Poems of World
War III
Charles Levenstein
|
String
I am accumulating Portuguese.
If they speak slowly and
I am alert, especially in the morning,
I understand more than
the vocabulary of lesson 2.
I hear the music of the language.
Popular poets from the Northeast
invent and sing their work,
sometimes in dialogue, with
guitar or accordion accompaniment;
medieval troubadours with
a dose of hiphop:
“To be a good citizen, report
workplace accidents,” sings
an artist with funding from
the Ministry of Health.
String poets print simple books
with carved stamps, bind
them, and at fairs and flea markets
hang their work on clotheslines:
very beautiful, very cheap!
Some live from their sales, others
are engineers, electricians, laborers.
In Brasilia the chief FBI man
in the U.S. Embassy speaks Portuguese
with European accent: he will not
give away sworn constitutional secrets.
But he’s been pushed too far –
$5 million for bribes to police,
orders to bug Lula’s offices,
surveillance of law-abiding Muslims –
so he’s gone public. A defector.
Ex-FBI on a string.
|
|
Charles Levenstein is a
contributing editor for Poems Niederngasse
|
03-04/
|