To My Eternity

Your whistling

I clearly heard

Your colour

I see not

Your name

I know not

But

To my eternity

I take you

Note: This poem was published in Songs of the Street, Volume V, edited by Arlene Williams & Ron MacLellan (2002) with the following editorial note:

Henry Victor is a published poet with two collections of poems No Tears (1998) and Frail Floret (1999). He uses poetry to promote more humane values, social justice, cultural pluralism and communal harmony. He believes that his task is to give “some voice” to the “voiceless”. “To My Eternity” was the winner of the “The End of the World” category of the Songs of the Street poetry contest, which was sponsored by Inner-City Pastoral Ministry. Other poems by Henry can be found on pages 19 and 46.

Insanity

Yesterday

With might and main I laboured

To diligently learn the art

Of lengthening simple shoes

For the ever expanding

Tiny feet of my little daughter

 

Today

I am frighteningly tormented

To discover the contemporary wisdom

Of conveniently cutting feet

To fit useless foot-wears

Made by the reigning professionals

 

Disagreeing

With the modern overnight professors,

I am very assertively informed,

By their cowardly counsellors,

Is plain insanity

Fit enough only for dismissal

 

Ethnic cleansing

In the political arena is easy answer

For those wolfish rulers

Greedily striving to firmly establish

Corruptive power and stinking business

Instead, dealing positively, the prevailing pluralism

 

juggle

i do not juggle with three balls

the coloured and the soft
neither do i juggle three stones
the triple solid in the air

but i juggle Fred, the four

and the forty four years
and also that sliding
in between the moments

and wonder the purpose

humans come to live
in their turn to juggle the living
the dead, and the thereafter hours

henry victor

 

 

dew on my lawn

like my mouth watering after a spicy dish

when my stomach is empty, last evening
my heart craved that highway leading
to nature’s carving the million-year-sculpture

that unambitious hard work, Grand Canyon!

but my sober soul suggested something else
to run around prompting a Nikon, or a Canon
a pair of better eyes and mind, a larger book

to photo-write, to note, to store to play later

and with others, also advertise my, already
overweight and extra-large ego lost
this morning like the dew on my lawn!  

21.07.2014

month-end pay-packet

a month-end pay-packet, now, i collect not
but i continue waking before the sun wakes
stretching feet many hours after the sun sets
picking crumbs falling from greased wallets

and buy, cook, and lay tables for animals

sleeping until the sun warms their butts
with only purpose to empty the bulbs
the tax money from hard working nests

do i, then, call mine a living soul, or a machine

paying bills? do i, then, smile and dance, or whine
and kill my urge to plod? do i, then, wake-up
and strike, or yawn in my grave, before i sleep

30.06.2014

my will

am i overly stubborn in imposing my will

rejecting your will, in my failing to see grace
in freight unloaded, regularly, at my feet
or, am i lively, very vibrantly, otherwise

adding life to a decaying soul like the mountain

lion, the cougar, pouncing dissolutely at the hunter
with his gun like will hounding the creature
who as a hermit already withdrawn to a cavern

my quest, however, is for wisdom, that light

from the abundance of your mercy to isolate
the black thread in the dusk of my life, and yield
to your will even in my defeat suspending mine
 
15.07.2014

never an outcast

when in my speech your voice is not heard
or, my movements make your being invisible

or, my songs do not convey your melody
or, my lines express not your poetic utterance

still i fear not a rejection but i am assured of acceptance

from you; for your embrace is not due to my conformity
to your will, my walking to the beat of your drum
that i seldom hear; nor, for it, my will is strong to submit

but my nonconformity to those who laid hands

on my head and those who claimed to love
and belong to me by blood and name and tribe
reject me, pushing me to the edge as an outcast

18.07.2014