Farewell of a Cottonwood

Almost for a century
A majestic cottonwood tree,
Lonely and salutary,
Waved its leafy branches to the sky,
Adorning the corner where
St. Catherine Street
And Lansdowne Avenue meet
In Montreal.

This giant old poplar of the city
Survived urban growth
And the spread of factories.
It towered to soothe, not to seethe,
Truly a magnificent poem in chlorophyll
Which helped the people of Westmount
To breathe.

Yet the tree had been assaulted
By the stress of pollution
By severe ice storms and draughts,

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poem by Paul Hartal
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From Plane to Sphere

They all tried.
They tried to free Euclid of every flaw.
At Bach’s time Girolamo Saccheri did
And Adrien-Marie Legendre later.

Unconsoled,
Pitying himself and all mankind,
Farkas Bolyai came back
With broken mast and torn sail.

He came back from the voyage
To the reefs of the infernal Dead Sea.

He traversed the bottomless night,
Devoting his life to the search for truth,
Trying to prove Euclid’s fifth postulate
And reach the parallels.

At the beginning he warned his son
But later he encouraged, even urged him

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poem by Paul Hartal
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Meaning and Eternity

Don’t tell me
This life is without focus and logic
Don’t tell me
This life is elsewhere
Immersed in uncertainty of destination
Rocking back and forth on cosmic trails.
Don’t tell me
That love is not eternal
And the end of life is death.

How can I agree with you?
The substance of the psyche is unknown.
Brain, cognition and matter
Remain a more profound conundrum
Than the riddle of the sphinx.
And is not the conjecture
That there exist forms
Of indubitable knowledge
Just a logical error, a misconception?
Is it not that somewhere reality

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poem by Paul Hartal
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The Moon Remembers the Astronauts

Neil Armstrong arrived first,
Landing the lunar module of Apollo 11
At the Sea of Tranquility
On July 19,1969.
“That’s one small step for man,
One giant leap for mankind”,
He said,
And Edwin Aldrin stood next to him.

Later others came.
In all a dozen men walked on the moon
Perturbing her pristine lot with rhythmic dockings.
Conrad, Bean and Mitchell,
Scott, Irwin, Young and Duke were there,
Strolling in moon dust, before Schmitt and Cernan
From the crew of Apollo 17
Touched down in the Taurus-Littrow valley
On a December day of 1972.

But since then human foot did not step on the moon

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poem by Paul Hartal
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The Ghost Machine

Wittgenstein took a sip from his tea.

"You're wrong Descartes, I can tell you,

because body and mind are one".

"Wittgenstein is right", seconded Ryle.

He looked very angry

and shook his head as he continued:

"In claiming that your thoughts are separated

from your body you created a dogma

of the ghost in the machine."

"Gentlemen", Descartes said, "relax.

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poem by Paul Hartal
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Scarlet Flower

The East is Red at the Great Wall.
My heart and soul yearningly-long
For my Scarlet Flower all day long
My love is magenta blood
It burns with crimson flames.

Scarlet, my beautiful beloved
Your dark almond eyes
Glow in tender purity and passion
With balmy warmth and devotion.

And we walk around ancient Xi’an
Kuomintang General Chiang Kai-shek
Was captured here in nineteen thirty six
At the foot of the Hills of Lishan.

Now the camera has another film roll
And you pose for the picture where long ago
Tang Emperor Xuanzong’s concubine
Lady Yang Guifei used to stroll.

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poem by Paul Hartal
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The Chestnut Tree (For Anne Frank)

On a winter morning
you climbed the ladder to the attic with Peter.
He chopped wood for about a quarter of an hour
and you watched him silently.

Then you looked out
from the open window
and marvelled at the stunning views of the city,
the roofs, the streets and the canals of Amsterdam.

An azure sky curved down
kissing a pale blue horizon
and white seagulls with outstretched wings
were gliding on the wind.

Standing bare in the inner garden
Shiny silver drops perched on the branches
Of the lonely chestnut tree
near the house at Keizersgracht 188.

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poem by Paul Hartal
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Whose Life is Worth More?

'Whose life is worth more? ' the SS officer asked.
Jacob Kogen did not answer.
In the eerie silence that ensued
the SS man drew his pistol.

'Tell me', he said, playing with the weapon,
'Whose life is worth more?
Yours? Your wife's? Your children's,
or the life of a stranger? '

'All human lives are equal', Kogen replied.
'You mean the life of a Jew and a non-Jew
has the same value? ' the SS officer asked.

'God created all human beings
equally entitled to their lives', Kogen said.

'In that case you will provide me 7,000 Jews',
the SS man said.

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poem by Paul Hartal
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Nurse in Evergreen of Absence

My nurse, my blessed nurse
In evergreen of absence
You breast-fed me, nurtured me
But now my confidence is shaken
My tranquillity vanished, taken.

I extend my arms toward you
Please, lift me up, hold me tight
Yet you just stand in the square
As I cry and weep to no avail
No matter how much I kick the air
I beg: Lift me up, hold me right
All in vain, a rope of sand
You are firm, ignore my plight.

I cry and scream and kick in rage
Still undeterred you stand your place
But now why rivers of tears pour down
From your eyes over your face?

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poem by Paul Hartal
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Angel in Transit

I arrived at the airport under dark
Overcast skies. I had a night flight to catch
From Amsterdam to Budapest.

And as I waited
Through the small hours,
The Schiphol Airport
Became quite deserted.

I felt lonely and sad.
My wife just died
And I was depressed.

I waited for my plane
In an almost empty waiting room
When suddenly, to my great surprise,
A pretty young woman seated herself
Next to my chair.

I found this rather strange

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poem by Paul Hartal
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