Two new poems from George Held

 

Prague

The photo shows me sitting in the old

Jewish cemetery behind my office

At Charles University, not far

From where gothic Charles Bridge

Crosses Vltava, on a sunny fall day,

And I am well aware about six layers

Of dead Jews are stacked below me

Because the Christian Czechs forbade

The burial ground from expanding

Beyond this space in the dense ghetto—keep

The Jews in their place—before they were rousted

And shipped to the extermination camps

By the Nazis under General Heydrich,

Who declared from his office in Prague Castle,

High above the other side of the river,

“We will Germanize the Czech vermin,”

Who had built this magnificent city

In concentric circles around Romanesque

Vyšehrad Castle, making it a living

Museum of European architecture.

A friend took this picture of New World me

Sitting in the heart of Old World Prague. 

Weather Alert

     “Thunderstorms have also been observed on Jupiter and Venus.”

Imagine that! Heavy weather

In the solar system but no

Busted umbrellas or downed trees,

No power outages on gleaming

Venus or giant Jupiter

With its Great Red Spot.

All the while, blue Earth

Rumbles and roars with thunder

And lightning, torrential rains,

Hail as big as golf balls,

And floods that would merrily

Float Noah’s boat away.

Yet the drought grows ever

More perilous in California

And the old Dust Bowl states,

Where there’s no water for irrigation,

Crops fail, food prices rise,

And the quest for oil and gas

Intensifies like that televised tornado

Bearing down on your lonesome house.

 George Held