POEMS BY DICK GALLUP
BETRAYAL 1939 STYLE
In this strange fragmented world blitzed with information
There are few things harder to bear
Than silence, so soon full of mocking voices,
The grating of ideas upon the ruined mind
Like the gnawing of insects deep within a tree
Where words run under cover into phrases
those phrases become men carrying meaningless baggage
Devouring sense into some mild porridge of rehashed thought.
You came, you saw, you departed
Piteous day clawing at the dawn
Breaking like the last wave on some forgotten stranded beach
Now lost far inland. So silence
Is like a desert, a blank in speech
A hiatus in time, a metronome in Poland
Somewhere that paused, quieted by a hand
As the sound of bombers grew into the whistle
Of bombs falling on the lost future.
BATTY AS THE DOVES THAT FLY
Reflective images were the darling of another age
Perhaps, as the Century turned
Shapes fluttered out of passing strangers
While neighbors at a cafe emitted and endless series
Of personalities
Quick pulses into the air
That sustained the likes of Ezra Pound
Who saw both before and beyond, it seems, in taste
And, no doubt, drew all his bright images
Out of the fruitful air.
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