Two Poems by Edwin Frank

For Georg Lukács

Observing the bricks
In a wall: how abandoned—

As in forsaken,
As in promiscuous too—

And how by virtue of that
They participate in

The lifeless
Form that they have

No other. But at dawn
Each brick, invested

With a bleak
Trapped brilliance, shines

With the fire of its making
Renewed, made real
 
In the determined form of its end.
“Hatred, too, can grant premeditation and vision.”

Nobody Says

Nobody says, I turned my face
to the wall, seeing its changed

reflections passing
inconsequentially.

Somebody walks by in the street
taking her words away with her.

But my whole body is
one sentence

repeatedly
qualifying its own

inexistence:
the sun shines; snow falls.

Please, I said, you can have as many
others as you want.

But my green eyes, and the long black hair I tie
in a tight knot, my two

green eyes.