For My Children's Children
By Charles Fishman


Before any part of me is reborn
in you, I pray
for peace to enter my veins
and stay
that no words I idly rhyme
over your heads
bear the venom of desire
or dread.

Little ones,
bare and breathless with
breaking
into this realm of quiet aching,
I fear the pain of your long waking
toward light
that will anoint your being
with sight.

I fear what you will see
within my eyes
that harbor dreams
easier to melt than snow
and pray that your eyes stay free
of bitterness and need

May you be joyous in deed
and ache with only the sweet pain
of things that catch flame
in love's heat.

Charles Fishman's books include Mortal Companions, The Firewalkers, Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, and The Death Mazurka, which was selected by the American Library Association as one of the outstanding books of the year (1989) and nominated for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. His new collection of poetry, Country of Memory, will be published by Rattapallax Press in Spring 2002. Charles can be reached at charles.fishman@sunysb.eduor cfishman@farmingdale.edu