Ode to the Heart

heart let me more have pity on

Gerard Manley Hopkins

It’s late in the day and the old school’s deserted

but the door’s unlocked. The linoleum dips

and bulges, the halls have shrunk.

And I shiver for the child

who entered that brick building,

his small face looking out

from the hood of a woolen coat.

My father told me that when he was a boy

the Jews lived on one block, Italians another.

To get home he had to pass

through the forbidden territory.

He undid his belt and swung it wildly

as he ran, wind whistling

through the buckle. Heart

be praised: you wake every morning.

You cast yourself into the streets.