The Gods As They Are, On Their Planets - The Poet's Press

Is this the potter’s field of shattered dreams?
The copper arm of Liberty
once stood at the northern end of the square.
The trees once soared. Now roots eat salt,
brush against steam pipes and rusted cable,
cowed by courthouse, statues frowning,
Gothic and Renaissance insurance spires.
Only the branches, forgiving, forgetting,
redeem this purgatory place.
A Druid stillness draws here at dusk-time,
squirrel and bird and runaway
equally blessed as the hot-ash sunset
gives way to the neon-lit night,
city unsleeping beneath the unseen stars.
IN PRAGUE, A TREE OF MANY COLORS
for Jan Palach, Czech martyr,
who set himself on fire January 16, 1969
to protest the occupation of his country
I am born, I am sown.
I am screaming as the sun tropes me out of the earth.
I am dragging in my tendrils the hopes of spring,
I am pulled, exhorted into summer. The light
deceives me with its deaths and resurrections.
I must be straight. I must not believe
the mocking sun and its revolutions.
I must wait for the ultimate paradise,
the world’s light redistributed for all.
Much passes beneath my shadow:
crowds press to marriages and funerals —
the upright grooms go in,
the silver-handled caskets come out,
the church, the state, the people
move on in soot and sorrow, day to day.
Why do these people whisper always?
Why do so many avert their eyes from me?
Why does neighbor spy on his neighbor,
reporting every oddity to the men in black?
Why do I hear the rumble of thunder?
Why does the symphony break off?
Why have the women gone to the cellars?
Soldiers and tanks are everywhere!
The streets are full of Russians and Poles,
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