Matthew Buchwald Poems

For twenty miles a lion followed her
Through the lonely desert
While she played on the mandolin, a sad song
And drank wine from a jar.
...

Men are Homeric, women are ineffable.
Let Solomon or the bards hallow the woman,
Historians and heros shall judge the man,
The pathetic man, who wept, tearing out his hair,
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A cat runs away
It swallows the stars like a sacred charm,
It has always been old
Immune to the cold
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Daybreak found Mabee in the jungle,
Cutting his way through the rainforest,
Making for the foothills of the high country.
He paused, listening for the telltale sound
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It's a dark cavern where the highway weeps
Sadly yielding grey cinders to the dust,
Where the moon on the grim river creeps:
It's a seething crater, a hole in the Earth's crust.
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Looming before a horizon,
Far from equatorial seas,
Of charcoal gray and indigo,
Repeating bars of ivory,
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do you remember
Leon Trotsky in Central Park
holding a catcher's mitt
for the mermaids from Weeki Wachee Springs
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The stealthy fragrances of Northern lights
Are stilled by the obtuse angles of your thighs
And sleep, tender and sated.
Your breast is a terra-cotta rose
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My head has become as soft as a tidal marsh,
The clammers cut into it, making slushy sounds,
Every day and every night they dig,
They squish like the valves of time.
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Why is it that the thing which we hate
is also the cause of our happiness?
The instinct which inspired my hatred
of the city, now brings me joy.
...