The Haves
Elli Hazit
They teach from an abundance of books
They have analyzed the warp and the weave
of how best to convey—Words
We’ve dissected, again,
the best method
for reinvention
No one will articulate the obvious:
The random gifts,
the essential inequalities
that life doles out
Maestros and laggards,
Chanteuses,
Those who pick up
and those who concentrate on
the specifics
How it might rain
Injustice will prevail
as time wears down
the most energetic
The differences seem as marked
as ever, but distance makes
a buffer from the tears
Heartbreaks are of another sort here
where water flows freely
we see images, read and bemoan
sporadically
their extreme need,
our extreme luxury
Muster sympathy
Jump into the pool
to cool off
Fly, fly anywhere, but somewhere nice—
Some place full of exotic plants,
and beaches
to rest from our heavy labors
while night falls on an exposed plain
of hunger—there
Back in the stacks
the millions of books
beg to be read,
are preserved, cherished, catalogued
The course of human history
that begat this.
____________________
Elli Hazit was born in San Francisco in 1960. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her master’s degree from Boston University. Hazit lived in Paris, France from 1983 to 1997. Her writing has been published in the International Herald Tribune, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and the Cambridge News. She has also produced radio programs for WORT-FM, Madison. One of her stories, “The Tangerines and the Dogs,” was broadcast internationally on the BBC World Service Programme.
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