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Issue 41/42 : July - December, 2008 : Volume 11 No 1/2 Stephen Stepanchev In Hastings-on-Hudson Is it suburban angst? Astonishment? He's a sleepy citizen, sprawled out on a bench In front of the firehouse, near a copper bell. He sees me hesitant and grabs my arm And forces me to hear The story of his twenty years in Africa Where rain kept dripping from the acacias, leaf to leaf, And young men died of AIDS, And happy women were sometimes stoned to death. "There is noting here," he says, "except the truth Old Rip propounded: time devours the past Of wives and children lost in accounting books." Off in the distance the brackish Hudson rides Toward the north-west passage where randy sailors came To find the spice and women of India. Nothing so far-fetched stirs the tugboat crews Who pull or push long barges here today: Cargoes of timber, furniture, and gas. In Our Village Nothing happens in this village of black-eyed Susans and English pollyhocks and dead-end Streets that lead to a leafy view of the Hudson River And an old house with an iron table and chairs For tea on the lawn in summer. There is a shady Plaza nearby named for Wagner, a long- Forgotten politician. A bench bears the strange, Daunting motto, "Run for your life." Who put it there? Nothing happens here except for the wind that blows— A crass, pollen-filled wind that sweeps the fallen Leaves under the elm in my back yard. I'm reading a torn obituary page From the local paper and learn that my friend James— My next-door neighbor—is dead. He died, naturally, in his sleep. |