Two-Party System
A sky full of starless city yellow
poison tonight while the moon decides
whether to push or pull. These open streets
were lighter once, because no one left them.
They filled up steady as calendars.
Now the shadow ground rolls forward
blithe as balance sheets from a thousand crooked days.
An ignorance of the past can close its window
or, not caring about the tipsy moon,
trickle out of cavities and strip us to bone.
Where will our names go, the passing tones
of our particulars, in this cantata of nonsense
and dolor? Today’s manic riffs rend
the lulling mahatma of the earth,
nature an abused foster child
that wants no more parenting.
This is the end of either/or: all dichotomies
are false. Every day the authorities
recover nothing as if nothing had happened,
as if we don’t even know we’re missing.
At Columbia, Harry Bauld was twice All-Ivy shortstop and broke Lou Gehrig’s records. Unfortunately, they were his academic records. A writer, painter, translator, and teacher in the Bronx, he was included by Matthew Dickman in Best New Poets 2012 (UVa Press). His poetry and translations have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in the U.S. and U.K. and won the New Millenium Writings Award and the Milton Kessler Poetry Prize. He divides his time between New York and the Spanish Basque Country. Bauld has two published poetry collections: The Uncorrected Eye and How to Paint a Dead Man.
