Back then we stropped our poems against the leather
of our discontents, honed their edges razor-sharp
until they gleamed more like weapons than verses.
In those undergraduate days didn't we
truly believe we could save the world?
speak in tongues to wake the sleeping and the dying?

It was the year after Smilin' White House Jack
lost it all in Dallas and we watched tragedy
on TV in Seton Hall's student union lounge
hardly believing it was Kennedy
they were wheeling into that hospital,
how could they dare tell us he was dead!

In '64 the Bayley Review published
our angry poems, all of which read like bad
Ginsberg or Ferlinghetti exercises,
and we Seton Hall rebels in our tan chinos
sported anti-establishment beards and bad
attitudes, cut classes, badmouthed the war.

Finally we even demonstrated along
South Orange Avenue when Father Lynch
the Dean of Men said "Shave or get out!"
-- you and I and Kenny Gaul-- then one of us
revolutionists said "Call Channel 4!"
A hundred strong we lay in the street, daring cars

to take our lives, make martyrs of us all,
but in the end we all shaved our beards.
Where do you suppose all the years have gone, Jack?
Even the poems I write now rarely try
to say it like it was back then, not even
figuraratively masked in simile and metaphor

how the '60s were, how we saw ourselves
in the mirrors of those turbulent times:
invincible, armed with poems sharp as swords
to brandish in the smug faces of our enemies.
What do you say, Jack, after all these years?
As for me the poems I now write are only poems.

"On Rainy Mornings the Mules"

Did I mention how in the long ago
These Sicilian streets were cobblestoned--
All of them!-- high concrete steps to break
The steepness of my ancestors' trudging walks?

On rainy mornings the farmers would plead
With their mules to cautiously step up or down
From stone to stone, front legs first, then back,
But those dumb beasts were petrified of falling.

Perhaps they were not so dumb, for they recalled
How, in the past, mules, even horses had stumbled.
Fractured limbs had earned them two shots to the head,
So while farmers with bent backs tested footholds,

Their eyes riveted on the wet cobblestones,
The mules chomped at the bit, displayed defiance
in screeching brays loud enough to coax
the rooster to re-announce the morning.

Farmers pulled the slippery wet ropes
And cursed the rain, the mules, cursed all creation
So vehemently it was hard to tell
Beast from man, bray from say, until the showers
Stopped, the sun began, and all made peace.

"The Marine of the Ancient Rimer"

He's fightin' tough,
A soldier ranking
Up there with the mean;
A fighter: a "neck" leather, rough;
One of a few good men-- a marine
Who would never admit
His dad wrote rhymes:
A quiet man of poetic wit
Who quoted famous lines,
An old poet from old times,
While he, a marine, tried hard
To keep his distance from the bard,
Cussed and drank and fought,
Kept his head free of poetic thought--
Did what he could but all for naught.
The day he learned his father died,
Forgotten rhymes came back: He cried.

SORCERY

This is the green we dreamed of yesterday,
One more April rebirth with red sun crashing
Like a wrecking ball atop purple hillsides
Sparking flakes of fire.
Down below, alongside Highway 23,
The neon sign of Hobart's Café blinks

A short-changed welcome three letters shy
While you sit inside at the only table,
One hand against a steaming cup of latte,
The other absently drumming
A red-checkered tablecloth creased and worn.
Jim Hobart says he'll keep an eye out for your bus.

Meanwhile, across town, in an empty house, if I
Could somehow through some April sleight of heart,
Interrupt your sadness, catapult myself
Into your Friday reverie, I swear this much:
I would conjure up a magic spell
To charm you and spring into staying here forever.

DUSK

In the interim between light and dark,
When the truce of nature is a billowing
Flag of grey-clouded dusk, this July
Creation drains its technicolor,
Washing out into a bland still-life.

When nighttime steps into its proper
First moments, all sky and forest creatures
In synchronized heartbeat hesitate in
A pretense of death.
From a bright day-long camouflage

The stars appear, and the moon, crater-faced,
Like a stern god, dominates the evening sky.
Everywhere the plushness of living things
Pays a nightly tribute of bated breath.