Samuel Hazo
You who believe in the false
assurances of schedules, the presumptions
of plans, or the pr0mised future
of appointments. this poem is
for you.
Today I have nowhere
to go and nothing to do
but watch the Mediterranean Sea
from a seaside table in Menton.
Nobody knows me here.
The couples dancing tangos
in the public square regard me
as the foreigner I am.
I order
lunch in unimpressive French
and sign language.
The world
that pressured me at home
with phone calls, obligations, bills
and headlines carries on,
but I’m not playing.
Instead
I focus on the green and red
confusion of a Nicoise salad
while I hurt for an America
I barely recognize.
In the name
of Christ we’re Arabizing Arabs
as we once Vietnamized the South
Vietnamese before our vanity
consumed us.
We’ve sponsored free
elections but reversed results.
To launch the neo-century
we crushed a country and destroyed
a culture.
Though someone warned
that occupiers lose at last,
the warning was ignored.
When scholars
wrote that Athens at its peak
sailed fleets to ultimate catastrophe
in Sicily and bled for decades
afterward into inconsequence,
they reaped the glory of derision.
Why bother talking history
with those whose only purpose
is deceit?
Why reason with unreason?
When shouters violate what’s sacred
with impunity, the only answer
is dissent.
Hiding behind
lapel-pin flags, they’ve fouled
what I thought would be a holiday
abroad, not merely a reprieve
before the next resistance.
I’ve met them all a thousand
times whenever fear and cowardice
demanded loyalty to causes
that were never mine.
Since power
is their word for peace, they swagger
like competitors who can’t not win.
And when they lose, as they
will always lose, they’ll claim
they could have won with more
support, and then they’ll whine.
Samuel Hazo is the author of poetry, fiction, essays, various works of translation and four plays. Governor Robert Casey named him Pennsylvania’s first State Poet 1993. He served until 2003.
From his first book, through the National Book Award finalist Once for the Last Bandit, to his newest poems, he explores themes of mortality and love, passion and art, courage and grace in a style that is unmistakably his own. He writes with equal feeling and clarity about political and artistic figures and the complex synchronicity between life and art. He is extremely interested in the wonderment and discovery that emerge in the act of writing, in the movement toward wisdom that results from the expression of feeling.
As the founder and Director/President of the International Poetry Forum, Dr. Hazo has brought more than 800 poets and performers to Pittsburgh in the past forty years. These have included Nobel Awardees (Heaney, Walcott, Paz, Milosz), Pulitzer Prize winners (Merwin, Kumin, Wilbur, Kinnell, Kooser and others), Academy Award recipients (Gregory Peck, Princess Grace of Monaco, Eva Marie Saint, Anthony Hopkins, John Houseman, Jose Ferrer) as well as public figures who understand the relationship of poetry to public speech (Senator Eugene McCarthy and Queen Noor of Jordan), playwrights and composers (Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Gian Carlo Menotti) and new poets of significance and promise.
Dr. Hazo is McAnulty Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Duquesne University. He has received eleven honorary degrees, is an honorary Phi Beta Kappa member, and has been awarded the Hazlett Award for Excellence in Literature from the Governor of Pennsylvania, the Forbes Medal, the Elizabeth Kray Award for Outstanding Service to Poetry from New York University, and the Griffin Award from the University of Notre Dame. His recent book, Just Once, received the Maurice English Poetry Prize.
We are honored to have Dr. Samuel Hazo’s work in Contemporary World Poetry: Journal for International Voices.
