WATCHING COCTEAU

Watching Cocteau's

film "Beauty and the Beast"

surrounded by collaborator

actors, costumes and text

does not excuse art

to release its failed duty
from choosing a monster
with at least a jealous partner
in a poet's vicarious fairy tale.

ANTONIO SAURA'S ART
(1930-1998)

A transparent hand
drawing us
to shapes on earth
pale shrouds and crucifixions
when surreal art rises
up from the sun's shadows
of life's beginning
and death wounds us all
in a world without end.

WITH TRUFFAUT

It was raining all day
and I was in a Truffaut mood
watching "The Woman Next Door"
for the second time
hearing the November leaves
burning outside
by the rubbed out nicknames
on a hundred year old Evergreen
the sun first lights up
as black birds are effaced
in a future memory.

MANET

Visionary light
of your self portrait
for an impersonal will,
a weightless shadow
extends the gestures
that became our mirror
of refuge
in your ruddy profile.

POLISH NEW YEAR
JANUARY 1, 2000


Despairing of fathomless cold
birds wait on the fountain
for rain water over stones
by the war memorial,
two friends from the country
wrapped in leather jackets
sleep in turn after celebrations
of the new year's century's peace
one wakes with a poem
the other turns his back
and finds his lost motorcycle
by a church's stained window.

UNRULY NIGHTMARE

I was lost on a train,
no one knew
if we were headed
for Germany or Russia
the camps were ready
for us
I had 1944 stripes
on my back
embittered by war
with a heavy cross
on our back
from Mount Calvary
which never goes away
the yellow stars
over the arm bands
of our sisters and brothers
in lamentation from our God
who loves all in death
and new life.

CHOPIN'S HEART

We are still moved
by your well- being of music
from your body of concertos
waltzes ,impromptus, sonatas
we played on grande pianos
now some want a diagnosis
of your death
but life has a greater name
which though paper,words
hidden in a grave monument
containing your soul
which survives in view
of love, war, disease, debts,notes
what survivors know
of a higher innocence.

POLISH WINTERS

By the winter of 1939
the world saw Hitler's mark
on graves of students ,farmers
and intellectuals
telling us of the stunned visibility
of evil and growing madness
from widows windows
and by the winter of 1949
his co signer of a death warrant
Stalin again emerges
this time on television
hiding his sweating and angry
from his eye witness darkness
in murder and deceit
from a war weary public
under the ice of propaganda
yet feeling shadows of spring
would yet emerge
even from the Katyn forest.