Hesitant about which way to go, a
choice,
straight back [?]
the
long way [?].
“I’d like to pass the church,”
pious,
sedate.
The sun is out, in the sky there
are white fluffy clouds;
hard to look up,
hard to get the full view, a little at a time,
a
quick move of the head, up and down, side and back,
see[ing]
the world in gasps:
a
street down toward the river,
a
boathouse and some bridges,
trees,
green banks,
sit[ting],
watch[ing] the water, fairy-tale turrets, painted white and gold and blue,
play[ing] at winning
We want to believe it was like that, salvaging, guardians now.
No
official reason. Why go from here to there?
No good and they would know it.
The church is a small one, not used,
a museum, women in
long somber dresses,
men,
darkly clothed and unsmiling.
Admission is free, [but] we don’t
go in,
stand[ing],
look[ing],
old
gravestones, skulls and cross bones, memento mori,
dough-faced
angels, winged hour-glasses, passing of mortal time, mourning.
They haven’t fiddled with the grave
stones or the churches either;
recent history
offends them.
Maybe there’s someone in particular;
every act is done
for show,
acting rather than
a real act,
to
look good, make the best of it.
That is what I
must look like as well. How can I be otherwise?
We turn our backs on the church.
There is the thing
in truth [we] came to see,
red
brick, plain but handsome,
ugly
floodlights, barbed wire and broken glass.
No one goes
willingly.
Perhaps I’ve become used to them,
stop[ping],
stand[ing], look[ing].
We’re supposed to look, as many as
possible, for this purpose,
upside-down and
sideways,
like dolls,
like scarecrows
meant to scare,
stuffed,
obvious heaviness,
vacancy,
no life to hold them up,
zeros.
Though if you look and look,
outlines, features
like gray shadows,
coal eyes, carrot
noses, melting,
a child’s idea of
a smile, a drawing,
Angel makers,
informants, “save his own skin,” lashing out,
[a] desperate bid
for safety, war criminals, atrocities hardly needed.
What [are we] supposed to feel[?]
Hatred and scorn
come from the past, blankness[?]
I must not feel,
relief wasn’t / isn’t,
beginning to heal,
a reason for disbelief
Each thing is valid and really
there,
pick[ing] my way,
every day
and every way,
very clear.
I feel a tremor in the woman beside
me.
Is she crying?
My own hands are clenched tight
around the handle
of my basket.
[The] ordinary may not seem
ordinary,
but it will become
ordinary.
************
** Found poems take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. A pure found poem consists exclusively of outside texts: the words of the poem remain as they were found, with few additions or omissions. Decisions of form, such as where to break a line, are left to the poet.
