Thanks Frederick enjoyed these glimpses
Cheers Patrick' so benign and harmless).

-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Frederick Pollack
Sent: 15 March 2009 21:38
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: 3 poems

Mélisande


If I say, “What struck me was – ”
it becomes about me, and this wasn’t.
Yet there was no one else
on that block but her; I mean
I passed no one else.  What one does
in such cases is find
extraneous symbols.  There were none.
Just the place that had sold
trophies (for bowling and such) fifty years
but had closed, the Italian place (watery pasta
but a neighborhood institution),
the overpriced antiques place … All
impeccably bourgeois.  No drug-dealers, no cops.
Every house hurting
financially but not showing it yet.
And up the street from one of them came
that girl.  In the eras
when “blood” was praised, hers would have been
for her grey-green eyes, severely pony-tailed
gold hair, and long long neck.
And unctuously, salaciously, the “cusp”
would have been mentioned …
I saw someone twelve, maybe eleven.
She moved gracefully, swiftly,
purposefully but to no
apparent purpose.  Why did she pause
to gaze in the blind window of
the trophy store?  Why throw
her hand out?  Why double back
five or so paces?  Was she waiting for the bus?
Or a playmate?  (Could she still play?)
Or fleeing an abuser?  The aristocratic face
was blank, or composed … All this
in the ninety seconds it took me to pass,
and look back, and see,
beyond that corner and the oblivious
traffic, above the trees, among
the lowering clouds, a female form.  It was she,
in ten years or eternity,
fiercely protective, glowering even
at me, so benign and harmless.





Havana


The Mob returns, elegiacally
maintaining, amidst pole-dancers,
the sequins and boas
of the Copa.  Part of the theme-park.
Like some Fifties Fords and Chevies
left as limos
among rickshaws.  When their doors are opened,
whores of the highest – white – class
perfect the art
of swinging their legs out.
Russians also return,
thick cologne
over what was once called “the grease
of the bear.”  Sportive rival
death-squads hunt each other after dark.

A doctor on call
to patch them up – he pays
thus for his habit
of treating the poor – has visions.
(He’s often hungry; he can’t eat sugar.)
One is a room
whose long walls hold
Fidel’s collected speeches.
To read every word,
perhaps in a prolonged dengue fever,
is to read the supreme fiction.
And sometimes a mausoleum
rises, dwarfing the one
in Moscow that housed
the embalmed corpse of the man of action.





Commute


… so stupid, waking,
that awareness of having
showered, dressed, and of being,
still, more or less
organic doesn’t register until
we’re within a mile
(in this traffic an hour)
of work.  The bus
is cheaper, certainly,
and cleaner, fueled
by our own exhaust; but the pipes
chafe on turns and
on braking.  It’s time
to unfold the paper
slightly, careful
of the personal space
of one’s seatmate.  Who, texting,
plugged in, or illiterate, gets
his news from what
he impassively views: moaning
chimeras on corners, skewed
streetlamps, the dawn shift
of streetwalkers, thousands strong,
the roadkill the city
collects and distributes.  When
the last newspaper folds,
we too will stare, but now we read
about our seatmate: the plague,
petrifaction, layoff to which
he is fated.  It’s
a good thing he never
looks over our shoulder; his name
is right there.  Should our
eyes meet, we readers, we bare
our neglected teeth.  Would fall
on each other with lust,
violence, or tears but
don’t dare.  It’s my stop,
a melting but functional
tower that bears
the usual motto: *Me, too,
eternal love created*. 
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com 
Version: 8.0.237 / Virus Database: 270.11.13/2001 - Release Date: 03/14/09
06:54:00