National Poetry Month - Day 30: Teacher Appreciation Day pt. 3: Irving Feldman

THEY SAY AND THEY REPEAT

"For now." "For the time being." "While this lasts."
Invoking time's passages (decaying, crumbling
under the lightest, the instant footfall),
they say and they repeat such halfhearted phrases
against the Absolute, which rises newborn
in vows, in devotion, and already has
overwhelmed them and refreshes everything
- even their unbelieving protestations -
with the new life's firstness without end:
for now, forever, for the time being
forever, while this lasts forever.
--


THE PARTING

Though the heavens shall undergo revision
and new constellations wheel into space
their fresh, unfabulated imagery,
they will not hide the blacked-out sky they brighten.
--

both poems from Beautiful False Things (Grove Press, 2000)