(As it happens, there were many apt ones available for the occasion.  All are posted with permission.)

Eleemosynary Theme

To save a life
What meaning in the phrase

If but a whim to pass the days
A far-off thought hardly brave

Yet others do for us
And others strive

While we sequestered
Merely thrive

Observe the naked
As they burn

Provide some clothing
Or an urn

Seek consolation in the shade
Afraid afraid afraid afraid

Copyright 1995 by Maurice Leiter

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Atrocities

“Raging tempo….Wild….
Beauty of tone secondary”
(a movement notation in
Hindemith’s Solo Viola
Sonata-Op 25 #l l922)

Atrocities unfolding
in Sunday’s Times
browsed at breakfast
late in July
my walls intact
water ready at the tap
silence broken only by pets
pavement unbroken where people pass

I crunch my Grape Nuts
to Hindemith riffs
the viola massaging
my abstract fear

Tonight a film
on prosthetic devices
shows an armless Croatian
not twenty-one
patiently learning
the prosthete’s trade
courtesy of a hand grenade
it’s meant to uplift us
to see him so brave
I deem it correct to doubt

I write    my hand steady
then head for the john
where I piss exactly
guiding the stream
flush matter-of-factly
soap my hands clean
scratch my scalp deftly
continue my scheme

(If I walked out
on the streets of Sarajevo
would anyone care
if mortar or fragment
parted my hair
would they report it
or look for me there)

Here in my outpost
on top of the world
my dinner digested
I breath the cool air
away from the raging
safe from the wild
I try to imagine
their fate as my share

I cannot imagine
their fate as my share

7/23-7/25/95, 1/26/98
Copyright 1995, 1998 by Maurice Leiter

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        Mythology

What mythology more dazzling
than the saga of our time
its lairs traps mazes
seductions deceptions
snares quests tasks

And what greater nether
regions than the dark-
nesses of man    ovens
charnel houses   oneiric
pastures of despair
famine’s arid stillness
memories we bear

What wondrous trials
have we known
rising
staying upright
going out
coming home

5/21/96-3/17/97

Copyright 1997 by Maurice Leiter
========================================

Query from Sir Francis

What news since Plato wrote
From in the spectral cave

Are the oracles yet signing
The old ways gripping still

Is there darkness between peoples
Are there mortars on the hill

Are the Idols firmly planted
On the mantle of our days

Is the truth correctly slanted
So we cannot pierce the haze

Is the theater filled with shadows
And reality still dim

Man inimical to neighbors
But obedient to HIM

And the carolers still crooning
As they dance around the bier

Mid the draping of the dying
And the trimming of the drear

“How merrily we worry
How cheerily we fear”

12/10-12/16/94, 2/20/95, 10/15/98
Copyright 1994, 1995, 1998 by Maurice Leiter

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       They Said

They said
Stand and be counted
I sat

They said
He who acts not
Acts for our enemies
I did not act

They said
The blood of others
Is our blood too
I washed my hands

They said
Man does not live
By bread alone
I went on eating

They said
We must not forget

I have forgotten what

7/13/00, 7/16/00, 8/4/00, 8/23/00, 3/11/02
Coypright 2000, 2002 by Maurice Leiter