Sample Poems by Jean Hollander
Organs and Blood
Hotel La Massa and its sovereign view
of summer heat, the Arno shimmering
in its slow move from hills to town
and we admired how the swallows skim
their own reflection in the stream,
their wings untouched by water
and you expressed concern at this great cost
of energy against small gain—
a tiny insect against power lost
in that great swoop and up again—
angling to find your answer in
the Bibled God who watches all
and I reminded you He sees
the sparrow fall but does not catch
its plummet to uncaring soil.
Later in town we saw a truck parked on the wrong side of the street,
white, with red writing on its unforgiving walls:
SANGUE e ORGANI
a curbside hospital,
dispenses and receives, hacks out,
its grim collateral.
Again on the carved terrace as I watched
geese float against the river’s flow,
the troubled sky for some time holding back
its rain, and listened as a single church bell cut
the hour in half and then again made whole.
I wondered if the answer was
the fish that leaps
out of the water to recall
the gnat to its own darkness
as we all must feed.
First Blood
After the fall when snake
and Adam slunk away
from tumbled grass of lust
and Eve uncoiled and stretched
and knew the dawn
when lion cubs lay curled around the lamb
although their legs stirred
to a leap in dreams,
the falcon’s eyes still hooded
and the vulture’s breath still sweet
then in that silent light
while birds were huddled into sleep,
then, like a signal, a new need
for blood, the whine of a mosquito
hovered over Eve, surprised
her smooth white arm and bit,
raised a strange welt
her sullen fingers scratched,
a touch of the first blood—
a bond of motherhood
an itch for knowledge
Old Movies
I watched a movie made before I was,
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers gliding to
Let’s face the music and dance
and you, under false light in another room,
just home from the hospital,
your right side gone, what’s left unable
to hold you, your deep voice snagged
to a whimper, limbs stretched on the hard
plastic of a hospital bed inherited
from a dead woman. And sitting there
I was swept into the smooth
sway and leap of the dance,
swung into the song’s
troubles and teardrops.
Later, Charlie Chaplin came on,
Monsieur Verdoux knocked at the blade
of the guillotine without regret,
and Hitchcock’s birds plunged to their prey
and did not allow vertigo to interrupt them.
Fear trails disaster like an ardent admirer
to the grand finale of despair.
In the old movies, there is always The End
to let you know it is over.
Direction
Like birds we used to know
how to direct our flight
by where the sun set
on our left and always flew
straight to the magnet of the north
we thought reliable
that now is proved
as fickle as a summer’s love
magnetic north residing now
in its queen’s progress
through geography
somewhere in Canada
instead of at the pole
and switches we are told
from north to south
every few thousand years
as you have veered
in this short season
off the charted course
and I don’t know
in this swift flight
which one of us
is heading now
to the true north.
Despair
Whatever the world really looks like—
is the tender green really grey —
we have eyes to think it beautiful.
The red-breasted bird feeding
its drab young with its own hunger
sees them in its own image
the fireflies dying as they light my bedroom
are dazzling in their promise,
the cat, its tongue rough in the confusion
of love and usage, sits at my hand
waiting for love’s hand-out,
and on a cool night, this valley
this clover-covered lawn is paradise
though in your despair you plotted
to crawl out a window to death
but your very darkness kept you
from moving, for in our despair
we are helpless, the blind dog follows
its broken trail, the little frogs leap
into chlorinated water, they cannot help it,
though I fish them out over and over
the guileless moths wasting themselves
against the lights that save us:
cooking fires and lighthouses,
the simple flame of a candle—
ceremony and knowledge—
a radiance of night.