A Tale of Two Walls

 

Unexpectedly, spectacular in its bitter resolve
to remain there, squatting mercilessly
as the symbol of irreconcilability
it suddenly, miraculously imploded on itself
collapsing, leaving a host of dazzled,
confused, triumphant prisoners
to emerge, the light of freedom realized
settling into consciousness like the
heavens themselves revealed. Free at last.

Echoes of another, earlier release
from brutal bondage barely recognized,
memories of the living dead released
from death camps. How precise is this irony
that the murderously irenic-averse
population complicit with the annihilation
of the pestilential Jews among them
suffered themselves a dim shadow of the
relentlessly mortal agony of official genocide.

The cleansing of the community,
the nation, the continent and ultimately
the world, of the existence of predatory
power-assertive, controlling Jews.
Shakespeare would have thrilled to
this moral dilemma, the bleak humour,
the black destiny, the upheaval
and the clever disposal of so many
throwaway lives, from infants to
three-legged doddering babblers.

Yet another anniversary; that which presaged
the cruel turmoil, the incessant slaughter
signified by shards of gleaming glass, goes
yet unacknowledged. There are the usual
preliminary dark clouds gathering on the
endless horizon of man's inhumanity to its own.
Another Kristallnacht abetted by the demonic
slander that soils the atmosphere. Perish
the very thought! But all the symptoms, the
signposts point unerringly there.

The dissenters - all those whose livid hatred
of surviving world Jewry become now citizens
of their very own land, their sovereign country -
speak of their own truth; their resurgent bigotry
has found its very own theme to augment
The Protocols, with another wall of desperation.
This one separating not a single nation with
polarizing ideologies, but two separate nations
one of which designs to obliterate the other
while proclaiming itself the sad victim, the
other the evil damned-by-acclamation occupier.

 

 

The Yearning Widow

 

Little do they yet know

she has long since freed her spirit

from the confines of her body

in her grieving yearning to join him

who preceded her and left a

yawning chasm of desolation

her mind could not overcome.

They who love her and for whom

her bleak future, blank stare and

refusal to live in his abysmal absence

resolve to resuscitate in her a will

to live through the poignant memory

of what was, little comprehend the

depth of the irresolvable vacuum 

and futility of their focus on life for one

who has lived and now will not. 

 

 

Male/Female She Created

 

The 'mother' of all that exists, Nature is less

a perfectionist than she is an inspired and

sometimes reckless experimenter dedicated

to trial and error with a truly impish sense of

humour. Having designed the ultimate creation

with a brain struggling to compete with her own

ineffable genius, she also gifted that creature

with the pleasures of procreation and conferred

upon it a binary reality infusing one half with

the attributes of motherhood the other left with

the endowment of an instinct for the hunt and

so they evolved man-the-source-of-sperm and

woman welcoming the outcome in her gifted

womb. In all her creatures was this gift of

creation proffered; those in the air, in the seas

in the trees and on land with the occasional

misfiring of neurons and confusion of genetics

to a place where males imagine themselves

females and females certain they are males

disrupting the order of Nature's deliberations

though in point of fact it is she herself whose

attention occasionally and infamously lapses

into distractions that confuse the formula.

 

 

How Strange It Is!

 

As a feature of indecent human nature to

jealously guard what is not theirs in the

arcane belief that claims are nine-tenths

of a just law of ownership it is beyond

strange that the most creatively talented

group on Earth from ancient times to

the present remains hounded, threatened

detested, their heritage and ancestry

mocked and belittled yet the articles

of their faith, their history, their land

and their contributions to the world

that shuns them are valued decoupled

from their source in counterclaims of

authenticity. From brilliance of thought

and reasoning, execution of monumental

discoveries to the ultimate horrors of

deliberate annihilation the world rushes

to claim originality and victimhood as

their very own experiences, denying both

achievement and martyrdom to the tribe

whose very existence profited them all.

 

 

Pastorale

 

The setting sun
like an Amondisc
Throwing waning light
in searching fingers
on oblique mountains
fencing the lake
where purple martens
swoop lazily
and robins
offer a paeon
to another day.

The honeyed air
casts an amber glow
over your flesh
mystically
as of some ancient rite
etching the features
of your face
defining the
slow undulations
of your body.

I cup this image
in memory
now and then peruse it
turn it like a
fabled treasure
to catch the light
of another day.

 

 

Faces, B.C.E.

 

Immutable stone
steatite, limestone
sandstone, granite.
Anthropomorphic
... zoomorphic
inert materials.
Human hands
... worked you
into aesthetic
definable shapes
aeons ago.

.... Your
bland fierce asexual
visages confront me
the inheritor of
art pre-historical
... my steps ringing
through stone corridors
of stone buildings
erected to house
... stone artifacts.

Meant to outlast
your creators
... you yet live
in a mythic
... skin-itching way.
I look at you
and you look
right back at me.

 

 

The River

 

The St.Lawrence winds
energetic coils
through the landscape
of this spring day
like a great serpent
roused from winter's
sere abeyance and
seagulls coast the wind
screeching for handouts
from people picnicking
on the lush banks
sheltered from the rain
by long swoops of willow.

Rain stipples the river
bounces off its taut skin
and waves lap the shore
twisting bleached logs
against the rocks
piled there and
multifariously shaped
tinctured like some
titan's cast-off playthings.

A robin serenades
in glad anticipation
driven to frenzied compliment
and still the gulls
wheel and swoop
teasing us for handouts.

Far on an island bank
a great blue heron
daintily steps among the reeds
its head outthrust and
primordial; at once risibly clumsy
yet imbued with timeless grace.

Fish lunge, leaping for mayflies
those myriad airborne sprites
celebrating spring. In the
distance great lakers skim
the river like great
sea behemoths. The
river teems with purpose
responding to needs
uncoils its sinuous length
hosts, transports and feeds.