The Poetry Of...
Karen Corcoran................
Dabkowski...................
Ring, Bells
Knell now,
I tell the bell, knell
low and
long, and save me
morning,
when the streaks of pink are all I think I know
of joy. Color one day the way it could be
in a perfect
world: my eyes
have teared enough. Please clap
the air-- his spirit loosed--and he will hear it perfectly
well,
your knell has been
transformed
by boys died young in war, in not
war, but imperfect
peace, when all they know is light step when they're
called so young, appallingly. Bells sing
your softest notes--
ones from a mother's
throat, though tight
with sorrow, laves on love-- the sound that doves make
when they coo
before
they sleep,
and it is deep
soft,
deep
soft, deep-- and let me hear it too-- the part that's dying
even as I speak, I need a bell
rung,
silver
or brass
or gold, a punctuation
for a life not yet grown
old,
but slipping silently
to God, whose robes are filled with bells-- whose bosom rings
and wraps each homeward child to make him
welcome.
Bells
do lead the little ones
back
from whence
they came. Beloved sheep,
asleep in mystery, it's but
the end of another day: be not
afraid.
A Definition, Near As I Can Make It
(for JVB, on the other side of the screen)
When I think of
sad, I think of Margaret Truman, mouth
like a carp, offkey
and pleasing Daddy, dropper
of the A bomb
onto Shinto temples
tinkling music,
moved in breeze and sun, and sad
is a flag flapped over schools
where boys to men take up the Cross,
and march
to certain death some time in the future. Sad is old men
sitting in their shorts,
dentureless, and whispering
"Starlyte,
(Dawn or Shawna)
honey girl, I'm cumming", as they strangle indifferent flesh
to coax
a puny ooze, an
antidote
in six minute fixes,
not from wives
who snore
in rooms one door away and real, in
holey hairnets- heads
oblivious
to what's happening in their lives
while they lay sleeping and a phantom
slips inside the years
they fought it out together
toward this fisted, desperate hope, when some typing on a screen steals every dream
at last,
where there could have been such
comfort shared, is squandered off
in secret, wiped
with kleenex,
buried in
the trash-- this makes me
sad
along with silences
in hearts, amid
the spam
of messages
that promise
bliss
with that pill or this-- it's
all so sad.
Night Blooming Contentment
Strange
night. I believe
my head has morphed
into
a tulip pod. Both sides
fall open; out
comes something mechanical
like a periscope, but I've
no desire
to look through
lens. It's one of those days I have
no interest
outside
my sphere; I'm too contented here
to risk a relapse into gossipy
nosiness. Let all the world wag on, I've finally
got me
by the tail.
No tulip set in sun--I am
azalea
blooming
just for one--tight
rooted.
