Angels and Devils

to Andrea Jarmai

Beneath the hackneyed prose of the petition
you sent me I sensed a vague stirring
which in some circles passes for thought.

According to the author the ravening wolves,
the multinational pimps,
would halve the rainforest to chips.

At the risk of tainting our messages further
I posed a question:
What is the price of chips to the price of planks?

I’d rather err on the side of the angels you wrote
and it only takes a second to err
which surprised me

that you should let your seconds spill from your pockets
piling up in years indifferently devoted to correct
or erroneous efforts. This is not the poet I heard.

I responded with undisguised fatigue:
One hardly knows these days, Ms. Jarmai
the angels from the devils.

Mr. Goorevitch, your chided, you are using a euphemism
I told you I have three little ones at home
and you woke them when you called.

Next I responded by telling you
I am unread uneducated and illiterate;
my triplet sister reads and writes for me.

You had no answer, not for quite a while.
I was working on a letter at the time
on behalf of my mentor’s widow.

I see now that he was a “native artist”
something he never referred to
in the fifteen years I knew him.

I didn’t have a bedtime, he said,
We’d run around wherever we pleased
and come home when we got tired or hungry...

All artists have this in common:
A perfect childhood
suddenly cut short…

The young person dreams a better world than he lives in
then he learns to bring it out
That's his art.

When I became involved in politics he feared
there would be one less voice calling for a different world
made from the inside out.

Why must you rage against the despoiler
When you yourself are able
To recover your innocence?


© Dan Goorevitch, 2004