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Mark Stern Wakes Up -- Frederick Feirstein

(Poem #214)Mark Stern Wakes Up
 Shining cratefuls of plum, peach, apricot
 Are flung out of the fruit man's tiny store.
 Behind the supermarket glass next door:
 Landslides of grapefruit, orange, tangerine,
 Persimmon, boysenberry, nectarine.
 The florist tilts his giant crayon box
 Of yellow roses, daffodils, and phlox.
 A Disney sun breaks through, makes toys of trucks
 And waddling movers look like Donald Ducks
 And joke book captions out of storefront signs:
 Café du Soir, Austrian Village, Wines.
 Pedestrians in olive drabs and grays
 Are startled by the sun's kinetic rays,
 Then mottled into pointillistic patches.
 The light turns green, cars passing hurl out snatches
 Of rock-and-roll and Mozart and the weather.
 The light turns red. Why aren't we together?
-- Frederick Feirstein

Clenched Soul -- Pablo Neruda

(Poem #213)Clenched Soul
 We have lost even this twilight.
 No one saw us this evening hand in hand
 while the blue night dropped on the world.

 I have seen from my window
 the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.

 Sometimes a piece of sun
 burned like a coin in my hand.

 I remembered you with my soul clenched
 in that sadness of mine that you know.

 Where were you then?
 Who else was there?
 Saying what?
 Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
 when I am sad and feel you are far away?

 The book fell that always closed at twilight
 and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.

 Always, always you recede through the evenings
 toward the twilight erasing statues.
-- Pablo Neruda