Assissi
Hush, can you hear the dusty prayer --
An undertone to audiophone and guide?
Where this cathedral stands in pelting rain,
Oblivious both to weather and trudging time,
A cheerful friar once dawdled on his way
Hitched up his itching cloak,
Only aware of violets in the ditch,
Some swallows giddying in the sky,
And clouds that frowned across
Another hill town’s rampart brow.
Listen, here where the clanging girders meet,
When riveting guns go quiet for a spell
Or the concrete load has filled the forms
That sprout their reinforcing rods
To underpin new villas for the rich
Above the dusty valleys and the smells
Encrusting rustic peasant industry,
The soft voice implicates us all:
“Deposuit potentes de sede
Et exaltavit humiles.”
Divine Distractions
A moment in the mind of deities
May well be worth a thousand years for us
But with creation’s weight should also be
Concern for chaos and for entropy.
Venus turned aside to yawn, it’s feared;
Pompeii and Herculaneum disappeared.
Queen Hera scratched a regal itch no doubt
While Trojans found a horse, their walls, without.
Athena blinked; her royal city fell.
Poseidon frowned; Atlantis went to hell.
Distractions these, bespeak a temper flawed,
Behavior unbecoming for a god.
So old Dionysus, of vintner’s fame
Showed mortals fermentation’s noble aim
If folks, Olympus-lodged, let havoc reign,
They’d have the wine at least to ease the pain.
Roman Rocks
We stones along
the pathways
In the Roman ruin
just want a break
from being
tourist-ogled,
fondled,
stolen,
prayed upon.
There isn’t
martyr’s blood on us.
No saint or emperor
stubbed a noble toe on us.
Just ground
by chariot wheels,
or chucked
at errant dogs,
we have no
grand pretensions,
(unlike those
old Judean rocks)
that any of us
dented some goliath’s skull
or held
the ten commandments
in igneous dispute.
No!
Roman rocks we were
and are and will be --
practical,
well tamped and trampled,
concrete-bound while still
the world,
a bloody pathway
beats
outside our door.
Pompeii vs the Generals
Relax,
My little country serfs;
Vesuvius
Is not a problem any more.
Sleeping
May be confidently resumed.
Administration,
Technologically enhanced of course,
Confirms
Your houses will withstand
Earthquakes
Much greater than that troublesome one
Killed
Quite a few of you some years ago.
Advise
Your ignorant neighbours to
Ignore
The superstitious, if not unpatriotic,
Fools
Advising relocation and distrust of our
Authority.
Relax,
America and all the Western World;
Atomic
Bombs can never fall on you
StarWars
Initiatives will shield us from
Insurgencies
And evil empires, all.
Relinquish
Power to us who understand
Security
And measures necessary to protect
Democracy
And institutions you depend upon.
Advise
Those radicals among you, and
Ignore
Their superstitions. Those unpatriotic
Fools
Need relocation to the halls of our
Authority.
2nd Nation in Italy
We are the other population
of this long-peopled land,
not quickened as your hordes, but
loving, fighting, struggling for
the entertainment,
education,
of all your gawking
mass.
We are the silent ones:
stone saints,
and martyrs, pagan deities,
the sinners, and the beasts
that tore them.
Christian?
Pagan?
Unconcerned are we,
who stand among you naked,
men uncircumcised,
the women, unabashed.
we are the warriors, though
our weapons long ago broke off
or folded into rust,
except for some.
There’s one you know,
a sling across his back,
stone hefted in the hand upon his hip
and fierce eye fixed on
one he challenges.
We challenge you.
We are created folk
of pure or painted marble,
terra cotta, bronze –
quarried, canvassed,
carved and worked
we stand, engage, recline
or poise to flee.
Give us our franchise,
speak for us
to all the throbbing mob
you represent.
Engage your institutions to resolve at last
our place within this land that owns us,
we, who are more surely of this land
than you
who claim to own us all.
Will we remain imprisoned here
in Vatican or turnstiled gallery?
to buy indulgence for some portly fool
whose dithering progeny in after years
stuck plaster fig leaves on us,
fearing well the passion we’d incite
if left exposed where art
could challege commerce for the souls
of your always-eager youth.
David
Oh for a transformation
Galatea-like
to grant for just a gasp or two
the power to breathe and move
and choose.
What targets would
that arm and sling enjoin?
What monstrous ogres
of our day bring down?
Released,
unlike attendant “Prisoners”
encumbered, blind,
un-birthed from
hard insensate stone.
Released,
with taut sling armed,
firm, balanced stance,
eye steady,
looking somewhat up
at something somewhat
larger than itself
as unknowns always seem.
Released
in confident aggression
to destroy without remorse
whatever threatens state security
Forbear!
Forbid such magic
that would unleash
such power upon the world.
Such striding,
flexing,
armed and swinging
zeal
of youth
would doom us all
in our half-hearted
obligations to redeem
our promises
to future generations
of his kind.