SZPILMAN

                                                                                     -for Toni

                                                                                               

 

 

On a Fulbright

Warsaw 1965

She is a musician

She is nineteen

It is snowing

She takes a bus

A small apartment

Near the Vistula River

A sonata by Copeland

Szpilman at the piano

She with her violin

Bows not knowing

The man with whom

She performs

As she tells me

This story

Somewhere a screen is going dark

At the end of Polanski’s movie

And this poem is

Lapping spilled words

From the pavement of history

 

 

-Kathleen Gunton

 

                                                          PRISONER

 

 

baby in her arms

another in her womb

she chews on fear

like stale bread

thinks blood is due

welcomes freedom

                                                            car ci no ma in situ

hysterectomy

call it sir jury

she has been given

by what has been taken

 

-Kathleen Gunton

 

                                                                                THE PATH WITH RON OFFEN: CENTO

 

 

With so much love and pride and sadness

I lie down in a clatter of broken things.

It seems to me they might have purpose

As if there’s one tomorrow left

That we secretly carry

Just down the path

I don’t know what I feel, I don’t know what to say.

 

You call me back from where I drift

Looking for peace.

How to enter the green cathedrals forever?

And still, and still. And still

I’m wondering is it possible

I was there?

 

-Kathleen Gunton

Line 1 ~ The Open Door

Line 2 ~ Elliott Carter

Line 3 ~ You Look Long And Hard Enough

Line 4 ~ Of Animals, Can-Openers, & Mankind

Line 5 ~ To The Memory Of Hart Crane And His Grandma                                                                           Poem

Line 6 ~ At The Grave Of Tristan Tzara

Line 7 ~ For Don: On The Occasion Of His Final Escape

Line 8 ~ Beyond Cancer In France

Line 9 ~ Bucolics

                                                            Line 10 ~ Late

                                                            Line 11 ~ As Autumn Approaches

                                                            Line 12 ~ Remembering/Remembered

                                                            Line 13 ~ Remembrance Of Mummies

                                                           

 

Collection: God’s Haircut (And Other Remembered Dreams)