Poems by Barry Seiler

 

All Rise

When we arrive, as we are,
we will remove our caps
as our fathers taught us,

turning them nervously
in our hands. He will calls us
my children. Like children,

we will bow our bare heads
and mumble our wants
to our shoes. Then he will say:

You are breaking my heart
with your ungratefulness.
He will hold out his hands

embracing thin air. Then
he will plead: What can I do?
Inconsolable he will stir

the ashes in his great fireplace,
his back to us, his shoulders
rising and falling like wings

on a fabulous beast
that will not fly. The ashes as well
will rise and settle back.

He will say:
Children fall to your knees.
And we will fall.

He will say: Children pray,
pray for your pitiful souls.
And we will pray fervently,

until he says: Cease.
And when he says: Rise,
children, rise,

we will rise, all rise.

 

Extras

This is the afterlife we were born for:
these couples strolling hand in hand
along a rear screen Seine;
these mobs, these doomed marching armies.
Let the stars have the close-ups.
Long after the camera has forgotten them,
we will march on.
Today we are battling peasants.
Tomorrow we are strewn corpses.
When the director shouts look menacing,
We shake our pitchforks.
We narrow our eyes until the set blurs
and we see death advancing.
When he orders us to look defeated,
we hang our heads, we shake them in disbelief.
Some of us cry woe, woe,
and the intertitle echos us.
Some of us, sensing the camera has found us
and our moment has arrived
shed, on cue, real tears.