Books, Articles, Poetry, etc. by William T. Delamar

DELAMAR WEB
Bill

Poetry

As I mentioned in the introductory page, I just write poetry when it comes unbidden. "I Cry" was written in a few minutes while I was working on a wage and salary program for the Medical College of Virginia Hospitals. It came out pretty much as is. I played with it later, even doing a brain web to see if I could improve it, but it stayed the same. "You" poured out while I was writing a novel about twin brothers in the Civil War. I live my characters, and I wrote this when I knew I wasn't going to live through the war. "Outside" poured out on a beautiful Sunday afternoon when I was working two shifts doing a study of a diet kitchen at West Penn Hospital in Pittsburgh. I simply wanted to be some place else. "Breath of Umber" was written on a fall afternoon when I was thinking of home and the past.

I Cry

I cry
Because children die
While I formulate a wage and salary program.
In a far-off land
Where only hunger holds their hand
Children whimper while I write upon the sand.
The snows are gentle in my night
But cruel to the stretched-out fingers of their fright.
Off beyond the haze
Above the tree-line of my gaze
Children stop the search for love and die.
Somewhere are leaves that hide the sun
And rooted paths where children run
And other men who cry,
And do their work
And wonder why.

- William T. Delamar

- from Weymouth: An Anthology of Poetry,
edited by Sam Ragan,
Saint Andrews Press, 1987

You

The wind blows leaves against my coat.
The same thought pulls inside my throat.
The sun sets through the trees
and lights the hillside,
And though I am a man, I cry
Because I know I'll not see you again.
Soon it will be night
And then I will remember
In the dark I held your hand.

- William T. Delamar

- from Voices, USG, 1979

Outside

World of clumsy clay
Spin your day.
I hear you through the distant calls
That find the way through ticking clocks and building walls.
There is an odor too, that now and then I know,
It tells of life and age and mulch and snow.
There's something yet that needs to be set free

A bird inside my soul that wants to fly and be:
But walls and clocks will shield me from the weather
And separate the sky from wing and feather.

- William T. Delamar

- from Scimitar and Song,
Vol. XXV No. 11, May, 1963

Breath of Umber

Leaves are beginning to fall.
Dry grass is dying.
The voices of home country call.
Thin winds are sighing.

Cool are the leaves in fall.
Tender the breeze.
The voices, they whisper, they call.
Restless the trees.

The trembling nights grow tall.
They hide the naked trees.
Earth has a moldy shawl,
Across her knees.

Dark are the leaves that dissolve in fall.
Mulching, decaying the leaves in the fall.
The voices are distant and seem to grow small.
The voices, they beckon, they call.

- William T. Delamar

- from Voices, USG, 1979

LIGHT VERSE
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