OK, this is it (I think. . .). I wrote a day or so ago about the "occasional" quality of the LP [long poem] Forth of July. Well, seeing as we're coming up to Martin Luther King Day, here's a poem from the 2nd section of Book 2 (Grassblade Light). A few words should be in italics, but I can't seem to manage that here:


1


Elena, you must be sleeping now, it's after Midnight
in St. Petersburg - just like the movie on TV
that surfaced yesterday. A mediocre thriller - only
Michael Caine, the pastel colors in pale northern light,

the wide expanses of your squares, the bridges
arcing the broad, scaled silver-gray of rivers -
only these redeemed it: an art heist, with connivers
racing guns drawn along pink-blue-green edges

of great perfect granite polygons, hauling
the icons, Rembrandts, and the rest in frames
framed by the camera and your city's polychrome.
I'm home from work today - a holiday, falling

once a year, like peace, like grace, like freedom.
The birthday of one man's falling to earth,
and falling again - from bright summits of faith
into the heart of passionate ignorance. To redeem

through falling, set afloat with a reminder:
I have a dream that we are brothers and sisters,
everywhere. . . from my rude windswept steppes
to your cultivated meadowlands - children of Peter,

Rock of Gibraltar - citizens of that Rome
where Christ is Roman (in Byzantium, and
in Jerusalem as well). Falling til we understand
the long weekend's brief redemption is a microcosm

of That Day to come. . . that day of Jubilee.
Elena, St. Michael's icon that you sent
rests on the shelf beside me - painted and lent
as a reminder of that realm (that is too close to see).


1.18.99 (Martin Luther King Day)