Grandfather Poems

One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
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How neatly a cat sleeps,
sleeps with its paws and its posture,
sleeps with its wicked claws,
and with its unfeeling blood,
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In my dream,
drilling into the marrow
of my entire bone,
my real dream,
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To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
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Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
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Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
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Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts
Noplace to shit but sand channel ruts
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'Angels of the love affair, do you know that other,
the dark one, that other me? '

1. ANGEL OF FIRE AND GENITALS
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He was as old as my grandfather and I, just twelve.
Marriage meant nothing to me, not even a new cheeram.
He lived in penance and I, just a little child, tended the aashram,
Never cared for, not even acknowledged of my existence.
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Taped to the wall of my cell are 47 pictures: 47 black
faces: my father, mother, grandmothers (1 dead) , grand-
fathers (both dead) , brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts,
cousins (1st and 2nd) , nieces, and nephews.They stare
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For a Child of 1918

My grandfather said to me
as we sat on the wagon seat,
...

Write down !
I am an Arab
And my identity card number is fifty thousand
I have eight children
And the ninth will come after a summer
Will you be angry?
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"Sit in my hand."
I'm ten.
I can't see him,
but I hear him breathing
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A single rose with thorny stem
On mother nature`s tattered hem
Which no-one cares to steal away
So left to wither and decay
...

it's 1962 March 28th
I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
night is falling
I never knew I liked
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Old leaves have no defence against the wind.
A gray hawk is October's inner cry.
The bells of Salem church play elegies.
Distance becomes a single snowflake's fall.
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............sitting here in the stillness
.............................staring
...............staring out the window
...at darkness my friend and my foe.
...

He’s active as quicksilver,
Ageless as the sun,
Agile as a stream,
And alert as a bird in springtime.
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Portate bien,
behave yourself you always said to me.
I behaved myself
when others were warm in winter
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She taught me what her uncle once taught her:
How easily the biggest coal block split
If you got the grain and the hammer angled right.
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Wide-eyed in wonder,
Ella beholds the world.
"How old are you? "
her grandfather asks.
...

Then I was 12 years old, my grandfather told me, ‘My father was a revolutionary. He broke the left leg of Pratap Roy, Zamindar of Nadia and right leg of Rana Thakur, Zamindar of Srirampur and fled away. We hardly found his trace. When the situations became normal, he appeared before us in guise of a monk'.

Pratap was cruel and Rana was ruthless. Shiv Pundit could never tolerate the humiliation and suppression of the innocent subjects. He worshipped ‘Das Kapital' for salvation and chanted Vedic Hymns in the Shiva Temple to earn his bread and butter. We were priests of the said temple for seven generations. Shiv Pundit was hardly a materialistic socialist but rather a revolutionary socialist. He led an aesthetic life during his final days.
...

In the realm of family, a bond so grand,
Where generations intertwine, hand in hand.
A grandfather's love, a guiding light,
A grandson's presence, pure delight.
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Wide-eyed in wonder,
Ella beholds the world.
"How old are you? "
her grandfather asks.
...

Wide-eyed in wonder,
Ella beholds the world.
'How old are you? '
her grandfather asks.
...

Grandfather's house, knocked to the ground - to dust:
The windows wept when the bulldozer came
Timeworn and dirty and wheezing black smoke,
Just like the drab mills where grandfather moiled.
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Why do you do what you do?

I am human, your brother, your sister
A mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, a friend
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I KNOW YOUR HISTORY
By Moses Abolade, de Peace Poet

You forgot your History, because you are illiterates
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The decision was to work at the Old Folks home
Working the night so he could be alone
Walking his rounds in the semi dark
And on the hour at his station to make his mark
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Poems about Fathers and Grandfathers

I translated the first six Native American poems for my father, Paul Ray Burch Jr., when he chose to enter hospice and end his life by not taking dialysis …
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