Jardín
In the square, where the fountain
is off, the sellers
of unwanted goods and labor
appear composite, stitched
from scraps of rag and leather,
because they look away, look
down in the dense heat
and the shade of dying leaves.
The tourists look at nothing
although they think they look;
their gaze is stopped
some distance from objects,
in part by the heat,
which must be borne and ignored.
They know (although their knowledge stops
some distance from this too)
they are better off here
than in some other square
they couldn’t tour because they can’t
afford it, or guards; where they might
be kidnapped, then killed
when no one back home
paid; where beggars
and viruses like beggars might
approach them more importunately;
where beggars, eyes dimmed
by rage or glaucoma,
would in a sense not see them.
The all-corrupting heat
disrupts time, though whether
to speed or retard
is unclear, both to the tourists
and the people in the square,
who live in that state.
And the tourists (for this is
of course about them)
look to the hills beyond
the square for an image
of calm: the grand and watered houses
above the motley shacks.
And in their halting way,
they imagine someone who
though small and brown is not
the people in the square.
Who like the tourists yearns to cross
the now-excessive distance
between them and home;
and who, once there, would move
through cool respectful rooms
unknown to the tourists themselves,
replacing heat with warmth.
Need to Know
Just outside, she turns. Not with horror –
the view is flat and misty and the horror
immediately dulled, which is the horror.
Nor to plead, for when she turns
she recognizes the angel, heretofore
a gas-cloud of projections. He has
the smug affectlessness
of any guard or enforcer
to come, the flaming sword
another gimmick like a submachine gun.
She can see more or less everything
ahead; lucidity
is Eden viewed from outside.
And the arguments she gabbles
about entrapment, justice, power –
their debut, though they feel rehashed –
neither expect nor intend
a response from Pretty-boy; she only wants
to scope out as much future as she can,
though she knows the knowledge will be taken from her.
She also finds she likes making a scene,
defying script and decorum.
The angel, silent, lifts the sword,
which seems an unnecessary
gesture in context, so perhaps
that was a victory.
She turns and leaves. The earth lies all before her.
Genius Loci
Liberals like to think that projects
(“council houses,” “estates”)
around the planet aren’t designed,
unless by someone in an on-site trailer
with so many tons of sandy concrete,
warped boards and drywall, buckled glass,
a kickback and ten minutes to dispose of.
It isn’t true. There’s an architect.
He began in Rome with the eight-story mud
insulae that Nero burned
when the plague got too bad.
Communism, social democracy,
the embarrassment and hypocrisy
of liberalism, the pressured makeshifts
of an older Right paid him.
He saw beyond them, saw the bangas pose
on urinous landings, saw and heard
keening grandmas, pimps and cops
(and here and there the Religious Police)
address reluctant doors, wandering kids
grow lean and cunning, girls
(as in, say, Delhi) eat
the ever-available rat poison
and dance themselves off railings.
An unassuming man, he has
the generalized love
for pullulating human life
of a mainstream poet, the dislike
for argument and categories.
Always in his heart the warm
and yellow lights mount
from earth to sky, offsetting
mildew and swarming floors;
they invite (he knows at his most rapturous)
the jungle and eventual forests
to come. He lives abstemiously, secretly;
the wealth he has earned is unimportant;
what matters is to know one builds for all time.
Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both published by Story Line Press. A collection of shorter poems, A POVERTY OF WORDS, 2015 from Prolific Press. Another collection, LANDSCAPE WITH MUTANT, to be published by Smokestack Books (UK), 2018. Has appeared in Hudson Review, Salmagundi, Poetry Salzburg Review, Die Gazette (Munich), The Fish Anthology (Ireland), Representations, Magma (UK), Iota (UK), Bateau, Main Street Rag, Fulcrum, etc. Online, poems have appeared in Big Bridge, Allegro, Hamilton Stone Review, Diagram, BlazeVox, The New Hampshire Review, Mudlark, Occupoetry, Faircloth Review, Triggerfish, Thunderdome, etc. Adjunct professor creative writing George Washington University.