First Things RSS Feed - Joseph S. Salemi

To a Decorative Dwarf in the Garbage

Wed, 07 Feb 2018 00:00:00 -0500

Perhaps you’ll find a home in some back yard
Beneath a poplar, or beside an ash;
How could those soft suburban hearts grow hard
And leave you stranded in the morning trash?

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Your Grandmother's Verse

Sun, 01 May 2016 00:00:00 -0400

She writes it with a quill pen, so they say,
On cream-smooth vellum (paper she refuses).
A photo of three granddaughters at play
Sits on her desk to supplement the Muses.

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The Old Story

Mon, 01 Dec 2014 00:00:00 -0500

She loved him in the way girls only can
At sixteen, with a maelstrom of desire.
She lingered on his every word. He’d fan
Her glowing embers into open fire.

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Babeuf at the Scaffold

Wed, 01 Jan 2014 00:00:00 -0500

François Noël Babeuf (1760–1797), known as “Gracchus,” was a French revolutionary and social incendiary. He was the instigator of Babouvism , an ideology of ferocious, leveling terrorism to bring about radical equality. He was guillotined by the French Directorate. Babeuf is honored as a hero by Communists of all stripes.

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All Gone

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0500

quam magnus numerus Libyssae harenae lasarpiciferis iacet Cyrenis

”Catullus, 7

Silph-bearing Cyrenaica, said a poet,
Alluding to a plant now long extinct.
The coastal plain of Libya could grow it
And nowhere else. The herb had a distinct
Fragrance of rosy fennel, with a whiff
Of spiciness, as if the gods had planned
To grace this stretch of desert with one gift
That made up for the scorpions and sand.

The helpless herb fell victim to our tastes”
Human greed soon harvested it all.
The fields of sylph turned into barren wastes
Where sunbaked serpents writhe, and lizards crawl.
The last surviving stalk was sent to Rome
Where Nero ate it with a golden spoon.
Meanwhile, back in the plant’s ancestral home,
Saharan death spread northward, dune by dune.

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For Benson A. Koenig (1912_1997)

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Battery A, 10th AART Battalion, U.S. Army
North Africa and Italy, 1942“1944

Those last three days, reciting from memory
Cicero and Vergil, you could quote
Long passages of Latin poetry.
It left us stunned. The only antidote
To poison in your flesh was blessèd words.
No other good thing comforted you when
Pulsating life, just like a flock of birds,
Gathered its wings to fly. The deaths of men
Can be as silent as the moon’s eclipse,
Spectrally speechless as fields after battle,
Loud as the riven sky’s apocalypse
With thundering noise”or mindless as a rattle.
Benson, your answer to encroaching dark
Was lustrous language, flaring like a spark.

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Charity’s Gift

Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:00 -0400

Pinioned here, I look downwards to see
My mother weeping in unfettered grief
Her heart transfixed by swords, beholding Me
Hang from this branch like autumn’s final leaf.

Disciple John-how much more than the rest
My soul smiles on him in completest love!
Mother and friend, by misery oppressed,
Huddle and hunch together. Raised above

This scene of bleeding spirits, I can make
No sign of recognition or concern
Except to speak out from My wooden stake
And give them to each other, for I yearn

To show the world how caritas unties
The bond of blood and flesh, and doing so,
Entwines a new knot even as it dies.
I bid you, mater dolorosa , go

And seek Me in the lambs that I hold dear:
The captives ransomed by My bitter cup-
For through this gift I make love’s mandate clear:
Go wash each other’s wounds, and bind them up.

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