Five poems by David J. Westendorp

CHARITY

Hiding behind the tree of life I find

The black haired accordion player
I knew when I was four five and six.

Close your eyes, she says, you work
too much with your eyes.

As she says, I do, and she plays me 
a song that strong women sing when all

is well for all is lost therefore all
is well.  Today, I think, maybe

tomorrow too, I will control my self.

READING THE GREEK LYRIC POETS

When the Church set out to destroy the works
of Sappho, had even one of those poor

zealots realized how vividly the fragments
would survive, they might have left the work

intact, trusting to God and time and the Devil
the critical grappling they had presumed to 

undertake.  Now that you and I have been so
harshly judged by love's inquisition, I recall

your tale of chain smoking one night, insomniac,
in your brutally clean kitchen, discovering

all over your table grains of salt.  If I had
been there we might have picked up every

spicy fragment, assembled an anthology,
and returned to bed well respected translators.

THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

	1.
	Was it something lacking in my vision?
	Walking the asylum grounds all those years as
a child, never once thinking there was any shame in 
being crazy.
	Purity, then, being the lack of something.
Never having had it. Learning to do without.  

	2. 
	You again, I say to the poor character who
looks back at me in mirrors.
	How are you?
	Still confusing the love of God and the love
of women?
	Still looking for just the right box in which
to transport the Absolute?

	(And whether the mind does ever operate in a 
disinterested manner is an problem that taxes us
greatly.)

	During a closely contested election, a rumor
was circulated that one of the candidates had
consulted a psychiatrist, he lost.
	The tribal fear of the inner and the outer
voice failing to refer to each other. 

	3.
	Rehearsing conversations in which, for a
change, I get to say the insightful thing in 
eloquent fashion.
	Sometimes I practice stuttering to achieve 
the right degree of nearly undone vulnerability.
	Never has this practice been efficacious. 

	4.
	You do not feel enough pain, the madwoman
said.
	I watched her breast spill like startled
white mice out of her nightgown.
	But I do, I said, I do, sometimes I mistake it
for joy.

A QUARREL WITH LAO TZU

	When the breath comes in all the way to the bottom, the old
man said.
	When the breath crosses the bridge of the lungs, climbs
down the ladder of the belly, rests briefly at the oasis of 
the genitals, and plunges to the delicate bones of the feet,
then is there no need for the fallen world of humanity and
justice.
	Eichmann, I said, gasping.  The oh so charming Ted Bundy,
I said, turning blue.
	Breathe, he said.
	Evil is a verb, I said, falling down.
	Humanity is an empty house, he said.  And justice, a 
broom with a broken handle. To be civilized is to make do,
merely that, nothing more.  You know this, I know, for you
have no gift for compromise.
	Tranquility is a disguise for selfishness, I said,
Beginning to pass out.
	I yield to you, he said, blowing his breath into me.

THE WINTER'S TALE

Begin with the idea of tragedy and
	Failure,
The thrill of thought lip-wrestling toward
	its doom,
exacting only from circumstance what 
	it requires
for a sanity close cropped as a soldier's
	head,
until the unlikely clowns improbably
	appear.
Continue, then, with the idea of magic,
	Ravishment
Of ends in the absence of means,
	A false
And healing thing, coincident and gentle,
	To think
The well made shall, after all, be well
	fated.
This laughter in the dark, language
	on fire,
is too brief, too fleet, contrived,
	and civil,
yet is as much of license as we can sanely
	bear.
That the king is mad, the queen defamed,
	spends little
of our faculties to corroborate.  Ah, but 
	that 
the lost shall be found is fireside talk.
	Let the 
things of the dark remain in the dark,
	still we
will, hopeless and not without fault, stalk
	illumination. 

David J. Westendorp is a poet, novelist and occasional essayist
living in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

[ Poems copyright © 1999 David J. Westendorp. All rights reserved. ]

Experienced poets who aspire to be featured in TW3's Permeable Looking Glass should send five to ten previously unpublished poems, with a short bio listing previous publications and awards, to Articles Editor Bill Sheldon.

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