Three Little Poems to Ponder

 

Through A Glass Enigmatically

 

Through the wavy uneven glass of a medieval window

The scene outside is a blur of activity,

Or to the cataract-covered eyes of an ancient scholar

Who remembers more than he reads his beloved books

And waits in vain for the voices of young students,

There are now strange perspectives that endow

All knowledge with an uncanny glow, like tea

Twice dipped at the end of the evening, or the dents

On his desk that rewrite his notes, as the sudden polar

Winds shiver through his consciousness, or the hooks

Of sadness when forgotten names appear, only to fade

In the confusion of long familiar verses: rhymes

Without an echo, rhythms that falter, tones

That hurt the subtle innermost drum.

In an archaic language he languishes, fingers

Stained with indelible ink, hugging invisible tomes

For the lingering heat in a palimpsest, the west

Grows dimmer and sadder, until a glow

Sinks below the horizon of dreams and reams

Of unpublished anecdotes crumble into darkness,

This sick transit into earth’s only nothingness.

 

Colonies

 

Cities in the past sent out infant colonies

To expand their trade and enhance their pride

And maintained the family links, tied to the knees

Of their offspring, by languages that ride

The seas and the roads unchanged. In due course

The vagaries of time and the differences of age

Made them draw apart, as adolescents force

Themselves to independence, deaf to the sage

Advice of their elders, blind to their likenesses,

And indifferent to the tugs of love. Then they raged

At one another, twisting steamy prophetesses

that exploded from the secret depths of unconsciousness,

returning theoretical messages, all of them unwise,

and animating corpses of ancestral promises.

So too now as we settle down to our own demise,

We try to unravel history, the thread

To questions of an unimagined dread.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Underground Rivers

 

Some rivers flow underground, deep in the soil,

And spirits of the earth sail slowly beneath the sea,

Old poets found their inspiration where the currents coil

Into one another, embracing their secret—See

How lovers intertwine in darkened mystery,

As though they never copulated eye

To eye, like creatures drawn by scents and touch,

All a-shimmer in the flood; though when a font

Emerges on the other side, there is never such

An ecstasy, no scene of recognition; they shunt

Into the splashings, drip down exhausted, and flow

Away again, blind and murmuring,

Mere liquid wantonness. Another evening

Passes into night, where stars illuminate

The passive universe; its love is always late.