gershon hepner Poems

Reintroducing J.S. Bach
and Handel, Felix Mendlessohn preserved,
as Noah did with his great Ark,
two major species. Neither man observed
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Gogol wrote a story once
about Akaky, a poor clerk,
a doleful, dedicated dunce
who did mere documentary work.
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DR. WATSON TYPES OF WIFE


The sort of wife I think that every man should pick
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According to the Polyanna principle
we think we are invincible
when we about ourselves are told
good things. Bad things will leave us cold,
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When your women start leaving, you’ll sing in the night
the blues––don’t ever forget it.
Those are the words of the song I now write,
but with music I cannot now set it.
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Mazdanasyans, worshipping Ahura
Mazda, felt regarding evil, surer
than Jews and Christians who do not explain
that it exists as something that’s as sane
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Fierce, unfallow, always bleak,
my mind, when it starts looking back
at what is older than one week,
is unprepared for the attack
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From Saul Steinberg comes the gag cartoon,
and from Feiffer comes the comic strip,
from Herblock comes the politician goon,
and from Levine the face that like a quip
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Preferring freshly perked to Sanka,
my favorite movie “Casablanca, ”
I collate cold-cut collages
which, unscreened, turn into mirages,
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Kiss me as if it were the last time,
and I your favorite pet and pastime,
for that’s the only way that kissing
becomes no dreadful way of missing
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