Tag: samuel menashe

“At Cross Purposes” by Samuel Menashe

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry1 Comment

     1
Is this writing mine
Whose name is this
Did I underline
What I was to miss?

     2
An upheaval of leaves
Enlightens the tree
Rooted it receives
Gusts on a spree

     3
Beauty makes me sad
Makes me grieve
I see what I must leave

     4
Scaffold, gallows
Do whose will
Who hallows wood
To build, kill

     5
Blind man, anvil
No hammer strikes
Your eyes are spikes

Samuel Menashe, “At Cross Purposes” from Samuel Menashe: New and Selected Poems, edited by Christopher Ricks, published by The Library of America, 2005. Copyright © 2004 by Samuel Menashe.

“The Living End” by Samuel Menashe

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry
Before long the end
Of the beginning
Begins to bend
To the beginning
Of the end you live
With some misgivings
About what you did.
.

Samuel Menashe, “The Living End” from Samuel Menashe: New and Selected Poems, edited by Christopher Ricks, published by The Library of America, 2005. Copyright © 2004 by Samuel Menashe.

“Rue” by Samuel Menashe

On By Christina's WordsIn Poetry
For what I did
And did not do
And do without
In my old age
Rue, not rage
Against that night
We go into,
Sets me straight
On what to do
Before I die—
Sit in the shade,
Look at the sky

Samuel Menashe, “Rue” from Samuel Menashe: New and Selected Poems, edited by Christopher Ricks, published by The Library of America, 2005. Copyright © 2004 by Samuel Menashe.