John Guzlowski
Two Poems
Danny
He wasn’t even one of my
students
Just one of my advisees,
a shy fellow
And a slow talker. When
he first came in
Two semesters ago, I
thought he was slow
In other ways too, but
his grades
Have been strong. He’s
smart enough.
Today, he came to say
he’s been called up
With the local National
Guard unit,
Boys from Mattoon, Neoga,
and Tuscola,
Boys from small farms and
small towns,
And he was worried about
his registration
For classes next
semester. Would he be able
To cancel it and get his
tuition money back?
I called the registration
office. He wasn’t
Their first, and I told
him what they told me.
You’ll need to sign some
forms, and cancel
Your housing and then
check in with the cashier.
And he thanked me for
helping, but I couldn’t
Speak, so I just took his
hand in mine, and held it.
I Dream of My Father as He Was
When He First Came Here Looking for Work
I wake up at the
Greyhound Station
in Chicago, and my father
stands there,
strong and brave, the
young man of my poems,
a man who can eat bark
and take a blow
to the head and ask you
if you have more.
In each hand he holds a
wooden suitcase
and I ask him if they are
heavy.
He smiles, "Well, yes,
naturally. They are made
of wood," but he doesn’t
put them down.
Then he tells me he has
come from the war
but remembers little,
only one story:
Somewhere in a gray
garden he once watched
a German sergeant chop a
chicken up
for soup and place the
pieces in a pot,
everything, even the head
and meatless feet.
Then he ate all the soup
and wrapped the bones
in cloth for later. My
father tells me,
"Remember this: this is
what war is.
One man has a chicken,
and another doesn’t.
One man is hungry and
another isn’t.
One man is alive and
another is dead."
I say, there must me
more, and he says,
"No, that’s all there is.
Everything else
is the fancy clothes they
put on the corpse."
John Guzlowski teaches at Eastern Illlinois University.
His poems about his
parents experiences in Nazi Germany appear in his books Language
of Mules
(DP Press, 1999) and Jezyk Mulow i inne wiersze (Biblioteka
Slaska, 2002). |
