NOT AS FOOLS WALK

  

My God, whose fault was it:

   The child’s who ran in front of me

(My automobile his last thought),

   Or mine, that I failed to see?

 

Oh, it was more my fault,

    Though he didn’t look both ways:

I sat behind the Juggernaut’s

   Grim wheel, in the parade

 

The tramples on our Paradise—

   For in its path are cast

The ignorant and helpless,

   Who writhe on broken glass.

 

The weak are crushed and maimed—

   The aged and infirm,

The homeless and insane,

   The gasoline-soaked worms.

 

Struck blind by our headlights,

   Bewildered deer are slain

While paralyzed with fright.

   The sun and moon seem stained.

 

Not only mine this guilt,

   Though I must voice its plea.

I hope one day to build

   The courage to release

 

My fingers from the wheel,

   And find somewhere to park

This sterile husk of steel,

   And circumspectly walk—

 

Not as a heedless fool,

   But as a man with eyes,

Who lives by Mercy’s rule

   And not the law of Sacrifice.

 

ROBIN’S NEST

  

One dull afternoon

I dozed in my chair,

My face before

The window where

 

I’d peered through blinds

At the robin’s nest

Made of mud and twigs

And lined with grass.

 

And the bird was there,

When I shut my eyes

In a torpid swoon

With a yielding sigh.

 

But when I woke,

The nest was torn

From the spruce’s branch

Where it was moored.

 

The blue green eggs

Lay on the ground

Shattered and dry,

No robin around.

 

More than this I rue,

More than this I weep:

Times I should have watched,

Times I fell asleep.

 

       IN THE MORNING

  

How graceful is the white neck of this swan,

Reflected in the river’s swelling flood:

His head bent sideways, peering down for food;

The pinions of his flight secure and drawn,

Prepared for sudden plunge--or skyward on

To aerial reconnaissance, the brave

And brilliant, sun-bedappled, dancing waves

Below him as he rises with the dawn!

Nearby upon this same familiar beach,

Another of that species stands, and warms

His aged, ragged, soiled and ailing form,

And hides beneath his wing his head and beak.

I stand beside him. He seems not to care,

Resigned to yield unto the fate we share.

 

      NOTHING BUT THE ALL

  

Young men and women, answer not the call

When politicians beat the drums of War:

Lay down your lives for nothing but the All.

 

Seek not for foes, but stem the bitter gall

Fermenting in a blind heart’s’ seething core.

Young men and women, answer not the call.

 

The world cannot be kept out by a Wall,

Or broken into Theirs and Mine and Yours.

Lay down your lives for nothing but the All.

 

Think not that when you stand so brave and tall

Your sins are covered by your uniforms:

Young men and women, answer not the call.

 

Two guardians enforce the Moral Law:

Your Conscience and your Shame sustain its norms.

Lay down your lives for nothing but the All.

 

Far better to be shunned or killed than fall

To that great folly, though you be abhorred.

Young men and women, answer not the call.

Lay down your lives for nothing but the All.

 

THE SIESTA OF SOCRATES’ DOG

  

Don’t make me tell you the truth

It’s best to let sleeping dogs lie

 

Instead you poke and you prod

And think it’s so cute

 

When you whisper my name in my ear

My tail thumps on the floor

 

My whiskers twitch when you tickle me

You can’t leave well enough alone

 

One day I’ll leap up and I’ll bite you

And then we’ll both be sorry

 

All I want is to go on dreaming

Let me continue lying that way

 

DIANA LEAVES HER BATH

    (after Francois Boucher)

 

I tramped through the woods,

The image of a painting

Dazzling my vision,

Like the noonday sun stared at

With presumptuous folly—

 

Seeking that lovely

Bare leg raised like my ardor,

Aching for contact,

Breathless for her breathing form:

Wilderness was my reward.

 

It is just as well:

If my dreams had come true,

What would have happened?

I would have crossed the fine line

Between the ideal and the real.

 

She would have killed me,

If I had come upon her

Unexpectedly—

Not because her guard was down,

Her warlike demeanor dropped

 

With her proud wardrobe,

But because I’d seen the look

In her dull eyes;

Her flesh so desirable

She seemed without desire,

 

With an innocence

Bordering on stupidity.

And before I’d guessed

There was nothing there but paint

Stroked upon a canvas void,

 

I’d have been struck dead

By the arrows of her wrath:

The indignation

Of a deity unveiled

Without due adulation.  

 

NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM

  

The peacock exploded on New Year's Day.

It was like Hiroshima, like Nagasaki:

Exhilarating, cold--like a perfect crime

planned without passion.

 

It was Pride going before the fallout,

ignorant of the consequences--

talons shuffling on asphalt through withered leaves.

 

I looked up and say you coming in the cloud,

your tiny pointed head peeking out,

the blue incandescence shrouding the rest of you.

 

We expected all the colors of the rainbow.

We expected diversity.

We expected to justify the ways of Man to God.

But it wasn't salvation we got--

Turns out we didn't know what we were praying for.

 

What we got was Oneness,

obliterating everything we dreamed of,

making us all unrecognizable--

mutated, twisted, grotesque beasts

toting Geiger counters into the Apocalypse.