New Land Poem by joseph rzemien

My song is about blades of grass beheaded
New from Krakow’s far away voivods
Like starlings on the live furrows
Checking in to live here on labor
That tasted of hunger
Back there

My song is the lament of transparent warriors
Marching on the grey meadows of a grey future
On a map of blind mornings of grey stables
And evenings of some fat in see-through slops
Nights on the oat couch
Listening to a night’s slow journey

This house its clock and the flowing of time are the deal
The calendar learnt by heart plow and sow and harrow
By rote the spire that tells bread and cheese
The long expected time by hunger’s clock

Pale and plain still are the words
Like buried endives like a corpse
And so wan also
Words sound a stupid sound
Like the silly bells of unseeing cows

I hear the wheels I hear the train
On roads at standstill
I hear my home receding
My stray heart my lost trees
My stream and the dirt on the footpath

Staying was a grave it was death every day
Here or there I remain poverty’s mean orphan
But I left no forsaken regret behind
No empty place
Just unchartered expectations of unchartered emptiness

june 2nd,2009