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[From the 2004 Andalusia Prize for Poetry] Thought jousts with all comparison In tournaments of guilt and grief Till you proclaim, “Put down your spear; There is no other champion here. “No other champion here has won In any way but deep belief That the parts men play comprise a whole In one’s own universal soul.  [Satire] In this perfectly revolting State of elegance we start Revolutionary moulting Of the things which most need jolting: Last year’s morals, clothes, and creeds. Like a famished vulture, bolting Down the flesh on which it feeds, Our consumer’s greed exceeds The highest flights of fancy’s needs At modern, manufactured speeds Nothing short of death impedes - Not the death of Third-World weeds, Fodder for some Rambo’s deeds. What use it that justice pleads Sharing food among these breeds? If a Third-class Worldling bleeds Revenge is what he seeks, not seeds Trade him high-tech glass and beads, The wampum with which War proceeds. Thus our high-class hero leads - - By raising Cain - and all he reads Or sees on film this truth concedes: Nothing like success succeeds! [Traditional Piety] And when the sun begirdles clouds serene With silken tresses that resplendent fall To earth, then God has let it come to pass. [Descriptions of Nature] In a land, long ago, Where the golden blossoms blow By the hand of a breeze Clear and sharp from the seas, Over green and rolling ground; In the air, not a sound Of a cricket, bell, or bird; From the lips, not a word; And the sun-dappled cedars are silently stirred. There below an aged pine Is a cottage, and it’s mine. Soft and slow, sweet and low, As the grass, O breezes, grow, Coolly clothing us with care - My beloved ones are there. Life has left my time-burnt face Hopeless of a lightning grace. But a gleam on the wing In the air of the spring Tugs tomorrow-bound longings like a kite on a string. |
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A moment’s meeting Filled with your sweet smile Has longer meanings Time cannot defile. Nothing counts as much as this: The sudden thought of passing bliss, The cries we think we’ll never miss From lips made for a mother’s kiss. A mother’s kiss upon the cheek Of one so fresh, so fair, so weak Is like the food the starving seek, The speech the angels long to speak. To speak of children grown and gone Is like a storm in spite of dawn, Except for those who hasten on Where hope has led and love has shone. And love has always shone around The souls of parents who have found, Although their hearts were heaven-bound, Some part of them stayed on the ground. The ground, from which our children grow, Lies under all that breathes below, No matter how despised or slow, Sees it above, and loves it so. So parents’ pains at least may please - From fights and flu to dirty knees - If we recall what God decrees: That nothing counts as much as these. These words you see I wrote above Have at the bottom Only love. When God spread out beneath the sky this earth, And preordained a death for every birth, For night its lights, and shadows in the day, That good and bad, in fear or hope, might say: “Even so my life could go the other way;” When thus He flung afar this vast display, Of every thing created He made two And gave us words like “love” and “me and you”.
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