Untied Shoes – Dante Mena

When I was cleaning out a drawer, I found this poem Ron had saved. I didn't want to lose it, so I have kept it on my desk until I had time to type it up to save. I thought it would be worthwhile to share once again. It first appeared in the Letters to the Editor of the Budapest Sun August 2007. If you have not seen the remembrance of the bronze shoes by the Danube, you should with this in hand.

Untied Shoes by Dante Mena

Sixty pairs
By twos along the flowing waters
Along the dragging currents
By the shore
Dripping to the morning dew
Alone…each…all
Daddy’s big leather,
Mommy’s perfumed arch
And don’t forget the children
By twos along the flowing waters
Along the dragging currents
By the shore

Sixty pairs
Oh, to be…to be…to be… to be
Taken off, leaving weeping
No one knew 

The moaning screaming of the 

few
Work shoes and heel
Undanced dances in the slipper
Play shoes stranded,
Couples alone aside the water
Falling one by one… togeth-
er…who took the shoes?
Who knows every-body
By the shore?

Had it been one shoe there
I had thought a thoughtless one
Had left behind
A man, a woman, a child, a girl,
A boy
A love, romance and flower
Why, why, why take the flower
Crushing ‘neath the power
To maim, to hurt…to kill
Beside the flowing water
Thrown in dead…for sure
Who wept, who screamed
By the shore?

Sixty pairs
By twos along the flowing waters
Sixty corpses sinking with the
Weighted stone
By the shore
Death draping in the deep
Alone…each…all

Daddy’s big leather,
Mommy’s perfumed arch
And don’t forget the children
They said the Danube’s drift
Would drain the dead
Did the current drag the bodies
By the shore? Do you weep?
Do you know?

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