MODERN

THE VIKING
By Shannon

A powerful radiance is felt instantly.
Flames of passion dance in his eyes.
He makes my heart ache with desire.
His words are music to my soul
That fill me with love and longing.
His mind holds the wisdom of the ancients.
His heart holds compassion and love.
His lips hold a promise of sensual delights.
His arms provide security and warmth.
He is as humble as a beggar on the street,
Yet as noble as a Viking chief.
There is a sense of mystery about him;
But his life, he has opened for me to see.
He is truly a beautiful and amazing man;
He is the best of all my dreams.
I will love him throughout eternity.
With not part, but with all that is me.

PHANTASMS OF EVENING
By Bruce Dawe

Light fails. From here
Its's hard to see
Whether those young men ghost-dancing into their graves
Are Viet Cong or Sioux.

Listen. Over the traffic
Guns sound as though it were midday.
Rorke's Drift, Adobe Walls, Pinjarra
-The magic of krall and gunyah
Is nothing beside the magic of factories.
Dust swirls through sonless camps.

Look. The moon's ancient blade
Falls flat across the shoulders of women.
Fools! Will you never learn?
All causes falter and go down
In this valley or the next.

Say, are those plumed shadows
Flying Horsemen ofthe First Air Cavalry Division,
Or Hittites bringing the gospel of iron
To confound the Egyptians?
What war are we up to now?
Whose mourning is it?

ANOTHER ARGUEMENT ABOUT THE IMPOSSIBLE
Lawrence Raab

Even if we agree in principle that a poem can be
About anything, you still want to claim
It cannot include space aliens,
Since, by their very nature (you insist)
They are silly. And even if belief
Is a subject that's stood the test of time,
A poem about a man who believes in space aliens
Will be a poem about a man who is either
Silly or demented. Belief requires
A world of consequence all around it:
Men, women, nature, history and so on.
Reality, of course, is another matter, but see
What happens (you continue) when these
Are put together, as in: "My work
Concerns the nature of reality, belief,
And space aliens." It would be different
If we knew they were there, but we dont,
And a poem cannot afford to adopt
Such a wait-and -see attitude toward the world
Which, after all, has provided so many
More compelling subjects. No (you conclude),
Not even a poem that argues against them
Can survive their presence,
Not even if the aliens never appear,
Never do or say anything, never threaten us
With their neutron blasters, never steal our women
To populate their planet, not even if their ships
Remain hidden, and we are never taken up in them
To be probed and instructed, dazzled and released.