{"id":5265,"date":"2015-10-07T09:33:50","date_gmt":"2015-10-07T09:33:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/?p=5265"},"modified":"2015-10-07T09:33:50","modified_gmt":"2015-10-07T09:33:50","slug":"emanuels-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/2015\/10\/07\/emanuels-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"Emanuel\u2019s poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

Poetry was a great passion for me in high school. I served on the Lowell High School Literary Magazine Myriad from 1980-1983 and wrote many poems (of which only a few were actually accepted).<\/p>\n

I imagined myself as a poet somewhere between T.S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams. But the truth is I have not looked at these poems for years. Here are a few selections. It was hard to resist the temptation to edit these poems after all those years, but I did.<\/p>\n

Sadly I have not written any poems in recently in English and only one in Chinese about five years ago.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Emanuel<\/strong>\u2019<\/strong>s Poems<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Genesis<\/u><\/p>\n

In the beginning<\/p>\n

God said, \u201cLet there be light.\u201d<\/p>\n

And there was light<\/p>\n

But the darkness lingered on.<\/p>\n

And man was born of death<\/p>\n

And rose from the darkness of childhood<\/p>\n

To carry a club<\/p>\n

Of gnarled wood.<\/p>\n

And he howled into the wind<\/p>\n

Of anger and suffering<\/p>\n

And hated his world and his God.<\/p>\n

And God said, \u201cIt is good.\u201d<\/p>\n

And on the last day,<\/p>\n

God rested, and man<\/p>\n

Suffered in an indifferent world.<\/p>\n

And cursed his god,<\/p>\n

And loved his god,<\/p>\n

And made his god<\/p>\n

In his own image.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Strawberries<\/u><\/span><\/p>\n

Standing under the open window<\/p>\n

Freshly cleaned, before I awoke,<\/p>\n

A bowl of strawberries<\/p>\n

Moist and fresh<\/p>\n

But tasting of standing<\/p>\n

With the dark crusted bread<\/p>\n

And the wilted green lettuce<\/p>\n

Overnight in the pantry<\/p>\n

From yesterday<\/p>\n

At the market, in the brilliant rain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mortality<\/u><\/span><\/p>\n

Death comes to me slowly<\/p>\n

As the morning sun<\/p>\n

Of restless afternoons.<\/p>\n

Lo, I grow painfully aware<\/p>\n

Of the fate of children<\/p>\n

And crumbling cathedrals.<\/p>\n

I see death in tulips<\/p>\n

And evil in the simplest gesture.<\/p>\n

Yet I cannot look away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(untitled)<\/span><\/p>\n

I am as best I can<\/p>\n

I would be more than what I am.<\/p>\n

I would have sacrificed everything<\/p>\n

But I have nothing to lose.<\/p>\n

I am a brave and worldly man<\/p>\n

Who is weak and afraid<\/p>\n

And fears suffering more than death.<\/p>\n

Should I suffer without reason<\/p>\n

Or reason without suffering?<\/p>\n

Without reason,<\/p>\n

I am a distant spectator<\/p>\n

Distant as the planets<\/p>\n

In eternal motion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(untitled)<\/span><\/p>\n

It was not that I was tired.<\/p>\n

I had slept well.<\/p>\n

It was not that I was old.<\/p>\n

I was just a child.<\/p>\n

I lay in bed and it came<\/p>\n

Not from the dark and evil places<\/p>\n

As one might think,<\/p>\n

But from the passing of time<\/p>\n

That takes up life,<\/p>\n

That makes up life.<\/p>\n

An ominous specter<\/p>\n

Coming from the very thing<\/p>\n

That is existence.<\/p>\n

The subtle discontentment<\/p>\n

That has no origin<\/p>\n

That creeps up<\/p>\n

And appears from nowhere.<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Elegant Afternoons<\/u><\/span><\/p>\n

Elegant afternoons<\/p>\n

When the cat slept<\/p>\n

On the sun-coated<\/p>\n

Quilted couch.<\/p>\n

Sitting in the library<\/p>\n

Reading the first pages<\/p>\n

Of yellowed books.<\/p>\n

And then having tired,<\/p>\n

I dozed in the warmth<\/p>\n

That penetrated<\/p>\n

The leaded glass panes<\/p>\n

Over the faded flowers<\/p>\n

Wilting in a Chinese vase.<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Car Crash I<\/u><\/span><\/p>\n

A car crash<\/p>\n

With scattered people<\/p>\n

Suffering.<\/p>\n

Everyone turned,<\/p>\n

Craning necks<\/p>\n

As if to see<\/p>\n

Misery.<\/p>\n

As if their own lives<\/p>\n

Were not miserable enough.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Car Crash II<\/u><\/span><\/p>\n

The world shattered<\/p>\n

In just a second<\/p>\n

What was is gone<\/p>\n

And cold reality<\/p>\n

Sets in around me<\/p>\n

And the pain<\/p>\n

But mostly the shock<\/p>\n

And the hands that try to help<\/p>\n

When I want to die<\/p>\n

And the pieces of the car<\/p>\n

And the blood<\/p>\n

And the sickness<\/p>\n

And the blackness<\/p>\n

And the sleep.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A Ruin<\/u><\/span><\/p>\n

The cool mist<\/p>\n

Coated the valley,<\/p>\n

Made less harsh<\/p>\n

The battlements<\/p>\n

And more rustic<\/p>\n

The cannons.<\/p>\n

The sun pierced<\/p>\n

The clouds<\/p>\n

And woke the lizards<\/p>\n

To climb on<\/p>\n

The towers of stone.<\/p>\n

One could forget<\/p>\n

That ugly past.<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Poetry was a great passion for me in high school. I served on the Lowell High School Literary Magazine Myriad from 1980-1983 and wrote many poems (of which only a few were actually accepted). I imagined myself as a poet somewhere between T.S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams. But the truth is I have … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9296425,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9296425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5265\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}