"Sometimes love is stronger than a man's convictions."
- Isaac Bashevis Singer
*
There are wars and rumors of wars.
machineries and machination of
singular dark days
and singular dark clouds that hang
like props above our city.
We shut the window, we avoid their play.
Hungrily we take refuge between
each others' legs.
How comforting this is to us,
to love without armies or tanks
or generals of reasoned love.
*
From the narrow street, they can see us
wrestling with an angel -
the tugging of limbs and hair-
You speak low so they can’t hear
your seditious talk of love,
where my callused hands get tangled
in your low moaning - while I hold you down
to the bed,
my captive.
The occupation has begun —
your occupied body
my undiminished country of so many
ardent prayers.
*
The soldiers are all leaving for the front.
Not us, we will stay
and wage our war
of tenderness.
They are all leaving this morning.
Give them your applause for their sad
theater, and all their war ships
and planes.
Soon
they will write letters home
which will arrive without them.
A few men will return,
return gaunt; much less
than before
with more sadness and less
dancing.
And when they do
our war
will have ended
with a flag of white
bed sheets,
only a little blood,
Victorious,
writing love letters on each others' bodies.
Poem was previously Published i VAYAVYA
http://www.vayavya.in/leibow.html
