Three Poems by Arthur Turfa

 

The Lament of Heloise

So deep in the labyrinth of my heart

echoes of your voice leave a joyous sound.

Not even the pain of when we had to part

compels me to regret the love we found.

 

Within the cloister walls your face I see

as if somehow you penetrate through stone,

I feel your strong arms encircling me

in the halcyon hours we spent alone.

 

I am not marble since I took the veil,

with me your tender words ever remain.

Regardless of the past, they cannot fail

the tumult of our senses to sustain.

 

Cruelly separated in life were we;

husband, let our graves near each other’s be!

 

 

The Pattee Mall- Center of my Universe

 

While shedding my youth I walked on the Mall

past the iron grill, many-stoned obelisk

to the library steps,. There rested my world.

   At times savouring my pipe,

   holding hands tentatively,

   laughing with friends, dreaming dreams.

 

Over the arched elms alongside the paths

colourful flowers graced the green spaces

except when winter whitened ev’rything.

     My Underwood typewriter,

     at microphone, ON AIR sign,

     discussing literature.

 

Perfecting my radio voice, searching

for connections in all I was learning,

Proteus-like evolving,

   From keg to class a-going,

   writing verse in green notebooks,

   a Baudelaire in training.

  

Days learning another tongue, nights lurching

towards a vision more mirage than lucid,

Prematurely leaving what I knew well.

     Then reading damning, faint praise

      I pivoted to the south

      vision now reality.   

 

Several times walking the Mall not as the

long-haired radical lad wanting to read

works of the living, tilting at windmills.

   Ev’ry so often I reflect on those

   long-ago times on the Mall,

   center of my universe

 

 

Often in motion I Remember Him- for AT

Often in motion I remember him;

Playing catch before sunset, hammering

countless nails, fishing from Canada then

closer to home, in open hearth’s heat as

steel emerged in glowing red-hot grandeur.

 

In retirement, then I see him sitting

explaining strategy on the kitchen

table cleared of dishes, late afternoons

with a mug  of tea and Mogen David

or savouring the dippy bread that would

shorten his days with each grease-drenched slice.

 

Sadly it was not granted him to see,

like Aeneas, the proud descendants that

his roving younger son grafted onto

 the family tree, or how his skills jumped

to the grandson he never got to know.

By Arthur Turfa