Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.
Henry Braun
76 years old
From the Maine woods, a fellow peace traveller.
April 23 in Wartime
Barbed wire entwined with rosebuds surrounds each window of our plane as we fly over the horizon seated solemnly in the empty blue.
Zero and Counting
Baghdad, it's said, gifted the West with 0. Or maybe Seville. Another Andalusian town? China? 0 we have then, paradoxically multiplying 1s to 10s, more ominously than a manhole cover's not being there adventures one into a way way down. And a string huge enough of 0s counts the whole shebang.
Videlicet: 0 0 0 0 0 C......
Zero and Counting
ZERO AND COUNTING
Baghdad, it’s said, gifted the West with 0. Or maybe Seville? Another Andalusian town? China? 0 we have then, paradoxically multiplying 1s to 10s more ominously than a manhole cover’s not being there adventures one into the way way down. And a string huge enough of 0s counts the whole shebang: 0 0 0 0 0 C*........
*pronounced zeeeeeeeeeeee
In Memory of Benjamin Linder,
IN MEMORY OF BENJAMIN LINDER,
After a while with eyes lifting slowly from the page, one sees genera and kingdoms, animal, vegetable, mineral. Also, I see the hair on my arm, fur between kingdoms. Twilight answers from its back.
I stand up in my room, yes, to learn more than I know from the news given away by unfelt strokes of radar, to hear the voice of this standing with bent head under the stars. On my wall the blue- green cataracted eye, the planet poster, hangs from its pin.
And so I ask again, How much land, which land, does a man need? Wherever green is worn? Or blue and white, red, orange? Yes.
Yes, when the little O, this earth, wears the rainbow raggedly, each man, woman, child needs all.
After a while with eyes returning slowly to the page-- yesterday's, today's--I say the names: Linder, Schwerner, Goodman, Chaney, Rachel Corrie, Marla Ruzicka, Aubin, Beaulieu, Cash, Ciraso, Coffin, Coutu, Cunningham, Dan, Dore, Dostie, Dostie, Emery, Gelineau, Harris, Holmes, House, Humble, Jackson, Jones, Kelly, Libby, Lowery, Lucas, Parker, Poulin, Rosa, Ross, Ronkey, Smith, Swiger, Veverka, Abeer Abed al-Kadhim, . ..., …, …, …, …, …, …,
Yes, our land with all its names.
Shock and Awe
SHOCK AND AWE
We burn cities. With your permission the only animal that runs toward fire to save, to gawk, to liven up the night, cancels with fire the quick networks of borders. I celebrate, with your permission, the borders of human beings, the profiles lifting and turning in drivers' seats, the parallels that bend and meet at the tear ducts of the eye. No longer frightened of fontanels, I touch the soft craters of the mind cap and root my nose gratefully in whorls of babies' ears. I celebrate the skin, the curves of women, the straight hips of men, my hand with its own life and tiny Pavlovian memories of cusps in the arms of chairs and handkerchiefs drawn like cold brooks through the fingers. I sing the damaged hands of les Eyzies, and Friday's footprint, triangles in tempera of the holy. As over the hump of windowsill more evening crawls, I contemplate full moons of countdown, after nine of which we come with hanks of cord trailing from our bellies. I celebrate, with your permission, the bellies, the treasure kegs of aging males, big bodies coming out of showers, and the taut ramparts of little girls. The approaching sine curve of an elbow gazed at and touched by a pregnant woman, I gaze at,and also touch, then sing the double string between the eyes of lovers. Faces, known and unknown, delineate like the moon suddenly in breaks of cloud. I celebrate and sing all the beloved faces, all, MOAB, and tickle the cittern for the cloud as well. I wave as if positioned for goodbye and, at the same time, for hello in the borderless shadow of the lingam.
Late And Soon
Late And Soon
for Cristobal Colon, entrepreneur
People called Mr own the world and TRUMP with big feet up and down upon it. To find America they crossed the ocean on pawned jewels, fording, fording, affording. On Easy St. they live, sharing the zipcode of giants, our royal misters of the bottom line.
Henry Braun
In A World of Peace
In A World of Peace
for the poet of "Kindness" Naomi Shihab Nye
The left hand studies what the right is doing and the right the left. Foreshortened lightning from clouded minds cannot be the answer. Solution is the sibling of problem.
