Bogdan Borgovan: two poems
“The Eve of War”
─from Adam’s journal
When Eve asked, “Will you come over to my penthouse? I have a terrace with
great views of the Old Town,” could I say no to her? She didn’t know and
didn’t need to know about my acrophobia.
She cooked a very nice dinner, we had some wine, the evening air was sweet.
We listened to a few Leonard songs we both knew very well
and that was all it took.
After midnight, we went to sleep, and I had a strange dream.
Many of Eve’s relatives were in the room with us. Most of them men in dark uniforms.
They gathered around the bed, examining our naked bodies sleeping side by side.
They debated whether that was acceptable or not.
They didn’t seem to agree with one another, and that went on for a long time.
Next day, when I told Eve about the dream, she didn’t seem surprised.
She even named some of the men wearing the dark uniforms, and said
those men show up in her dreams too. “Sometimes,” she said,
“they teach me one of the songs they sing when they go marching in the streets.”
Then, Eve sang one of the songs she memorized.
I couldn’t think of anything to say right there and then.
Perhaps I thought it was just one more display of her black humor.
When I went overseas, we wrote each other every week, and
Eve slowly revealed a very old web of family entanglements.
With every new letter though, she also reaffirmed her loyalty to the dark uniforms.
When the new war began, there was no doubt whose side Eve was on.
I hoped she’d change her mind when pictures from the Eastern Front were
published in the West. Instead, she said the pictures were not reality.
Not too long after that, the letters stopped.
I don’t think of Eve so often anymore. I didn’t save her photographs.
Except for one from high school, in which her ragged bangs cover her right eye,
while her left eye looks straight into the camera.
"For the First Woman to Take a Soldier’s Part”
Were our streets ever so dark?
—D. Nurkse
Fall equinox day
my phone says. Suddenly cold,
ash gray sky, 90% chance rain.
In Bennett Park
the bicentennial elm tree
sheds leaf clusters and bark,
the windswept flagstone path
traces the pentagon
of Fort Washington.
Marked on a granite bolder,
Manhattan’s highest point-
265 feet above sea level.
The black & blue war cannon
stands only 2 minutes
from my door step
but I know nothing
about war, the military,
being a soldier.
Afraid of losing her only child,
my mother dressed me as a girl.
She never let me have a haircut.
When the draft notices were sent,
none had my name on it.
My boyfriends disappeared one by one.
In 1775, at age 24,
Margaret Corbin went to war.
One year later, dressed as a man,
she joined her husband John in battle
at Fort Washington, and helped him load
the double tail-six pound field cannon.
When John was killed,
Margaret took over,
firing against the Brits.
Her aim was steady,
she was a sure shot.
But when the bullets hit,
she lost her left arm,
her jaw, and her left breast.
The battle was also lost.
Tonight, the park is quiet.
A woman wearing a nightgown
walks a large dog over the granite boulder.
The dog sniffs the Revolutionary cannon.
Under the lamppost, the woman
turns out to be a man,
my neighbor Sam in building B,
who lost his daughter Anna in Kabul -
a 25-year old Marine,
same age as Margaret Corbin
250 years ago. Killed by a bomb
aimed at 100 civilian Afghans on the run.
Sam never saw his daughter’s
burnt face, the severed legs,
the bloody torso.
When he received the urn
he placed it on the mantel.
He spoke to no one ever since.
At midnight, there is a clearing
in the sky. A giant Harvest Moon
glows high above the park.
It stops Sam and his dog
dead in their tracks─
the German Shephard’s instinct is to howl.
Bogdan Borgovan is an architect living in Northern Manhattan. Born in Bucharest, Romania, he came to New York in the early 80s to study architecture at The Cooper Union. He primarily writes poetry and short prose pieces.
