gershon hepner Poems

After delight comes
the doom
as tragedy follows
the joy,
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Life’s not a bed of roses but a dahlia
that withers after bursting into bloom,
a troubled preparation for the failure
eluding us until we reach the tomb.
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On bedrocks of existence are regrets.
They are the ground on which we always stand
while making on the future brain-dead bets
we base on data we can’t understand.
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Seduced by other writers, I repay
their compliments, and attempt seduction by
completing, in my own near-loving way,
the works they have abandoned, as I try
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Enjoyment of my poems’ rhyme
is winding up with ancient Scotch
that is precisely right, or like a watch
that, wound up, tells you the right time.
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With “yes, nearlies, ” “almost sos, ” we can
come closer to the truth far closer than
with certainties of “definitely yeses, ”
ignoring that behind the truth lies guesses.
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A poem should not mean, but be,
said Archibald MacLeish;
poets, like real men, should see
it’s so, and not eat quiche.
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“Oh lady, be good! ”
is what people once said,
it was quite understood
that they wouldn’t be led
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However much we think we can evade
our parents when they’re vibrantly alive
we cannot do this when they start to fade
and down towards their death begin to dive,
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Listening to Beethoven we sense
the inspiration pouring from the master.
Johann Sebastian Bach sounds as intense,
but far more distant from disaster.
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