Weekly Poems by Nicholas Gordon: on Hanukkah, Season's Greetings, Love, Politics, Religion

CHEERFUL LIGHTS DANCE WITHIN YOUR WINDOW

Cheerful lights dance within your window,
Happy to dispel a bit of darkness.
As you display your faith, remember when
No light was light enough to light the wind.
Underneath our joy there must be sorrow
Kindled by a willing act of witness,
A turn to share in love again, again
Horrors that we would not leave behind.

SILENCE IS A QUALITY OF SNOW

Silence is a quality of snow.
Eager to hear it, I trudge through virgin fields,
Awake at the heart of nothingness, and so
Seized press on, as the world's white oneness yields.
Oh, what happiness! Though the deadly cold
Numbs the extremities, traveling inward.
'Ere it reaches the heart, I turn, the old
Songs singing in my head as I head homeward.
Give thanks, then, for the unforgiving silence,
Revelation in white swaddling clothes,
Eden's seed asleep as we find radiance
Even in the bleak December snows.
To be is to contain the holy light,
In nothingness the being ever born,
Never more the locus of delight,
Grace the equal gift of day and night,
Shining like a candle until dawn.

I LOVED YOU, BUT I COULD NOT WAIT FOREVER

I loved you, but I could not wait forever.
I made my choice, but you would not make yours.
In some delays, a year's as good as never,
As what is lost no change of heart restores.
I love you still, but cannot think of you
Without the bitter longing of regret.
This, too, will pass, I know, and time renew
The innocence one needs to love, and yet ...
You were my once, that never comes again,
A happiness untouched by any past.
Whatever love comes next comes with the stain
Of knowing well this love might well not last.
Goodbye, my love! I hope someday you'll be
Ripe for the love you could have had from me.

AMELIA

Amelia is a worker bee,
Making marvelous honey!
Each moment buzzes with her song,
Love's labor lasting all day long,
Intent on joy, not money,
Alive most gracefully.

FIFTY-ONE

Fifty-one's a broad, slow-moving river
In between the fall-line and the sea:
Flowing full of rich, red-tinted clay,
Taking much encountered on the way,
Yet looking towards the teeming shores to be.

One must be a taker and a giver:
Needing, loving, wanting, swept away.
Even rivers cannot help obey.

HOW MIGHT LIGHT HAVE COME FROM NOTHING

How might light have come from nothing,
Absent any uncaused cause?
Nothing cannot lead to something
Under Reason's well-known laws.
Knowledge is as knowledge does,
Knowing only what we know.
A cause uncaused is caused by nothing!
Here again around we go.

TORTURE IS THE RASH OF THE DISEASE

Torture is the rash of the disease,
On which a diagnosis may be based.
Regarding information one might gain:
Truth comes only through extended pain,
Uncovering the mange beneath the sleaze.
Restoring health requires each chain be traced
Even to the heart such horrors graced.