Sacrifice (a song of Auschwitz)
I clung to your hips
As they scourged us with whips
I kissed both your eyes
As they shut out the lights
I kneeled by your breast
As they stripped off your dress
I told you my prayer
As they cut off your hair
I gave out my heart
As they dragged us apart
I bargained with hope
As they massed in the smoke
I gave them my name
To keep you from the flames
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poem by Frank Bana
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American Lives
American lives
Are being wasted in Iraq.
It is entirely evident
Why, by whom
And how
But if you are a politician
In the USA
You have to issue an apology
If you utter the word 'wasted'
If you dare to voice the truth
At this late hour
It's like a fatal illness
For an imperial power
That can't bear to see the face
Of its own reality
To hear the dead and wounded
Lamenting the futility
After all this
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poem by Frank Bana
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Relative Poverty
In Ethiopia they sometimes say
How shameful and unethical it is
That people eat well and drink
In the super-luxury Sheraton Hotel
While children in white rags and mothers beg
Outside on the Addis Ababa streets
As for me I sometimes think
How shameful and unethical it is
That people eat so well and drink
In Europe and the USA
While children in white rags and mothers sleep
Outside on the Addis Ababa street.
poem by Frank Bana
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Seeking for your Shore (1974)
Northern men of ice and story:
Lay your shadows by the sand
Our mouths have closed for want of kisses
And now deny what you began
Southern men of moon and music:
Weave us sandals from the grass
Our skins have tightened since the summer
Too dry to breath in nature’s dance
Heir to the histories of your loving
I guess no culture holds a cure
For the free and landless alcoholics
Ever seeking for your shore.
poem by Frank Bana
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Snow Makes Everything Silent...
Snow weeps into the silence
The snow makes everything still
The traffic is muted, passing on air
Children play on, unaging
In the white moments of snowfall
Wild creatures perch on their nerves
Ploughmen and mailmen, pause unaccustomed
To know the effect and the call.
Simple, imploding in song
Unknowing of its disturbance
Transformation will come... but here in its time
Snow makes all that is lonely, belong
poem by Frank Bana
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Night Star
I saw a shooting star, a falling star tonight
All green and gold, a peacock tail
(Perhaps it was a satellite)
Anyway it made a sign
Impressing the silent night upon me.
And I knew only that I loved you
That I was in love, that I love you -
All my knowledge deriving from that
I could be young and brilliant again
Upon the flight
Of falling full in love
And rising still, once more
To live beside the solemn sign.
poem by Frank Bana
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Weightless Boughs
Lost among the tallest trees
Men drowning of the green
Bury me under weightless boughs
Where I may not be seen
So I will come to visit you
In your nights of peace
Talk with me to comfort me
Still youthful in your sleep
Out there on the motorway
The gridlock of the dawn
Here beside a cherry tree
A hoof of newborn fawn
Ducks beneath the willow tree
My widow weeping silently
You let me down so tenderly
Leaving me rest eternal.
poem by Frank Bana
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My Meatless Year
In my meatless year
I failed to eat an aggregate
of 17 turkeys, fifty-nine chickens
a dozen cows
and a litter of pigs
I could hope that they're happy now
cared for and alive somewhere
and did not meet their end
on somebody else's plate
trampled in their pens and cages
decomposed in a landfill in Delaware
forgotten victims of our failures
so a Happy Better Year
to my fellow surviving
sentient beings
those who are
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poem by Frank Bana
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Leaves (a song of exile)
Leaves fall across the pathways
Like a steady blowing rain
On the old ranch houses and new MacHouses
And it's cold in Connecticut, once again
I hear it's cold in England too
I am less than American, after all
I don't drive & scream for the Yankees
I remember how leaves of Autumn fall
I'll never learn all these written rules
Of shaven lawns and cleared debris
As if there were something innately flawed
In designs of nature, the heart of me.
poem by Frank Bana
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Lovers of Peace
What does it take
For a land to be at peace?
A mineral in the soil
A truce upon the streets
Natural defence, a desert or a sea
Alpine protection or great barrier reef
To keep the force of hatred in defeat?
Where fathers to their daughters, where good hearts stay connected
Politicians answering to those by whom elected
Where death and life are sacred
And the moon not forced to hide
Lovers of peace will stand together
Fearless
Side by side.
poem by Frank Bana
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