THERE WILL BE PEACE AT THE END OF THE WORLD

I have seen it in sad dreams & blue cafes, tasted it in the howl of wind weeping at streetcorners & sandwich shops, peace at the end of the world & I have felt it glow in the low dark secret places and in sunbright luncheonettes, spoons in clattering coffee cups, where working men go for 20 precious minutes of solace, a communion beer, sandwiches, soup, warm pie on cold plates, while bee-headed waitresses behind tired countertops contemplate their tips

Peace at the end of the world, I have seen it with my own eyes, held it in my hands & I bet you have too, at the end of the night shift, busboys piling chairs up on tables & the homeless turning back into shadows, a man with the mop walloping the floor with soapy water, bleach in your eyes the boss at the cash register & cook in the kitchen hanging saucepots on hooks

& outside on the boulevard rich women strolling past in highheels & furs taking their time or racing along in pursuit of hot lovers & cold appointments (O sweet liaison!) I see them too, thru grease & mirrors, thru smoke & window glass, they are magnificent, also captives to time, lost artifacts & grand civilizations going where daylight goes to where eternity bleeds what’s black & holy back into the world & all this stupidity ends, all this stupidity which surrounds us & fills the hearts of every woman & man past all holding

I have seen it and seen it, peace at the end of the world, all of us walking to the same metronome through sunshine & icy rai toward the light at the end of the world where peace returns

A BOOTSOLE WHITMAN

Lord let me live and die with an ax in my hand, cutting ax or splitter, equal to the drama of woodstock and fencepost, a fresh kindling animated kind of man with woodchips flying, true to the politics of my wild gray hair, stoop backed or straight, a man with an honest eye glinting into the light of spring itself

And my lungs afire, not gathering shadows or dust, cobwebs tossed, even the blackwidow spider brushed aside lovingly, Virginia Creeper fisting the ledge where the wood rotted out, a wabi-sabi kind of brush-hog man greasing the shed door and laughing while the fieldmice scurry

No more the rusty hinge nor floorboard collapsing, the stammering coruscation and spark of a man on a parcel of land he calls his own, though he knows it is the land that owns him, root rock and soil he belongs to the land, equal to the ax in hand, the love and the living after a long winter’s undoing, after the pine uprooted, after the black cherry toppled and a family of jackabbits suffering in the thicket

Equal to the sublime intelligence of the North American continent, no stranger to my calculations, ax in hand, this shaft of life in the plain palm of my hand, more Basho than Bunyan more Abraham than Astarte, a singlebladed man cutting through air, cutting through oakflesh and walnut, cutting through applebranch into the sap of life itself, which is my sap

A bootsole Whitman dizzy with the truth of outdoor labor, lungs filled to bursting, callouses ripening, responsive, admiring, frank

O once more chest high into the blackberry bushes! and the gods their own selves watching, admiring, measuring me in the defiant, sweat-dazzled sun

VAGABOND

He who plows, who seeds, he who celebrates,
he who is grateful for any kind of dawn,
spittoon kicker, roustabout, lumped in with
hobos and anarchists, servant of an ungrateful,
unmindful people, he who is cast aside
when the work is done, stranger in town
wearing coveralls and a red bandana
he who sleeps in simple alleyways
or travels light in boxcars, crossing
the grain-fed face of a continent
like a pair of headlights or a nun in prayer,
he who sweats it, who curses it, who
flaunts it, who conspires with the accidental
drift of life to survive, moisture in the air,
nourishment of his body, man of good conscience,
busted in the lung, exiled in his own land,
backbone and generosity, he who sleeps by
railroad tracks or behind a grain silo,
he who steps through the old terminus,
twisted and stubborn, a workhorse of a man,
a ball of twine, elementary man without regret
or manners, plain, plain, shooed away to the edge
of town, beaten by his own hands, crawfish on a slippery
rock and so what, a pushover, a slipknot, a swindler
and fastbreak, stares society down, species of one,
survivor, vagabond, gutter pup, stray, stoop-shouldered,
pinch-eyed, purloined apple, unexalted, unheeded,
he who does the necessary work and then moves on,
trading sweat for pay, ghost who was never there,
filling his lungs with the sawdust of borrowed air

George Wallace (b.1949 NY, USA), Writer in residence, Walt Whitman Birthplace. National Beat Poet Laureate/Next Generation Beat Poet (US). Honorary Doctorate, CiESART/Royal Academy 2024 (SP). Author of 45 chapbooks and eight spoken word albums, recognized and honored at major poetry festivals worldwide. Orpheus Prize (BG); Alexander Prize, Aristotle Medal (GR); Silk Road Prize, Poet of the Year (CN); Naim Frasheri Laureateship (MK); Corona d’Oro (AL); Naji Naaman Literary Prize (LB); Iraqi Abaya Award (ND); Clouzine International Music Award, PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Prize (US). Other major festivals include Medellin (CO), Ledbury (GB), Casablanca International (MAR); Mespotamia (ND); Turrialba (CRI); Lyric Recovery/Carnegie Hall (US).

Further info at Poets & Writers: George Wallace | Directory of Writers from Poets & Writers