Charles Hood, In the Face of Modernism
“I Cry for Cicero”
The feel of the ground fifty feet from the water
Is unlike the swell of the sea,
Or the look in your eyes in a light drizzle,
Or the Catacombs underground
Or the feel of the day
When the day is closeted by memory.
I will never desert my hands,
They are a part of my memory,
More substantive than anything written
And they speak to me. I cry for Cicero
Whose hands were nailed to a wall.
The feel of our hands on a day of hard work
Chopping wood or plowing or digging
Roots in a field is worth twenty days in sunlight.
If you let it go now you will never recapture
The phantom rhythm that is in the wind
On a starless night
Alone
Stepping over broken limbs
And around downed trees.
What is it that is carried
In a gust suddenly occurring
With your hands tight at your side?
_______________________
Zeke Sanchez