For Example

For Example

I would like to be a Dolomite tower

            And hear you say I mean the world to you.

Or, for example, I want to be the glistening

            Pilot fish of memory baring their skin.

Memory of sand in dunes, cliffs, or carved curves

            The sighing of the wind in long-needled pines.  

But, I am not, for example, replete with rugged good looks

            Or, for example, plenty of dead presidents.

I might, however, for example, pretend I had erudition

            Or reputation with words, bright wide awake apothegms.

Redolent with virile recall of macadam fields on

            Ascension Island in the equatorial Atlantic.

Or, for example, the Cocos, or Christmas, or Diego Garcia

            Far southern reaches where only radio aerials hum.

Or, I might for example, be a Foreign Legionnaire, in the

            Shattered aftermath of Dien Bien Phu,

Facing the Viet-Minh firing squad, a drooping cigarette

            In a fascinatingly crooked small smile.

While, for example, world and time away, you held your drink in

            Two hands in an obscure hotel bar, thinking of a husband.   

Hadassah

Hadassah

Hadassah, pearl of Persia

Woman from out of Asia

Alpine daughter, red and white

Early gray yet a smile so young.

May all your Khmer children

Gather round on warm evenings

Full with the on rushing tropical breeze

Bearing the fecund scent of paddi mud.

To share your time and words

With open mouths full of laughter

Days full of moments lush with loveliness

Beautiful with green and gray, evening clouds and grass.

Black and white, fine checks on

Unlikely tropical scarves among nasal

French and curves of Sanskrit on old stone

Temples among the wats and banyan trees. 

Hadassah, white orient pearl

May half an emperor’s kingdom be yours

And love fill the bowls at the feasts you give

And friends be many, fresh, and vibrant

Gathered from the four corners of the earth,

Out of the Seven Seas, blown to your shore

By the winds at the edges of the wide world

Drawn by the archangels of heaven to complete your company

To give glory to your God, and mine,

And complete the covering of the corner of his garment

Over you, O daughter of the East

O splendor of Iran. 

St. Andrew’s Sidewalk

There’s a linden tree

          A sapling in an old city

Springing to adolescent height

          In the midst of a circle of silica

Speckled black flecked gray granite flags

          Ordered stones stretching away

Into Hiberian fog

          To the right and to the left.

Tell me, my silver barked youth,

          My limber linden friend,

What thoughts of Scots love

          Have you sown in drifted silvan leaves

Into my sister’s wide blue eyes? 

As the Ruin Falls

All this flashy rhetoric about loving you
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love - a scholar's parrot may talk Greek -
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

C.S. Lewis - Poems.

SEA BEFORE THE RAIN

At the memory of trees
An image arrests
My far off eye.....

The island sky is dark
As the afternoon monsoon
Steams in from the hell hot
Surface of the Natuna sea.
White foam scalds the toes
Beneath the temporarily threatened
Equatorial eye in his height.
Coast sand scorches in an
Eternal white ribbon
Tying emerald fleshy jungle fringe
To silty grey brown ocean.
White and red and blue paint peal
From the high prowed fishing prahu
Beached to blister on the silica strand.

The fisherman’s chocolate leather
Skin bakes a deeper brown
Ancient eyes narrowed to the glare
Beneath the weathered rim
Cracked and pale palm fronds
Woven green and skillful by a
Loving woman’s hands, mother, wife, or
Daughter not far hence.
At rest before the rain, one hand upon
The forestem, one foot on the sand
The other tucked beneath him
A human heron in contemplation.

The rain comes on, soaring rushing wave
Soft black billows
Mounted on slanted silver spears
Plowing the wide salt field
With splashing white furrows.
And now the sand melts and runs
In plastic smoothness under this ocean in the air
And oven’s heat enough to
Warm old cold souls
Gives way before a child’s dream of
Breathtaking cool and laughing wet

Even old fishermen might dance.

Coffee Sunlight Spoons

Coffee sunlight spoons
You and me and macaroons
Conversation, intercourse, thoughts in air
How dark your hair is

Lorna Doone

Books, by Benjamin Hummel

Railing at M'lady

I'm incensed with you, Vincent

            But adore your poetry, your gift

The gemmy words studding

            The pages where I've found them

Irish waters by a Cornish prow

            Sonnets by the dozen.

You are to me, an historical anomaly

            1916 girls should be pure and demure

Not given to lovers chasing them

            To Paris, or back and forth across the Channel!

Ah, curse wealth and privilege, fame and fortune,

            Skill with the mouth, tongue and pen,

Why must they so inevitably lead to abandon? 

            Wherefore Anais Nin?

Damn it, poet!  I'm sure I would've been among

            The manly crowd admiring, longing, lusting

After your red, red lips, your flaming tresses.  Perhaps even, scaling that tower,

            I'd have shared in your collective social malaises, Millay.

I refuse to read your biographies because

            I'm jealous, out of season, out of time,

I want Paris, too, the cafes, the words

            Glittering like dark red wine in crystal stems,

And tall, strong Nordic companions

            Wearing crowns of red and gold or onyx

Like the shepherdess of Shulam.

            You died before I was conceived! 

                        But I've snitched snippets of your life

In the Borders stacks, furtively reading in the middle

            Looking at the pictures, an undisciplined hack. 

Your rhyme and rhythm enrapture me, wile’d flapper!

            And I wish I had been on the field then

I'd've won your heart, composed you verse

            To show you how, impossibly, I understood!

I know!  My blood is as red, my words as good.

            That I can love and long with the

Best of them -  with you!      

                                    For you. 

But I have nothing to commend me

            No one knows these words, my languages

Are all foreign, oriental, scented with cloves and

Black pepper, cinnamon and tea, I have no proper degree

No peerage, no land, or horses, houses, industries.

            I've not been to Paris, I haven't known women. 

Only jungle and granite, and deep blue saltwater. 

Your price is ever beyond my means, as are all the beautiful

            Ones, the brilliant ones, the red lipped ones, catching the eye

With hooks and tearing the heart, provoking love.

            And all I am able to do is pound out my longing

In words that tumble, and do not flow like the streams from your mouth. 

            You did some pounding, too, perchance.  But you had fulfillment right

There!  Why were you not happy with your English god and all

            His sycophants?  The lesser gods before and after? 

And here I am all out of time

            My white charger pawing sand, proud silver

Armor dulled by corroding air, chipped sword in hand

            Seeking a flat horizon for the damsel in distress.

Chivalry did not die with Alfred Lord, that Quixotic Victorian,

            But my sword, my pen are impotent.

Failing even now to rescue the living

            Sending for the dead 

For places in the realms of vision

            Where dreams succeed, dragons are slain. 

Pity, they are so soft

            Rather they were as real as pain.