JOURNEY HOMEWARD

Poems by Arnold Greenberg

To my grandchildren: Keira, Anna, Lena, Aaron, Isaac, Atticus For they are the beginning of the world

All rights reserved Clayfield Books 2012

Introduction
I was twenty-two when I signed on as a galley boy aboard a Norwegian freighter and left Brooklyn harbor with twenty dollars to my name. I had no idea where this ship would take me. I was Odysseus lost at sea searching for meaning, for truth, for answers to lifes overwhelming questions. Would I find what I was looking for out there? Would I find my way back home, or would I always be lost at sea looking at horizons? I didnt know. Looking back over a span of many years, these poems travel through a wide range of experiences--storms, love, marriage, children, the joys, pains, sorrows, struggles and mysteries of this journey and now, like Odysseus who returned to the rocky shores of Ithaca long ago, I have my own rocky shore, this place I call home and where I stand looking out at the horizon. Arnold Greenberg East Blue Hill, ME

Where shall a man find sweetness to surpass his own home and his parents? In far lands he shall not though he find a house of gold.
The Odyssey

Table of Contents
Part 1: At Sea
Reflections on Leaving.......................................................9 The Last Goodbye..............................................................10 Looking at the Star............................................................11 Beirut: On the Dock...........................................................12 Port Said: Noon...................................................................13 The Red Sea ........................................................................14 Cliffs: Off the Coast of Africa ........................................15 Lost at Sea ...........................................................................16 The Old Man of the Sea ...................................................18 Athens: The Parthenon ....................................................20 The Carver of Figureheads.............................................21 From Paris: Regards from an Old Poet .......................22 Strangers on a Train .........................................................23 Midnight Train: Cologne to Hamburg ..........................24 On the Ferry: Near Dawn.................................................26 From a Bar in Antwerp .....................................................28 Copenhagen: A Cafeteria ................................................29 Lunch at the Caf ..............................................................30 A Sailors Letter to a Blond in Copenhagen .............31 Unsent Letter to a Lady in Copenhagen ....................33 Hamburg: The Red Light District..................................35 The Last Night: From the Edge of the Pier................36

Part 2: Homeward
One Slight Touch................................................................38 Travelers...............................................................................39 Fantasies ..............................................................................41 Choosing an Illusion .........................................................43 Chagall ..................................................................................44 Before a Marriage Proposal ...........................................45 A Marriage Vow ..................................................................46

~6

A Baker Dreams at Dawn ........................................47 Sonnet for David ......................................................49 A Kind of Requiem ...................................................50 For the New Year .....................................................51 Wanting ....................................................................53 Song of Myself .........................................................54 These Flowers Must Have Care ..............................55 They Say You Mustnt Sing ......................................56 Four Poems of Farewell: Adam and Eve .................57 Don Quixote to his Lady ..........................................59 To Sleeping Beauty..................................................61 To Scheherazade: Teller of Tales............................63 A River We Cant Cross............................................67 An Old Farm: The Stones Garden...........................68 Another Birthday .....................................................69 The Victims .............................................................71 My Old Baseball Glove.............................................72 Looking Homeward .................................................73

~7

Part 1: At Sea

~8

REFLECTIONS ON LEAVING
The oily water didnt matter. The dirt floated and the minnows underneath the pier flashed like mirrors when the rose. The work began around me. The men pulled lines and near my feet--snake like--one moved. The tug boat hoots were answered by the ships harsh bellow, and sea gulls high above the garbage shoots squawked in their gliding wait. Around the yellow crane, shore men stood, finished loading one more ship. The water stirred and churned and the oil slick--blue and purple--broke like floating pieces of a puzzle. The huge ship turned Children grow and have to break away, I know, but thats an easy thing to say to someone else. It was difficult last night. Her face was worried and the silent way she drank her tea, looking deep into her cup, made me know how much she wanted me to stay at home. How can I forget her face? Up until dessert she seemed alright. I know she tried to understand and reconcile her thoughts with what she felt. Children grow but theyre still children. Her smile was stiff when I promised I would write when I arrived wherever I was going The sun was setting low in back of Brooklyn, and the ship, at last, was heading east. I stared down at the water and felt the wind sting. My thoughts rushed by as the speed increased and the shaking of the deck made me wonder made me question all Ive ever said about my needing this. My heart was thunder when I looked up at the seagulls over head turning back then stared down at the swelling sea not knowing where this ship was taking me.

~9

THE LAST GOODBYE

Looking at her in the bay, green from rain and sea spray, I thought how her torch in the sky made men and women cry once. The streets were paved with gold. Their children would grow, they were told and be rich and happy. Life would be new. And here I was, leaving. Where to? For what? I could not say, but could only feel, like a gasp, the need to get away and breathe fresh air, to follow every urge, to walk gold streets inside of me, somewhere. Somewhere? Would streets be new, somewhere? Looking at her, smaller now, who was I to mock her promises as I waved goodbye?

~ 10

LOOKING AT THE STARS

At night, standing out on deck, the darkness like the inside of a cave, forces me to stare into its darkness. My mind seems vast a universe with planets, moons and stars. Standing there, gazing high into my mind, watching thoughts sparkle in the distance. I wonder what it is out there beyond me, pulling.

~ 11

BEIRUT: ON THE DOCK

While maggots squirm and flies dive down for scraps of food piled here in rusted buckets, the busy pier ignores two boys grabbing at a crust of bread or a bone to eat. No one saw then sneak along the wall, or heard the squeak of the buckets lid as the thrown out food was shuffled through and their skinny fingers fought among the flies. As I watch them make their way past egg shells and shake away the food that lingers on a piece of food, their eyes see mine and for a moment we share our getting caught: that sudden flare of rushing blood. They rise, their mouths stuffed and stare at me. I feel the flash of their frightened eyes as they back away then dash like flies from a swatter.

~ 12

LOST AT SEA
At night, sailing through the dark, Id lie awake hearing the wind howl and the water break and pound against the ship and there, lying on my back, looking up into the dark, Id listen to the night above me, sighing restlessly, while the stillness, stark and jagged, made my breathing fall and rise like waves swelling under moonless skies. Id lie there, rolling like the ship--no course, no star, no way to steer, no way to force myself to move in some direction, no sail to catch a wind and so, Id lie there bobbing in the dark, hoping that a gale howling through the night would blow me somewhere closer to a coast. But no waves tossed, and no wind blew--and so Id lie there, lost. Night after night, tired from the hours in the galley, Id search inside for towers or lights--something that would help me find my way to shore and lying there feeling more and more as the dark nights passed that my mind would sink before it reached whatever shore it hoped to reach, Id think of other days rolling in like fog from distant bays. That lonely boy in dungarees, sitting by the creek, fishing by himself, admitting by his silence that the rocks and trees that filled his days, the sound of giddy birds and rushing water were enough to squeeze excitement to his heart and squash the words that ached there. Words he did not have to speak because each cast sunk them in the creek.

~ 13

And who was that boy standing on the beach, wondering if one day hed ever reach the place where sea and sky touch. Could he take the poetry of that and say he had to seek another world? Or was the ache inside of him too deep to say how sad he was? Did he know he had to find a place where dreams and life touch in the mind? Yet lying there, those shores would fade and I would stare into the dark and starless sky of my mind and like the midnight watch strained to keep myself awake. Soon, I knew Id fall asleep and would not feel the pained world of this ship. What was there to do, lying in my bed, my body warm, my mind in the cold eye of a storm?

~ 14