To The Enemies

My poem is a response to each line of Vladimir Holan’s poem. A reinterpretation, remake, using a model and making it my own, originally written for Claudia Reder’s English class.

To The Enemies 

By Tyler Mobley 

I’ve been too young to understand why those

Towers crumbled, and watch what becomes

Of the world, less look for love, as tho

Spoiled on Jersey Shore or Next, still

I love somebody because I love myself, go ahead 

Laugh, raise all you will against me, for you’ll have to 

Aim for the stars, as I become home. 

To be is not easy… World beneath our feet

At any moment on top, while still under it’s weight.

From these eyes… A suspicious observer.

A mystery passes for truth, each person 

A foraging tool, some prefer wings

On their cake, simple one day   

Mind and moment purr together 

Broad as the horizon, somewhere 

Horses jostle in race gates, but that’s a different story.

She wears only night, lunar arousal she

Carves brilliant ice sculptures with her nipples, 

Only to melt by morning. 

Frame a ship on a frozen sea, bow

Pickled with caged crab, another story to tell. 

Cast into water, catch yourself on a line

leading to something greater, a tall redwood

Birds peck a trunk, squirrels hide nuts in my midst. 

Wispy clouds offer a dance in the sky, and 

Somewhere an answering machine is taking message. 

Be slow… slower, there

Ending up a letter in a bottle,

What God conceived, he wants to be felt, 

As an opium epidemic numbs a nation

They do not ask, it doesn’t even occur 

To suppose why the moon scales to the sun,

As angels in the outfield walk the foul line, 

Sobriety caught a fly. 

So don’t mope your peejays, clearing a path behind 

An erased memory of a world

You couldn’t embrace.

Step out of your dream, pretend 

A galaxy knocked on Plato’s study, 

And went on as nothing happened.

What God conceived, he wants to be felt, 

As the Earth feels the moon, you catch 

My gaze, and beg we aren’t the same, 

We all enter the world in similar fashion, 

And exit with personal flare, so when your 

Tummy rumbles so does mine, still 

I don’t believe what you think I should.

In order to be, you would have to have lived. 

End efforts to end me pick up harmony

Sing a golden sun elaborate on a 

Rainbow, and kiss your toad goodnight. 

For one can’t know life, if they haven’t lived, 

Or know love, if they never love themselves. 

So release those shoulders, and know

I love somebody, because I love myself, go ahead 

Laugh, raise all you will against me, for you’ll have to 

Aim for the stars, as I become home. 

To be is not easy… Only death is easy… 

To The Enemies 

By Vladimir Holan 

I’ve had enough of your baseness, and I haven’t killed myself

Only because I didn’t give myself a life

And I still love somebody because I love myself. 

You may laugh, but only an eagle can attack an eagle 

And only Achilles can pity the wounded Hector. 

To be is not easy… To be a poet and a man

Means to be forest without trees

And to see… A scientist observes.  

Science can only forage for truth:

Forage yes, take wings no! Why? 

It’s so simple, and I’ve said it before 

Science is in probability, poetry is in parables, 

The large cerebral hemisphere 

Refuses the most exquisite poem by clamoring for sugar… 

A rooster finds rain repulsive, but that’s another story,

It is night, your might say: sexually mature, 

And he young lady’s breast are so firm 

You could easily break

Two glasses of schnapps on them, but that’s another story. 

And imagine a ship’s beacon, 

A sailing beacon: but that’s an entirely different story.

And your whole development from the stele for man

To the stele of a lichen: but that’s an entirely different story!

A cloud is going to vomit, but there’s not even a gas leak at your 

Place, 

You cannot be, you can’t even be 

Strangled by snakes scales, 

What God conceived, he wants to be felt, 

Children and drunkards know this, 

But they aren’t brazen enough to ak 

Why a mirror fogs when a menstruating woman looks into it,

And poets, from love of life, do not ask 

Why wine moves in barrels 

when she passes by… 

And I’ve had enough of your impudence

That permeates everything it wanted to contain 

But couldn’t embrace, 

But a holocaust will come 

That you couldn’t have dreamed of 

Having no dreams, 

What God conceived, he wants to be felt, 

A holocaust will come, children and drunkards know it, 

Joy could come about only through love, 

If love were not passion, 

Happiness could come about only through love, 

If happiness were not passion, 

Children and drunkards know it… 

In order to be, you would have to live, 

But you won’t because you don’t live, 

And you don’t live because you don’t love, 

Because you don’t even love yourself, let alone your neighbor.

And I’ve had enough of your vularity, 

And I haven’t killed myself only because 

I didn’t give myself life

And I still love somebody because I love myself… 

You may laugh, but only the female eagle can attack the male eagle 

And only Briseis the wounded Achilles. 

To be is not easy… Only shitting is easy… 

TR. C.G. Hanzlick and Dana Habova (pg.424)

Forche, Carolyn. Against Forgetting: 20th Century Poetry of Witness. New York: W.w. norton, 2009. Print.