Regarding Art

Sometimes, I, too, tell the ah's

of my heart one by one

like the blood-red beads

of a ruby rosary strung

          on strands of golden hair!

But my

poetry's muse

takes to the air

on wings made of steel

like the I-beams

               of my suspension bridges!

I don't pretend

              the nightingale's lament

to the rose isn't easy on the ears…

But the language

              that really speaks to me

are Beethoven sonatas played

on copper, iron, wood, bone, and catgut…

You can "have"

galloping off

in a cloud of dust!

Me, I wouldn't trade

for the purest-bred

              Arabian steed

the sixth mph

              of my iron horse

                         running on iron tracks!

Sometimes my eye is caught like a big dumb fly

by the masterly spider webs in the corners of my room.

But I really look up

to the seventy-seven-story, reinforced-concrete mountains

                   my blue-shirted builders create!

Were I to meet

the male beauty

"young Adonis, god of Byblos,"

on a bridge, I'd probably never notice;

but I can't help staring into my philosopher's glassy eyes

or my fireman's square face

                        red as a sweating sun!

Though I can smoke

third-class cigarettes filled

on my electric workbenches,

I can't roll tobacco - even the finest-

in paper by hand and smoke it!

I didn't —

        "wouldn't" — trade

my wife dressed in her leather cap and jacket

for Eve's nakedness!

Maybe I don't have a "poetic soul"?

What can I do

    when I love my own children

                               more

                               than mother Nature's!

Trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk (1993)