Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, FAR AWAY, by JANE MILLER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

FAR AWAY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: There is weeping as is customary and good
Last Line: Lover no children no poetry
Subject(s): Cities; Grief; New York City; Urban Life; Sorrow; Sadness; Manhattan; New York, New York; The Big Apple


there is weeping as is customary and good
the lively sitting on boxes
inside the complex overlooking the bridge
I shall have to sacrifice
one of my few intakes of air
to drag him into the coffin room
and choose the right oak come ye
hear the weeping in and of New Jersey
the chosen bent earthward ransacking the woods
unprepared for the tide and wind
until I am like unto him
American Jewish prosperous and free
except for death the freeway below
blasting and blowing us senseless
over a meal mud-tongued I pray
his soul be blessed and returned to work
so that which is decent and innocent
shall not be torn from me limb by limb as I dig
deeper into debt and longing and thereafter
despair holy the father and memorable
his merciful acts of the hearth and household
laboring fruitlessly in the unstocked
and when stocked uncategoried warehouse
the Bronx of our sorest complaint
who shall be judged according to his deeds
his thoughts and his offspring o especially
those stock phrases and incantatory lines
we represent on earth as we are in heaven
rotten little verses transformed by the decent
the good and the young into hymns
of detonated twilights along toxic shores
innocent songs about nothing nobody
who lived nowhere and had no neighbor no
lover no children no poetry





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