Poetry by

                        Grace For Andre Sakharov

 

Still, I grieve, Lord, grieve for your choice of fruits: whether I should prune and pluck sweet apples

or scrub the blood from coats of newborn sheep;

demand both eyes and ears of slanderous sinners

or let them mute my words with your spittle;

praise your patriarchs who collected wives

or your disciples who deserted their children;

sing the birthing from violated wombs

or write poems for God’s dead African children

rejoice for wise whales that spit out Jonahs

or for leviathans that did not smell the Baptist’s flesh;

or grieve when you raised up shepherd, but not goatherd.

 

Another goatherd, Lord, is shepherding his herd

toward your walled-off pens.  Unlike Milton,

what poet is pure enough to fashion him

wings like Satan's to rest in Adam's garden

or uncut hair like Samson's to harrow hell

and shake the mountain from  Christ's sepulcher? 

so that a graceless goatherd will father,

like Abraham,  who loosed Sarah;  and mother,

like Rebekah, who clothed Jacob with sheepskin;

and create, like Peter,  a song for the cock.

And like the woman wed to adultery

become a softer stone to be raised up.

 

                           Conserving Like-People                       

Like-people  like  like-people.

White-people rear white children

Black-people bear black babies.

Like-people   like 

                             like

                                    like-people do.

 

White-people eat white bread alone on white cloth—

no black-people sit around.

Black-people eat dark bread, together—

no white-people there to break it.

Like-black-people   like

                                          like

                                                   like-white-people.

 

White-people paint white-skinned Jesus.

White-people   like

                                   like

                                           like-white-people:

White hands hammered in by dark minds.

White feet pounded in by dark hearts.

The white Savior bleeds mortal red blood

                                                       covering white flesh.

White-people   like    white Jesus

                                             like

                                                    like-white-people do.

 

Black-people   like  

                                  like

                                           like-white-people:

White Jesus with masculine black pink-dark hair.

White-fleshed Savior praying for

layered flesh spurting red

even cut deep down deep,

paying for white-like Peters and Johns

whose white-like spirits quake with

black earth shaking open.

Black-people   pray  

                                    like

                                              like-white-people

and praise white-like Jesus

                                     like

                                             like-white sinning

soldiers—

 

                                  “Sing, O Bones, In Song”

 

We meet again, this time by surprise

as when you listen for cues in the theatre

of your body:  Your bones cry like slingshot

stones:  “Hit her,” and you embrace a friend.

You plunge forward, and your bones, cold as brook

stones, shudder:  “Drown her in stones,  and you press

hard the shoulders of another friend beside her.

Soon the footlights brighten the bony hand

of another; you shake it, and dislodge a

dusty stone in a mending wall, and your bones

shout:  “Throw it.”  You mount the stage, turn toward

the lighted faces, your face visible, theirs

invisible:  your bones grumble:  “We can’t see.

Olga Kronmeyer is a native of the Catskill Mountains.   She is the editor of the   2007 Alchemist, an anthology of poems written by the members of the Alchemy Club, a local poetry group based in Grahamsville, N.Y.   She has published a few poems and has taught creative writing classes.