Author: John Repp
Location: Pennsylvania

John Repp's most recent collections of poetry include Gratitude (Cherry Grove, 2005), Fever (Mayapple Press, 2007) and No Away (Pudding House, 2007).

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Masked Martin Buber, Bearded Heschel

an apostrophe (past hope)

Come with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear
when Martin Buber and Abraham Heschel strolled
past Grant’s Tomb, seeing not the Hudson

nor the brick promenade nor the gorgeous joggers,
intent chess-players, quality-time fathers swarming
Riverside Park, seeing not even the benches full

of be-wigged matrons bemoaning the slights
their children wield like razors nor the humble shrubs
untended by any but the bums who piss on them gratefully,

no, nothing but the scoured visions Jeremiah
laid before the generations, Isaiah’s reconciled beasts,
the dirges and plagues of the gnarled shepherd Amos,

the Word that roared from the whirlwind.
Masked Martin Buber of the plains, bearded Heschel
on your painted pony, book-worming titans

waging a doomed battle in the bowels of Nothing,
guide us by disputation and strophe soulward!

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