gershon hepner Poems

The hour of the soul, said Walt,
away from books, is based on themes
no poet worth his salt can fault.
The first is night, the source of dreams,
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“Hats off, gentlemen, a genius! ” Schumann
declared when hearing Chopin. Generosity
of spirit isn’t typically human,
more typical, by far of course, pomposity.
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FLORESTAN, EUSEBIUS AND MEISTER RARO

For Florestan the movements are most animated,
and for Eusebius cantabile and more expressive;
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Paradise for Delius wasn’t Florida,
where he was sent to manage orange groves
It was a pub that he imagined to be horrider
than Florida, whose only treasure troves
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Lisping cougars, just like aging panthers,
don’t always have smartest answers
when looking for young men whom they can seduce,
since often it’s too late to reproduce,
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Honi soit qui mal y pense
on Samson, though some think Saint-Saëns
makes more sense if you think of him
as being Palestinian, while the grim
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Warning! Do not poke about
the correspondence of your friends:
you’re surely better off without
the information that it sends.
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From Aeschylus’s eagle-bark
to self-punishment of Plath
lights are put out by the dark
in tragedies we rue with wrath.
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My center’s a reed
I play like a flute,
producing the seed
that years for your root.
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Said Mr. Steed to Mrs. Peel,
“I think we make a splendid pair.”
Said Mrs. Peel, “I also feel
we are, since clearly we both dare
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