John Horváth, Jr.

Blue Lioness
Indifference to Names
Enclave

BLUE LIONESS

szabadsag, szerelem! E ketto kell nekem.
freedom, love! These I crave.

To a lover about to escape into the thicket of time,
you must know that being here now is no promise
that you will be real to me when after I wake
in the morning you are gone.

After the dream come the routine tasks of reshuffling
memories back to make room for desires yet fulfilled.
Be as you must part of my life past; admonish yourself
that nothing real can escape to the thicket of time.

Either do not escape me this time or be dreamlike.
I neither escape nor dream but I keep you with me
(Blue Lioness, sleek huntress of night, morning
is harsh without real sunlight and without you
there is little sunlight at dawn).


INDIFFERENCE TO NAMES

Her words the sparrows in branches spoke,
above the elmwood, flew in the cold stone,
murmured in the rockbound corner of town
where the old Sundays gathered to picnic
on the remains of Saturday adolescents
who had come to test love nights before
family communion and to eat the sins of the dead
in souls of birds clattering the elmwood branches.

Here where I'd been a Saturday boy
I with my father unloved came
to terms in this place where he lay
beside her under the tree; I said,
son, these are my father's bones
and my mother's flesh and blood
not made for stone on the forehead
but for trees planted in the heart.
In our hands from their hands take
the cross and let them hold seed
that will ramify among sparrows
there in the branches eating worms
that on these morsels fed and rose
from soggy earth after slight rain.

Here I was one of the Saturday boys
testing love with a sparrow of woman;
I was the motherless one who slew
what little hope we shared for manhood,
spilling the first seed behind headstone,
ashamed; I was the one who had known
no greater love beyond my father's hand
that so quickly withdrew
when I almost was a man
stepping from this cold corner
into the world around with her words
like sparrows in my heart speaking
the clatter of that promise love might
have brought me, what father had
always loved--an idea of love unending.
And so, my son, my father's name,
his bones, my blood, his cross and tree,
my son, these will be yours; listen
to the courage of the sparrow in a tree.


ENCLAVE

How they hate the prissy Pole girls,
better-than-thou Turks and Bulgars,
Blacks see them all as White semen
jacked-off on the face of their city:
Tch'Kaga bro's n Shy-town sista's,
don't you touch nor taste that blood,
do not at all with likes of Whitey,
do despise the slaver in them, they
the white-trash kids from Whiting.
Don't you smell the garlic in 'em,
don't you hear their Sunday sinnin',
don't you see 'em dancin' goosestep,
these be dumb and tainted whitefolk
somehow outside crazy patchwork;
don't you go and give'm comforts,
they just ain't learned they surely bigots.
Stay away from dumb, tainted Whitey;
them just White-trash kids from Whiting.
We are Blackstone and Blue Island,
all the streets of Gary likewise,
this is a nation of the black race.
My papa also works the steel-mill…
We are blackmen, hate the honkey…
we detest our Anglo bosses…
We are blackmen, not like Whitey…
you have become like Anglo Yankee,
bigot, hater who calls me honkey

lips that were black wine
breasts full of black wine
songs of the black bird
I have tasted

from among rye birds of the field,
black against the green and gold,
rise when I pass, by dreams disturbed

look at my workmen's hand
that has touched the blackbird
the wine of its breast held

with the knife that cuts your bread
the names of blackbirds in oakwood
carved by this same hand that held
the goblet of its wine, the blackbird
breast, the dream of the open field

There are souls that move from Whiting
whiter than were born in man; lilies
of the valley though they toil, there're
souls still in the Region high-yellow
as the corn; Turk and Bulgar, Pole and Magyar,
Marco, Chavez, Rodrigo, Martineau are there
to replace their growing pains. Amigo,
you will also move into suburb;
you too with green lawn will blend.
Black birds snuggled safely in the rye field
will rise as you pass, by dreams disturbed.

Bring with you the raven, cousin;
bring with you the locust, cousin;
we must our fields make clear and open,
else we'll always be the peasant.

© 1999 John Horváth Jr.

Links to John Horváth, Jr.:
Publisher/Editor, PoetryRepairShop
Poetry Editor, Amateur Poetry Journal
and his bibliography