The Optimistic Cucumber
Once upon a time
There lived a cheerful cucumber
In a lovely vegetable garden.
Optimistic and happy in its green dress,
The cucumber was born toothless;
Yet it made a firm decision to resist
The learned advice to visit a dentist.
In the garden the days quickly trickled
And on an early summer morning
The cucumber timidly asked
Its gentle neighbor and kin,
A yellow and plump pumpkin:
"Excuse me, but don't you think,
That you are a little fat? "
"Oh, I don't mind to be like that
After all I am not an adipose cat.
And besides, as a humble pumpkin
I would be embarrassed truly
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poem by Paul Hartal
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Apology to a Dandelion
Dressed in luxuriant yellow
You can find her everywhere.
She crops up in green meadows
And well-manicured lawns
In picayune cracks of aged walls
Or along concrete sidewalks
In the heart of downtown
‘Dent de lion' the lion's tooth.
Some call her Wild Endive.
An admirable and humble flower
In spring her strong taproots
Send up through naked stems
Dazzling bright and intrepid blossoms
And white botanical lactic juice.
Kind, gentle and beautiful Dandelion
She is spiritual and eccentric
A celibate perennial wild plant
That has refused to live a sex life.
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poem by Paul Hartal
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Lost Love’s Distance
The astrophysicist aimed the telescope at Antares.
Oh, this red giant of the Milky Way Galaxy is so beautiful, he said.
Almost as bright as the stars Aldebaran and Regulus.
Have a look, he told his assistant.
Almost as bright as the star Aldebaran and Regulus,
Repeated the assistant.
Yes, the professor said, it shines like a brilliant diamond
in the night sky, surrounded by colorful cosmic clouds
And winding dust lanes.
Then five years elapsed and one moonless night
The astrophysicist again aimed his telescope at Antares.
But he could not concentrate as his thoughts
Constantly returned to his lost love.
One chilly day he met her at a cozy restaurant.
They sat and ate and sipped their coffee and talked.
You were once so close to me, he said to her.
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poem by Paul Hartal
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What Dante Told Me
The golden crescent of the moon
was shining through my window
when I fell asleep.
Soon a soft astral darkness enveloped me
bringing along a vivid and strange dream.
A bright sun was shining in the firmament
and I found myself in a Tuscan landscape,
hiking on the old Via Apia.
It was an early afternoon
and suddenly I saw a man in the distance
walking toward me from the south.
As he came closer I recognized him.
It was the poet Dante Alighieri.
'Oh, Sommo Poeta',
I accosted him timidly,
'Please, tell me, does love really exist,
or is it just a romantic figment
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poem by Paul Hartal
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Money and Love
She was reading a book on a bench.
He recognized her. Years ago
He had a crush on her in high school.
So what is now your luminous goal in life? ”
She asked.
“Money and fame”, he said.
“Your answer is more disappointing
Than surprising”, she said.
“Why? You don’t want money and fame? ”
“No, I don’t want money and fame.”
“You’re a hypocrite.”
“This sneer was predictable, but I really
Don’t want money and fame.”
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poem by Paul Hartal
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Flowers of Horror
People who love flowers
Cannot be bad
Says the proverb.
But take the insight
With a grain of salt
For malignant hands
Can turn flowers
Into graceless means
Of lies and deception.
During World War II
The National Socialists
Perfected the dark art
Of deceit by exploiting
The beauty of nature
To disguise and shroud
Their fiendish goals
Of ruin and destruction.
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poem by Paul Hartal
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Love Knows Not 'Why?
You can touch a stone, a tree or a flower
But not the human heart, he thought
Isolated from the conversation,
Which went on faintly luminous
Non-stellar formations, elliptical shells,
Amorphous cosmic clouds, lunar crevasses
And the conquest of space by man.
But his mind was wandering far away
Contemplating there is no ‘why? ’ in love
(“Quod quaeris,
‘Quare? ’ non habet ullus amor.”)
Pondering things that happened last night,
How happy they were, delighted and ecstatic
Sweet trembles fading on the winding path.
Yet the magic now is over
Just a blurred memory remains
Less than a forget-me-not,
A windflower or a daisy
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poem by Paul Hartal
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Grandma
Above the bed
Old photos stared down
Solemnly from the wall.
Behind the glass frame
Grandpa wore
His grey uniform
Of the Great War;
Grandma her sombre dress.
She died before I was born
And grandpa shortly after.
The only grandparent
That I knew was
My mother’s step mother.
For some reason
She did not get along well
With my parents
But I basked
In the warmth of her
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poem by Paul Hartal
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The Science of Freedom
For Joseph Beuys,1921-1986
The coordinates of history are the masters of fate:
Where and when we are born determine paths of destiny.
You were fascinated by art but worked as a circus acrobat.
You enrolled to study medicine but Hitler’s war came
And you volunteered to fly in the Luftwaffe.
Diving almost vertically from the skies
You were a rear gunner on a JU 87 Stuka bomber.
Plunging downward with accelerating speed,
The sirens on the wheels screaming terrifyingly in the wind,
Your plane descended on its targets, bringing devastation
And horror to distant lands and nations.
And then,
On a deadly mission in 1943,
Russian fire hit your plane
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poem by Paul Hartal
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Richard Feynman's Woodpecker
Under a cloudy sky
A hammering woodpecker
Drilled and drummed
On a tree branch
With her chisel-like bill tip.
Then a physicist stepped out
Of his house into the haze
Billowing over the street.
He scratched his bald head
And brooded and pondered
Contemplated and thought
Of the opaque secret of light.
Well, he said, nowadays
Of course we already know
That light can be
Both a particle and a wave,
A stream of arcane photons
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poem by Paul Hartal
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