Poems from Origins

BEGGAR

A beggar
with the face
of autumn

opened his palm
beneath
my grandfather's nose

Grandfather gave him
his hand
and together they left

Grandmother's eyes
snapped into stone
when she heard

and she followed
by the road
they had gone

I see them
on hills
under the moon

the beggar swaying
in his overcoat of leaves
with grandfather

trailing at his hand
while a blind old woman
wanders below

lost in a midnight filled with trees

from "Rogues Gallery"

3. Forger

The forger
writes
the name

of another's dreams
He is arrested
and beaten

The prosecutor
declares
that he's worse

than a forger
calls him
a poet

Convicted
the forger
wonders who he is

and practices
writing
his own name

The words
shiver and loop
like cats

who scratch the snow
with paws
of wind and rain

The prison
melts
away

The forger is free
in his
own country:

On the white
page
he has written

the dreams
of the
prosecutor

4. Thief

This is the thief

the one who steals
a kiss from the earth
and never returns it

 

Origins (Kayak, 1969) is a sequence of short-lined poems without punctuation, which explores an archetypal family and archteypal human experiences. In tone, it is ironic, humorous, even cynical, and shares an affinity to contemporary East European poetry, especially with the work Yugoslav poet Vasko Popa and the post-World War II Polish poets.

Critical Comments: "The work in Origins is genuine...It is the finest first book I have read in years."
--Vern Rutsala, Minnesota Review

"...his Origins is probably the book I like best. He is honest, his poetry is tough, [and] his work has everything to do with the world...All the poems in this book are useful, and for me that's what writing poems is all about."
--Margaret Randall, Poetry: A Magazine of Verse

"Occasionally a poet comes on the scene whose talent is such that he pleases most when he breaks the rules. Morton Marcus is such a poet, as he amply demonstrates in Origins...his poetry reveals that capacity for controlled rawness that appears all too seldom." --Gail Barnett, Dryad

BALDNESS

Yes
hair grows

but baldness
grows
too

In bed at night
you can hear
it growing

Not rustling
not sticking out
its nerve ends
from the borders of
hysteria

but emerging
from the forest
like a moon

from "The 5 Games of The senses"

5. Touch

One puts his finger
on the meaning of life
and death bites off
his head

Another touches
his exact center
and falls through
his skin

A third
feels along the ledge
of a universal night
and turning a corner
finds a costume party
of noisy friends

A fourth
caresses the wind
makes airy shapes
with his hands
and watches them
go bounding off
to populate the world.