"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.

'Does anyone still want to go with me into a panorama? '
—Max Brod


The sun floats down river
Resting from a long day.
As Banvard draws love

Birds in the sand.
She tries to explain
How his deformity angers her.

Unable, she leaves him
On the other side of the shore.
Banvard becomes

a traveling salesman,
s campfire fiddler,
s drunk, a painter of shores.

Yearning for her—

He turns her into the Mississippi shore.
Riding the long river, floating

On a brush, he paints her portrait.
Huge bolts of love
The canvas sags from longing

Immense wood contraption
(Gears-pulleys crank machinery)
Three miles of canvas.

An uninterrupted portrait.

The papers publish the spectacle
'The hunchback painter and his panorama! '

He builds a wooden stage
Winds up river then down.
The lines are long, (.50 cents.)

They wait for hours...

He sits in the middle
Of hungry brush stroke
Up river

Down.
Up river

down
Eyes straining—

To find her.


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