Balance - Poem

Progressive, The, April, 2003 by Mario Susko

Balance

   maybe some twenty years from now
   they'll sit down with their adversaries
   and over coffee and assorted drinks
   exchange notes and peruse the maps,
   entertaining bald historians and strategists
   with their now polite explanations
   why they had to kill each other.

   the atmosphere at a peaceful resort
   will be cordial, even some jokes offered
   to unburden the collective conscience
   while discussing the variables of life
   and death that once had to create
   the shortest distance between them.

   places such as Pig's Head, Turtle Point,
   Goats Trail will be revisited, coordinates
   re-examined, hands that held the wheel
   or hovered above the button will try to be
   steady again as the memory searches
   for the orgasmic explosion of color particles.

   I have now dead future pictures
   to show, any unmarked grave that could
   be my mother's, any lit window once mine,
   as I sit in a dark empty room in a town
   pinpointed on some waterproof map
   and hold the eviction notice in my hand,
   the droning of the landlord's refrigerator
   reminding my displaced mind of gravity.

   commentators will then talk about the need
   to understand the necessary historical balance
   in the global scheme of things, and mention
   in passing only the unbalanced act of someone
   who throws a good refrigerator out of the window
   and jumps, trying to beat it to the ground.

Mario Susko's most recent book is his translation of "Leaves of Grass" (Meandar, Croatia, 2002). This year, the same publisher will release his selected poems, 1982-2002. The poem "Balance" is from his fourth book of poems in English, "Eternity on Hold," which is forthcoming.