gershon hepner Poems

Summer’s dying in the russet and the gold
of leaves that fall obscurely in the wood
where lives must set as we must all grow old,
and in the west the clouds show signs of blood.
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Dinah had an eye
that rovin’, sought to please
her appetite, that’s why
all men thought her a tease.
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With sexual frenzy monarchs mate,
to lepidopterists oblivious,
and in the northern milkweed wait
and linger, lovingly lascivious.
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Whereof one cannot speak but must
be silent constantly
concerns the troubles of the just,
though everyone can see
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Breughel said we have to carry on,
whatever may be happening outside,
and pay far less attention to each con,
than to the pros that have to be our guide.
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Here’s a list of all the things I crave:
your hair, your mouth, your lips, your tongue, your voice,
your legs when you’ve remembered, love, to shave,
and that dark bush inside which we rejoice.
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The More Loving One


Though Wystan said the stars may think
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Without the windings of my violin
you cannot hear attenuated tones
I used to play, nor do my fingers spin
the dials that they turned on telephones
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Down the passage that we didn’t take,
past the door we never opened, lie
goals that once we tended to mistake
as quite impossible, and still deny
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Picking, outside my garage,
ten tomatoes, small and shiny,
which I ate with French fromage,
I concluded being tiny
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