Friday, September 21, 2007

Accurate Medical Supplies

Accurate Medical Supplies
79-Aibak Block, New Garden Town,
Lahore.
Tel: 5846894-6
Fax: 5846897

Accurate Medical Supplies

Accurate Medical Supplies
79-Aibak Block, New Garden Town,
Lahore.
Tel: 5846894-6
Fax: 5846897

Abbott Laboratories (Pakistan) Limited

Abbott Laboratories (Pakistan) Limited
Opp. Radio Pakistan Transmission Center,
Hyderabad Road, Landhi,
Karachi.
Tel: 5015045-9
Fax: 5013245

Abbott Laboratories (Pakistan) Limited

Abbott Laboratories (Pakistan) Limited
Opp. Radio Pakistan Transmission Center,
Hyderabad Road, Landhi,
Karachi.
Tel: 5015045-9
Fax: 5013245

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Gary Fincke

(1945– )

The Magpie Evening: A Prayer

When magpies die, each of the living swoops down
and pecks, one by one, in an accepted order.

He coaxed my car to start, the boy who’s killed himself.
He twisted a cable, performed CPR on
The carburetor while my three children shivered
Through the unanswerable questions about stalled.
He chose shotgun, full in the face, so no one stepped
Into the cold, blowing on his hands, to fix him.
Let him rest now, the minister says. Let this be,
Repeating himself to four brothers, five sisters,
All of them my neighbors until they grew and left.
Let us pray. Let us manage what we need to say.
Let this house with its three hand-made additions be
Large enough for the one day of necessity.
Let evening empty each room to ceremony
Chosen by the remaining nine. Let the awful,
Forecasted weather hold off in east Ohio
Until each of them, oldest to youngest, has passed.
Let their thirty-seven children scatter into
The squabbling of the everyday, and let them break
This creeping chain of cars into the fanning out
Toward anger and selfishness and the need to eat
At any of the thousand tables they will pass.
Let them wait. Let them correctly choose the right turn
Or the left, this entrance ramp, that exit, the last
Confusing fork before the familiar driveway
Three hundred miles and more from these bleak thunderheads.
Let them regather into the chairs exactly
Matched to their numbers, blessing the bountiful or
The meager with voices that soar toward renewal.
Let them have mercy on themselves. Let my children,
Grown now, be repairing my faults with forgiveness.

© Gary Fincke

Len Roberts

(1947– )

The List of Most Difficult Words

I was still standing although
Gabriella Wells and Barbara Ryan were too,
their bodies dark against the wall of light
that dull-pewter December afternoon,
shadows with words that flowed
so easily from their mouths,
fluorescent and grievous,
pied and effervescent,
words I'd spelled out to the rhythm
of my father's hoarse whispers
during our nightly practice sessions
beneath the dim bulb,
superfluous, excelsior,
desultory and exaggeration
mixed with his Schaefer breath
and Lucky Strike smoke

as I went down
The List of Most Difficult Words
with a man whose wife had left,
one son grown into madness,
the other into death,
my father's hundred-and-five-pound skeleton
of skin glowing in that beer-flooded kitchen
when he'd lift the harmonica

to blow a few long, sad riffs
of country into a song
while he waited for me to hit
the single l of spiraling,
the silent i of receipt,
the two of us working words hard
those nights on Olmstead Street,
sure they would someday save me.

© Len Roberts

Oliver Wendell Holmes

(1809–1894)

The Last Leaf

I saw him once before,
As he passed by the door,
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o'er the ground
With his cane.

They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.

But now he walks the streets,
And looks at all he meets
Sad and wan,
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
"They are gone."

The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.

My grandmamma has said—
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago—
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow;

But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff,
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.

I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!

And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling.