These poems get some extra attention this week (see related Commentary, home page).
The Rain
By Esteban Cano
Rain wets my body
Bare of truths and lies
It stains with water
From the sky
It cries the solitude
of a young poet
How pleasant when
It rains
Tapping on my roof
All night
I listen to the rhythm
From my bed
Renewing Nation—a Pantoum for the President
By William Campbell Wallace
Embrace resurging promise in the body politic
Bring hope again to those distracted, web-wedded, cell caught
Excite our ear-budded, pod-prone, inward sated public
Reaffirming common freedom’s desire, found hard sought
•••
Bring hope again to those distracted, web-wedded, cell caught
Ready to change, but with free-willed original intent
Re-affirming common freedom’s desire, found hard sought
To reclaim our purpose, re-achieve, restore, re-invent
•••
Ready to change, but with free-willed original intent
Requiring new leadership to merge old, new and restate
To reclaim our purpose, re-achieve, restore, re-invent
Should be principal focus in the incoming debate
•••
Requiring new leadership to merge old, new and restate
Excite our ear-budded, pod-prone, inward-sated public!
Should be the principle in the incoming debate
Embrace resurging promise in the body politic
Editor’s Note: Pantoum is a form of poetry first developed by the Malay people of Asia and later adopted by Europeans. A pantoum is composed of a series of quatrains. The second and fourth lines of each stanza are repeated as the first and third lines of the next.
This pattern continues until the final stanza, when the first and third lines are the second and fourth of next-to-last.
Le Diner Parisienne
By Gary Brownstein
We went to dine
Gastronomique
Gourmet food paired
with incredible wine
A bite of food
A sip of grape
The taste was all
Quite refined
We started out
With champagne
On the proprietor
A happy man
Moustachioed
and smiling
His wife tends bar
Her style beguiling
Le Garcon recommends
a sweet Sancerre
To accompany
The pungent faire
Next, Madame had
Blanquette de Veau
I the Bourguignion
Cooked long and slow
Le Sommelier arrived
With a Cote du Rhone
For the veal in sauce
And my tasty bone
With the finale a pair
Of bottles came
A Port for the cheese
For the tarte, a Sauterrne
And at the end
of this feast
We never got
heartburn
S’il vous plait, monsieur
L’addition
I asked the waiter
for the check
D’accord, monsieur
Was his reply
Then the bill arrived
And I thought I’d die.
