Are There Ever Too Many Poems?
ARE THERE EVER TOO MANY POEMS?
Are there ever too many poems?
Will the world fall down
If there is one small poem more?
Here we are, my poem and I-
Sitting on a park bench
In the morning sun
In Jerusalem.
What could be holier
For an old Yid
than that?
poem by Shalom Freedman
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An Evening Poem
AN EVENING POEM
An evening poem
Waits for deeper darkness
A night poem knows blackness
As home.
A morning poem is light
An afternoon poem is thick with heat.
All times have a poem
And all seasons poems also
All lives are poems
And all stories also.
We all are and all know poems
Poems pervade us
And the universe.
It is night now
But when the morning comes
Its poem will overshadow now.
What a brave new world it is
With so many poems in it
And what a life-
With such deep sadness
Waiting forever to be unexpressed.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Poem -Written On The Small Pad
THE POEM / WRITTEN ON THE SMALL PAD
The poem/
Written on the small pad
In the almond tree park
Intersection Disraeli- Alkalai
The poem of the past days
The poem of the light – rain beginning,
Another Jerusalem poem-
Four- thousand years of Jerusalem poems
I from Troy, New York
Thirty- five years in Israel
Nearly sixty- eight years of age
Write.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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What Is A Jewish Poem?
WHAT IS A JEWISH POEM?
What is a Jewish poem?
‘Shema’ is a Jewish poem
Perhaps the Jewish poem-
'Shmoneh Esreh' is comprised of Jewish poems
Nineteen prayers as one-
Our history is filled with Jewish poems-
From the beginning with Abraham and Sarah
Those who have given so much beyond our understanding -
Jewish poems everywhere -
Is each Jewish life a poem and a story also?
Or is it only those who give something to our people and history
Who are worthy of Poetry?
I have known many Jewish poems
People the great world will not know the names of
People who whether they walked humbly or not
Made the lives of others better in some way –
Kindness is perhaps the ultimate Jewish poem
And Justice also-
And Jewish poems are not without their contradictions –
As I write this poem in Jerusalem in the land of Israel
I think of the small Jewish world of Troy New York where I came from so many years ago
And miss so many people no longer of that and this world –
Longing for Israel for two thousand years was the Jewish poem
Living here now is a blessing and a gift
I thank God for.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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This Poem
THIS POEM
This poem
This first poem
This last poem
This poem that invented Poetry
This one and only one poem
This fictional poem
This ideal poem
This perfect poem
This would – be holy poem
This unreal poem
This poem which is not a poem
This poem which is the essence of all poetry
This poem
And that poem
And my poem
And your poem
And all poems
Poem poem poem poem poem
This poem
Mine and yours
This one small poem of so so many
And not such a good poem at all.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The History Poems Have Not Been Written
The history poems have not been written
The poems after Milosz
The Wallace Stevens poems will never be written
I can’t come close
I have tried the Blake poems
But of course I am not near them either
I would like to the ironic intellectual poems
I might be able to do them
I could do a kind of surrealistic association mind poem a prose poem
But I don’t like that very much
The poems of Jerusalem have not been good enough
Poems of propaganda are awkward and unacceptable
The small poems that tell of my life
They are for me the chance at real poetry
And I will continue as best I can with them
The American poems I have not yet found the idiom for
I can be epigrammatic in Emerson Thoreau fashion
But not with the hard New England observing eye
Borges poems I love
And the stories of mind and literature
Making the drama of a life of a storyteller
Interest me
But I doubt I could truly do them well
Imitation can only take one so far
And through it one may lose one’s way entirely
I can really do only what I am
Not the Dickinson poems nor the Hopkins poems nor the Wordsworth poems nor the Keats poems nor the Amichai poems nor the poems of many others whose poetry I love
The Biblical poems have been tried
The poems of cosmic and scientific reflection
I could try to improve them
There are too many different kinds of poems to write
And I cannot write almost all of them
This is another poem about poems and poetry
I have written many for a long time now
Perhaps I need to go elsewhere and write in a new way
A way I have not dreamed or even remotely understood possible before.
The poems of the unknown poetry await me
I will go on but I am not sure now I know in which wa
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Poem Is Restless In Me
THE POEM IS RESTLESS IN ME
The poem is restless in me-
It waits to be heard-
Now that it comes
It does not feel especially happy about itself.
It knows it is not real-
It is not much-
Just because it is called a poem by me
Does not make it a poem -
The mind has its own place-
My mind also -
I am always thinking poems are with me,
And poems waiting to come-
But who am I and what do I know?
These lines are written in the still of the morning
When the light outside still brings hope
That a new day is possible.
But so many poems have been written in the early morning
And I am so old from hearing them said to me by myself-
And what does it all mean anyway in the end when God is the Only One?
And who am I to know what God is, or invoke the name of God
In such a small thing as my own poetry?
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Not Every Poem Knows How To Say Its Own Name Properly
NOT EVERY POEM KNOWS HOW TO SAY ITS OWN NAME PROPERLY
Not every poem knows how to say its own name properly-
There are poems that have no name
And poems that are named by others who have not written them-
There are poems whose names make them what they are
And poems whose names contradict and belie them-
Many poems have their first lines as their names
And these poems often are as memorable as one line only-
Great poems and good poems can be nameless
Or can have unforgettable names.
Not every poem knows how to say its own name properly -
Poems are poems are poems
And names are names are names
And sometimes they meet and are one
And live happily ever after-
But there are times when perhaps
They never should have met each other at all.
Poems have their names
And names have their poems
But sometimes they love each other
And truly are one.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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There Is No Poem For Me Today
THERE IS NO POEM FOR ME TODAY
There is no poem for me today
There is no poem of yesterday
The poems have gone
And far away
There is no poem
For another day.
There never will be another poem
Poems are gone
Poems are stone.
All the words I will ever write
Are not enough
For a Poem of Life.
The Poems are not
They will never be
I am not a Poem
Nor Poetry.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Poems Poems
poems poems every where does any one care
poems are your life but do you include them
poems may seem silly but there a great part of life
so say a poem write a poem listen to a poem be the poem
poem by Samantha Thuringer
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Few Poems Are Remembered
FEW POEMS ARE REMEMBERED
Few poems are remembered -
Few poems are ever really known-
Few poems are chosen -
Few poems make us want to return to them again and again-
Out of thousands written every day
Perhaps one poem in a decade
Perhaps less.
This is not the poem.
One can write a lifetime
Without ever writing one such poem.
Most of us never write the poem
And most of us are not remembered either.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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I Wanted My Poem To Be A Real Poem
I WANTED MY POEM TO BE A REAL POEM
I wanted my poem to be a real poem-
I have read and studied and memorized
So many real poems-
I wanted my poem to be one of them
Which others would read and feel and memorize
And make their own –
We want and we want and we want
And who are we with all our wanting?
Who am I with all my wanting?
One more dreamer
One more ambitious person
One more lover of poems
One more writer of poems
One more wanter of real poems
Who writes this poem
For others
who dream like me
of writing real poems.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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There Is A Poem For Me Somewhere This Morning
THERE IS A POEM FOR ME SOMEWHERE THIS MORNING
There is a poem for me somewhere this morning
I will find it somehow
Perhaps it is in the memory of my father
Whose Yahrtzeit is today
Twenty- two years.
Perhaps it is as it is often
In the morning light
When I first walk outside to Shul
Perhaps it is in the deep need for a poem
For my own justification
Perhaps it is in my daughter’s search
For poems of inspiration
Perhaps it is in many things mixed together
Most of which I have not yet
And may never bring to mind
There is a poem for me somewhere this morning
I am writing it now
It is not beautiful
And not the best
And maybe even not much of a poem
There is a poem for me somewhere this morning
And I am not alone.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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There Was A Poem Long Ago
THERE WAS A POEM LONG AGO
There was a poem long ago
A poem of youth and hope
Now there are other poems
Poems of age and sorrow.
There was a poem once
Of love – and happiness in love
Now there is a poem of lovelessness
And sadness.
There was a poem once
Of the long and distant open road
Now there is a poem of the dead end.
There was a poem once
That believed in Poetry
Now there is a poem that knows
Even the most beautiful worlds of words
End in dust
There was a poem once – long ago.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Poem Of Shabbat Morning Is Gone
THE POEM OF SHABBAT MORNING IS GONE
The poem of Shabbat morning is gone-
Forgotten forever
As if it never was.
It came to me
And I could not write it down
And now it is gone.
The world is filled with poems which are lost
And never written down
Great works and great mysteries
Never to really be.
In all those billions of unrecorded lives
That went before us on this earth
There were many many poems lost.
I write this down now
as compensation-
How many poorer poems
have replaced
the true poems
that were once
and never are to be?
poem by Shalom Freedman
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All I Can Do Now Is Write Another Poem
All I can do now is write another poem-
The poems are small,
And do not require the long hours and long years
Of the books-
Like the world as a whole
I seem to have a shorter attention span
And less patience-
A poem can be written and given a name
In minutes not years-
Though some would say a great poem
Takes the travail of years of waiting
And years of work-
But I did not say
‘All I can do now is write another great poem'
Perhaps I have in all the years of the nights never written one-
I can write the poems I write
My kinds of poems
In a fairly short time-
All I can do now
Is write another of my kind of poems-
Whether they be worth anything,
Or not.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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I Am Tired Of The Word 'Poem
I AM TIRED OF THE WORD ‘POEM’
I am tired of the word ‘poem’
‘Poem’ ‘poem’ ‘poem’ ‘poem and ‘poem’ again
Weren’t there stars before there were poems?
And won’t there be light somewhere else
when no one has words to say?
And in all the great Silence before and ever after
won’t there be the being of something real however unsaid and unknown?
And won’t ‘Poem’ and ‘poems’ too like all of us
Cease one day to be and never again know that they are?
All the immortals are mortal and their poems too
Silence before and Silence after
And no words forevermore.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Morning Poem Did Not Come
THE MORNING POEM DID NOT COME
The morning poem did not come-
So this is the effort of an afternoon poem,
Warm and sun- filled and relaxing and deep and waiting.
This is a poem between times more interesting than itself.
The light is so great now.
But this too is a poem of little or nothing to say
Of afternoon emptiness after morning emptiness
On a tired tired day.
Once I thought I would write poems which would make immortal
Those I love.
Now I write poems to keep myself going.
This afternoon I am extremely tired
But if this is poem
Or even if I only think it is
I can have a rest
Before I face the evening.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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Once Upon A Time There Were Long Poems
ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WERE LONG POEMS
Once upon a time there were long poems that told a story-
Now there are only small poems
That tell a feeling.
This is a small poem
And I am a small poet
And we are all small readers
Who are always losing the poem
By rushing on to the next thing.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Story Of A Search For A Poem
A man went in search of a Poem
He searched everywhere he walked
He searched inside himself
He searched inside the poems of others
He searched and searched -
And what came to him were fragments of many poems
And he thought perhaps that they themselves were the poem
But they refused to be satisfied with themselves-
So he searched for a way to put them together-
But in searching came upon more fragments
With each new fragment totally re-ordering those that had gone before-
So he thought ‘I went looking for one poem but found many
Perhaps there are only many poems’
And he began to write them down
And felt at times that he had found many poems
But always too he knew he had not found the one-
So he searched and searched again
And could not find the Poem-
He is still searching
And does not know where the poem is
Sometimes he thinks it is hidden in the many already written
But he does not have the eye to discern it the heart to feel it-
He now is surrounded by poems-
They are everywhere-
But he still cannot find the One Poem which is the Poem for him
The Poem which is his Poem and his Poem alone-
He says he is still searching and will search to the end of his days
But he is old now and soon may be too weak to search
And so the Poem he seeks the one he has longed for all his life
May never be found
Though he goes on searching still.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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The Poem Of All The Places I Have Never Been
THE POEM OF ALL THE PLACES I HAVE NEVER BEEN
The poem of all the places I have never been
The poem of all the dreams I have not seen
The poem of others poems written in lines I have never imagined
The poem of the infinite – what-is- not and ‘what- will- never- be
The poem of seas and suns and sounds and Shakespeare’s sonnets,
The poem of words and only words whose sounds do not mean what we feel
The poem of all I would not and cannot write
The poem that is not and never will be in me
The poem I do not write
The poem I am not
The poem lost
The poem which itself is not a poem
The poem of the last contradiction and the first
The poem beyond the poem hidden within the poem
The poem which will never be a poem
The poem which is not
The poem I cannot dream.
poem by Shalom Freedman
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