Gary Beck

Careless Seed

Turn enchantment backwards

before tomorrow’s birth,

or old men seated by imagined fires

will steal all visions.

Creaks and grumbles time

has never made objection

to nothing, nohow,

so what are we waiting for.

We are mostly words and crimes,

instants of beauty.

Let us dare to say it.... Beauty.

Moments will sometimes grow pauses

never, never long enough

to weep good tears.

So kick the old men from their places

and let the dark, cold nights of city streets

end each dawn when someone new 

is betrayed into the world.

Indifference

The siren shrieks through city streets,

no one hurries fast enough.

The sound foretells

crime, fire, pain, death,

but no one hurries fast enough.

Overloaded circuits falter,

overburdened people doze.

The yell, the cry, the scream,

pierces the callous dawn,

mostly ignored,

one plea too many

in this relentless life.

Barren  Land

O makers of cities

in your threadbare revelation,

coursing crumbling streets

that cry hunger like wares,

your passage is a bounteous corruption,

a dark voice drearing a tired lament.

You are a specter of old burlesque,

a shirtsleeved letch of clapping lust,

drooling the last song,

lost in a drifting dawn.

You are a morsel of entertainment

wasted by strangers,

a landless wanderer pleading arrivals,

eroding the book of enlightenment,

searching with wonder and anger

the land of visionless youth.

Humanitas Rex

Tribal fires are mostly extinguished

sending men to hulk in safer places.

Grunts and snarls become bewildered faces.

What replaces savagery relinquished?

War dances and auto-da-fes are departed.

The fear of night is hidden with inventions

that illuminate the world restarted,

shaped into acceptable conventions.

Marvel found by a remote and vanished (dare I say)

man, part ape, part hunger, one unflinching part

dreaming of glory, building the courage of day

from the terror of darkness that sets man apart

from other beasts a long as he believes,

smashing forever the limits of what he achieves

in the grandeur of endeavours whose only rival

is the miracle and arrogance of man’s survival.

Winter Night in Germany

There is no gradual decline of day

to prepare the people for evening.

The passing of the sun to grey

brooding skies is swift, without warning.

The shops are lit. Young, restless girls

fill orders and with anxious eyes watch snow

fall slowly on the streets in weary swirls

that soon are spun to ice and cast a dull glow.

The church bells sing loud. It is six thirty.

The lights wink out in offices and shops.

The trip home starts on never dirty

Strassenbahns, or orderly bus stops.

The evening meal is simple food, mostly cold

sausages, cheese, bread and always beer

in huge amounts, for German stomachs hold

more than other stomachs and we always hear

the toasts: Prost, zum wohl.

Then lively stube or keller for more beer,

or the warmth of the cinema at eight,

visiting friends who welcome good cheer,

talk and drinking, but not leaving late.

Home again, quickly to bed,

almost everyone asleep by midnight.

All is still. The darkness men dread 

remains until morning births its light.

(C) 2007 Gary Beck

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