three poems by four score years

“This person is no longer listed in our records…”

It seems I no longer exist, my name deleted

From the lists of those who create and think, as though

A void opened on a certain date, my soul defeated

While a pall of ignorance descended, and no

One cares or remembers. A powerful undertow

Sweeps everyone out to the horizon where sky

And ocean merge. The hidden strength below

A swamp pulls everything into its stinking hole.

A cosmic monster, the black unmeasured eye

Sucks in life and light, and never is completed.

Compressed more than coal to diamond, the cry

Of primal degeneration whispers. So I am turned

Without beginning or end, without hopeful soul

Or soil to grow again or anything ever learned.

The Return of Old Poems and Friends Long Gone

What happened to the twice-dipped tea of yesteryear,

The houpou birds who would never shriek except

To shake your bones, tingling in the middle ear,

And a girl who disappeared, swimming and swept

Out beyond the sounds of shore, where love is kept

And painful images are stored? I listened once

To a kindly man who cried in agony,

And never slept for weeks to muffled dreams

But could not hide my fears, until he died.

I tried to build a wall of awkward rhymes,

To sip the tepid cup, to mock the birds

Of paradise, to find the face that drowned
That day so long ago whose name is now forgotten,

And not to know what death is before I Ching,

It exposes and exhausts unbearable pain. But once

The night exploded and no innocence remained;

The tinkling rhythms trickled back, and the flying words

Filled up the sky with ancient meanings, and the door

Snapped shut on a sonnet echoing Suk Ching’s name

And a naïve threnody for Aaron, it made me weep

that only then with feelings dulled could I sleep.

Memorials and Memories and the Muddle of History

He saved my life, did much for others, then died,

His name became a building, and his photograph can be seen

In the hall as you enter. His life is memorialized

And passed on to those who don’t remember him.

There was a statue in the square, without a plinth,

Undistinguished and small, and only when

You stood next to it, did it achieve normal size,

But he was defaced and taken away by angry men

Who never heard of him and thought he was a myth.

No one, in their passion, wanted to know the truth,

That he had never been near our town, was killed

Within days of his ship’s arrival, at a battle filled

With noise and confusion. His name was such as many

A town or city had, so it was convenient to lie,

To call the mud-filled village after him.

Thus history’s vagaries and empty enthusiasms cry

Out for correction and interpretation by and bye.