517 Social commentaries poems

Oh mighty City of New York! you are wonderful to behold, Your buildings are magnificent, the truth be it told, They were the only thing that seemed to arrest my eye, Because many of them are thirteen storeys high. And as for Central Park, it is lovely to be seen, Especially in the summer season when its shrubberies and trees are green; And the Burns’ statue is there to be seen, Surrounded by trees, on the beautiful sward so green; Also Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott, Which by Englishmen and Scotchmen will ne’er be forgot. There the people on the Sabbath-day in thousands resort, All loud, in conversation and searching for sport, Some of them viewing the menagerie of wild beasts there, And also beautiful black swans, I do declare. And there’s beautiful boats to be seen there, And the joyous shouts of the children do rend the air, While the boats sail along with them o’er Lohengrin Lake, And the fare is five cents for children and adults ten is all they take. And there’s also summer-house shades and merry-go-rounds, And with the merry laughter of the children the Park resounds During the livelong Sabbath day, Enjoying the merry-go-round play. Then there’s the elevated railroads, about five storeys high, Which the inhabitants can see and hear night and day passing by, Oh! such a mass of people daily do throng, No less than five hundred thousand daily pass along, And all along the City you can get for five cents, And, believe me, among the passengers there are few discontent. And the top of the houses are all flat, And in the warm weather the people gather to chat, Besides on the house-tops they dry their clothes, And also many people all night on the house-tops repose. And numerous ships and steamboats are there to be seen, Sailing along the East River Water so green; ’Tis certainly a most beautiful sight To see them sailing o’er the smooth water day and night. And Brooklyn Bridge is a very great height, And fills the stranger’s heart with wonder at first sight, But with all its loftiness, I venture to say, For beauty it cannot surpass the new Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay. And there’s also ten thousand rumsellers there, Oh! wonderful to think, I do declare! To accommodate the people of That city therein, And to encourage them to commit all sorts of sin. And on the Sabbath-day, ye will see many a man Going for beer with a tin can, And seems proud to be seen carrying home the beer To treat his neighbours and family dear. Then at night numbers of the people dance and sing, Making the walls of their houses to ring With their songs and dancing on Sabbath night, Which I witnessed with disgust, and fled from the sight. And with regard to New York and the sights I did see, One street in Dundee is more worth to me, And, believe me, the morning I sailed from New York For Bonnie Dundee, my heart it felt as light as a cork.

These empty words are so remote. They are stories someone wants To believe at the end of the century. Everyone gathers their sea of telluric Pain to greet the beginning of the new world. Cars stop and watch the deck chairs limp across the street to await The coming of the new year. It is the end of summer and autumn and Winters and springs, and panzer infatuation. After four hundred eighty-one years, I cannot pull out the Spanish arrow In my eye. Suddenly everything I knew was inhuman: The oceans, the tadpoles in their new cars. The clams became Cheerleaders. The palm trees, strippers, and everyone forgot, Deer are the shapes of God. His official language became Latin, when he ceased to be a Jew, Biting his nails and collecting cans like a cheap minister with sunny gold teeth. The tender years that once wore oysters would never speak to Him again. The female spider became a lesbian, devouring our new long legs, That would never again climb the toy steps our fathers left us. Although Our legs are hairy and the lilies of a theater, the gentle lips of Our pyramids rest on our souls like a lover’s fingers. How many aspirins will we take to reach the surface of truth? My existence is for sale. The dawn is learning English. The waves of the sea are unionizing. The stones that were once our troubled hearts are eating chocolate. I come to sell you fish, the bread in my blood and my existence.

jumpsuits, they have changed paintings, I behind the concertina wire can't look at it anymore, that wall across which shadows play Sorry to be vague at such an hour. Were you When I called, I heard my voice anywhere near waking in the background Strange, reversible lines, I thought he was dead. He is better of it, pushing the glass away. How many songs can it hold, that thing I've seen in windows, has it changed singing, or hooded figures I didn't know it had a camera, some features are The blue of links, obscure beneath the face, the green We still don't have a word for Simulated drowning in embedded streams a perfect world

jumpsuits, they have changed painting, I behind the concertina wire can't look at it anymore, that wall across which shadows play Sorry to be vague at such an hour. Were you When I called, I heard my voice anywhere near waking in the background Strange, reversible lines, I thought he was dead. He is better of it, pushing the glass away. How many songs can it hold, that thing I've seen in windows, has it changed singing, or hooded figures I didn't know it had a camera, some features are The blue of links, obscure beneath the face, the green We still don't have a word for Simulated drowning in embedded streams a perfect world

Huru Welandes worc ne geswiceσ? monna ænigum σara σe Mimming can heardne gehealdan. —Waldere An axe angles from my neighbor’s ashcan; It is hell’s handiwork, the wood not hickory, The flow of the grain not faithfully followed. The shivered shaft rises from a shellheap Of plastic playthings, paper plates, And the sheer shards of shattered tumblers That were not annealed for the time needful. At the same curbside, a cast-off cabinet Of wavily warped unseasoned wood Waits to be trundled in the trash-man’s truck. Haul them off! Hide them! The heart winces For junk and gimcrack, for jerrybuilt things And the men who make them for a little money, Bartering pride like the bought boxer Who pulls his punches, or the paid-off jockey Who in the home stretch holds in his horse. Yet the things themselves in thoughtless honor Have kept composure, like captives who would not Talk under torture. Tossed from a tailgate Where the dump displays its random dolmens, Its black barrows and blazing valleys, They shall waste in the weather toward what they were. The sun shall glory in the glitter of glass-chips, Foreseeing the salvage of the prisoned sand, And the blistering paint peel off in patches, That the good grain be discovered again. Then burnt, bulldozed, they shall all be buried To the depth of diamonds, in the making dark Where halt Hephaestus keeps his hammer And Wayland’s work is worn away.

October, 1918 Across a world where all men grieve And grieving strive the more, The great days range like tides and leave Our dead on every shore. Heavy the load we undergo, And our own hands prepare, If we have parley with the foe, The load our sons must bear. Before we loose the word That bids new worlds to birth, Needs must we loosen first the sword Of Justice upon earth; Or else all else is vain Since life on earth began, And the spent world sinks back again Hopeless of God and Man. A People and their King Through ancient sin grown strong, Because they feared no reckoning Would set no bound to wrong; But now their hour is past, And we who bore it find Evil Incarnate held at last To answer to mankind. For agony and spoil Of nations beat to dust, For poisoned air and tortured soil And cold, commanded lust, And every secret woe The shuddering waters saw— Willed and fulfilled by high and low— Let them relearn the Law: That when the dooms are read, Not high nor low shall say:— "My haughty or my humble head Has saved me in this day." That, till the end of time, Their remnant shall recall Their fathers' old, confederate crime Availed them not at all: That neither schools nor priests, Nor Kings may build again A people with the heart of beasts Made wise concerning men. Whereby our dead shall sleep In honour, unbetrayed, And we in faith and honour keep That peace for which they paid.

A huge sound waits, bound in the ice, in the icicle roots, in the buds of snow on fir branches, in the falling silence of snow, glittering in the sun, brilliant as a swarm of gnats, nothing but hovering wings at midday. With the sun comes noise. Tongues of ice break free, fall, shatter, splinter, speak. If I could write the words. Simple, like turning a page, to say Write what happened

Once, in the city of Kalamazoo, The gods went walking, two and two, With the friendly phoenix, the stars of Orion, The speaking pony and singing lion. For in Kalamazoo in a cottage apart Lived the girl with the innocent heart. Thenceforth the city of Kalamazoo Was the envied, intimate chum of the sun. He rose from a cave by the principal street. The lions sang, the dawn-horns blew, And the ponies danced on silver feet. He hurled his clouds of love around; Deathless colors of his old heart Draped the houses and dyed the ground. O shrine of the wide young Yankee land, Incense city of Kalamazoo, That held, in the midnight, the priceless sun As a jeweller holds an opal in hand! From the awkward city of Oshkosh came Love the bully no whip shall tame, Bringing his gang of sinners bold. And I was the least of his Oshkosh men; But none were reticent, none were old. And we joined the singing phoenix then, And shook the lilies of Kalamazoo All for one hidden butterfly. Bulls of glory, in cars of war We charged the boulevards, proud to die For her ribbon sailing there on high. Our blood set gutters all aflame, Where the sun slept without any heat— Cold rock till he must rise again. She made great poets of wolf-eyed men— The dear queen-bee of Kalamazoo, With her crystal wings, and her honey heart. We fought for her favors a year and a day (Oh, the bones of the dead, the Oshkosh dead, That were scattered along her pathway red!) And then, in her harum-scarum way, She left with a passing traveller-man— With a singing Irishman Went to Japan. Why do the lean hyenas glare Where the glory of Artemis had begun— Of Atalanta, Joan of Arc, Cinderella, Becky Thatcher, And Orphant Annie, all in one? Who burned this city of Kalamazoo Till nothing was left but a ribbon or two— One scorched phoenix that mourned in the dew, Acres of ashes, a junk-man's cart, A torn-up letter, a dancing shoe, (And the bones of the dead, the dead)? Who burned this city of Kalamazoo— Love-town, Troy-town Kalamazoo? A harum-scarum innocent heart.

I was birthed restless and elsewhere gut dragging and bulging with ball lightning, slush, broke through with branches, steel I was bitch-monikered, hipped, I hefted a whip rain, a swirling sheet of grit. Scraping toward the first of you, hungering for wood, walls, unturned skin. With shifting and frantic mouth, I loudly loved the slow bones of elders, fools, and willows.

November 9, 2016 University of Notre Dame minutes felt like hours "deplorables knocking at your door" he shouted the day after—“build the wall— we're building a wall around your room!" minutes felt like hours "cowards!" you managed, catching a glimpse by cracking your door: there were three of them scurrying down the hall, their faces obscured… your back against the wall, you slid to the floor— "Hail Mary..." you began whispering to yourself and back they came their laughter louder minutes felt like hours and the thumping in your chest— his fist pounding the door for Gregory Jenn ('18)