Despairing Angels
Carnalized in our time
Wingless
floating floating
Serenading cities aflame
far below
Lyrics of death descending
Shrill with despair
Not not
the sweet Tiepolo angels
Now now
a lost imagining:
the sweetest among angels
are being tutored to die
While wingless beings
graceless and grotesque float
above our menaced planet
Digital Enigma
Rivers of words
flowing through my mind
from smiling eyes
from everywhere
These intimate strangers
descending from digital clouds
becoming even aspiring lovers
or worse…declared soulmates
Or so it seems
Or so it seems
Our 21st century senses permeable
that lust for lust
that thirst for phantasy
neglecting what is touchable
this love that infects our bodies
disabling all that is autoimmune
befogging our clogged desiring
escaping from what? to what?
Or so it seems
Or so it seems
The answers my friends the answers
encased in the soul’s tomb
mummified forgotten
mystery unsolved unsolvable
Or so it seems
Or so it seems
How many time have I seen them together
Yet mostly near birth or just after death
Neglecting the hard passage through time
From infant Jesus to the cross is too quick
For my modern eye to see
And rarely caught the painter’s fancy
But holding the holy infant
Became back then the artist’s signature of belief
As holding the limp sacred body
Became the artist’s inscription of faith
This holy mother alone for centuries
Abandoned in hard times by Joseph
Or was it the other way around
Abandoned also by her only son
Or was it the other way around
Her son who finds the world to lose it
And is found again and mortally spurned
And found yet again to be so well remembered.
BEYOND THE IMAGINARY: A STUDENT FROM GAZA
It surely exists
as surely more surely
than you or I
more surely than this place of mine
Same sun same moon and sky
with similar starlighting
yet the sonic intrusions are different
the nights and days are different
Those children driven toward death daily
are still being born and dying there
their mothers trembling past pain
as old men weep with wonder
Despite the visits and images of distress
renewed year upon year renewed by films
that hide little and show s well hard truths
despite the futile rage mixed with tears
Despite all this weighing down of heart and soul
Gaza remains a blank space in the recoiling mind
a void valley of despairing darkness
a wound without boundaries
So condemned it seems to this deforming destiny
such an endless night expects no dawn
expects not even an audience
for this prison theater of crime
The real Gaza will always be unimaginable
it can only be lived lamented loved
and then forgotten by forms of departure
forgotten even by the most tender among us
And yet her presence before me now
seems so much stronger than my imaginary
her eyes shining her smile glistening
for her we must learn to walk in the dark
For her we must do more than hope
Colors (in Japan)
Without love
Green is black
Without sorrow
Brown is yellow
Without passion
All drains white
Without luck
Life goes gray
With great luck
Love lasts red
With fortuna
Love is blue
With blessings
Love grows green
With Spring blossoms
Love is starlight
With love
Life lasts longer
In Praise of the Giraffe
“It is one thing to see far; it is another thing to go there.”
Constantin Brancusi
Yes, it sees far
And yes, it goes there
It carries its big heart
With the grace of a butterfly
And often plunges its tongue
Into savannahs of delight
It lives from the land
And dies on the land
Above all a voiceless being
Wordlessly addressing our soul
Perhaps an early warning to all
Hiding their grief by words alone
If the world lasts longer than I do
As my twilight lingers and fades to dark
I ponder another nightfall
Neither mine nor yours
But the nightfall of the world
That comes as secretly as creation
Heralded yet unannounced
Without lyric farewell
Without autumnal warmth
With fury of unrequited love
Not a spectacle caught on TV
No falling towers no cosmic tremor
Unnoticed by the nearest galactic neighbor
Unworthy of attention by our space siblings
Unnoticed unmourned fully deserved
Yet the saddest day ever recorded
For those dying amid species dusk
Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He initiated this blog partly in celebration of his 80th birthday.
Global Justice in the 21st Century 
