SIMONE WEIL


You search
for a mystical union
in a church
finding God in communion
with "Love"
from the metaphysical poet
George Herbert
whom she read
we will know the truth
when in forgiving we join her
by living above
only after we are dead.

ZBIGNIEW HERBERT


No time for much truth
in your criminal era
of totalitarian nights
oppression was open
and shut
in your travel case
kept under your frightful
pale windowsill
there was a playful
flower of Mr. Cogito
you keep watering
in your less than
still life
your poetry saves us
from slaughter.

HONNEGER

Your music
Dance of the Dead
based on the poems
of Claudel,
rarely played or read
in symphony hall
or citadel.

HEIDEGGER

I am ash
in the sun
you dismiss us
like Hannah's caress
no longer yours
but you reach out
for Germany's
unclouded tongue
in the endless
betrayal hung out
at the many rail
of a once praying mantis
now only a skeleton
abandoning Jesus
and the Jews
in your Heraclitus' soul
which hurts
like only words may do,
choosing salutes
and invitations
you dine at this hour
on the finest wines
not hearing any cries
from other citizens
or colleagues
building your own statue
as Herculean power
like Nebuchadnezzar
having your stature
of a philosopher enhanced
without presumption
of your own Belteshazzar,
with a wine invitation
of high ranked consumption
to dine with the best,
taking the party card
of a National Socialist
with the assumption
and fisticuffs cause
with the brown shirted
comrades enjoying wine
with fascist gumption
even now with applause
in the ivy hedged halls
of the academic jaws.

BELY

Your "St. Petersburg"
in phantasmagoria
from poetry to prose
in your Gogol overcoat
a map ,notes and word
as Bolshevik messiahs rose
in a revolutionary vote
but quickly lost
in a Pharisaic world
as a visionary quote.

TSVETAEVA

Along the Neva
you weep
in a poet's struggle
wanting to love
as a flower to smuggle
out of a spice garden,
Marina Tsvetaeva
with a song out of sand
to recover a Russian land
never to forget God's favor
in a thousand hour pardon.

PASTERNAK

At a revolutionary storm
of workers and peasants
a poet recollects on the life
and death of Jesus
in his novel "Dr. Zhivago"
Boris Pasternak
assumes new forms
like Proteus' waves
on his own incandescence
over a bloody Baltic 
sea of snow.