The Day He Left - inauguration day 2021
Raised in L.A., educated at UC Berkeley in music and Harvard Graduate School in composition, Joel Kabakov received a Graduate Prize Fellowship and doctorate in composition. Encounters with master poets Octavio Paz and Robert Lowell at Harvard encouraged his poetry. “Available Light”, a book of collected poems was published in 2015 by Goldfish Press. “The poems are eloquent and well-crafted, ranging from fastidious and poetic to loose-limbed vernacular”…Harvard Colloquy. JK now lives in The Dalles, directs “Europatopia” ensemble and teaches at CGCC. See link for more on Joel
By Joel Kabakov
The day he left
two hawks were sited
copulating in the sky
above the lake
put there by a poet
returning from exile,
driven to lie
about all truths
until, as Einstein postulated,
they returned on bends in the cosmos
to their origins
the day he left
chaos played its last card
folded its hand
raked in a few coins
and left the table
the day he left
myriad libidos were lifted
from order to class to genus
to just us
peeking over our wine glasses
the day he left
headlines, op eds and journals
all spoke with one voice, one word
one syllable
as in day one of creation
an ancient fountain buried
beneath Pompeian ash
began to >low
on the day he left
an army of news reporters
buried the expression
“we now know”
on the day he left
on the day he left
curtains drawn,
not every demon left the room,
some thing of him
remaining...
an evil thing bereft
on the day he left.