With these touches
we try to build
an edifice and a structure.
A frame
for our moments
and our memories.
But it all withers away
before the constant winds
of change.
Who are you,
what
were you?
A momentary configuration
in the ever shifting sands
of the implacable.
Are you the river stepped in,
or the passing form that stepped
into the river for a moment?
In the ever erasing
and renewing of existence,
we are lost.
gallagher
18Oct22
– on our return from Europe
We’re singing
with the kindergarten school teachers.
And the Moscow trees and sunlight outside
are all profoundly different
and yet so much the same.
From the top to the bottom,
they are organized and coordinated.
And from face to face
they are open and loving.
Now we are singing a Russian song and
now we sing an American one.
And outside the sunlight and trees
are the same.
But somewhere … somewhere outside,
are the missiles.
gallagher
Moscow, USSR
25 Jun 1987 #4
The Leningrad siege, 1941 to 1944, 900 days.
How green grows the grass and how softly wave the trees.
here, under these gray Leningrad skies.
The winter and summer sun, smiling,
the seasons turned,
and all the agony man can give himself
came to pass here.
The breeze tugs at me,
dim faces … and memories of families gone.
The grass grows so green
and people walk here through the memories of death.
They bring a child and they touch his soft cheek,
and they hold his small hand and they cherish his eyes.
Here, against these stones and these mass graves,
how could it be?
Wind, death, sun and child all here.
Mankind is surely asleep.
gallagher
21 Jun 87
“At the burial ground
of the victims of the siege”