Poem #27
Jéanpaul Ferro

                                           
 I read poetry by poets who have never met ten 
 Puerto Rican girls singing and dying at a funeral;

 never saw an old man about to slit the throat of one 
 of his own fine goats. 

 Have you ever seen a man take the life of his own wife 
 with a club?
 
Have you ever seen one wave take the life of ten thousand 
men, women, and children like they were simply dust? 

I have seen things that a slip of paper cannot hold.

I have kissed the brunette hair of the woman that I was 
in love with while she was lying there in her casket. 

I have written a song for my son who died at age three.

I have remembered long goodbyes like they were ten 
thousand winters in Soviet Russia.

I have seen tanks run over a man until he was down to 
nothing.

I have seen a field piled high with the pale limbs of men 
and women who were stacked up like cord wood like they 
did not even matter.

I have seen things in the nature of man that I wish I could 
erase from my eyes, so this page could be blank--
 
     but it isn’t.