Leo Yankevich Poems

Hit Title Date Added
51.
Obituary

Today I leaf through the obituaries
and find out who has died among the famous—
an actress, doctor, and philanthropist—
the stories of their lives take up a page.
...

52.
Passenger Pigeons

I'd lift my forehead from the book and see
a flock consisting of a billion birds,
like a river in the heavens, three
miles wide, and forty miles in length. My words
...

53.
Sarajevo Sonnet

Within the four walls of this sonnet’s form
(while outside spring rain gathers in a pail) ,
there is at least one happy story to tell,
something lovely brought on by a storm.
...

54.
The Condemned House

(After a Black & White Photograph by Jared Carter)

Who alive remembers who lived there
seventy years ago? A family
...

55.
Heraclitus

'a dry soul is wisest and best'

Biographers write that above all men
he was a lofty and hubristic spirit.
...

56.
The Loneliest Man

“My coming to England [sic] in this way is, as I realize, so unusual that nobody will easily understand it. I was confronted by a very hard decision. I do not think I could have arrived at my final choice unless I had continually kept before my eyes the vision of an endless line of children’s coffins with weeping mothers behind them, both English and German, and another line of coffins of mothers with mourning children.”
—Rudolf Hess to his wife Ilse
June 10,1941 
...

57.
The Idiot

Whenever I sit with the village idiot,
it's always with genuine reverence and a bit
of suspicion. Usually we just stare at the rooks,
and he sips my beer without asking, then looks
...

58.
Quasimodo

As he lies mid his retinue of rats,
oblivious to the trickling water
and the maelstrom in the babbling sewer,
one might think his nose a hovel for flies
...

59.
Racked Beauty

Blest be the dawn, the luminous blue-slate,
the arch transfused by the glorious sun,
and blackbirds chanting hymnals in prickly bushes,
and rooks high over fields coughing up love.
...

60.
The Familiar Night

You leave the dive, the din behind the doors
forever shut. You stagger in the light
and watch rats bear the moon and stars away
into an afterlife of steaming sewers.
...

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