Three Poems for 5780

 

 

Lament for Ruth Bader Ginsberg

The ricks are on fire, the barn is blazing, the rats

And mice come streaming out into the fair field

Full of folk, farmers in panic with their pails

Of precious water, while helicopters, like bats,

Swoop over the flames with fire retardant pink,

And superstars stare at their disappearing homes.

Out of the straw, covered with luminescent ink,

A mutinous army searches for aliens to blame,

Anxious shepherds of fickle faith proclaim

The coming messiah, sound the trump of doom, and he’s

The chosen one, they say, in lederhosen,

Arms extended, crosses twisted. What a shame,

A shandah, that the wise old woman died last night.

Whispering to her daughter, Delay, delay! Dismay

And anxiety when the plowman sinks in the fallow field,

Unable to save the infants from the plague,

The precious innocents, the air-born spawn of fleas

And the rotting seeds in the cities of the plain,

Sanctuaries from the obscene pharaoh of the dawn

Who fiddles away as the nation declines into ague.

 

 

Popa Victor’s Granddaughter

 

Nice warm home-baked bread, the staff of life.

So I remember the little bakery in Ţiganeşti

Where there were loaves as big as puppydogs, a knife

Wasn’t needed. You could dig your open fist

And grab a handful, if it wasn’t too hot, and chew

All the way back to the cottage where we lived.

Enough for a week, delicious with bright red

Capsicum, and black charred eggplants. Warm milk

In a jug from the neighbour’s cow each morning,

Freshly churned butter and for a special treat, the priest

Brought the coliva from his ceremonial portion.

Popa Victor loved to watch Daktari. Very wise,

He said, unwilling to talk politics or his faith.

The little girl was his daughter’s child, another mouth

To feed, here away from the city. The mother had

To work for the Party and could not protect her, so

He and his aged wife took her in. Children die,

In the apartment by themselves. Fall from

The balcony. We sat in his little house

Watching his little television, black and white.

My children looked at Daktari, too. Very wise,

We all nodded, and chewed our bread and coliva.

When the winter rains came, we left for the city.

 

 

Nightmares Galore

The world as we knew it is not as it is,

Nor ever was nor could be such,

While the dreams that we dreamt

Are nightmares now and best forgot.

The music we knew has turned all tuneless,

The movies we loved have lost their touch

And what we watch makes no sense to us.

The weathers of the world are all wrong,

The bees disappear and the butterflies,

So that only the maggots remain and the roaches,

While whales are beaching in their pods.

Men and gods have turned against us

In their droves driving us inexorably over the cliff,

Like lemmings or bison or Mr Gabriel Oak’s flock.

Our leaders are mad, our advisers silent,

Our underlings are in revolt, our minds unhinged.

The world is upside down, backwards, inside out.

The voice that cries in the wilderness deceives

And the dove that descends crashes into the sea,

What you will will not be, what you shun is your lot.

Barlaam’s ass is our prophet, Elijah a fool,

And children run riot chased by a bear—Exunt.