Enter Home Planet News Poetry of Issue #4                        Page 21
Click page 21


MORE DEPARTURES FROM HEINE
[HEADNOTE: This series of poems came about when I was reading Heine. But i cannot give all responsibility to old Henri: i redid his stimuli, in places wildly, for the year 2000. My logic was: if Henri had added to his presuppositions & inclinations also my experiences & a bit of my temperament etc., he might have written these poems in 2000. I fear he'd have written much better ones.]

3.
Red-eyed bloody business weather!
One-eyed profit-ordered town!
How i wonder when -- not whether --
Earthquakes rise to break you down.

4.
A white bird flies over the sea
Shark & stingray at her try
It flutters up, it flutters down
The Moon is small & very high.

Dear soul that flies over the sea
How i understand your sigh!
The black black waters are so close
The Moon is small & very high.

5.
For on this rock we shall erect
The Church that works from downside up
The Third Age church of Holy Bodies
Both personal & congregational:

See: hunger, killings are not needful
The pie in TV skies deceives
Give us today our daily sweets
Give us down here the sacred hearts & sense.

Return to body its merry pump
Rid of the fat that has enclogged it
The overeating brought by hunger
The ulcers caused by profit slash & burns.

Return to brain its hormonal bath
Disturbed by wolfish enmities
To people & birds & beauteous trees--
When heart & brain work well, we shall be saved.

If you, O masters, will not let us
Be saved, entirely we must
Remove you: profit is the fat
In bloodstream, profit brings the early stroke.

Your lying church will be dismantled
Our Earth at last inhabitable,
Polluted eyes may see no godheads
The cleansed may go to many-coloured stars.

When holiness meets wholeness
& the people absolute,
Washed clean of Class Division Sin
We may aspire to the cosmic Lute.

10.
When we lie together in post-coital bliss
Don't ask me about ex-Yugoslavia, how grand it
Was, how come it got pushed so bloodily amiss:
There are good reasons -- i cannot stand it.

I beg you, leave Yugoslavia in peace
Don't mention world banks – NATO – elites -- bandits
Don't call up traitors or errors, just give me a kiss:
There are good reasons -- i cannot stand it.

One i loved in those bygone, far-off, beautiful days
Now calls it "Sérbo-bolshévik", our youth's season,
& sighs for more civilized (European) ways:
I cannot stand it -- there are good reasons.

6-700


Darko R. Suvin