Rousseau’s brave savages
had circled her covered wagon,
leaving vestiges
of life that could have been:
dreams of a promised land,
a son and rag-doll daughter,
a scalped Scottish husband,
and not a drop of water.
Rousseau’s brave savages
had circled her covered wagon,
leaving vestiges
of life that could have been:
dreams of a promised land,
a son and rag-doll daughter,
a scalped Scottish husband,
and not a drop of water.
You disappeared in the dead of winter,
but not like Yeats. No wife or mistress
were at your side. A hole and splinter
alarmed you, but did not distress.
Duty called. You would not part
your sculptor’s studio, (more…)
At the gates of heaven
he did not know the names
beyond the bombing bay.
But many miles away
he could still see the flames
judging the dead in Dresden.
154 words
Editor’s Note:
From Leo Yankevich’s Journey Late at Night: Poems and Translations, forthcoming from Counter-Currents.
For a moment as brief and long as eternity
he sees what the blind man sees in the blink of an eye:
a sun that never sets, forms wrought from gold, purity
before it falls or is restored to grace, the grey sky
Editor’s Note:
From Leo Yankevich’s Journey Late at Night: Poems and Translations, forthcoming from Counter-Currents. (more…)
When the mind melts in the cave of the skull,
forsaken, alas, like everything else,
will some victorious Socrates crawl—
out of the depths, like a most secret self—
beholding all things as they really are?
Then, apostolic, but shunning the smell,
will he crawl back down inside—to pole-star
and enlighten the blind monkeys in hell?
It’s true: few deaths are kind.
The agéd pensioner,
with Dunkirk on his mind,
prays for his to occur.
His life was long and hard;
a belt still burns his back.
Inside the cancer ward
he lies upon the rack.
What German family must have once lived here?
Built in ’32, the building’s façade
was freshly made, the face of every god
and angel brand new. Nowadays they sneer,
looking out sooty niches, ears and noses
riddled by history and acid rain.
Wort and stinkweed prosper where once roses
brushed against each crystal window pane.
117 words
The garden has been left unkempt. Now thorn
and thistle thrive, burr, bramble and stinkweed.
The path that led to tulips, once well-worn,
is overgrown with wort and crabgrass seed.
What grand and stately gardens — Egypt, Greece
and Rome, though under the same sun and clouds
they perished. When great civilizations cease
existing their bleak ruins are but shrouds.
He’ll part this world with feathers on his feet,
the ton of five & dime cement no longer heavy,
his battered brow resembling morning wheat
as sunup blesses rusty Dodge and Chevy.
And hipsters coming out saloon and church
will mark a glimmer of unworldly light
when for a second he climbs walls to perch
by Jesus, having left for good the night.
Look from the bridge down into the black waters
where, corroded, rest the sunken barges.
A riddled sapper never set the charges:
the cry of birches is a wife’s or daughter’s. (more…)