Knock Knock:
A Poem for Ukraine

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Ukrainian boy.
I have walked from far,
Over fields of snow
And ice of roads
And cities at war.
I don’t know you.
Are there any with you?
My family is gone,
I don’t know where.
I’m here all alone.
May I come in?
I have a number
On my hand. Can I call?
Not on my land!
There’s a country
Down the road.
Try them there.
It’s far, and I’m cold.

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Ukrainian boy.
Can I come in?
I’m so tired,
And the wind is so cold. . . .
Why are you here?
What is that 
In your eyes? Is it tears?
Is it sadness or fear?
No, it is ice,
It is melting there.
Go down the road.
There is nothing for you here.

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Ukrainian boy.
Can you say where I am?
I saw ghosts on the road,
They looked like my papa,
My mama, my sister,
My brother at home.
Has anything happened to them?
Will you please let me in?
I’m so tired, I don’t think 
I can walk any more.
I can’t feel my hands.
May I come in here?
What is that number
Written out on your hand?
When I call, there is silence 
At the other end.
Come in and rest
On my bed. No, it’s snow . . .
When you sleep you will never
Fear war again.
No, no, I must go,
How will I get home
If now I don’t go?
Come in and rest,
Come in and rest,
Come in and rest
Until you must go . . .  

Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Who knocked at our door?
Show yourself if you’re there!

But there was no one there,
Only the sound of the wind,
And the snow in the air.


The Sunken Palace 

The curlew calls in the sycamore tree.
Do you hear it? A boy’s laugh follows.

A rustle of gold flickers over the lake.
The sky is cold and on fire.

Do you see the fair one, the kind one, the holy?
She is not to be seen on the tower.

There is only a shadow to be seen in the arch
And an iron gate as it closes.

He is gone now, and she is not here.
Their story, our story, is over.

The palace of love was a fable. The rain
Fell for long on the meadow.

At the season when the moon was a song in the snow
And the wind was a shout in the mountains,

The ghosts of the palace where the ballroom had drowned
Danced in a lake of shadows.


The Sound of Falling Trees


“There’s no such thing as ‘being a poet.’” 
—T. S. Eliot

It used to be
an almost embarrassing compliment.
If someone called you that, you skipped 
a heartbeat of secret bliss,
as if the most beautiful girl in class
had just blown you a kiss.
Now it is almost an embarrassment.
“Writers in San Francisco,”
New York and L.A. smile to each other
with a wink and a nudge. “Aren’t they all
poets? They can be safely ignored,
left to PEN and AWP,
unless you go in
for the penniest of penny stocks.
They can’t even make themselves any money,
let alone the likes of you and me;
they’re famous only if they die
(I know it sounds bold, but it’s so true) by
a monumentally gaudy suicide.”

It’s not much of a compliment anymore, yet
it is still a kind of destiny, a kind of fate:
a compulsive need to find new words
for old emotions, old and raw,
and make them ring like bells in the winter air—
clear and true and fading into oblivion—
the crash of trees falling deep in the forest
even when there is no one to hear.

_____

Christopher Bernard’s latest collection of poems, A Socialist’s Garden of Verses, won a 2021 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award and was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ “Top 100 Indie Books of 2021.”