GREEK
CLASS
As with golf or
tennis,
I got started on
Greek too late.
Our legendary
professor
Peered out from
under a green visor
And held that
mastery of the rough breathings
Was a key to
life.
They said he’d
been a croupier,
That he once
drove a bus.
The text he
chose,
The writings of
Lysias, I think,
Had little to
recommend them
Beyond a certain
intermediate ease.
I’ve forgotten
how the rough breathings work.
What has somehow
stuck
In memory’s
craw
Are lines he
must have liked
From a courtroom
speech:
The man was in
the room,
And the woman
was corrupted in time.
ABENAKI
LAMENT
after hearing a lecture by
Dr. Robert Goodby of Franklin Pierce University
It is our n’dakina, our
homeland.
We were the
people from the East,
Here long before
you came,
With your famous
ships,
White chapels,
village greens,
Your right to
pray as you supposed
And insist that
you were right.
You thought we
vanished
Except for the
names of places.
We were not
Gypsies, the dark French
In your demented
plan
To cleanse the
stock.
Traces of our
lives still
Linger in the
rocky New England soil
And other places
you do not know to look,
Invisible:
We are still
here. We never left.
“Abenaki Lament” appeared in
a slightly different form inThe Aurorean Spring/Summer
2010
Robert Demaree is the author of four collections of
poems, including Fathers and Teachers
(2007) and Mileposts (2009), both
published by Beech River Books. The winner of the 2007 Conway, N.H., Library
Poetry Award, he is a retired school administrator with ties to North Carolina,
Pennsylvania and New Hampshire in the eastern U.S. He has had over 600 poems
published or accepted by 125 periodicals in the U.S., Canada and U.K., including
Cold Mountain Review, Red Wheelbarrow, Miller’s Pond, MediaVirus, Bolts of Silk,
Louisville Review and Paris/Atlantic, and in four anthologies including the 2008
and 2010 editions of Poet’s Guide to New
Hampshire and Celebrating Poets over
70.. For further information see http://www.demareepoetry.
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