11 Poems by Nolo Segundo
BABYLAND
My wife and I
went to say hello
to her mother and
put flowers on her
grave
and as it was such
a vivid day shining
like life’s most
poignant dream (you
know, that feeling
you only get in late
autumn as the last
reluctant leaves
finally fall and old
man winter sends
hints of his coming
harsh arrival),
I suggested we go
for a quiet walk
through the large
silent park where
the dead reside in
undemanding patience.
We walked the long paths
of this community of souls,
stopping here and there
to read the grave markers
(and without telling my wife
I would compare their years
against my own, so often
amazed I had more, and
knowing my own youth of
unsweet carelessness, had to
wonder why).
Then we came upon a small
stonewall enclosure, with
a sign at its entrance:
BABYLAND
Within low walls of dead-cold
stone we saw the tiny grave
markers, most with but one
date beneath a name and often
an appellation (‘Little Bo’, ‘Our
Angel’, ‘My Lost Dream’)
though some had two dates,
usually only a few days apart,
sometimes a few months of life
were testified to.
As we left that saddest part of a
very sad place, I said to my wife,
‘It’s good they’re all together,
isn’t it?’
She nodded her head but turned
away so I could not see her eyes….
EMERGENCE
Once…
I took long walks through the Universe
making giant strides across formless space
(just the way a giant would)
thrilled to think if it never ended
it would yet be too soon.
People took me for a child,
were deceived by simple disguise
for I was seer, prophet, and beggar.
One day
as I was meandering across the Milky Way
movement stopped—I had touched the Fear
and froze fast to It
with all the desperate and mad ardor
of a melting icicle for the roof ledge.
Unseeing days string into beads of blind years--
I become the criminal courting his cell,
a burnt out Prometheus on his boring hill,
an ox of ignorance forever pulling a water wheel
(but there is no water), or to say it another way,
a sleepwalker who dreamt he was awake….
I stopped looking for escape,
turned a key to lock chains that never were
and existed for treading,
the endless treading through nothing
until a push and a long, long falling
through a tunnel filled with nightmare
and madness and tears—suddenly
to awaken like Alice did
from the dreams of ants
to the dreams of Emperors, Kings and Queens.
Now I wear life as a jewel around my neck
and enter only houses with many doors.
On Seeing an Old, Old Friend As One Plague Ebbs And Another Progresses
He came to the restaurant
with his 36 year old daughter
who I said looked radiant
in her first-time pregnancy.
We were eating outside
that rare summer day that
smelled more of heaven
than earth and my wife
and I had got there first...
so I had prepared myself
for meeting my friend
of half a century after
almost two years and
two major operations
on his part (a triple
by-pass and prostate
cancer as he neared
the ninth decade—
I almost wondered
if he was showing off,
a Superman of old age).
Still, my heart creaked
a bit when I saw old Gus
and young Kate coming
to our table: he was smaller,
slower, less exact in stature
and speaking and I had to
strain to hear him even
though he sat close to me
but none of that mattered
for a miracle happened—
the subtle but resolute
miracle found in the
bones of liking, the bones
of friendship and the
unbreakable bones of love
as all those months since
two old men last hugged
had vanished as though
we had dreamt that lost
time and now we were
once again awake….
Ludic
English is not a language
One can ever get ahead of—
Just too darn many words!
Like ‘ludic’ for example:
Playful, in the sense of
Spontaneous, without a
Real purpose. Sooo…
How come I never came
Across it in over sixty,
Yes, sixty years reading
Untold millions of words in
My beloved mother tongue,
The language I love,
The language I married.
Even spell-check never saw it,
Or else why would it underline
Little Ludic in red, like some sort
Of criminal who needs a good
Sorting out, a spell in scary
Word prison perhaps?
But if you try, really try,
You can find sweet Ludic
Laying low, hiding quietly in the
Big fat Oxford Dictionary, lord
And regent of all word books.
He lives there with his cousins:
Ludibrious and that stuffed shirt,
Ludibry, and Ludicro (no doubt
From the Italian side of the
Family) and, of course, the far
More famous Ludicrous who
Seems to want all the spotlight
For himself…words can be
So very selfish too.
I Have Been To Places Of Great Death
I have been to places of great death:
Walking the battlefield of Gettysburg,
As a lusty young man of no firm belief
Who stepped between the great rocks
Of Devil’s Den and felt his soul shudder
as though he had been a soldier there,
and died in fear a long, long time ago….
I taught my tongue to the gentle Khmers
As civil war raged and the killing fields
Were being sown—I left before the
Heartless murdering began, the killing
Of over a million: teachers and students,
Doctors and farmers, the old, the young,
Each with a photo taken before dying,
Their pictures taped to classroom walls.
And when I visited Hiroshima, now myself
Chastened by death’s touch, and knowing
My soul real, knowing of meaning absolute
And of unseen forces that work good or ill—
As I stood at the first ground zero, I once
Again shuddered to feel the pull of madness
(though I knew not if it was my own or some
Remains of that evil which brought the fire
And brimstone of a world wide war….)
But by then I knew I could pray, and so
Opened my desperate heart and sought
His mercy—and then I saw a sort of angel,
Who took me from that place of insanity,
Healing me while we wandered by the
Beauty of the Inland Sea as my storm
Calmed and left me, never to return….
I have been to places of great death, and
I have felt death’s cold, careless hands.
But I know now what death itself fears:
The Light, the light eternal which carries
Souls beyond time itself, like the winds
Of a Love exceeding all understanding.
The Caress Of Words
When I read a poem that breathes,
pulses with its own heartbeat,
relentless, compelling in its own desire—
I feel touched as by another, some
unseen hand brushing my hair,
lips as light as air licking the flesh
near my own sojourning heart…
and I return the caress as my hand
glides ever questing o’er the soft and
solid paper, my eyes rolling over the
printed page like a hawk seeking prey,
looking with the desire of the wild
at the naked words, unclothed by any
convention, unsoiled by any deceit.
A good poem is a lover—
a great poem, a great lover,
the kind you never forget.
On The Old In Clearwater, Florida
Old men attired in yellow wool sweaters,
yellow wool to play golf in.
Older hunchbacks pushing shuffleboard
with the tempo of a film in slow motion.
O marvel at the patience of those
who sip their past daily! Go, go
into a supermarket and they will
be there, shopping on social security
for small packages of life.
They wait for death
in this humid climate
like unwrapped mummies.
Look at them,
you who are not yet members
of their exclusive club
and behold the sum of life
tallied on those old faces,
for it is the amount of life
they have bought.
Some got shortchanged,
some value for their money….
My Doppelganger
We don’t meet often
and that’s okay—
it’s hard to meet yourself,
harder still when your twin
is some 50 years younger
and relentlessly reminds you
of all the mistakes you made
in your time of insouciance
and good looks when you got
pretty much whatever you went
after—girls, jobs, friends…
and all of them you left,
sooner or later, one way or
another...until that day you
were completely alone,
with madness pulling you
one way and death the other….
My doppleganger knows all this
because he was there, he has
always been there and now I
know I should have asked him
for help—but before I jumped,
before I took that leap not of
faith but despair, I did not, no,
could not believe him real and
so I did not know he was my
endless being, my atom of
eternity, my lost soul...
A Doctor Blind To God
My friend, a retired surgeon,
tells me he would like to believe,
in an almighty and loving God,
but claims science, annoyingly,
keeps getting in the way—so
I ask why, why is that?
After all, one is of this world,
the world of physics, of math,
the world of flesh and blood,
the world of nature, full of
contradictions, unpredictable,
noble, beautiful on occasion,
cruel and base at other times
[and I make clear to him, by
that I mean nature’s nature,
with its sunsets and rainbows,
hurricanes and earthquakes,
and human nature, with its
art and music and poetry and
war and genocide and slavery].
But God is not of this world--
in it, yes, through it, yes, yet
always unimaginably beyond,
a Being that is a Force that is
a Presence, that is the All…
so how could my friend, or
anyone who can think only
one thought at a time define
such a One? Or worse, talk
about God as though God
could be measured, weighed,
evaluated… captured by a
puny being whose existence
spans a handful of decades
and never really can know
its own mind completely?
Alas, my friend, the doctor,
just cannot see that science,
like art, music, poetry, and
that singular gift, sentience,
are just intimations of God….
Science and Faith
They are not natural enemies,
Nor were ever meant to be.
True, for a time, when faith
Was strong, science was bound,
Cowed, driven down—then,
Science began its growth spurt:
By leaps it enlarged, pulsing,
Tumescent, fed by Galileo and
Newton, Curie and Pasteur,
Sweet old Einstein and young
Oppenheimer with his bomb.
Now Faith is scorned by most
Scientists, an unreasoning as
They see it, closing their minds
As tightly shut as ever did the
Padres of the Inquisition. They
Worship reason, while believers
Drown in imagination, fantasies,
A Big Guy God, a soaring soul?
Show me, they shout, prove it,
They demand—reason be all,
They exclaim! Yet Science grew on
The back of imagination, and Faith
Loves reason like a sister, for we are
The seeing ones, and we are the blind.
We can hear God's whispers, but then
Are often deaf to the pleas of angels.
And what we think we know is never,
Never enough—we are always left
Wanting….so we can repair a torn
And damaged heart, but cannot open
It to love's incessant pulling….
The Love of God
When a man loves a woman,
Holds her warm flesh to his flesh,
And feels bound to earth itself,
Is that not the love of God?
When a mother clutches infant,
Amazed and bewildered, sensing
A bridge between two souls—
Is that not the love of God?
When a soldier under fire,
Fearful to his sweat, throws
His sweet life onto a grenade,
Is that not the love of God?
And when He went knowingly,
Willingly, to torture and death
To save a universe of souls,
Was that not the love of God?
Nolo Segundo is the pen name of a retired teacher [America, Japan, Taiwan, Cambodia] who became a published writer in his 8th decade in over 270 literary journals in 22 countries and has 3 poetry collections published in trade softcover: THE ENORMITY OF EXISTENCE, OF ETHER AND EARTH, and SOUL SONGS. These titles reflect awareness gained 55 years ago when he had an NDE whilst nearly drowning in a Vermont river: that he has, he IS a consciousness predating birth and surviving death—what poets since Plato have called the soul.