MEDITATION ON 11

MEDITATION ON 11

In what do I take refuge,
with so much doubt?
How can you say to me.
"bird, hill"
without explaining?
Am I to fly like a bird
to the mountain,
or fly like a mountain bird?
Or fly to my own hill?

When the foundations
have been thrown over,
what can the just do?

For the foundations
are destroyed--
what has the Righteous
One done?

If the foundations are destroyed
what has the righteous man accomplished?

quoniam quae perfecisti, destruxerunt

Because what you fashioned,
they destroyed,
but what did the righteous do?

If the foundations are destroyed,
what can the righteous do?

Quando fundamenta evertuntur,
justus quid facere valet?

For the laws are dissipated,
what has the just man done?

leges dissipatae sunt

There is so much doubt--
how is it to be
dissipated,
overturned,
destroyed?

The foundations
are a monument
to uncertainty.

December 12 2015, revised December 12 2016

OS TESTAMENTOS DO INFERNO

I.
Por qué te preocupas con el fin
si non comprendes o comesso.
A verdad é que el fin
y o principio son lo stesso.

Why do you concern yourself with the end
if you do not understand the beginning?
The truth is that the end
and the beginning are the same.

10 dizembro 2016

DEFENSIVE MANEUVER

I keep an agéd finger
on the young pulse
of my old country.
The symptoms are:
a turning-inward
that is "away from"
and not "toward,"
a disconnecting from
the outside world.
Likes and dislikes,
determined by long
habit, may no longer
fit.
There is confusion
and there is fear--
will isolation protect?
While other parts of
the world are
waking up,
my countrymen
have no more
attention to give.

O you, who call
yourself "America,"
are you sleeping,
or are you dying?

9 December 2016.

MACHINES

To work with computers,
one has to think like a computer,
to think like a machine.
It makes for a colder,
more lifeless world,
a world run
by machines.

We are programming
the defenses of dictators,
the logistics of fascists,
and the humor of maniacs.
We are designing the systems
of our surveillance,
and building the platforms
for our own hanging.

Thirty-five years ago
I laughed at a neo-Luddite.
Now I wonder
if it's too late.

8 Dec. 2016

BODY SHAME

It's a different kind
of body shame:
not body-type
(though that came
later), but just
HAVING a body.

Oh yes, we've laughed
about it, my sister
and I: "Traxlers don't
have bodies," we
often say. But where
did it start, and
how? Why, at the
age of ten, did the
very word,
"body,"
make me blush?

What was the shame
in having a body?
Why the secrecy
about certain parts
which must,
at all costs,
be kept hidden?
Why the blushing?

It will not happen
again. Perhaps
my naturism
has gone too
far. But,
you see,
it took me
many years to
get a body,
and now that
I have one,
I won't easily
give it up.

6 Dec. 2016

STANDING ROCK

Is it possible that the world
is changing for the better?
Can unity and solidarity
be hallmarks of the future?
Is it possible that love
really does
conquer all?
Let us live
in this crazy
hope.
Let us become
what we desire.

5 December 2016

I would like to thank everyone for showing support for my poetry. Some say that no one reads poetry anymore, but evidently that is not the case. In the two months since I started my poetry blog, it has had more than three thousand visits. The top ten countries from which the visits have come are the US, Uruguay, Germany, UK, Chile, Spain, Ireland, Argentina, Canada, and India. The blog has also had visits from Poland, Italy, Venezuela, Guatemala, Turkey, Colombia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Sweden, Norway, the Ukraine, Bulgaria, Belarus, Mexico, and other countries. Thanks again, and I hope you will continue to enjoy my poetry blog.