Len Roberts

We Sat, So Patient

in that third grade
class, learning the numbers of days,
weeks, months,
repeating the numbers as they flashed
in the air, forming
the curved 3, the angular 4, the easy 1,
counting the rain drops that wriggled down
the gray window,
counting the hearts and cars on our desks,
our crayons,
Ann Harding and Richie Freeman making 2,
10 on each side for the spelling bee,
counting Sister Thomas said 5 of us
would not reach 20, showed the chart
where children dropped off into 0,
the blue zone of no return
that Jimmy Legasse whispered, making us laugh.
Looking around, I thought Al Aldon, Jackie Schuster,
Margaret Blake
who already coughed blood on her gold glasses
when she spoke,
the thin girl just come over from Germany,
and Ray Martineau who had no lunch, the
zigzagged
white lines of lice forming mazes on his
crewcut head. And
the good Sister herself, number 6, at least
40 years older than us,
her rosary beads clicking as she walked
down the aisle like the Angel of Death,
black wings spread,
brushing our faces, our arms, wafting blackness
reminding us that God was watching and could tell
who knew 9 times 9, 144 divided by 12,
telling us it was God's will that we die,
Jimmy Gleason pulling up his white sock
on a leg he would not have 10 years later,
Barbara McGill raising her hand with another
correct answer,
the same hand so whitish-blue as she lay
in her eight-grade coffin,
Jimmy Amyot and Donald Wilcox quietly passing
drawings of naked women
back and forth, the car they would die in
revving
unheard in that classroom where we yelled
out 360, 225, 32, 0, 10,
waiting for the split-second flash of red,
yellow and blue cards
beneath the slow, steadily clicking clock.

Gift Shop in Pecs, Hungary

They paint yellow and red flowers
	on the white vases,
with pale green leaves and stems,
some with dark blue centers,
three dark blue circles with X's.
The embroidery, too, and the small
	carved walnut boxes,
flowers jutting our everywhere, not
	one Jew on the train
to Auschwitz, which is not so far
	from here,
not one young wife with two children
	dragged from her side. And
African masks, the death mask, the
	life mask, the mask
of love chiseled in jade-like stone,
so heavy I could hardly pick it up
to see the naked bodies, the veils
	covering and uncovering
them.  I almost bought the many-armed
	Lady from India, the Wise Fool
from Vietnam, I almost paid the full
	thousand forints
for the hand-made Polish moccasins
	with the pointed toes
and small beaded white horses, smaller
	men with sabers drawn
as they rode off the stitched edges.
I had to lift them all to feel their weight,
I had to bring them close so I could see
	the tiny hands and feet, the
curve of an arm, the straight nose, the
	buckle on his shoe, the gilly-
flower on hers, I had to feel the heaviness
	of their dreams, the foolishness
of their hopes as they dipped black bread
	into the bowls, as they
snuffed out the candles name by name
by the tiny carved altar.  I had to bend
	to hear their silence
as they bowed from the waist and curtsied,
	stiff-legged, without
a single moan, not one face turned
	away, not one hand raised
as they began their strange dance
	on the dustless shelves.

The Moment

Walking the three tiers in first light, out
here so my two-year-old son won't wake the house,
I watch him pull and strip ragweed, chickory, yarrow,
so many other weeds and small flowers
I don't know the names for, saying Big, and Mine,
and Joshua -- words, words, words. Then
it is the moment, that split-second
when he takes my hand, gives it a tug,
and I feel his entire body-weight, his whole
heart-weight, pulling me toward
the gleaming flowers and weeds he loves.
That moment which is eternal and is gone in a second,
when he yanks me out of myself like some sleeper
from his dead-dream sleep into the blues and whites
and yellows I must bend down to see clearly, into the faultless
flesh of his soft hands, into his new brown eyes,
the miracle of him, and of the earth itself,
where he lives amont the glitterings, and takes me.

Learning Our Place 
in the Hierarchy of Angels

Jon Dumas wanted to be a Throne,
    a fiery wheel
sent by God to bring justice to
     us all,
which meant beating up Dougie
	Freeman, the class bully,
and no more spelling bees or
	math,
while Gabriella Wells politely
asked if she could be a Virtue
and work miracles on the earth,
help Jimmy Lagust take his braces
	off,
give Dorothy Blake a new stomach
so she could stop throwing up
	into the black bucket
	filled with sawdust,
and I wildly waved my hands
	to be a Power,
stopping the demons from overthrowing
	the world,
my father on his last drunk,
my mother kicked out of Boney's Bar
	where she pressed herself
	   into the dark,
thunder in my left fist,
lightning in my right
as I rose from that third-grade seat
	to assume my place
with the other eight who were holding
	orbs or swords
some singing Holy, Holy, Holy
while others kept the stars fixed
	and bright,
all nine of us flapping our wings
	hard
in a circle around the emptiness
Sister Ann kept pointing to, insisting
	That, That was God.

The Goldfinch, My Father,
     in the Forsythia

He is going on forever
in the newly brilliant
   forsythia,
gold blur in yellow,
ready to take on the
   grackles
and robins if he must,
tough little bastard
   that he is,
and he will not shut up.
Of course he's you again,
left hand six inches
from your left cheek,
right hand ready to snap
   the wrist,
send me reeling in that
   backyard grass
while old man Tremblay watches
from his window and shouts
   Out!
I finally learned to box
   before you died
of that rotten heart,
clipping your ear anytime
   I wanted,--
you could make a comeback,
get a woman, some money,
   a job--
always falling for the second
   feint
that got you open, wide-mouthed,
like that morning you were
   lifted
into the ambulance and wailed
   away,
knocked out on the spot
by the very right cross
you'd always warned me about,
the one that shot straight

   from the heart.© All Copyright, 2000, Len
      Roberts.

      All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission. 

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