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Kiss the Hand
Himself at an elegant angle,
obeisant, mischievous, his breath
a gallant assay on her
permissive hand,
the gap between them going
gone
My father's 'Küss die Hand'
was cast by the lamp
in gold relief. Oh all
the possibles in this world!
My eyes grazed future
tendons
shoulders
breasts
This
No one but
us you
see
No one
but each other in
this no name we call
names
Nought beyond this flash
of skin and flesh and blood, this
toil-and-bone cathedral. (Fear
booted to heaven, faith
returns
to bathe sore feet.)
Let the lung sing ode to This.
Let me face you
squarely
not through stained
designs.
John Barta was born in 1941, Hungarian emigrant at fifteen,
University of Toronto at nineteen, high-school teacher(English, history, drama) starting at twenty-three,
marriage at twenty-four, first child at thirty-two, retired at fifty-six,
CAA member since 1997, published in The Saving Bannis-er, Ten Stories High,
The New Quarterly, Event, Hammered Out, at certain-uncertain points since
1997, date of death as yet a guess.
Email: John Barta
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