As the music swells somehow stronger from adversity
Our hero finds his inner peace


Oleg Radvan, Anna, 2005

Socrates
-- by Jack Spicer

Because they accused me of poems
That did not disturb the young
They gave me a pair of glasses
Filled with tinture of hemlock.
Because the young accused me
Of piles, horseradish, and bad dreams
They gave me three days
To burn down the city. What dialogues
(if they had let me.)
Could I have held with both of my enemies.


Sheep Trails are Fateful to Strangers
-- by Jack Spicer

Dante would have blamed Beatrice
If she turned up alive in a local bordello
Or Newton gravity
If apples fell upward
What I mean is words
Turn mysteriously against those who use them
Hello says the apple
Both of us were object.


A Book Of Music
-- by Jack Spicer

Coming at an end, the lovers
Are exhausted like two swimmers. Where
Did it end? There is no telling. No love is
Like an ocean with the dizzy procession of the waves' boundaries
From which two can emerge exhausted, nor long goodbye
Like death.
Coming at an end. Rather, I would say, like a length
Of coiled rope
Which does not disguise in the final twists of its lengths
Its endings.
But, you will say, we loved
And some parts of us loved
And the rest of us will remain
Two persons. Yes,
Poetry ends like a rope.