To A Cautious Poet
You can write poems
On venetian blinds
Flash them on and
Off to the world
Someday
The men with
Guns and butter
Will see you from the street,
Tramp up the stairs
To your room,
Strangle you with the cord of your caution.
Then they will praise you
As a tragic genius,
Your readers will admire
Your poems
While your body
Hangs
Behind the blinds
Winter
Dark malefic clouds crowd the sky
winds carry the stench of carrion to every nostril,
the crazy ape has followed the faculty of hawks.
All around stand crows, magpies, jackdaws, vultures,
edacious eyes anticipating their putrid feast.
A weary Cassandra laments;
doves, hearts weeping for a better yesterday
forsake their olive branches.
I’m Proud
I’m proud of my people, proud to be one of them,
that great mass on society’s bottom rung.
Those who, with coal-dust under their nails
in their eyes, in their lungs
claw at the earths entrails.
Their brothers,
cement in their hair
in their mouth, in their ears,
oil ingrained in their fingers,
on their face.
Sisters, glistening with sweat
midst the ceaseless noise of machines
that throw out shirts, shoes, toys, carpets
for other people.
Those with soil and sweat stuck to their skin
smelling of the earth, feeding the multitude,
grinding out their lives in a harsh pitiless system
weighted down
with a sack load of half-dead dreams,
sometimes brought to their knees
by a tidal wave of despair,
never defeated,
groping in the dark to find tomorrow,
keeping hope alive;
they amaze me.
Somehow, from somewhere
in this cold, cruel
unforgiving scheme of things
they find love for their children.
Not a teaspoonful, not a cupful,
but buckets full, to bathe them in,
to pour over them.
They seem to know
that one day this world will be ours
and to take care of it
we will need those who have been loved.