Shake

YOU ASKED ME THAT I WRITE TO YOU
IN VERSES ELEGANT AND TRUE.
NOW SHAKESPEARE, WHOM I DID CONSULT,
PUT DOWN HIS PEN AND SHOOK HIS HEAD:
“NO! NO! YOU MUST NOT SPEAK TO ME..
WHEN YOU SEEK WORDS TO SPEAK YOURSELF.
YOU LOVE? YOU CARE? YOU CHERISH ALL
YOU SEE AND HEAR AND SENSE …NOW SPEAK;

YOUR WORDS WILL THUNDER, HEARD BY NONE
BUT BY THE ONES YOU LOVE.” THEN SHAKESPEARE
JUST TURNED, BENT DOWN AND GAZED AT WORDS
THAT HE HAD WRITTEN. CROUCHING BELOW
THERE WERE NO WORDS FOR ME TO SEE.

Career

22/12/2013

Career

 

I am a poet unrenowned,

 Unpublished and unsung.

I’ve scribbled verses as a boy,

And as nonagenarian.

 

The question is; If I am not     

A poet, writer or the like,

What am I then? I’d better think

Of all the roads on which I hiked..

 

A chorus of well-meaning friends

Were resonant I should attend

A university abroad

With glittering titles at the end.

 

To study law in Switzerland?

To practise law? This was too much!

This thought was squashed at birth and yet

I think I could impress a judge.

 

Well then, this very clever boy

Should study languages, become

A highly skilled interpreter …

Rejected (though it would be fun).

 

Parental counsel and suggestions

Began to highlight engineering

For Jews in Nazi Germany

As the most valuable training.

 

I acquiesced. My father’s contacts

Got me a job as ‘Volunteer’,

To learn the rudiments of turning

And fitting iron, brass, and steel.

 

Kristallnacht spelt the bitter end,

My father was arrested, shipped

To Buchenwald – but did not speak

Of how his dignity was stripped.

 

Some six months later we arrived

In Melbourne, and within a month

I was apprenticed to become

A turner, fitter, and so on.

 

I rose to very moderate heights

While making things in brass and steel,

But on retirement I raced

To where at home I truly feel.

 

I read, I listened, and I wrote

About my thoughts. And now it seems.

I had performed the miracle

Of catching up on youthful dreams.

No Rancour

3/05/2014

I have been in the gold of marital bliss.
I‘ve cringed and trembled in the chill of discord.
Now I am old and any touch of hands
Bespeaks not passion nor the rise of rancour.

 

Mankind Believed

17/04/2014

Mankind believed – and I was a believer,
That on your death a band of angels would
Conduct your soul to paradise there to
Enjoy a life of pious luxury.

The other possibility, endorsed
By me and many others, did envisage
A rowdy crowd of devils dragging me
Through fires searing sinful, wicked flesh.

I think that age has taught me an alternative.
To wit there are no angels and no devils.
And life is nothing but a one-way street,
A towering unresponsive wall stands at the end.

Business of dying

18/2/2014

Business of dying.

This business of dying has its funny side,
Apart from causing grief to the survivors
I like to speculate like all religions do
Just where we’ll go when we are dead.

This speculation has an apriori:
Life after death exists! This is not only
My firm belief, but every creed since Moses
Created paradise and hell and in between.

The catch is that there seems to be no choice
Which railway station will be at the end.
The track is laid, the rails in perfect order.
You are invited to a first class seat.

A Letter from Paul

1/1/2014

 
Oh, John

Men can do anything and in a small way
it does happen again today that men
become animals or unfeelingly regard the brutal behaviour
(vide Croatia, Serbia, and Kosovo). But this
rather “massproduction style attempt” of pursuit
and annihilation of a complete group of men will never happen
again in Europe and in the non-islamic countries.
Here the young men have changed, and we all
who know through our parents and friends
what really happened, must pass it on daily,
that is our duty. I myself learnt from my father only on the eve
of his death what he had to suffer in 1933 in the torturecellars 
of the SA (Berlin Columbiahaus), in 1934 in the concentration
Camp Sachsenhausen and later in Wokurka (1944-
1949), this was Stalin’s camp in Siberia). He
should have talked earlier, it would have given me a different
view of the world. Not knowing that on
the following day he will die I promised him never
again fascism, never again war, never again cruelty
and for that do everything that I can.
Paul

Brown Skin

29/11/2013

Brown Skin

I lost my memory. It’s no big deal.
I can recall the sandpit where I built
Tall towers, castles and the hills between,
But now I find it difficult to tell
Who of the carers helped me when I cried.
When I had lost my bearings, lost myself?
I know that she was tall, that she was built
On ample Polynesian lines, brown skinned.
I thanked her at the time. I cannot now.

Washerwoman

2/12/2013

The German poet Chamisso

Who lived two hundred years ago,
Philosophized about a woman
Who scrubbed and washed his dirty shirts.

He wrote that she had silver hair.

(Of course he meant the hair was white)
He said she had three healthy kids,
But widowed brought them up alone.

And yet she always smiled and proved

That faith in God and love of duty
Suffice to keep you on your feet
When you are over seventy.
 
I do present this poetry
To you who does my shirts and socks.
Your hair not silver, and you use
Machines unknown to Chamisso.
 
And you are nowhere near seventy!

Joyous Cry

I do not like the endless repetition  

 In what you write, in what you versify.

It’s death and death and death in every strophe.

Do you intend to teach the few that read

Your poems and your fable stories

That this is all we can look forward to?

I beg you, do desist, and like all poets

Employ the license that permits you saying:

Life, happiness, and beauty never, never vanish.

.

I would not claim that death is beautiful,
But it is constant, inescapable,
And thus precedes your life, your happiness and beauty.
You have seen beauty fade, your happiness
Submerged in sorrow, death supreme.
Regardless of your lifetime’s victories
Death conquers all, lays bare the greenest fields.
Be you a fly or homo sapiens,
You end prostrate and speculate no more.

So, would you say that we can not agree?

I fear that’s so, unless you reconsider

The sudden death of joy, of happiness …

I will, indeed   I more than happily

Recall the times…. the few.. when we had ceased

To speculate or ponder life’s gyrations,

When all our hunger, our thirst was quenched

In darkness lit by gentle touch and murmurs

And ending in a shattering cry of joy.

Zero

10/12/2013

I may yet turn a centenarian.
There is distinction, fortune, maybe fame
For any numeral however small
To have a humble zero in its tail.
Yet zero stands for nought. It proves
That an array of noughts arranged
Behind a figure – never mind its size –
Bestows respect, deserved or undeserved.

Solitary

5/12/2013

 

Breakfast solitary

 

I told a lady as I passed
Her table set for tasty breakfast.
But she was alone:  “You eat  
In solitary splendour!” - “I  what? “-
So then I had to say it all
Again, but to this day I wonder
Which word she had not heard before.

Fame

3/12/2013

Fame

 

“Who will read what I have written?”
Asked the poet with foreboding
“I’ve constructed in an hour
Sixteen lines of perfect wording,
Perfect scan and perfect rhythm
To delight the young and old,
And I’ll wager in the future
My collected works get sold
For a fortune”. – “That may be so,”
Said the lady serving tea,
“In the meantime do remember
They are only read by me!”

Death Next Door

Death lives next door. I know it for a fact.

He calls in ev’ry couple o’months or so
And sidles up to one or other here,
Peacefully sleeping in a chair, or staring
With vacant eyes at things that can’t be seen,
But they can hear the friendly welcome speech:

 

“So how are you, my friend?” And for the ladies:
“Most gracious lady, do let me assist you!”
And be it man or woman lifeless, listless,
They shudder slightly, maybe blink just once,
And then the head will roll, the head will drop,
And nerves and muscles claim eternal rest.

Never Solved

19/12/2013

Never solved
 

To think that I shall die

In what is called,

In what is justly called

The lap of luxury.

 

Three sumptuous meals a day –

A tasty breakfast,

And lunch and dinner served

Beyond reproach.

And for eight peaceful hours

I sleep, I dream

Of problems of my childhood

I never solved.

 

I do repeat I dream

Of unsolved problems,

That used to worry me

And do not now.

 

The reason that I’m granted

This absolution

Must be that I am now

Grown up – I think.

Torn Clothing

27/09/2013

TORN CLOTHING

On a string of memories
Like washing on a hoist,
Wet, worn, and torn,
Hang pictures, sounds, and gusts of air
Of where I was, and what I did,
And where I should have been,
And what I should or not have done.
There is no soap, no needle and no thread
To clean, to mend the clothing on the hoist.

PLETHORA OF TASKS

5/09/2013

       

PLETHORA OF TASKS

The many women that I knew and left,

The plethora of tasks left incomplete,

The flood of duties that would drown me,

Together with all moral obligations,

And edicts, censures, and parental sermons

That have survived this ninety year old maelstrom,

Should I recant?

I should have cherished every woman in my sight,

And turned my back on tasks be they complete or not.

I should have swum across this gulf of duties,

And loved my parents though dethroned, made human.

Fear of authority and lack of trust in self –

Am I at ease with people in command?

Do I believe myself?

I Live in a Room

I live in a room and I sleep alone

In a bed that is just three feet wide.

I know I am old and I venture with care

From my room to the world outside.

I remember quite clearly I used to sprint

From meeting to meeting and chat

With the boss of group A and with manager B

And the girl who wrote down what was said.

At that time I attempted to know it all

And occasionally gained the respect

Of the boss of group A and manager B,

And the girl who wrote down what was said.

Yet now I no longer am leader supreme,

And the girl who would write down my uttering

Would still write it down, but in modified form

So it’d seem that I spoke without stuttering.

10 February 2009

Gravity

25/08/2013

                            Gravity

There are two dints in my near hairless skull

Reminding me that gravity is not

My friend.

Indeed it’s gravity that fixes mountains

And causes rivers to proceed downstream,

Not up.

But when I crouched in order to retrieve

A piece of paper from the spotless floor

I fell.

Thus gravity will pull without concern

For right or wrong or any consequence

That hurts.

Waiting Room

19/08/2013

WAITING ROOM


Excuse me knocking on your door;I know it’s not my turn.
But frankly I am sick to death
Of waiting all forlorn
In this gigantic waiting room. 
The exit is controlled
By what you did and how you lived
By what you thought and dreamt.
I filled in all the paperwork
About my life to date.
And when the paper curled in shame
About my evil deeds,
I kept on writing nonetheless
Believing stubbornly
That sins confessed and truly rued
Will shrink and slink away.

Walking Slowly

13 August 2013

WALKING SLOWLY

He walked a lot slower than ever;

And nobody walked by his side.

He smiled and he walked even slower

And he thought about death.

He’d encounter

His mistress, his wife and his daughter,

His passion, his home, and his pride.