How Can You Feel Blue?
How can you feel blue
When you look toward the sky
And see the darkling silhouette
Of birds, as gracefully they fly
In strict formation ‘cross
The iris of your eye?
How can you feel blue
When you pause upon the shore
To watch the waves caress the sand
Now gently and forevermore
Tender as the present tide
Or crashing with a roar?
How can you feel blue
When the pattern of your life
Full lived, with joy and woeful pain
In equal sum for man and wife,
With cool dispassion viewed,
Is still with colours rife?
A Song of Warfare
We have fought for king and country,
We have heard the bullets zing,
We have sung the song of warfare,
Who’s next, who’s queued to sing?
We have seen our friends being shattered,
Bones and gore the only litter.
Those who sing in praise of courage
Serve to make us more the bitter.
Now a new and brutal warfare,
Meant to slay both weak and small;
“This is just,” – this evil terror –
Is the new muezzins’ call.
Hate still breeds among us, brothers,
Cain kills Able far and wide.
Can we stop this self-destruction?
Time is not upon our side.
Edmund Jonah was born in Calcutta, India to Iraqi Jewish parents. He discovered his love of words, music and film at a very early age. At age 22, he emigrated to the U.K. where he married. 10 years later he and his wife moved with their 7 month old daughter to Israel, where they produced two boys. They now have 3 granddaughters. He has his book, ‘Yeshua!’ published and several of his stories have appeared in Magazines and Anthologies world-wide. He is one of the founding members of English Theatre in Israel and of the Shakespeare Reading Circle in Tel-Aviv. He is now retired but lectures on several subjects all around the centre of the country.
Could you please tell me what kinds of classical poem (pantoum, sonnet, etc.) you wrote? I’d like to do some! Thank you for sharing your work.
Very interesting poems. My favorite is the first and I am also interested in the form. Thank you for sharing!
I apologize, on my iPhone, forgot to enter my last name. I didn’t mean to be rude.
The anaphora repetition is lovely and emotive in ‘How Can You Feel Blue’ and adds to the haunting quality of the question you pose . ‘A Song of Warfare’ is powerful and moving. Both pieces are wonderfully rendered.
Thank you all for appreciating my work. I never thought of myself as a poet, and wrote rhymes only for fun at first. Then my mother’s death and my Dad’s grief made me write ‘The Hindu’s Lament’ to hide it was my Dad about whom I was talking, Jews have a different way of lamenting and mourning. ‘Circles’ came after a bout of sex with my wife, We enjoyed a great sex life until she died at 82 after sharing for 60 years. I was a lucky man. The War poem came about due to the hatred we are surrounded by from our cousins.