Frederick Pollack- Three Poems

Their Names Are Prick'd

(But it can never, never be achieved … )

Among the gifts of age is peace.

The major form of peace is that

of forgiveness.  They shuffle,

your enemies, in the room prepared by time

(like the hall for a low-rent bar-mitzvah),

grazing the buffet.  Most are unclear

on the concept, some few

embarrassed; none has thought of you

for years, or ever.  They’ve gained weight

or tragically lost it.  Children call

on their cells, or, more likely,

they call, and (it’s the way of these affairs)

draw near for an air-kiss, a few, final,

fragmentary words – happy to leave,

though they were perfectly glad to be here.

And, left alone again among

the plastic cups, you resolutely turn

towards death, its invitation

long open.  But it is still so noisy

and crowded ... you

prefer your party, which can be resumed

at will.  That braying voice

forever in the right, forever wrong;

the nameless blonde whose parting

remark confirmed eternity

by soiling it; those children whom

as a child you didn’t see

as children and don’t,

but as a secret government:

all still there, drinking blood and eating night.

So you lock the doors and the fun starts.

The name of the game remains

forgiveness, but the cards are in your hands;

in theirs the bones to which they strip

as balloons sink and lights dim.

It’s a life, as they say.  They say,

he who desires revenge digs two graves. –

He who achieves it empties all of them.

At Sixty

1

Remember the file that contained

what you romantically called

your life, which

was lost, the whole office searching

at first professionally –

apologizing for the state

of the shelves, the poor

computers, the whole underfunded

mess; then gradually,

as the file

refused to be found, becoming defensive,

discourteous, sullen;

until you imagined it

in a landfill.

2

It is the humor of the past

that dies.  It’s hard to explain

blackface, the first cartoons

about bicycles

and suffragettes, the special meaning

of “sausage, eggs, and ham”

during rationing.  One night in the ‘80s,

the screen went dark on my old

black and white

set, and I heard

the canned laughter.

Therefore I have not learned

“lightness,” but cling

to a pose (itself hilarious)

of martyrdom.  Better to plod undead

than to flare up and out with the wise.

The pilgrim in that Bruegel,

gray-cowled, an eyeless nose, thinks

Because the world is so faithless

I go my way in silence

while having his purse snatched

by a grinning dwarf in a crystal orb,

himself, now, inscrutable.

Assessment

“I have been brutalized.  Brutalized!”

he cries.  But the word

sounds, to us, too,

too …  If he wouldn’t

ordinarily use it, can he be

in such bad shape,

using it now?  If he would,

is he the sort of person

we know?  The voice is

high-pitched.  Does it

connect with the deep belly-feeling,

the truth, of self, his

and ours, or is it

a kind of surface-layer,

defensive, obnoxious;

and was it put there

by the shock and pain

he is presumably in, or do we

hear something

chronic, an affectation;

and if so, should we care? 

Pity is, after all,

a gradual force

like that which changed

a dog’s throat-tearing

impulse to that

of herding: it is an admirable,

tenuous, reversible

mutation.  The fingers wave,

clutch; this ambiguous

though admittedly disturbing

gesture decides the issue.  Is too much.



Author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both published by Story Line Press.  Other poems in print and online journals.  Adjunct professor creative writing George Washington University.