Poems my wife wrote
Since my wife’s passing in 2022, I have been collecting and assembling her writings for our family and friends as a remembrance of her and what she was passionate about. For me, these two seem as relevant today as they were when they were written in July of 2020:
Two poems my wife wrote before she passed away.
I wanted to write you a tirade
a drawn-out diatribe
a jeremiad pulled out of me
and quartered
like federal forces
around the agora. There
I would harangue you
batter you with language
relentless volleys
from my thundering tongue
smite you ad hominem,
flatten you with philippic
in the public square.
Let the day be scaffold
for scolding.
May you be racked with words.
May you be harrowed
with the plow of predication.
May syntax ravage you.
May diction devastate you.
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The Greek dia, “through”, plus tribein “rub”–
a diatribe: a wearing away with words.
How strange your bunched lips.
How ugly that embouchure
trumpeting hatred and fear
throughout the land.
The blast of your mouth
brings chaos.
Your tweets and lies
your sayings and un-sayings
make a wasteland where
anxiety and pestilence blow.
And a voice said, Prophesy!
And I cried out,
One day you will simply disappear!
You will go away and life will flow
back into the trees, into the people.
In the streets and the forests
there will be singing.
Jane Meneghini