myself in the names of constellations
And remember my first sense of their terrible distance,
I can still hear what I thought
At the edge of silence were the inside jokes
Of my heartbeat, my arterial traffic,
The C above high C of my inner ear, myself
Tunelessly humming, but now I know what they are:
My fair share of the music of the spheres
And clusters of ripening stars,
Of the songs from the throats of the old gods
Still tending even tone-deaf creatures
Through their exiles in the desert.


- David Wagoner

[Larry Robinson]

For Those Who Came Before

Silence that breaks the strongest of eardrums
The lynching rope's last whispers,
Cracking as it stretches before the awful truth
Of pure unrelenting ignorance.


Where innocence is crowned in thorns
Just as it was centuries before
To noble the cause of awakening.


The good buried deep
Remembered only vaguely by the grave digger,
Who unapologetically does his sole labor
To forget the past.


Erasing the deeds that mock harshly
Humanity's false imaginings
Of its evolved state.


Denial, whose Sunday preacher
Emancipates with sweat and spittle
Any doubts of conscience or equality
In the name of Jesus.


To whom any or all injustices can be righted
Tightly, like a taunt rope.


- Craig Bassett

[Larry Robinson]

Legacies


her grandmother called her from the playground
“yes, ma’am”
“i want chu to learn how to make rolls” said the old
woman proudly
but the little girl didn’t want
to learn how because she knew
even if she couldn’t say it that
that would mean when the old one died she would be less
dependent on her spirit so
she said
“i don’t want to know how to make no rolls”
with her lips poked out
and the old woman wiped her hands on
her apron saying “lord
these children”
and neither of them ever
said what they meant
and i guess nobody ever does


- Nikki Giovanni

[Larry Robinson]

You Reading This, Be Ready


Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along the shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?


Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?


When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life --


What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?


- William Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

Petrified Wood


In this moment,
the wind lofted branches
dance their familiar pine waltz.
And while the June snowfall clings,
the granite peaks remain
seemingly permanent, unchanging.
While elsewhere,
the virus dance destroys,
and cuts open inequities
to global view,

and rage
at the atrocities to which we are powerless,
channels
to meet the currents of rage
at the human atrocities we must control.


Here, the ancient deaths become rocks of treasure,
spawning new appreciation.
Yet, let us not take aeons -of grains as small as sand -
of empathy , compassion, and justice,

to bring us to treasure the present,
human, xylem and phloem of our communities.
Let us not wait
for the living gifts of our people
to turn to stone, before they are preserved.


- Renee Dryfoos

[Barry]

[Larry Robinson]

Help Me, Love Poem


Help me, love poem, rise up from the broken glass,
The time to sing has come.
Help me, love poem, to reestablish integrity,
And to sing again about pain.


The world isn’t free of war, it’s true,
It isn’t washed of its blood, hate still exists,
It’s true.


But it’s also certain that we’re closer to a truth.
Violence sees itself in the mirror of the world
And its face is not even attractive to itself.


And I continue believing in the possibility of love.
I’m certain of that understanding among
Human beings, achieved over pain,
Over the broken glass.


- Pablo Neruda

[Larry Robinson]

Weather


On a scrap of paper in the archive is written

I have forgotten my umbrella. Turns out

in a pandemic everyone, not just the philosopher,

is without. We scramble in the drought of information

held back by inside traders. Drop by drop. Face

covering? No, yes. Social distancing? Six feet

under for underlying conditions. Black.

Just us and the blues kneeling on a neck

with the full weight of a man in blue.

Eight minutes and forty-six seconds.

In extremis, I can’t breathe gives way

to asphyxiation, to giving up this world,

and then mama, called to, a call

to protest, fire, glass, say their names, say

their names, white silence equals violence,

the violence of again, a militarized police

force teargassing, bullets ricochet, and civil

unrest taking it, burning it down. Whatever

contracts keep us social compel us now

to disorder the disorder. Peace. We’re out

to repair the future. There’s an umbrella

by the door, not for yesterday but for the weather

that’s here. I say weather but I mean

a form of governing that deals out death

and names it living. I say weather but I mean

a November that won’t be held off. This time

nothing, no one forgotten. We are here for the storm

that’s storming because what’s taken matters.

- Claudia Rankine

[Larry Robinson]

Huck




Where did you go my little one?
Your puppy paws and milky breath,
brown, spotted fur
with the eyes of Mary Oliver


You had me before we even made it home


Together we imbued our dream
of open car windows,
golden parks with butterfly ferns,
English Plane trees
where we practiced voice commands
that you would stay,
and I would soar with adorations


How could they take you away, my darling
How could I have already failed
in my duty to protect our sovereignty
They lied to my protective instincts
when they took you and your pink tummy
to be neutered


and then gave you away to someone else


I stand now in the dark
your open crate and your unsoiled blanket
apologizing to you
and our dream
of endless mornings, walks and tug-o-war


How they will have to wait, and wait
now with my tears -
an open braided-leash




- P. Gregory Guss

[Larry Robinson]

On Breathing


I held mine, at a cash point
by the police station
when I saw her kneel to speak
on his level, a mother telling
her not yet three year old son you don’t
need to be scared, we’ve done nothing
wrong, him nodding like he could see
the shape of her lie, like life had taught
him already that fear is for surviving
and in his innocence the boy brought
me to the tight of my chest at the sight
of the men in bullet proof vests by their
hi vis van, I felt for the phone in my pocket
heavy as untaught history where there on a timeline
a man in Ohio can’t decide if a mask
is more dangerous than his own face—
I want to live
but I also want to live
—I’m trying to take one here to get a grip
on what I mean but it's everywhere and
messy, while my friend wastes his in polite
debate with a man who can’t fathom
a life without his invisible upper hand
and a few months before this, when I refused
to watch that video, I gasped for mine
between guttural sobs on the sofa and
a man in Hackney gasped for his on the hospital
bed when the doctor tried to switch him off,
saying he’d been on for too long, saying
the ventilator needed to go to someone
who had a chance at life, his wife fought
to her last for his, wouldn’t leave the bedside
until he could inhale without coughing
and lord knows it's hard to speak when
you’re trying to catch yours, and how is it that
we’ve been running out of ours and not stopped
running, we’ve been chasing ours and it seems
the world wants to knock the wind out of us and
as I write this now, with another tab open on
respiration and stress relief, two men hover
in the sycamore outside my window, paid to cut
down the thing that’s been quietly, unequivocally
helping me inhale/exhale, this ordinary act
made sacred under the impossible weight
of a world that won’t tend to its wounds and
what becomes of a poem that’s run out of air
but refuses to end?


- Remi Graves

[Larry Robinson]

If Only…..




If only we had all worn masks…
If only every human had good medical coverage….
If only our nursing homes were safe….
If only every person listened to scientists and medical professionals…..
If only every person had a made a living wage to be able to save for a difficult time
If only our caring for others became more important that our selfishness
If only……..




If only we had conserved our natural resources
If only we had preserved our many forests
If only we had known the price of convenience over saving our air and oceans
If only we had invested in public transportation
If only we had listened to scientists’ warnings
If only we relied less on fossil fuels
If only we had realized the cost of unchecked growth on animal habitats, breeds of wildlife
If only we had realized that everything we do and how we live has an effect on nature
If only we all wanted a safe climate for the next generation
If only we could see that the worst is yet to come…..


- Karen Barnes

[Larry Robinson]

For John Lewis


In an age of outrage there is love.
In an age of fear there is love.
In an age of unspeakable grief and loss there is love.


Gratitude remains intact.
But we must act.


In an age of outrage, fear and grief
there is always love.


And always gratitude, kindness and compassion,
in action,
in the service of love.
In the service to the generations that follow.


- Janis Dolnick

[Larry Robinson]

Berry

Figural lugers rove-ovalling over ever dagger-doomed time-bend.
Sectioned seconds severed slightly, silently.
Space-slivers tomb-riddled busily biding dial-driven dome-dance, endemerail.
The minotaur a monitor a moonitude, dune-dumb, dancing.

Quiet please, a berry is breaking.
The juice is trickling strictly sweetly,
a temple treble, an ice-lit sky court,
a deep-pillared pentagonal pale-paved haven.

Five garden marble-maids breathe entrance, bow arches.
Astrally assembled, a circle assuming,
still-stationed sacredly, aspiring to spiral.

Split-lifted at prayer-point, swirl-hurling through the midnight noon.
Petalpure power pipe-reeling through ringrich rim-locks,
unpeeling the first mystery fruits myth-rhythmically.

Quiet please, a berry is breaking.
The pain is trickling strictly sweetly.
The stem is still ecstatic.


- Cindy Bishop

[Larry Robinson]

When I Am Among The Trees

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”



- Mary Oliver

[Larry Robinson]

Poetry At The End Of The World


Indigenous peoples do not believe the world is ending.


The world is changing, they say.


Even before the scientists named climate change


The shamans knew it


When they saw the snow caps melting


The earth quaking and tilting


Animals and birds leaving


The Ocean rising


They say: The Earth is Changing. For the sixth time.


***


The Inuit ask: When all the ice melts, who will we be?


In Vanuatu they say: We have nowhere to go in this island.


The Kogi says: The Younger Brother is hurting our Mother


The Syrian refugees say: The war is caused by drought.


The Indian farmer says: I cannot pay my debts; I’d rather die.


The white man in Texas says: I will build me a bunker.


The white man in the White House says: I will build me a wall.


The Silicon Valley techie says: I will build spaceships to Mars.


The media mogul says: Let’s make more reality tv spectacles.


The religious say: God will provide.


***


In the meantime —


Fire says: I’m hungry


Water says: I am thirsty.


Fish says: I am choking on plastic


Bees say: Your chemicals make me sick.


Monarch butterflies ask: Where’s our habitat now?


***


Chthulune, Anthropocene,


Biomimicry, New materialism


Agential Realism, Inter and Intrasubjectivity


Mental monocropping, Hybridity


Indigenous Cosmopolitanism


Concepts roll off the brain but doesn’t land on the skin


***


Poetry at the end of the world is:


Silence


Elegant Disintegration


Just. Be. Kind.


Tender and Generous


***


Go barefoot often


Salute the Sun each morning


Say Goodnight, Moon.


Eat local and in season


***


I keep going because I belong to a village


Pay my debt for the privilege of being here for a few moments


Live poetically even if I am not a word poet


English is not my first tongue


***


Grieve now while you can


Build beautiful altars to Death


Sing and dance your prayers


Resist the temptation of bright-sidedness


Do not meditate away your grief


Do not write another self help book


Poems, yes.






- Leny Strobel

[Larry Robinson]

Irony


France forbid burkhas in its elegant cities,
Americans persecuted those with covered faces


Our President forbid the entry of those people into our country
Schools/universities made rules forbidding the strange coverings.


Must I go on?


God has played a wonderful trick on us all:
Wear the mask or die of a virus that is out of our control,
that is beyond our immigration rules
that does not see borders,
that is toys with the most intelligent minds on the planet,


mutating as I speak these very words, trying to survive in its primitive right.


Ah! irony. Now, even the male sex of the species,
required to cover their faces, except for those eyes,
the haunting eyes that look for recognition, connection.


May the Covid 19 teach us the Unity we actually are
and have its Darwinistic impact on those who remain arrogant.


- Jan Corbett

[Larry Robinson]

In the Eighties We Did the Wop




If you end your crusades for the great race,


then I will end my reenactments of flying,


and if you lean down to smell a painted trillium,


then I will cast a closer eye on those amber waves,


and if you stop killing black children,


then I will turn my drums to the sea and away from


your wounded mountains. Who mothered your love of death?


Here is a heart-shaped stone to rub when you feel fear rising;


give me anything, an empty can of Pabst, a plastic souvenir, a t-shirt from

Daytona.


Here is a first edition: The Complete Poems of Lucille Clifton.


Give me an ancient grove and a conversation by a creek, charms


to salve my griefs, something that says you are human,


and I will give you the laughter in my brain and the tranquil eyes of my uncles.


Show me your grin in the middle of winter.


In the eighties we did the wop; you, too, have your dances.


It is like stealing light from a flash in the sky. I promise:


no one is blaming you. No one is trying to replace you.


It’s just that you are carrying a tainted clock calling it European History,


standing in khakis, eyes frightened like a mess of beetles.


- Major Jackson

[Larry Robinson]

Drawings By Children




1


The sun may be visible or not
(it may be behind you,
the viewer of these pictures)
but the sky is always blue
if it is day.
If not,
the stars come almost within your grasp;
crooked, they reach out to you,
on the verge of falling.
It is never sunrise or sunset;
there is no bloody eye
spying on you across the horizon.
It is clearly day or night,
it is bright or totally dark,
it is here and never there.


2


In the beginning, you only needed
your head, a moon swimming in space,
and four bare branches;
and when your body was added,
it was light and thin at first,
not yet the dark chapel
from which, later, you tried to escape.
You lived in a non-Newtonian world,
your arms grew up from your shoulders,
your feet did not touch the ground,
your hair was streaming,
you were still flying.


3


The house is smaller than you remembered,
it has windows but no door.
A chimney sits on the gable roof,
a curl of smoke reassures you.
But the house has only two dimensions,
like a mash without its face;
the people who live there stand outside
as though time were always summer —
there is nothing behind the wall
except a space where the wind whistles,
but you cannot see that.


- Lisel Mueller

[Larry Robinson]

A Cry From Down The Rabbit Hole In The Time Of The Pandemic

I have gone
down the rabbit hole
chasing a bright
promise of information,
which I believed to be
the quick tail of elusive truth,
but so far, down here,
have scarcely gotten
even another glimpse!

You see, I thought I already
possessed that commodity:
that truth was safely inside me.
I pursued my daily
rounds of life with confidence,
eager to make my sojourn here
a vehicle for truth’s stamp
each time the sun came up.
Were those the days!
And in summer, I would travel
to faraway places and sometimes
my holiest spot on Earth,
to refresh those inner wellsprings.
Now my world has been fractured—
cloven asunder by Duality’s sword
in the form of bold voices
speaking into my world
what I considered nonsense,
with straight face
and many earnest points
and copious hyperlinks.
My confidence—
easily shaken when challenged,
a lifelong problem—
falters and I think:
“Could they be right?”

I languish in this rabbit hole
of dualistic parry-and-thrust,
for my Beloved of my heart says
all are One, and even more:
“Inscribe these words on your heart.
God alone is real.
Nothing matters but love for God.”*
Oh, Beloved!
How do I recover the vision
of Oneness You gave me,
which I enjoyed—
let’s not exaggerate, though,
it was never continuous—
before I dove
down this rabbit hole!
They call this cognitive dissonance,
a fancy name for confusion,
for a dragon whose smoke
obscures the clarity of Truth!
A virtual destruction
of the wholeness
I thought I knew.

Show me how to restore
the perception of Oneness
to my double-vision mental eye!

Those contrary voices:
How can I see they are You as well—
that there is no “right” or “wrong”,
but only You?

What am I not getting?
God was. God is. God will be.
How can I not see this?
Do what You must, Beloved!
Bang me on the head! Burn me alive!
Skin me and turn me inside out!
If this is all a pang of re-birth,
please, please, slap me on the ass
and get me the hell
out of here soon!

- Max Reif


“Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.”
Wendell Berry

[Larry Robinson]

At the Bomb Testing Site


At noon in the desert a panting lizard
waited for history, its elbows tense,
watching the curve of a particular road
as if something might happen.


It was looking at something farther off
than people could see, an important scene
acted in stone for little selves
at the flute end of consequences.


There was just a continent without much on it
under a sky that never cared less.
Ready for a change, the elbows waited.
The hands gripped hard on the desert.


- William E. Stafford

[Larry Robinson]

How I Discovered Poetry


It was like soul-kissing, the way the words
filled my mouth as Mrs. Purdy read from her desk.
All the other kids zoned an hour ahead to 3:15,
but Mrs. Purdy and I wandered lonely as clouds borne by a breeze off Mount Parnassus.


She must have seen
the darkest eyes in the room brim:
The next day she gave me a poem she’d chosen especially for me
to read to the all except for me white class.
She smiled when she told me to read it, smiled harder, said oh yes I could.
She smiled harder and harder
until I stood and opened my mouth to banjo playing darkies, pickaninnies, disses and dats. When I finished my classmates stared at the floor. We walked silent
to the buses, awed by the power of words.


- Marilyn Nelson

[Larry Robinson]

Come to Hiroshima


to those who with no shame condone
annihilation of whole cities or nations
please come to Hiroshima
come in early August when the heat is worst
make sure you're there on the sixth
when the sweat running down your back
somehow feels appropriate
see the museum - learn what you can
imagine as deeply as possible what happened
and try to understand - why


to those who think we need atomic bombs
newer better more useable ones
as certain leaders now claim
please come to Hiroshima
walk through Peace Park
this epicenter - cemetery of ironic serenity
contemplate - meditate - try to understand
would we have done this to whites - dear Christians
here by the riverside thousands staggered to water
"mizu! mizu!" some couldn't even ask
for what could possibly relieve the burning


to those who think that war is still okay
sleepy as people used to be about slavery
come see the shattered wrecked dome
left in jagged shambles to remind us
see at sunset the paper lanterns
red blue and gold - inscribed with dreams
people lovingly made in the park all day
watch them float downstream candles aglow
like thousands of vanished souls
or beautiful hopes - for what might be possible
please come to Hiroshima
and bring pictures of your loved ones


- Ron Hertz

[Larry Robinson]

Here for Life

(Vandenberg Air Force Base, January 1983;
first blockade of the MX Missile test)


I am here —
I wear the old-ones’ jade —
it’s life, they said & precious,
turquoise I’ve sought to hone my vision,
& coral to cultivate the heart,
mother of pearl for purity.

I have put on what power I could
to tell you there are mountains
where the stones sleep —
hawks nest there
& lichens older than the ice is cold.

The sea is vast & deep
keeping secrets
darker than the rocks are hard.

I am here to tell you
the Earth is made of things
so much themselves
they make the angels kneel.
We walk among them
& they are certain as the rain is wet
& they are fragile as the pine is tall.

We, too, belong to them;
they count upon our singing,
the footfalls of our dance,
our children’s shouts, their laughter.

I am here for the unfinished song,
the uncompleted dance,
the healing,
the dreadful fakes of love.
I am here for life
& I will not go away.

- Rafael Jesús González

---

Aquí por vida

(Base de Fuerza Aérea de Vandenberg, enero 1983;
primer bloqueo de la prueba del proyectil nuclear MX)


Aquí estoy —
llevo el jade de los ancianos —
es la vida, decían, y preciosa,
turquesa que he buscado
para darle filo a mi visión,
y coral para cultivar el corazón,
madreperla para la pureza.

Me he puesto el poder que pude
para decirles que hay montañas
donde duermen las piedras —
los halcones anidan allí
y liquen más viejo
de lo que el hielo es frío.

El mar es vasto y profundo
guardando secretos
más oscuros
de lo que las rocas son duras.

Aquí estoy para decirles
que la Tierra es hecha de cosas
tan suyas mismas
que hacen a los ángeles arrodillarse.
Caminamos entre ellas
y son ciertas como la lluvia es húmeda
y son frágiles como el pino es alto.

Nosotros también les pertenecemos;
cuentan con nuestro cantar,
los pasos de nuestro bailar,
los gritos de nuestr@s hij@s, su risa.

Aquí estoy por la canción sin acabar,
el baile incompleto,
el sanar,
las terribles adujas del amor.
Aquí estoy por vida
y no me iré.

- Rafael Jesús González

---

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only7 the worst, it destroys our capacity7 to do something. If we remember those times and places – and there are so many – where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
~ Howard Zinn

[Larry Robinson]

To World War Two


Early on you introduced me to young women in bars
You were large, and with a large hand
You presented them in different cities,
Made me in San Luis Obispo, drunk
On French seventy-fives, in Los Angeles, on pousse-cafe's.
It was a time of general confusion
Of being a body hurled at a wall.
I didn't do much fighting. I sat, rather I stood, in a foxhole.
I stood while the typhoon splashed us into morning.
It felt unusual
Even if for a good cause
To be part of a destructive force
With my rifle in my hands
And in my head
My serial number
The entire object of my existence
To eliminate Japanese soldiers
By killing them
With a rifle or with a grenade
And then, many years after that,
I could write poetry
Fall in love
And have a daughter
And think about these things
From a great distance
If I survived
I was "paying my debt
To society" a paid
Killer. It wasn't
like anything I'd done
Before, on the paved
Streets of Cincinatti
Or on the ballroom floor
At Mr. Vathe's dancing class
What would Anne Marie Goldsmith
Have thought of me
If instead of asking her to dance
I had put my BAR to my shoulder
And shot her in the face
I thought about her in my foxhole--
One, in a foxhole near me, has his throat cut during the night
We take precautions but it is night and it is you.
The typhoon continues and so do you.
"I can't be killed--because of my poetry. I have to live on in order to write
it."
I thought--even crazier thought, or just as crazy--
"If I'm killed while thinking of lines, it will be too corny
When it's reported" (I imagined it would be reported!)
So I kept thinking of lines of poetry. One that came to me on the beach on
Leyte
Was "The surf comes in like masochistic lions."
I loved this terrible line. It was keeping me alive. My Uncle Leo wrote to me,
"You won't believe this, but some day you may wish
You were footloose and twenty on Leyte again." I have never wanted
To be on Leyte again,
With you, whispering into my ear,
"Go on and win me! Tomorrow you might not be alive,
So do it today!" How could anyone win you?
You were too much for me, though I
Was older than you were and in camouflage. But for you
Who threw everything together, and had all the systems
Working for you all the time, this was trivial. If you could use me
You'd use me, and then forget. How else
Did I think you'd behave?
I'm glad you ended. I'm glad I didn't die. Or lose my mind.
As machines make ice
We made dead enemy soldiers, in
Dark jungle alleys, with weapons in our hands
That produced fire and kept going straight through
I was carrying one,
I who had gone about for years as a child
Praying God don't let there be another war
Or if there is, don't let me be in it. Well, I was in you.
All you cared about was existing and being won.
You died of a bomb blast in Nagasaki, and there were parades.
- Kenneth Koch

[Larry Robinson]

San Gregorio Sands


the last sweet drops of the tangerine sun
trickle down, and the surf is tangerine foam
San Gregorio sands are honey and gold
and the fog is waiting till we've gone on home

perfect day — there's a hawk there playing
where the warm air climbs up the rocky cliff
he can stay there floating forever
like a daydream balanced on the point of "if"

if I had my way, that tangerine sun
would stay floating right there like the lazy hawk
and San Gregorio sands would always be warm
for an hour of love and a barefoot walk

the road is twisty and the summer is hot
our bags are packed and we're ready to go
there's not much time but we'll take what we've got
when San Gregorio calls we don't say no

perfect day, and it's almost over
but there's two more sips of the cherry wine
we can stay for five more minutes
watching gulls play hopscotch at the water line

the sun is down, it's past time to go
I'll be back some day but I don't know when
San Gregorio sands will be honey and gold
I'll shed my shoes and be home again

- Elizabeth Fuller

[Larry Robinson]

Ode to the Joyful Ones




Shield your joyful ones.
—from an Anglican prayer


That they walk, even stumble, among us is reason
to praise them, or protect them—even the sound
of a lead slug dropped on a lead plate, even that, for them,
is music. Because they bring laughter’s
brief amnesia. Because they stand,
talking, taking pleasure in others,
with their hands on the shoulders of strangers
and the shoulders of each other.
Because you don’t have to tell them to walk toward the light.
Because if there are two pork chops
they will serve you the better one.
Because they will give you the crutch off their backs.
Because when there are two of them together
their shining fills the room.
Because you don’t have to tell them to walk toward the light.


- Thomas Lux

[Larry Robinson]

Sorrow Song

for the eyes of the children,
the last to melt,
the last to vaporize,
for the lingering
eyes of the children, staring,
the eyes of the children of
buchenwald,
of viet nam and johannesburg,
for the eyes of the children
of nagasaki,
for the eyes of the children
of middle passage,
for cherokee eyes, ethiopian eyes,
russian eyes, american eyes,
for all that remains of the children,
their eyes,
staring at us, amazed to see
the extraordinary evil in
ordinary men.

- Lucille Clifton

[Larry Robinson]

Two Suns In The Sunset


In my rear-view mirror the sun is going down

Sinking behind bridges in the road
I think of all the good things
That we have left undone
And I suffer premonitions
Confirm suspicions
Of the holocaust to come


The rusty wire
That holds the cork
That keeps the anger in
Gives way
And suddenly it's day again


The sun is in the east
Even though the day is done
Two suns in the sunset
Could be the human race is run


Like the moment when the brakes lock
And you slide towards the big truck (“Oh no!”)
You stretch the frozen moments with your fear


And you'll never hear their voices ("Daddy, Daddy!")
And you'll never see their faces
You have no recourse to the law anymore


And as the windshield melts
And my tears evaporate
Leaving only charcoal to defend
Finally I understand
The feelings of the few
Ashes and diamonds
Foe and friend
We were all equal in the end


- Roger Waters