Two zinnias in a glazed vase
clipped by nuns’ careful scissors,
are the only decoration in this spartan 
   room
in a convent in Jerusalem
but it is clean, the mattresses comfortable
flagstone floors, yellow- and red-ochre,
have been polished to a gleam by 
   passing shoes
these one hundred years, even more

We have returned to Jerusalem
after an absence of some months –
a jittery city, it is more intolerable 
   than ever
horns constantly honk, faces do not 
   smile
congestion and pollution, agitation,
congregate in its centre
together with beggars,
street musicians, religious Jews, Arabs
an incongruent conglomeration
which beckons in a manner I cannot 
   fathom
and repulses with vengeance,
as though one reaction triggers 
   its opposite,
a contradiction of emotions
that is disturbing considering I 
   lived here
for so long and loved it with passion,
wrote love poems in dedication,
painted its landscapes from every angle
until my ability wilted and the brush
could no longer respond to my commands

So that earlier today when I walked
through this city in the heat of its summer
and watched dusk extinguish the gold 
   from its stones,
I noticed a nostalgia for it – for the 
   once-Jerusalem,
almost expecting the present
to disappear behind a curtain
and lo! enter the Jerusalem of old,
the city I knew and yearned to return to,
smaller, happier, more beautiful

These are my thoughts now, late,
in this sanctuary amidst this city’s insanity,
this secluded quaint convent,
where quail and jay and gay flowers 
   reside,
whose energies are lovely, light,
a place that does not disturb
nor disappoint my memories

While the two zinnias in the vase
blink red and pink
in the heat of the night
and soothe me


Copies of Helen and Johnmichael Simon’s illustrated poetry book Cyclamens and Swords are still available from Ibbetson Street Press. Order yours today.

The sonnet comes as naturally as ordinary speech to poet Judith Goldhaber. I’ve enjoyed her versified retellings of classic fables in the book Sonnets from Aesop, illustrated with charming Chagall-like paintings by her husband Gerson. This YouTube video shows the Oakland Symphony Chorus performing “The Power of Light” from the musical “Falling Through a Hole in the Air: The Incredible Journey of Stephen Hawking” (book and lyrics by Judith Goldhaber, music by Carl Pennypacker). Judith is the lady with dazzling red hair who is standing behind the famous physicist. Here are the lyrics:

The Power of Light

i.
To touch the heart of a star,
To feel the ground of being in the boundless,
The edge of space,
The edge of time,
The edge of eternity…

CHORUS:
Feel the power of light
Feel the depth of the night,
Long is the journey to our distant home,
Worlds spin ‘round us but we’re still alone,
Darkness, silence, and the end so far,
Who will speak to us and tell us where we are?
And then…

Comets and candles,
Starlight and diamonds,
Glimmer and glitter and glisten and gleam,
Torches and campfires,
Lanterns and moonlight,
Showery arrows that shine in our dreams —

Moon in a halo
Shedding your luster
Bathing the earth
In your luminous glow…
Carry me
O carry me higher
Carry me,
O carry me further
Carry me upward
Carry me into the light!

ii.
Feel the power of light
Feel the depth of the night
Now we’re moving toward that distant star
Towards the mystery of who we are,
When we’ll reach it we can never know
The path is dark but now we see the way to go
Lit by…
Prisms and rainbows
Opals and sunbeams,
Crimson and orange and yellow and green,
Fountains of color,
Flashes of fire,
Indigo, violet, and ultramarine.
Light more radiant than the sun and moon
Grant us now the eyes to see!
Carry us, O carry us homewards,
Carry us, O carry us starwards,
Carry us Godwards,
Into the source of the light!


Read more of Judith’s poetry at WinningWriters.com (here and here).

Bash’um hard with a hunk o’ lard, cowboy,
when they come ‘ere to seduce our sons and daughters,
the only sons and daughters we have,
with their damn ideers. They think ideers
are worth somethin’ like a Bushel O’Pork
per each. Trahahahaha. They eschew
the feelin’s of patriotism, peals of chivalry
‘n’ private property like. So what does we care
to preserve them as a subspecies? Bein’ ourselves
of solid as rock good local stock
‘n’ rooted in these very hills that we cultivate,
bein’ so local that the mind races over
aeons of banjo-tinklin’ memory of roots
like echoes in the prairied valley, being
precisely that kinda stock, honest blue grass treadin’,
we’re buyin’ none of that Uruguay political correctness.
None, I be tellin’ ya m’s’ladies!
We automatic’ly
put that subspecies under suspicion, zitwere.
The shmuck (pardon me, Sir, me
umbilical vernacular) hadta be tryin’ to
spray us around wi’ hi’ curlture.
He said he be a-dribblin’ learnin’ into our heads
wi’ like critical thinkin’ routines.
But without shittn’ y’uns, I muss hereinafter d’claire
his reasonin’ ta be sorely wrong an’ fallaiches.
In fact, it is beyond fallaiches. Whatever.
Y’uns havin’ troubles hearin’ or somethin’? We been
on this land for gwerk knows how many a century,
from eras immemorable, and we know,
havin’ built these here barns and infrastructure,
we know without prejudice
and in good shape ‘n’ hope ‘n’ faith ‘n’ all
of mind and body like, we know
exact what the heck it cost to keep
the streets of our polity clean,
Partridge and Dingleberry Rock Village Plaza,
positively speakin’ straight narrow clean.
I do repeat, straight narrow clean,
of all yum culturevultures with all yum
cloggin’ dog’s doo an’ piece o’shit ideers.


(Philip was my classmate at Harvard in the 1990s, but despite that early disadvantage in life, he is now the proud editor of Fulcrum: An Annual of Poetry and Aesthetics and the author of several poetry books including Letters from Aldenderry, from which “Ideers” is reprinted by permission. Visit his MySpace page here.)