I was waiting to try out one of my inventions from the flattop garage roof — parachutes this time — when I tasted a black cherry from the next yard, wondering even at that age who had prior rights and what was constitutional so instead of jumping I wrote a brief brief called Yaakov vs. the Tree Trunk where everyone laughed herself crazy at Marlboro vs. Madison
Five soldiers fixed by Mathew Brady’s eye Stand in a land subdued beyond belief. Belief might lend them life again. I try Like orphaned Hamlet working up his grief
To see my spellbound fathers in these men Who, breathless in their amber atmosphere, Show but the postures men affected then
We boys, the neighborhood’s barefoot We boys, the neighborhood’s naked We boys of stomachs bloated from eating mud We boys of teeth porous from eating dates and pumpkin rind
We boys will line up from Hassan al-Basri’s mausoleum to the Ashar River’s source to meet you in the morning waving green palm fronds
We will cry out: Long Live We will cry out: Live to Eternity
I had eight birds hatcht in one nest, Four Cocks were there, and Hens the rest. I nurst them up with pain and care, No cost nor labour did I spare Till at the last they felt their wing, Mounted the Trees and learned to sing. Chief of the Brood then took his flight To Regions far and left me quite. My mournful chirps I after send Till he return, or I do end. Leave not thy nest, thy Dame and Sire, Fly back and sing amidst this Quire. My second bird did take her flight And with her mate flew out of sight. Southward they both their course did bend,
Aren't you glad at least that the earthworms Under the grass are ignorant, as they eat the earth, Of the good they confer on us, that their silence Isn't a silent reproof for our bad manners, Our never casting earthward a crumb of thanks For their keeping the soil from packing so tight That no root, however determined, could pierce it?
Imagine if they suspected how much we owe them, How the weight of our debt would crush us Even if they enjoyed keeping the grass alive, The garden flowers and vegetables, the clover, And wanted nothing that we could give them, Not even the merest nod of acknowledgment. A debt to angels would be easy in comparison,
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