Sunday, February 2, 2020

Gift Shop Idols - poem

Lawrence Hall
mhall46184@aol.com
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

Gift Shop Idols

                    How sharply our children will be ashamed…
                    Remembering how in so strange a time
                    Common integrity could look like courage

-Yevtushenko, “Talk”

They were neither ancient nor beautiful
Someone procured them and said that they were so
Those gift shop idols before which poor weaklings bowed
Grotesques which glorified neither God nor man

(Splash)

But there are many other golden calves
And most of them lurking within ourselves
Littering our souls with rubbish and sludge
There’s much in us that needs tossing away

(Splash)

If we stand upon the Ponte San Angelo
And look down to the mud –
                                                 we might see ourselves

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