Poems of London, The Bible & others
EVENING PROWL
Fur-covered legs undulate
like fronds weaving
in the whispers of the wind
softly waving.
Pulsating
arcs of roundly
formed limbs following
each other in a
dance of feline
flesh, sangfroid walks
tunneling through the seeding
grass, in a song
of sinew, sinew
sliding stealthily in a world
where the lynx stalks.
his prey
or the cats
on our rooftops.
#215 Ezra Ben-Meir June 1983
A Walk in London Smog
Mouth and covered nose
Handkerchief a snagged triangular
Nudging the tortoise—shell frames
With a single knot tied in the nape.
Shallow breaths
Wet drops on my fingers
As they course through my hair.
Alone.
The plash of my footsteps,
The dark walls shadowing me around.
I merge into someone else's world
Redirecting him
To ascent turbid Stamford Hill
The limp ghost fading with his steps.
Home, secure from the black oily—laden drops
A hair wash of murky rivulets down the sink
A stare at the door
Are there wisps curling through
Are the window panes all tight?
Thirty years adieu
And the fogs a mnemonic of the smogs disolved away.
#216 Ezra Ben-Meir July 1983
A Tree Planted by Streams of Water
#217, Ezra Ben-Meir Oct. 1983
I saw a tree
Branches hanging in a silvered haze
Threads of spiders' webs embracing scintillations
Reflecting the Great Constructor's works
Mirrors of a thousand stars spreading to my eyes
Hidden by the morning sky.
A life woven by the ordered laws of God
Reaches out into rivulets
To sparkle on a filigree of stones
Crystal goblets interlacing as they sweep between the rocks
And under welling eaves among the banks.
Spreading fingers of an estuary
When man's lifting hand grasps the weaker arm
As tumbling waters thrust forwards
Bringing sweetness of a hundred miles
And he lives, unfettered by the wilting shadow of the dead.
But ignore the patterns of empathy around
Trample, stub the threads that interweave between us all
And fear will mark each minute
To lengthen to an hour,
An umbrella' s spokes will stretch until
Its barbs will pierce its cloth
And scratch and tear its weaver
And he will wilt and fade
From the festering shadow of the dead.
Trumpeldor
The lion clenches his huge claws
Bulging ravines running through;
at his feet, soldiers lie in perpetuity
In the perfect drill formation
They never could achieve in life,
Unblinking
Even as the guns roar salute
For each addition to his minions.
Homage bought through years
As rain washes down his face and body
To mix with the tears
Rolling down into the peat of the Hula Valley,
Spill
and caress the stones of the Jordan,
Fall into Lake Kineret, flow to the Dead Sea.
Somewhere there
I could find the grains of salt
From all those mothers and wives.
Ezra Ben-Meir, # 220.2 March 1998
Revised from Dec. 1983; July 1999
Contact me for comments or printing at, ezrabm@gmail.com
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