I. Escaping from Alcatraz
For courage,
men must first
imagine the night:
dark folds of stars,
the bloom of camellia perfume.
They must imagine
their girls from home, still young when they went away,
bare-breasted and longing across
the guarded shore.
To climb free from
barbed wire cages
some built boats with tires and rags.
By dawn their bodies lay
like flung lilies on the sand:
the Pacific won’t swallow them.
II. A Small Article in the Sunday Times
The Nazis buried a Jewish doctor alive.
They found his bones last year in the Belzec trench.
He ate one of his leather shoes
to buy time.
His granddaughter’s hands
held the shoelace up to the sun
like a string of sapphires—
they have not won.
Somewhere he stands,
urges us on: keep rowing, keep running.
The old man with one shoe.
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