;.cSelected Poems, 6/90--1/91; "The Vision Thing"
;.l1,6,62,66,1,0,5,79,192,2,15,20,25,127,5,0,
;.l2,10,75,192,2,15,20,25,127,10,0,
;.l3,15,75,192,3,20,25,127,15,0,
;.l4,25,75,192,2,127,25,0,
;.l7,1,78,192,2,15,20,25,127,1,0,
"THE VISION THING":  SELECTED POEMS, JUNE 1990--JANUARY 1991                

                               Steve Amdur

------------------------------------------------------------------------MORE TALES OF MODI'IN 

"You ain't talked to me in 11 years
 and today all you said was,
 'Don't talk to Leon.'"

-----

Can do
       everything
in half the time
including shmira.     
     

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
POEMS TO CLAUDIA

sigh of thunderstorm
fluttering wings of a dove
red fox lopes through the grass

------

soft wind, summer clouds
rumble of a thunderstorm
red fox running home.

-----

watched by cows and mule
I sumble down from the pass
soft bells in the rain.


             (Passeo del Colombo, Val Blenio, 8/26/90)

--------------
*One day a poor student met a comely young woman of Moab, and followed herhome.  Then he remembered his duties and spurned her.  Quite a bit later,when he came to rainbow bridge to the pearl-light gates of heaven, hefound, as expected, a great sage robed in a long tallit waiting to greethim.  'Did you really not recognize me?' asked the Moabitess.

	Cf. Kitov, Book of our Heritage, on Book of Ruth

.p
CHAGRIN D'AMOUR


"Steve  I just lost another
 Steve; one            must  
 really be more care-
 -ful with her
 possessions."
                  (Brookline '79)
-----
*"Belied yourself
 only; I
 was, as you'd put it,
 'true'."     "And you
set to rout     merely
our   ration  of time."

----------

"The best-laid plens of mice and men"
derive, as in Of Mice and Men.
I've no-one now to show this to.

---------------
I gave my love three wishes.
She bade me wash the dishes.

----------
      "Hine ecquitavit"

Friday night again;
wonder where my woman gone
red squirrel loping.

-----

"I love you true
 but you must part
 for dropping bread-crumbs on the car-
 pet; yet we'll meet again some day,
 if that's what my housemates say.

------
*"garlic"
                      "Darling..."
Not darling, garlic."

-----

	The old Prarie Dog emerges from his hole, chirps to the Alps orthe Rio Grande Gorge, talks with his echo a while, and then goes back inagain.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
*That spayed cat, Madam,
ate your decaffinated tea.

------
*but a mind is always a volatile thing
shy as a cat and apt
to run away 

____

Honest Iago

Pity poseurs; respect affectation:
if angels fail
they fall and fizzle
out like meteorites; we
can't quit, have to shamble on dragging
bagmen's bundles. 

---------------
*Fumbling and losing things -- pieces of 
teeth mind and memory
I'm only surprised that age arrived
before I grew up.

-------
Frying bacon, honing poems --
trim off the fat.

------     
*I ride the rails as beige displays
of foliage float by, and toast
with tea displays of black-&-white striped cows
that jet-stream past me, relatively.

----- 

Resented for 50 years
your refusal to negotiate,
Time, but know now
relief at leaving
done deeds behind.

                   Harwich-Hamburg Ferry
                   Winter Solstice, 1990.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
.p

L'Arc de Triomphe
lonely as de Gualle
stands encircled
by a swirling moat
of endlessly encircling
autos.

-----

How Paris celebrates
each house where every poet died
of its high prices.

----
& President Ford V-8
        spake
in a great blaring of horns
unto humanity, saying:
We Rule, worms;
go Underground.

------
The sun scuttles across the grey sky
like a hedgehog corssing a snow-lined road.

                          (England, Dec. 11)

-----
*"Steve  I just lost another
 Steve; one            must  
 really be more care-
 -ful with her
 possessions."


-----
In deepest sympathy
2 Hamburg policemen
& 6 citizens
contemplate a wounded swan.

-----
In the first-class Hamburger subway coach
a gentleman sits
beside an attache case
stuffed with chocolate.

-----
Amusing a modern woman
by my covered head
passing the Plaza
last train stop,
Dammtor; Hamburg deportation.

--------

                               "this people mild politely smiled"
                                     Gilbert & Sullivan, Iolanthe(?)

The Great Synagogue of Hamburg lies
only in a photo, black on white
of a smirking factory worker or some such
near the Bimah, I suppose ---
   we may fast or go to the Opera
   but the villains have passed
   in a Cheshire cat's ass.

.a2
                                     November 9, 1990*
                                     Hamburg--Holland train
                                                              
                                     *November 9, 1938 was "Kristallnacht"


l7
Our Italian Catholic suburban neighbor's children once "did the job"
with a brand new remote-control-operated electric garage door
on our middle-aged spayed cat.
My mother asked, "Why would anyone want to kill a poor old shlump like that?"

--------


*My sheliach was a teenage girl in blue-jeans,
Korean, German father
dreaming of returning
to be Jewish in Israel.


		Hamburg 1/25/91

--------
