Life is the model for a poem, even the subtlest;
for life ignores death, as a poem ignores logic.
If they say your studies are a waste of time,
tell them you’re taking a bite from it.
In eternity, the barren life
of each mass killer gives birth to another.
When the figure of the sage is lost by a culture,
it shines more brightly in the darkness.
A kind of prayer is possible without God;
it lacks an addressee but leaves an echo.
for life ignores death, as a poem ignores logic.
If they say your studies are a waste of time,
tell them you’re taking a bite from it.
In eternity, the barren life
of each mass killer gives birth to another.
When the figure of the sage is lost by a culture,
it shines more brightly in the darkness.
A kind of prayer is possible without God;
it lacks an addressee but leaves an echo.
|
Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, The Adventure and Happiness, both Story Line Press; the former reissued 2022 by Red Hen Press. Three collections of shorter poems, A Poverty of Words, (Prolific Press, 2015), Landscape with Mutant (Smokestack Books, UK, 2018), and The Beautiful Losses (Better Than Starbucks Books, forthcoming 2023). Pollack has appeared in Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Fish Anthology, Magma, Bateau, Fulcrum, Chiron Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, etc. Online poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Hamilton Stone Review, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire Review, Mudlark, Rat’s Ass Review, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, etc.
|
