Chapter 6 (A Found Poem **)

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. 

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** 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.