Poems by Louis Gallo

 

FRAGMENT FROM THE LOST
BIBLICAL “BOOK OF ORPHEUS”

And, lo, Orpheus ascended from hell
and on the third day strummed his lute
on the Phrygian shore where the women
had gathered, harridans who plotted
against him because they could not bear
the sweetness of his threnodies
over the lost Eurydice, and stones rose
into the air on the wings of his song,
and the sky which had darkened, cleared,
and asters sprang from arid fields
and gently swayed the beasts of those fields—
but the hysterical women beset themselves
upon him and tore him to pieces and flung
those pieces into a stream which bore Orpheus
away, content, whereas the women
grew sullen and bore venom and rage
for the rest of their shriveled days.

 

THE DAZE OF DAYS—AMERICA 2025

We feel the days ensue with the zeal
of a metronome or the goosesteps of
a crazed army marching nowhere,
razing everything here to there.

Never before in halcyon time when
we praised the golden moon and sun
(plucking cherries from the boughs then,
lazing beside stalks of sugar cane),
have they seemed so aimless, drained
of purpose, mere twitching of the eyes
as we swat hours off like flies.

Why have we reached this bleached impasse?
Where did we veer from the ripened bend
onto this arid dead end,
the ziggurat of history stolid on our backs?
Oh, the onerous, blood-stained stacks
of years, the blank stare of extremity—
vinegar curdling the sweet cream of memory.

 

THE LAST NEANDERTHAL

I watch the young digital sapiens buzz about
their eyes and fingers connected
to spiffy machines that can do anything
and vortex back to my cousin Jack
and I tossing shells across Columbus Street
and cutting windows in massive
appliance boxes and catching chameleons
and dragonflies and romping through
the bamboo stalks of Audubon Park
and charging up Monkey Hill
and, well, engaging the real world--
though, now, who’s to say what’s real?

The real changes—and now you have
millions of fingers across the globe
texting transient messages, scrolling,
surfing the virtual universe, hooked
on being hooked, connected always
to what I think of as abstractions

just the other day I told one of my girls,
about to move to another state,
that I would buy her a cookbook
and she replied, don’t need it—
recipes are on the internet . . .
and surely they are, good ones too

nevertheless, I am the last Neanderthal
standing on the last safe speck of Europe,
my back to the sea (into which I may plunge)
as I gaze backwards at the beautiful ruins
and rejoice that I savored them, knew them,
touched and tasted and smelled them—
my only regret, having no regrets

 

DRY

The well has run dry.
You’re lapping condensation
from the mirrors, licking dew
off blades of grass, eyeing
the moisture on her lips.

It happens—but you’ll spot
another falcon soon, hear
a new Bach motet, gaze
upon Christina’s world again,
 re-read Ode on Melancholy—
that Temple of Delight.

The fuse will light
on its own accord,
an explosion sure to follow—
and the dark sky will blaze
with tongues of fire.