Poems, Two

By Roy Shifrin

Roy Shifrin is an author with published books containing more than three hundred of his poems. He has also written three novels and an autobiography describing an artists life lived in New York City and in Europe.

An artist as well as a prolific poet, he has primarily supported himself and his family over the years through his visual creations. The illustrations that accompany the poems of this collection are of works representing a sample of his drawings, prints, and domestic bronzes from his many exhibitions in Europe and America. As a sculptor he has placed over fifteen large bronze commissions that stand in prominent public plazas in cities such as New York, San Diego, and Orlando, as well as Badajoz and Barcelona in Spain. His most recently completed commission is the large bronze that is an official memorial located at the entrance to the Florida museum honoring the US Navy SEALs.

He currently lives in Vermont. Visit him online at users.erols.com/rshifrin/home.html.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491757123

Roy Shifrin

Roy Shifrin is an author with published books containing more than three hundred of his poems. He has also written three novels and an autobiography describing an artist’s life lived in New York City and in Europe. An artist as well as a prolific poet, he has primarily supported himself and his family over the years through his visual creations. The illustrations that accompany the poems of this collection are of works representing a sample of his drawings, prints, and domestic bronzes from his many exhibitions in Europe and America. As a sculptor he has placed over fifteen large bronze commissions that stand in prominent public plazas in cities such as New York, San Diego, and Orlando, as well as Badajoz and Barcelona in Spain. His most recently completed commission is the large bronze that is an official memorial located at the entrance to the Florida museum honoring the US Navy SEALs. He currently lives in Vermont. Visit him online at users.erols.com/rshifrin/home.html.

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Copyright © 2014 Roy Shifrin.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Cover: Dancing Death, bronze 14 inches

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-5711-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-5712-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014922801

iUniverse rev. date: 01/08/2015

CONTENTS

Illustrations

City Morgue

Bruegel’s Icarus

Fallen Poets

There May Be A God

Of My Love

The Meek And Mild

If I Recited

Matter

Justice As On Court Tv

Time Back Then

You Are Beautiful

Facing Death

God Made Man

A Fond Farewell

Land Of Greed

Love Song

To Her Of The Southworld

She Who So Wanted To Please

The Couple

The Visit

This Field

Cruel Death Visits Emily Dickenson

Homage To W H Auden

Green Wheelbarrow

War

Basic Training

The Wall

Silhouettes

Soldier’s Song

We Here

The Butcher’s Window

Mystery

The Way

Less Real

Men In Suits

To Think Thoughts

If And Love

The Same

Artists At Sea

The Botticelli Show

Falling In Love

Friends Be Joyous (A La Beethoven)

Jazz Club

Marsha And The Starry Night

Bluff-Daddy

Who’s That Knocking?

Crickets

Sea Song

Poem From The Spanish

Moment In Time

Paper Roses

A Dark Rectangle

She

Barcelona Of My Dreams

Friendship

A Richer Man

Urban Hermit

Cutting Edge Phone

2G

City Dog Tells All

Wonderful Days

He Woke Up

The End Of The World

Hereafter

Glorious Nigeria.com

Excerpts

Magi

Whose God?

My World

Wear In The World?

God’s Day

Jogging As God

Three Sons

She Did Not Come

Poor And Wealth

Greed

To The Barren Plain

The Stream

Returned Home

She Who Went A Yearning

Free Free Me

Gourmand’s Creed

Nothing Is Ever Guaranteed

Time Out Of Mind

Your Hat

Him

The Voyager

Forever

Cancer A La American

I Dreamt

You Are Beautiful

A Scary Nursery Tale

Forced To Knock

Your Face

Icarus In The Bronx

Great New York City Art School Students

New York Subway Singer

On The Selling Of A Painting For Millions Of Dollars

You Just Don’t Care

A Boarding Manifest

Illustrations

All art works by author

Page 3 – public monument, polished bronze, Icarus (back) 18 feet tall, in New York City

Page 5 – portrait, ink drawing

Page 9 – polished bronze, head of sheep, 18 inches

Page 13 – polished bronze, head of a lion, 12 inches

Page 16 – portrait, color print

Page 18 – detail, bronze figure of death, 24 inches

Page 23 – female nude back, ink drawing

Page 25 – seated nude, pencil drawing

Page 27 – female, ink drawing

Page 30 – bronze head, biblical Eve, 12 inches

Page 34 – bronze imagined portrait of Van Gogh, life size

Page 37 – bronze ceremonial chess set on board 48 inches square

Page 38 – bronze head, biblical warrior David, life size

Page 42 – printed poster from bronze sculpture, at Soccer Hall of Fame

Page 44 – bronze David and Goliath sculpture, in artist’s designed plaza for Spanish Civil War Memorial, 100 by 100 feet, Barcelona

Page 47 – portrait, pencil drawing

Page 54 – bronze Winged Jumper, 6 feet

Page 56 – bronze Mermaid, 24 inches

Page 60 – Roy Shifrin working in Spain on plaster sculpture

Page 64 – bronze Winged Runner, 8 feet, in San Diego, Ca.

Page 68 – female nude, pencil drawing

Page 74 – printed exhibition poster, for London and Barcelona

Page 78 – Roy Shifrin below bronze Astronaut-Column monument, 16 feet, in New York City

Page 80 – Roy Shifrin working on plaster Great American Horse in his studio

Page 83 – bronze biblical head, Isaiah, life size

Page 86 – bronze Winged Sculpture in Barcelona, 6 feet

Page 91 – bronze Olympic Athlete, 20 inches

Page 99 – polished bronze head, Rhino, 16 inches

Page 108 – pencil drawing, male nude

Page 112 – polished bronze horse’s head, 20 inches

Page 113 – poster of Great American Horse, for Florida exhibit

Page 118 – Roy Shifrin working on plaster of Icarus in his studio, 14 feet

Page 120 - study for M L King monument, for Washington, D C

Page 124 – bronze head of Tom Paine, life size

Page 126 – bronze chess pawns

Page 132 – polished bronze Prometheus monument, 15 feet in Princeton, N.J.

Page 134 –reclining man, ink drawing

Page 138 – portrait, pencil drawing

Page 142 – detail of death helmet from bronze figure, 24 inches high

Page 151 –nude female figure, color print

Page 153 – mounting polished bronze David monument, in Barcelona

Page 155 – dedication of official U.S. Navy SEAL Memorial, bronze 17 feet, in Florida

Page 157 – Roy Shifrin in studio working on bronze Horses of Estremadura, Spain

Page 162 – bronze three headed dog, Ceberus, 20 inches long

CITY MORGUE

Death’s minion came

No, not a gentleman neat in tie and dark suit

Or a winged angel in bright robes

Or softly as on a scented breeze

Or gently with a lover’s touch

Death’s minion came

In a stained white apron laughing, hands in dirty

rubber gloves

Smelling of detachment and disinfectant out from a

noisy hall

Unzipping the large shiny black plastic bag

The industrial shroud of unsentimental disposal

Death’s minion came

Into this the last place for the lately lost and left

To he who perhaps once felt himself the center

of worlds

A driver of great wheels,

That muscled arm falling out from the black plastic

(seen but for a moment) now thin and

withered, just before a zipper’s fearful

final sound

Death’s minion came

To him maybe long ago noted in song and fable

A fallen hero here upon this steel well-polished slab

Stripped and repackaged for the icy vault, a

numbered door, the dark

Awaiting only papers to be signed, releasing to next

of kin, if any or if not — better not to know

Death’s minion came

With a job to do

Be it called corpse or cadaver

To quickly prepare it for delivery to eternity — some

he, she, I, or you, someone death, but not his

minion knew.

Interior17Icback30020141002041043.jpg

BRUEGEL’S ICARUS

They may have heard a cry but they did not look up

A distant shout of father, or help, as if a child’s cry