Life poems
The eternal riddle
- by P.M. Raskin 61
Israel, my people,God's greatest riddle,
Will thy solution
Ever be told ?
Fought - never conquered,
Bent - never broken,
Mortal - immortal,
Youthful, thought old.
Egypt enslaved thee,
Babylon crushed thee,
Rome led thee captive,
Homeless thy head.
Where are those nations
Mighty and fearsome ?
Thou hast survived them,
They are long dead.
Nations keep coming,
Nations keep going,
Passing like shadows,
Wiped off the earth.
Thou an eternal
Witness remainest,
Watching their burial,
Watching their birth.
Pray, who revealed thee
Heaven's great secret :
Death and destruction,
Thus to defy ?
Suffering torture,
Stake, inquisition -
Prithee, who taught thee
Never to die ?
Ay, and who gave thee
Faith, deep as ocean,
Strong as the rock-hills,
Fierce as the sun ?
Hated and hunted,
Ever thou wand'rest,
Bearing a message :
God is but one !
Pray, has thy saga
Likewise an ending,
As its beginning
Glorious of old ?
Israel, my people,
God's greatest riddle,
Will thy solution
Ever be told ?
Aerialist
- by Sylvia Plath 60
Each night, this adroit young ladyLies among sheets
Shredded fine as snowflakes
Until dream takes her body
From bed to strict tryouts
In tightrope acrobatics.
Nightly she balances
Cat-clever on perilous wire
In a gigantic hall,
Footing her delicate dances
To whipcrack and roar
Which speak her maestro's will.
Gilded, coming correct
Across that sultry air,
She steps, halts, hung
In dead center of her act
As great weights drop all about her
And commence to swing.
Lessoned thus, the girl
Parries the lunge and menace
Of every pendulum;
By deft duck and twirl
She draws applause; bright harness
Bites keen into each brave limb
Then, this tough stint done, she curtsies
And serenely plummets down
To traverse glass floor
And get safe home; but, turning with trained eyes,
Tiger-tamer and grinning clown
Squat, bowling black balls at her.
Tall trucks roll in
With a thunder like lions; all aims
And lumbering moves