POSTSCRIPT TO MANY LETTERS

For Robert George Hazo

While other brothers meet and talk like foes

or strangers or alumni—hostile, cool,

or banal—brotherhood is still our binding.

Somehow we have survived disintegration

Since the quiet Pittsburgh afternoons we walked

in the rain bareheaded, scarfless, flaunting health,

the nights we smoked large academic pipes

and read and talked philosophy, the years

of seminars and uniforms and trips

and letters postmarked Paris, Quantico,

Beirut, Jerusalem, and San Francisco.

Nothing has changed or failed and still we have

“the same heroes and think the same men fools.”

Our heroes still are individuals

resolved to face their private absolutes.

We see the fool in all who fail themselves

by choice and turn all promise cold with talk.

A Levantine who saw such folly done

two thousand years ago grew bored with life

and said only the unborn were worth blessing.

Not sticks, not any, not the sharpest stones

can bruise or break the unbegotten bones.

Yet, fools and our few heroes will persist.

We cannot bless the unborn flesh or wish

our times and cities back to countrysides

when wigwams coned into a twist of poles.

The future holds less answers than the past.

Salvation lies in choice, in attitude,

in faith that mocks glib gospelers who leave

the name of Jesus whitewashed on a cliff.

We still can shun what shames or shams

the day and keep as one our vigor in the bond

of blood where love is fierce but always fond.

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