inside the coracle

UNBENDING PINE

You hear the rustle of a spring

in the moss forest;

in the immaculate nest

inside the coracle.  Outside, nothing.

Milton tutored Williams in Italian;

Roger taught John a mite

of basic Narragansett

collecting firewood around London

to banish winter at the poorhouse.

Here in January ice

beside the river, ICE

is on my mind.  The Emperor’s

in league with Herod, every infant

trembles for her life;

Virgo is mummified by strife;

grieving, she murmurs her dissent

from frozen exile on external heights.

Meanwhile sweet Providence

searches for evidence

& Lincoln coins... irrevocable rights.

Your imago, moss copper-serpentine

(between Son of Man

& some unbending pine

of immeasurable heaven) is Washington

redeemed, again; your Virgo (hovering

ethereal triangle

o’er Spotsylvania) might mingle

with Virginia clay... Jonah, recovering.

1.18.19

message to President Donald Trump

Dear President Trump,

Just thought I'd share something we here in America call "harmony".  Harmony is a concord of different notes - "e pluribus unum" expresses the same idea. We don't try to hate & attack & control others, because we all come from the same place, we're all brothers & sisters. Life is good. We're all immigrants & pilgrims in this world.

Sincerely,
Henry Gould

 

These Are the Times

Her heart was a Mediterranean

Edwin Honig would have turned 96 today.  Child of a polyglot immigrant family in New York, Honig devoted his life to the art of poetry in translation, crossing linguistic & cultural divides.  In this time of great refugee distress, I would telegraph this Honig poem in reply to all the anti-immigration demagogues (Trump, Le Pen).

For an Immigrant Grandmother

She sat for an age at the window with glances that threw
Pennies of pity at collarless beggars, and cripples
Who crawled like crabs from gutter to curb rippled
The geese in the bag of her hunched-over flesh. But you
Always could tell by her murmur for heaven to witness
When neighborhood children like sparrows hopped in distress
To catch from the hand of the baker his three-day-old bread.

Yet she danced with a hint of the hips and a lilt of the head,
And the savor of turbans and princes and spices welled
From her smile like a promise of Turkish delights withheld;
For her heart was a mediterranean cradling the earth
With wishes that tumbled like fish and golden sea fairs
Where pirates were drowned and angels were spared by her prayers,
Till she slipped unaware on the edge of a sigh to her death.

young Edwin Honig