Poetry of Issue #6                        Page 43
Previous Next Table of Contents	EMENESCU'S WAVES We read by the stars, we make love by the moon, we weep when the sun comes upand when the sun goes down we break our promises and make new ones, we count our blessings and fill our socks with coins and folding money, we turn the sheets down and we dream of summer fields and children we will make together, many children, thoughtless children and brave, our own children careless as the world is careless and brave and carefree, and everything is okay across nations and fields, and the cities are not dying, neither does the rust belt rust, and on the open plains endless waves of children are returning, children who will fulfil their promises and become stronger than us, men and women who will honor the gods and respect each other, who will commend and sacrifice and make children of their own and start again Even as this blood of mine sheds, even as this voice of mine rises like coal dust rising, falls like snow in the mountains, settles like fossils in the deep, even as my heart waits like this soil of an hour or an eternity waits, or standing at the furnace with the men who sweat and strain and stoke the flames, i sweat and strain also, mechanically, humanly, I shed and fall, I am a civilization crumbling, I am a new world rising, there is no choice in the matter In this cup of wine, sweet pleasures and forgetfulness; in this foundry of iron, ghetto rust In this neon light the light of an oil lamp, my grandmother at a cottage window, folding blankets and sewing, my grandmother a thread unto herself, skein of generations, a patchwork of endurance against pain, a woman whose life might have been extinguished childless but for some unusual thing which occurred a generation ago and an ocean away A woman of luck a woman of hope and stubbornness, strong of hip and endless carriage, impossibly strong, who might have danced in palaces but she was of the peasant kind, a woman who lives on in your quick eye and the quicker steps of our own children as they walk out with us through snowy fields and out along the open shoreline, who walk as i walk, with my collar up, who walk as you walk, with your arms swinging freely, and the waves leap like waves, and fall Emenescu's waves And i do not taste in their rising the ocean's brine, neither the bite of wind nor the fermentation of grain, but sunlight on perpetual fields, courtship and death and labor, dawn to dusk, the dappled heads of mice in hay, the eminence of wheat piled high under the tousled sun, baskets of apples and leather straps, horse flesh And the singular smell of my own children, scalp and hair and dander of my sons and daughters, hair upon hair upon hair, a grain which is the future and meets our own dying grain, that carries us forward like a cartwheel fresh from the blacksmith's forge, this death and this transfiguration, there is no death at all, all is well, all is well, take my hand   George Wallace __	THE OLIVE PICKERS We take our rest in cool of shade we make mute gesture to heart and circumstance we measure each branch rammed with hard fruit and beat the fruit out of the tree and let the light shine through, yes we pick and we pray, easy enough to make our pay, we make the necessary adjustments we feed the flock and the flock feeds us, providers all, provided for, we are servants, to art to family to children to lord and master whose face we have never seen except in the blinding rays of sun, whose voice we have never heard, only the bees buzzing in heat of day and hush this is a secret but ownership is thievery, sanctioned by time and government What we are is what we own and what owns u, and we are owned by sunlight only, we serve at the pleasure of the land, not men or gods, we are sweet as a kiss, tender as hands finding their way and we take our rest among trunks and tufts of tall grass, in shadow of leaf and branch, and so what -- is it so wrong to be simple! in shadow in sun hands break bread, open a big jug of wine, pass it around -- o secret heart which has made us free, in the sweat and labor of summer light, a moment an eternity in the olive grove, we do not ask much, the selfish and damned and the selfless too, men equal to the moment, women equal to the men and to each other, for their own sakes To live well is treason, to love well is rebellion, art has its own reasons and so do we   George Wallace__ _________________________________ DAWN BREAKS OVER THE BLACK SEA One of several small children is hidden among deck chairs, his eyes reflect the sea, more coral than green, and the sea is irked, the black sea is glaring, and he is irked, this small boy, as the adults pass, as the adults take their long rolling strides and greet the dawn, as they greet each other, predictably in the weak predictable light, and his mother is one of them, and the black sea does its business without reflection, like a nation in the grip of war, like a large city releasing dark birds back into the sky, the black sea, which is eternal, and this passage which is meant to be an enlarged form of their world, something eternal and much larger than what happens back home, in their lives, in their successes and disappointments, in their dreams and desires And dawn wraps itself up and spits itself out on the deck of the ship, in itself redundant and eternal and small, like a champagne cork on a rolling deck, and dawn breaks and breaks -- many people are breaking just now in this world, which is at war with itself -- and she is one of them, the mother of one of several small children hidden among the deck chairs, she is breaking, and what can adults say that will allow them to escape or to hide? something in this atmosphere escapes the adults, only children can feel it, a grievance in the salt and mist, a revolt in the horizon, a truth, a truth, only children can feel it, and anyhow the mother of the boy is distracted, she was pretty in vienna where the light was artificial and gay, she bends her neck to greet the gaze of the men who pass her But it is not the same, she turns to the man with whom she is walking and says something private and hideous and true, and his eyes sparkle and he looks away, and his eyes are clear as the rays of the rising sun   George Wallace __	SHADOW OF DREAMTOWN It's all the same in the shadow of dreamtown there is no reason to rush daylight has made its play the game was on but now it's not the hipsters are done clipping the wings of syntax they have drifted out of the room thank god it's our turn we are the long haired aliens from the recent past we have always been here with our soft accents and we do not care we do not make waves this is the third way the silent path inside our heads a muted trumpet sings miles davis does the hand jive in the blue afternoon a couple of south american overcoats slip past I follow them in the mirror behind the bar which is teeming with gold dust and old ghosts -- the past lives everywhere in the fixtures in the walls in the shadow of dreamtown the past slips through the cracks outside a taxicab slows down, down to a halt a man gets out he is tan as a deer What I like about this place you like about this place which is why we like each other the smoke the beer cheap shots of brown whiskey people who have no names so what neon light sails across the tabletop like migrating birds this place is quiet as heaven on a sunday afternoon everybody's gone to the hamptons I guess a woman at the bar is peeling lemons over by the juke box a man is trying to explain some complicated matter to some other man what's the use the bartender shrugs his shoulders he has incurious eyes his skin is smooth as eggplant he is polishing glasses he is not an unobservant man he is scrupulous though he's seen it all and keeps his trap shut the ticktock continues irregardless irregardless -- yes we have seen it all lost in the afterglow we disturb nothing it's all the same this is the shadow of dreamtown A day a month a life slips by � a fly lands on the table, let it   George Wallace__