GOLEM
By Leslie Philibert Lemons for Klarafor Klara Grünzweig 1957-2016 drops of river or ice patches;
all of this without your notice
but tough and half eternalthe lemon tree grows
cool and silent;
this makes you remain. Golem unholy earth, dark with stein,
unformed loam at birth;
a worded child of mud,fingernail skinned blacklack eyes,
peek out of a ball of wet slam;
a groundling that waves like a black branchacross the sleeping fields,
see a shadow under the cold grass,
near in sight under a crust of frost. Tower of the Blue Horses(after Franz Marc) Four of stained glass and stars
all leftglance beyond ratio or air,
thin as tissue but strongas a pastel visa; fated curves
guide your hand, voices drag you
into mud and steal the day. After Reading The Bell Jar curl up like black paper,
burning like a moth;
a glove turned inside out;trapped too under a house,
a circle hidden and musty,
fragile under steps;let us escape the carrying,
legions of white coats,
corridors as long as life. A Night in Tenerife the sea the skin of a wet dog,
black the beach; a ruined church,
the coastal lights a string of lesser ways;
we are as empty as a dropped shell
pulled across the ebb, a ripple of salt:and as the night gets deeper
a dragon breathes like the tide:
no mistake, the dark needs its hours. About the Author: Leslie Philibert is a London-born poet and social worker living in Germany. He studied English Literature in Ireland. He has published poems in a number of magazines in the US and UK and has also translated for South German theatre groups. He is married with two children. |
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