|
|
Poetry in English
Charles Fishman
War Babies
We approach but do not touch your world,
do not enter, as if our eyes have been distracted,
at the last moment, by a flutter of paper
of a sudden flash of light.
We were the bruised windfalls of your harvest.
The dead you assimilated changed you,
the way a tumor growing inside your head
will change you. Death was our element,
the first pungent breath.
We did not cultivate the taste, tried to forget.
We learned to hibernate, to breathe once or twice
a decade. At last, the words would burst from us
in harsh stuttering gasps.
We were the spoiled fruit of your poor husbandry.
You knew we bore desire—a deviant gene
that would flourish in the slow epoch of winters.
You could feel the undertow, the taproot
struggling deeper. We were the last
permitted to cluster, in vague despair,
in dazed sobriety, yet we walked singly,
the bloom rubbed off, the juice bitter.
Robert Dunn
Poet Laureate
The good news is: last week
I was finally named
Poet Laureate of someplace.
The bad news is: it’s my car.
I’ve been named Poet Laureate
Of my car.
My own car …
And not even my entire car, either.
Just the front seat.
Apparently, there was some dissatisfaction
From the rear seat.
And there was one person who was
Especially virulent against my being selected.
I locked him in the trunk.
He is still in there.
After all, what good is being
Named Poet Laureate of anywhere
If you can’t get the last word?
(Don’t answer that …)
Hassanal Abdullah
Finding the Difference
A poet and a priest are
Almost the same,
The only Difference is
One believes in god
And the
Other tends to be one.
|