Donald Mager
3 poems
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from Helping Verbs Work: Solutions to an Old Equation
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Solution #7
...........Because it is natural, my
“I cannot” is big and its beingness within me
is big. Like the aorta’s pump, the charge that surges
...........the heart’s clock, the lungs’ sacks that
...........inflate and collapse, it is
inevitable and alive. So why does “I cannot”
not boast? Why is modesty its face? And why are its
...........actions wounds and not badges?
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Solution #8
...........Why is “I cannot”
so precious? Why, like the clarion flights of wedge upon wedge
of geese, are its embassages so vibrant? At the moment that
...........its denotation
...........stuns the silence, with
hardly a sign to alert it, “I cannot” is as pristine
as ice bored from the core of a glacier. How could it not be
...........precious—not be hard?
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Solution #11
What is this “I will not” with its gorgeous plumes?
...........Look! it strides like some hetaera whose
...........chains are replaced with ropes of pearls and
onyx beads. Look! how it lolls in performance
and stagings and haloing lights and applause!
...........How can we not be seduced? How can
...........we not adore “I will not’s” dazzling
entries, poses, and pathos-enflamed farewells?
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return to sawbuck 1.8
**
Donald Mager teaches at Johnson C. Smith University and has published poems and German, Czech and Russian translations for over 45 years. Recent poems have appeared in Kakalak, Main Street Rag, Eclectica and Ezra. His books are To Track The Wounded One (1987), Glosses (1992), Borderings (1996), That Which is Owed to Death (1996), Good Turns (1999), and The Elegance of the Ungraspable (2001). He wrote the libretto for Marc Satterwhite’s opera Akhmatova.
**
from Helping Verbs Work: Solutions to an Old Equation
**
Solution #7
...........Because it is natural, my
“I cannot” is big and its beingness within me
is big. Like the aorta’s pump, the charge that surges
...........the heart’s clock, the lungs’ sacks that
...........inflate and collapse, it is
inevitable and alive. So why does “I cannot”
not boast? Why is modesty its face? And why are its
...........actions wounds and not badges?
**
Solution #8
...........Why is “I cannot”
so precious? Why, like the clarion flights of wedge upon wedge
of geese, are its embassages so vibrant? At the moment that
...........its denotation
...........stuns the silence, with
hardly a sign to alert it, “I cannot” is as pristine
as ice bored from the core of a glacier. How could it not be
...........precious—not be hard?
**
Solution #11
What is this “I will not” with its gorgeous plumes?
...........Look! it strides like some hetaera whose
...........chains are replaced with ropes of pearls and
onyx beads. Look! how it lolls in performance
and stagings and haloing lights and applause!
...........How can we not be seduced? How can
...........we not adore “I will not’s” dazzling
entries, poses, and pathos-enflamed farewells?
**
return to sawbuck 1.8
**
Donald Mager teaches at Johnson C. Smith University and has published poems and German, Czech and Russian translations for over 45 years. Recent poems have appeared in Kakalak, Main Street Rag, Eclectica and Ezra. His books are To Track The Wounded One (1987), Glosses (1992), Borderings (1996), That Which is Owed to Death (1996), Good Turns (1999), and The Elegance of the Ungraspable (2001). He wrote the libretto for Marc Satterwhite’s opera Akhmatova.
