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The Poetry Of.
Harold Lorin.......................................................
Artifice
The universe would go on well without us.
We have not contributed much to it.
All we have locally made is ' the artifact'
That we hold upwards for our uncle to see.
Or say to the children "you can wind it up."
Or "be careful do not break it."
It makes our loved ones feel calmer.
It provides pleasures and diversions
In the vast space in which we are doomed
To come and go come and go come and be.
We can later say "child, now this is yours."
But parts of our artifice are torment and remorse
Ancient apprehension like a shadow on the valley.
Rising over the mountain we should have long ago achieved.
An echo of the laughter of angels who are not our friends.
Empire
Here now the fragile pine forest
Grows sparse and speckled suburban.
Gives way to the beetle, to scrub oaks
To ‘time has come’ and the cycle.
Permitting views of the neighbor and
Letting in light in previous deep places.
Here now is not the dark forest
That was here when I came as a child,
Out from the city into the coolness.
To my father’s house where he arranged
That history did not happen.
Ending his journey out of the world
To a country of forests set by the sea
Where history need not happen.
Likely It Would Have Been Wiser
Likely it would have been wiser
to have sent him away with those stones.
To let other people be the hated chosen.
Unhappily, we gave in to his intensity.
And we thought a promise had been made.
There was no excuse for it. We had been around.
Had seen enough from Ur to Heliopolis.
You’d think we’d know better than
To wait about, like children,
For instructions from a Flame.
What instruction did we actually require?
We knew already how to tend the sheep.
Suffer drought, succumb to age.
There were some useful ideas about fruit trees,
But even they turned out to be less a boon than a bother.
This God, alone in His Heaven. Jealous even of His Name
Has made us lonely too. Made us The Problem,
The link between Pharaoh and Fuehrer.
Gave us this 'homeland', which, being travelers, we did not require.
Where we have never lived in peace.
Had we understood this particular "Odysseus" was not wise
We would not have waited by the mountain.
Would not have become constant strangers.
We would have lights on Saturday.
Proscuitto with melon or cheese.
And feel we belonged to this planet.
