TONI MERGENTIME LEVI :: Selected Poems

MIRACLES

On the beach, we talk of wars in the desert
and the miracles it will take to end them.
You say you don’t believe in miracles:
loaves and fishes, the walk on water,
appearances of the Virgin Mary
to children dewy with innocence
and devoid of motive.

You say you don’t believe in
transformations and manifestations of the gods:
swans and bulls and showers of coin,
burning bush and tasteless wafer.

Is flight by man a miracle? I ask.
Is walking on the moon? And penicillin,
organ transplants, coding of our DNA?
No, you say, man made these things –
these and gunpowder and atomic bombs.

I pick one grain of sand from the palm of my hand.
And proclaim it a miracle that on this very day
I should have picked this grain
from all the grains upon this beach,
among all the beaches on this planet Earth.

And bearing witness to your dear eyes
and hair and skin, I say it is a miracle
that you were born, requiring the uniting
of one egg and no other with
one specific sperm from all those
that are swimming or have ever swum.

At last we are agreed that, yes, this is a miracle –
and that the miracle of every man’s existence
is becoming as invisible to others
as oases in a raging sandstorm
that eventually leaves all men blind.

BENDICIÓN

When one hears the music of Granados,
grand master of the Spanish song,
the cascading beauty of the canzión
drowns an ugly Goya dwarf
huddled in the soul.

The dwarf does not dare to speak –
especially of love –
for who would have him?
Not the spangled majo with his sweet guitar.
Not the scented maja with roses trilling in her hair.

Granados sings
all we cannot say
about the cruelties of love.

Upon her iron balcony,
Goya’s maja
weeps beneath her veil.

But the nightingale consoles her
when the thin moon sets –
as does the butterfly
who rises mornings
on renascent song,
having long forgotten
that it once crawled
like a worm.

A FLOWERPOT COULD FALL ON YOUR HEAD

I am the flowerpot
your mother called preposterous,
trying to belittle or allay

Your fear of doom
in stray events
that prowl beyond the door.

I am your destiny
blooming on a window sill
far above the streets.

When will hand or wind
loose me, tip me
from my heavenly ledge

So that black rain
strafes the pavement,
a red flower plummets,

And your skull, my hero,
spares me from the end
my potter had foretold.

ALL THINGS WILL COME TO REST IN YOU

Beams of caved-in barns,
eggshell and feather ride
the same plunging currents
down and down.

Now none can tell
the branches pruned
from those that winds
have ripped away.

White-noise water
drowns the lyres
of a thousand birds
and our own mad songs.

The deaf, omnivorous river
eats our lean lives,
unappeased.

But at the end,
water striders
stroke the radiant surface
of perfect stillness.

And far off you can
hear the oceans,
great cathedrals
of all the waters
of the world.