Author: carmenbugan

Do not point your gun at a child

 

Once you were a child too,

And your father must have carried you

On his shoulders, from where

You could look the grown-ups in the eyes.

 

Do not point your gun at a child

Who holds in her hand a bag of crisps—

Food her only weapon, her father’s shoulders

The only vantage point for this world

 

That burns in flames before her.

People have come to ask for dignity,

This girl must learn it is safe to ask

For a better life, do not point your gun at her.

 

Once you were a child too

And your father must have carried you

On his shoulders, from where

You could see the world you will live in:

 

Do not point your gun at this girl

Do not point your gun at her father,

Take off your helmet and look in their eyes

There is a love of life in them you can only see

 

If you do not point your gun at this girl,

Who is learning at a tender age that no man

Should kneel on the neck of another man,

That no one has the right to take another’s life.

 

June 1, 2020

Covid-19

 

Children are flowering

At the windows.

 

The blue butterfly

Gladdens the empty street.

 

Air and Music

 

Our lilac has bloomed.

All day long birds sing and call,

They are delicate and restless–

Letters hopping from word to word.

 

Words flee one language for another.

Poems arrive in the sleepless night.

Soon I will be fifty. I would have

Liked the world to be healthy.

 

I would have liked the chatter

Of friends in the garden,

Family to have flown in.

In my country peonies bloom.

 

May 15, 2020

Crossing the Carpathians with you

for my mother

 

 

Mountains and us clothed

In soft white fog,

Suddenness of cliffs.

 

You and I carve walking sticks,

Bursts of sun dust

Thousands of yellow and violet flowers.

 

Red and white polka-dot

Mushrooms among trees,

Strong smell of ferns and cones.

 

Stones in pots on our backs

Warnings to black bears,

We gather forget-me-nots.

 

Distant curves

Of snow and peaks

In the white of the moon.

 

Shepherds’ rain fast and thin

We empty the boots of water,

A bear licks out pots.

 

I know what it means to go

Anywhere with you: you are

The moss on which I sleep.

 

From Lilies from America

Alba

      For Alisa

 

 

Sculpting the marble block of time

This spring in the silent house,

 

Dreams of dear ones break the season

Into months filled with faces we wish

 

To hold in the palms of our hands–

Family and friends stranded other-where,

 

Memories of their laughter in our ears,

As Alba walks through the window.

 

*

 

But days crumble under the chisel.

Too much dust gathers while we await

 

Hope’s ministrations. Scattered, useless

Thoughts, a heavy sleepiness overtake us.

 

The robin in the cherry tree, cuckoo

Testing the bark, blue jay cawing by

 

The kitchen window; the dawn chorus

Is muted by the clamor in the head.

 

*

 

Alba walks over the sheets, blows

A kiss over the eyes that have not slept.

 

There is light in the corners, the spider blinks

In its net, the book spine is visible,

 

Here is a day rising from the block of time:

“Come,” says Alba, “see what you can find.”

 

My daughter sits on the threshold

Singing to the birds. She intones vowels,

 

Orioles send consonants back.

The hour fills with their song.

 

 

 

The House of Stone

In the village where I was born, we wish
A house of stone to shelter the heart of the marriage.

So here too, I wish you
Obstinate, strong love, unyielding and unending.

May you be in reach of each other when all seems lost,
May your tears and your smiles happen always face to face.

When you imagine that you have shared everything
May you know that you still have the rest of your lives
To do all of it again and again.

But now listen to the hurry of bells and
Look how petals of roses about the vineyard

Bring you the words, ‘husband’ and ‘wife’:
First words in your house of stone.

 

*This poem comes from my very first collection of poems, Crossing the Carpahians, and it was written for my friends Mark and Ella, on the occasion of their wedding in Adelaide. I still remember reading it in the vineyard at the ceremony.

My review of Carolyn Forché memoir What You Have Heard is True in Harvard Review

Poetry Reading in the time of Coronavirus, April 20, 2020

Fields

Orthodox Easter, 2020

 

In warmer places, where the sun lingers,

Fields offer the first harvest.

 

The farmer understood light’s labor

And the generosity of water:

 

Snap peas, strawberries, tomatoes,

Squash and green beans gladden the eye.

 

But this is not the usual season.

This year the farmer buries his harvest.

 

The tractor calls the crows to feast on

Earth’s fruit, crushed in the furrowed field.

 

*

 

Miles away the city parking lots are filled

With cars in which families wait for food.

 

Bird’s eye view shows them like toys in rows,

Figures with face masks and gloves

 

Place a box in each car with food flown in

From across the border. No one knows why

 

This is. The farmer plows the food

Into the soil while people starve in cars.

 

The hungry don’t go harvest

The fields, pay what they can.

 

*

 

The city streets are lined with trucks

Where hospital workers store the dead,

 

If each person could be remembered

With a fistful of flowers, the glasshouses

 

Would empty out. But this is not the time

For old prayers, rituals and incense.

 

We take away the bodies, following

The protocols for toxic waste.

 

Our world is sick this season, Lord, we’re sick

And dying, we plow our harvest in the fields.

 

*

 

My mother has kept the Lent as every year

And she has baked sweet bread.

 

We won’t go home for Resurrection.

The priest left the candles in the mailbox.

 

My father calls me “my little heart,” says

They can’t tell how this will end,

 

We recall the parable of the mustard seed,

We know the right time to plant

 

Is when the fields are plowed, and

Water from our tears is plentiful.