I
The sun upon the horizon’s edge.
Rays of light stretch across the sea
To where she swam.
Soft sand between his toes
He stood and watched her
Shimmering rosebuds glisten.
Calling out: ‘I grow old . . . I grow old
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the
beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing each to each.
I do not think they will sing to me.’
She sprung from sea foam
Such loveliness
With all the earth in bloom.
Sing to me
Aphrodite
Of the deep.
II
Darkness falls quickly as the heavy hand of night
Comes down upon boys playing ice hockey on
Big Winter frozen solid with sentinel pines closing in
Tightly round a cold New England Sunday.
Shivering saplings making their way back
Across the ice to catch a ride home in time for supper.
Brian’s mom had come to collect them.
Tired ankles no longer able to hold frozen feet
Upright upon steel blades of new skates.
And the last one back to steaming station-wagon:
“I left my shoes on the other side.”
“Oh dear, go back and help him find his shoes,” she said.
Two boys surrounded by black ice and pitch sky,
Darkness over darkness.
The ice moves unseen shuddering booms beneath the surface
And spurs them on.
He moved like winged Mercury – tall, quick
A quarterback bound for BC or Notre Dame.
And then the trek back over obsidian plane.
Crippled with cold he had fallen behind.
Brave Achilles, holding one end of a hockey stick
Stretched out the other and
Towed him across deserted battlefield of Troy.
Again and again the boom boom of distant cannon
Heart beating seeking warmth and
Safety of a heated car to carry home
The wounded.
Ten toe-nails lost to bitter frost bite
And Mrs. C would always reminds him
Long after that cold January night
That shaped an imagination like a hawk blowing wind.
III
Untold stories told and re-told
On Heroes and Hero-Worship
Fourth year of second term and
I LIKE IKE still pinned to an old canvas duck hunting jacket
That had been his grandfather’s who
Spoke beautiful English,
Whispered French to mon chér grandmere,
Italian and Sicilian dialect like the prince Lampedusa.
Loved his Wagner and his grape vines
Tied tomatoes to a string and would sing
To Nanna in the garden.
IV
Forged by fires of unspoken passion
He cast over the wastelands of a wrecked civilisation;
Crossed a great ocean to touch the old world
And plunged into sea of cold isolation.
Steeled in exile while seeking asylum
From a land of dreams that had become a nightmare.
The world wobbles that has no pivot.
Voided of true men there are not leaders
And chaos runs amok.
Better to read Rimbaud through the night
In a Harvard Sq. garret
Than drop acid and napalm on Viet Nam villages.
Monsanto and Dow defoliating S.E. Asia
Aphrodite raped upon scorched earth.
Not a politics but a prayer must be found
To make your way ‘round desolation road.
V
Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation:
“In councils of Government, we must guard against the acquisition
Of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought,
By the Military-Industrial Complex.
The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power
Exists and will persist.”
Making war too good a business
Pentagon, arms industry and financial sector:
A sordid ménage à trois in the boardroom.
Pig-pen politics greases the wheels of the war machine
Politicians pandering for campaign funds
So that they remain in office.
“You the many, we the few.”
Nixon to be next in line but sometimes
Democratic process fails do deliver,
And a fairytale prince usurped Richard.
‘Kennedy fucked up in Cuba’
Had to give them Viet Nam.
The Mob lost the action in Havana
Handed Vegas on a plate as political payback
For having helped Jack.
Camelot was for public’s consumption
Jackie and the kids on magazine covers.
But Jack and Bobby wanted to play hard ball
And the game got rough.
“Your brother got us into this god-damn thing.
“Now I’m caught in a Texas hail storm,
“Can’t run, can’t hide.”
But LBJ couldn’t ride out the storm.
Nevertheless it was McNamara’s war:
Step up the bombing and we’ll shoot our way out.
But if Bobby ran it would split the party and
The Republicans would take the White House.
Then Johnson withdrew his Stetson: “I will not seek another term.”
He ran but he didn’t run far.
Ambitious men played out puerile dreams on a world stage
Making headlines for tomorrow’s front page
All meant that in the end
It was business as usual.
VI
A peripatetic poet walks along the Lyceum
Towards a gathering of students.
“Good afternoon Sir.”
“And good day to you gentlemen.”
“Would you remain with us a while?” asked one of them.
And another said: “Will you tell us about Alexander?”
“And how he conquered the known world?” posited another.
A quiet boy said: “Tell us about Machiavelli, sir, and the character of the prince.”
A young man from Iberia added: “And of the works of Ibn Khaldun.
And a fellow with fine features chiselled in ebony spoke:
“Today men in high office are sending poor men’s sons to spend their blood
To secure rich oil fields.”
“And what of men who send other men’s sons off to blow themselves to bits,
So that they remain in power?” rejoined another.
And the teacher said:
“For God’s sake let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings…”
VII
Once again the sun sets, with African sky ablaze
Ruby tinted water colour brushed lightly along the horizon.
On time the Egyptian geese fly past and herald day’s end.
Standing aloft a man calls out to the people:
“Come to prayer, come to success…”
Arranged in ranks they wait for the old man to step forward.
He motions to a much younger one who was
Most excellent in memory and with clear recitation.
I follow you, he thought to himself.
Gray beards don’t count for anything
But the rapid passing of time that waits on no one.
So a man of no name stood alongside the future.
They bowed and prostrated and stood again
And again bowed and prostrated and sat upon their sides,
Each turning to their right to greet the one next to them.
The old man turned and greeted the angel he did not see:
“Peace be upon you,” he said (and peace be upon me).
Winter’s coming and the last leaf fell from the oak tree.
VIII
IO HO CIO’ CHE HO DONATO
Written over D’Annunzio’s front door on Lake Garda,
Seen on a visit with the young dottore from Parma.
Then lunch at the hotel restaurant overlooking the lake
Followed by a coffee, of course!
The winds of change blow from the east to the west
And a new generation of leaders
Must be forged in an academy of light.
In the light of light is the virtù
“sunt lumina” said Erigena Scotus
(That was Johannes Scotus Erigena
condemned by Pope Honorius III
As an adherent of Averroes (Ibn Rushd).
The sun slips silently into a limpid lake
As flurry of birds heard overhead
Proclaim the time of prayer and peace.
The walk back to the station and the train to the north
“Thank you for taking me here and
I shall always remember it with you.”
An elderly man, with a small grey moustache,
Sat across the aisle reading a book.
With a backward glance
He remembered the boy
Walking down the hill to meet Grampa,
Who arrived on the 6 o’clock train.
They rarely spoke on the climb back up
As he held his hand.
IX
Time slips back
And vanishes before the moment.
There was a time, she said, when “… poets were men
Trying to make sense of their existence
Within the tumult of events that men
Misleadingly called history.”
Hot news flash blinds vision
Wrecks pile up as
Information clogged arteries stop!
A message arrives.
Read: There are signs in yourself and on the horizon
“It has been a lifetime
And now this little bit more.”
Old Odysseus stood by the shore
Making sea-worthy his craft for one last journey.
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