Daniel Galef

Cannon Bollard
  In many European cities the street bollards (lines of posts
  to stop traffic and protect pedestrians) are made from 
  broken or decommissioned cannon filled with concrete and 
  buried nose-down.

The yellow sunset glimmers off of cobbles
worn to polish, gold and rust and black
and rust. A pensioner or postman hobbles
through the Victory Arch, whose marble crack
conceals a pigeon’s bed, and, as he passes
underneath the coffered vault whose friezes
fade like photos, stops and wipes his glasses
with one woolen sleeve. A squeezebox wheezes
around the corner. Farther, boats are drifting
in on the tide. The benches and boot-scrapers
turn gold-black, too. Light fog is slowly lifting.
One by one, with gas-lamps or with tapers
windows glow to life. Catching his breath
before he shuffles on, the postman leans
on me. Above us, scenes of noble death
and bloody glory border stirring scenes
of stately allegory. None compare
to memory. Not his. Far too artistic.
Too little mud. There was no beauty there.
No symmetry or goddesses. No mystic
air of Great Men living their Great Minute.
I quite agree. Half-buried in the ground,
my muzzle mute, a plug of concrete in it,
the only Living Truths that I have found
are that all is forgotten, no one cares,
and iron rusts. The Old Town now is peaceful,
the century’s seen no sieges. Unawares,
I grew a strange disgust for all things easeful.
Some fine retirement this is for one
who saved this city time and time again,
who routed stout Napoleon, gun for gun
and shot for shot, who fought, with fire and chain,
the invading Turk, the Frenchman, and the Serb,
who stood upon the ramparts, strong and polished,
before the battlement became the curb,
before the fortifications were demolished
to build the shops and banks and marble arches,
and the sun (it seemed) might shine for days and days.
Then my thunder and their military marches
turned to music oozing from cafés
out to the sidewalk. Laughter. I was glad,
don’t get me wrong. It meant that I had won.
Whatever thoughts of peacetime I had had,
I knew, it meant the time to lay the gun
down, and kick the boots back in the closet.
But I thought I was too heavy to be kicked.
They kicked me still, and flipped me to deposit
face-down like heretics entombed and bricked
in sunless cells, or witches buried bound
in iron chains, or holy martyrs lashed
to anchors buried in the bronze-bright sound,
like icons that iconoclasts have smashed.
And now this poor old fool and I stand dumb-
ly by as centuries wash overhead,
and I just let them wash. My trunk is numb.
Perhaps this feeling’s victory, instead,
or service, in a sense. Like when a cat
or dog makes use.... He’s leaning on my head,
so I’m a help, of sorts. There’s pride in that.
But — when the unmoored lorry, swift and dire 
and driverless, comes barreling down the curve,
a juggernautic mass of steel and tire
and fire and glass — my mettle, or my nerve,
or whatever’s left is steeled, and stands as solid
as Samson in his chains. And someone cries
‘Look out!’ and someone ducks behind a bollard
and someone doesn’t hear, and someone tries
to move two paces in a half-pace second....
Then the rolling thunder rolled again, the sound
of Napoleon at the gate, and glory beckoned,
and a force to uproot an oak tree from the ground—
Then time returns, and the man’s no longer leaning;
I am, though, as if to give a proof
of action and reaction. What was careening
is still; the pigeon’s flown from the marble roof
through steam like smoke on a battlefield, or gauze.
And something’s stirring in the fellow’s face
like in those faded friezes, and he paws
the crater in the hood that marks the place
where something struck, and something stopped it fast.
Radiator steam, a hissing ghost,
lifts like a fog, so I can see, at last,
that in all these years, I’ve never left my post.

Daniel Galef’s first book, Imaginary Sonnets, is a collection of persona poems each from the point of view of a different historic figure, literary or mythological character, or inanimate object. Subjects include Lucrezia Borgia, Wernher von Braun, and a new variety of breakfast taco. Buy the book here: danielgalef.com/book/