The Dangerous World

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The Dangerous World collects seventy-some poems written between 1934 and 1994. It was published by Another Chicago Press, but is now out of print.

Selected poems will be posted on this blog.

Night Prayer for Various Trades

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Night Prayer for Various Trades
      
Machinist in the pillow's grip,
Be clumsy and be blind
And let the gears spin free, and turn
No metal in your mind.

Long, long may the actress lie
In slumber like a stone,
The helpless words that rise from sleep
Be no words but her own.

Laborer, drift through a dark
Remote from clay and lime.
O do not tunnel through the night
In unpaid overtime.

You out-of-work, walk into sleep.
It will not ask to see
Your proof of skill or strength or youth
And shows its movies free.

And may the streetcleaner float down
A spotless avenue.
Who red-eyed wake at morning break
All have enough to do.
     
Enough to do. Now let the day
Its own accountings keep.
But may our dreams keep other time
Throughout our sprawling sleep.
   

Changes of Climate

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Changes of Climate

Once I lived in polar night,
Burned summer fat for winter light.

When my store was nearly gone,
There came someone like Tropic sun.

I shed my clothes in so much heat
And the ice-mountains in retreat

Fled downhill over river-banks,
Sweat streaming from their white-skinned flanks.

Now, though all around I see
A fragrant moist community

Of fevered growth and sudden storm
Where insect generations swarm

And flesh is eager to divide
And fruit is roundly multiplied,

I dare not lose my Arctic skill,
My strategies against the chill:

What if the fire quit that face?
What if that sun shifted its place?

What if my clouds obscured its light?
What if I woke to daylong night?

Cold would then constrict this scene
And pinch the bud and bleach the green

And scatter those bright birds, all lost
In one shotgun blast of frost.

The giant tendrils withering,
Flesh shrinking into shivering,

Lichens and one stunted tree
Replacing this dense canopy,

And then, upon their well-worn track,
The ice-monsters lumbering back.

Copyright ©Naomi Replansky

Foreigner

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Foreigner

He is alone and unarmed
And has no vessel for his vanity.
His curse is spoken, but nothing trembles.
His praise like rain runs down the gutters.

Laughter seizes him and he is silent.
Grief shakes him, he hides it in a stare.
And he can change nothing where he passes
Though he walk barefoot through bristling events.

A room, a sea, a street, a war,
Gather within and sinew him for speech
Richer than this, but who will hear him out.
O who will know him unto nakedness.

Copyright © Naomi Replansky

The Weeping Sea Beast

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The Weeping Sea Beast

Tentacled for food,
You range your underwater neighborhood.

To look, to like, to eat, to break your fast!
Before you move an inch an hour is past,

Your prey is past, a swarm of scales, an eye,
A round fish eye, a rude unblinking eye.

You close on nothing; slowly you untwine
Your many arms and trail them through the brine.

Now sailors at the surface hear you cry,
And from those heights they cannot fathom why.

For there are agile creatures all around
Who dart like flames through this rich hunting ground

And others who lie still and gaping wide
And make no move; but armies come inside.

Copyright ©Naomi Replansky

Housing Shortage

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Housing Shortage

I tried to live small.
I took a narrow bed.
I held my elbows to my sides.
I tried to step carefully
And to think softly
And to breathe shallowly
In my portion of air
And to disturb no one.

But see how I spread out and I cannot help it.
I take to myself more and more, and I take nothing
That I do not need, but my needs grow like weeds,
All over and invading; I clutter this place
With all the apparatus of living.
You stumble over it daily.

And then my lungs take their fill.
And then you gasp for air.

Excuse me for living,
But, since I am living,
Given inches, I take yards,
Taking yards, dream of miles
And a landscape, unbounded
And vast in abandon.
And you dreaming the same.

Copyright © Naomi Replansky

Gray Hairs

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Gray Hairs

Gray hairs
crowd out the black.
Not one of them
brings me wisdom.

Wrinkles
provide no armor.
I still quiver
to anyone's dart.


Copyright ©Naomi Replansky