Poems and Translations
Poetry of Sholeh Wolpé <Back To Poems Home Page
Rhapsody
I hear this music in my head
and my fingers can’t stop
dancing with my pen
Cypresses in the backyard
tango the wind
in tender sways
The coffee shop door
down the street
rumbas open and closed
eighteen hours a day
The music is louder
in a deserted parking lot in L.A.
where the moon is pale and far
and fear is a Baryshnikov
leaping across darkness--
Louder still when a Palestinian,
trapped in a crossfire of bullets,
shields his son in his arms
and sings a rhapsody
to the soldiers and their God.
-- Sholeh Wolpé
