Rambling, Onward To Hope
I listen to the poem in the original Polish.
It no longer seems like
"A Poem for the End of the Century,"
but turns to me, desperate, begging
for some savior.
Summer burning out around Milosz and
Europe, burning out
leaves
of poetry. Burning Adorno and Warsaw
from the inside out.
I turn to another Pole
to his Jesse Owens, "the black star,"
a symbol come and gone.
Yes, symbols, come and go
mounted on poles
mounting more.
The century is far from over;
my hope lies in the past, in
the glint of my father's eye,
where summer lives, eternal.
Where poetry does not despair,
is not so lost, swept away
like a Jew
in darkness.
