Poems

Kevin Hannan

Alleys of Kraków

Soft, lean creatures strolling briskly
arm in arm, laughing their innocence deeply into the sky,
are mistaken
for sprites, not the adolescent virgins of human race they must be.
Apart, differently, prepubescent boys celebrate a robust beauty,
free of unnatural aggressions

with which America proudly inoculates its own.
The ancestors of this exquisite youth roamed these same paths
before history.
Still Indo-Europeans,
the ancients never knew the martial expeditions
that led their kinsmen afar,
to the ends of Europe and halfway through Asia,
and molded with their blood and conquests
historical nations.
Instead, they remained,
from satisfaction or perhaps idleness,
uncalculating,
in their forests,
tending beehives,

celebrating groves and orchards,
where their descendants
romp gently.

Kraków, 3 May 2002

Rome and Siberia

Two poles
balance a magnetic field
upon which is suspended, eternally, a state of mind.

One light and charm, the essence of the sun,
whence history began.
One dark, chill, frightening.

A duality
imprinted upon each Polish soul
qualifies the realities of Polishness.

Bielsko-Biala, 29 May 2002