Just a few times in life you meet someone a bit special. At a party during Christmas I came across a guy who made a real impression on me. He was not a corporate thruster. He was not a “get out of my way” Mister Important. He appeared to have no interest in Maserati executive cars or money. He was a little old guy, wearing a suit and looked up at folk through his eyebrows. I saw several youngsters chat and smile with him. He knew their names. He knew the names of their brothers and sisters. I wrote a poem about him. I hope the smallness of my work reflects my respect in inverse proportion.
Dr Czaykowski
His name, he said
was a common denominator
In Poland.
He was the numbers guy
swept here by War
and placed in brackets
outside the theorem’s QED.
His people too
were in the numbers game,
marching to the one way algorithm.
Finally he could not go home
but stayed to bless
the countings of children.
No such inversion in his heart
nor in his inner tongue
subtracted by History.
Yet he lived,
smiling uncalculated
love by numbers.
Wonderful poem!
Sigh. That is so incredibly touching, Oscar! It bowls me over how you can wrest such a rich world of feelings and experience from 77 words. Most can’t do it in 300 pages. You are the master, my friend!
I can do a bit with words perhaps – but you are a true thinker/poet and your praise humbles me. http://twobitbard.weebly.com/2/post/2012/01/a-fragile-thread.html
Reblogged this on Oscar Sparrow.
Oscar,
Awesome – as usual,your words flow, ebb, riffle, and touch the heart.
Thanks for sharing it with the rest of us.
Bert
Poetry, when in the hands of masters like both of you, becomes all of art rolled into one – rhythm, image and word. No other art form can express as succinctly yet reveal as much as a poem.