Sojourn In Egypt

1

Omar Pound

never knew

his father.

2

From Isis

Dorothy got

what Ezra

couldn't give

her: a son.

3

Sand now

only

knows the

well beside

which the

bloody clothes

were left.

4

At the bottom,

a living Joseph

or a dead Caliph

al-Hakim?

5

Dust

and secrets

turned to dust.

6

Ezra signed

the birth certificate

but Ernest

was with her

at the hospital.

7

The soap bubble lives

of the artistes

turned to art

and reflection

from gossip -

a Midas' touch

turning everything

into words.

24.01.2017

the thoughts slippery at night

sentences falling away depths unseen

coherence lost left the 'I' wondering

grasping losing nothing but itself

generating throwing vanishing thoughts

small stones thrown at black water at night

gone thrown gone sent gone lost gone

gone gone gone gone gone going

peeling layers of thoughts the onion of mind

never hitting that gray piece that is I

wanting to feel itself holding itself

pressing pressing crushing

20.01.2017

We all are the sum

of our mistakes

more than our successes;

the harm done

always goes deeper

than the good achieved.

Yet that good

is all we have

to pay for the harm,

and increasing it

the justification

for our
continued existence.

15.01.2017

An Answer For My Niece

For Jii

Why do yo write so much? she asks,

the young voice exasperated.

I seek an answer, stumble,

then grab what I can

and mould it into an answer:

I want to preserve moments.

Now, looking back,

I have more to say.

The words I couldn't find for you then:

To write is to record;

a text is a memory

of at least of the process of writing

and to read is to experience

the past, to unite

the past and this moment -

simply, culture.

14.01.2017

Snow swirling,

writing in the air

between the grasping branches

tapping the sky.

13.01.2017

The Sweet Lie about Li Bai(701-762)

Once again I am reading how Li Bai

supposedly drowned while trying to embrace the Moon

reflected on the surface of a river.

This time, the writer tells how it comforts her,

that death she sees as pleasant concerning alternative

fates imagined up by Du Fu, his friend.

And I think how often I have read this,

this sweet lie, and when first I learned

- it was decades ago, surely -

about the letter Li Bai's cousin wrote of the poet's death;

that how after a long and painful illness

the poet expired at the cousin's home, in bed.

An ordinary death, the Moon hovering cold and distant;

no more poetic than dying

lungs full of water.

11.01.2017

An Epitaph

He - like you -

was nothing.

11.01.2017

Lost in the Landscape

A harsh gale blows through

the black-white land,

black branches dance up and down

naked, the snow long fallen.

I walk, what else?

From one point to another

in space and time,

an afternoon walk,

a life among biting winds and snow

to erase all tracks

after erasing the cause.

11.01.2017

Sometimes we need a Year Zero,

to guillotine the memories

and blow up the relics of bygone eras

of our lives;

let them collapse to dust

so that we can escape,

a hacksaw in one hand,

leg-irons cut from our feet,

for a brief dash to freedom.

11.01.2017

Afternoon pause

resting under snow

the town in January

a silence

of people in black

a rare car slowly

appearing disappearing

a slice of the sun

in the horizon

reflected on a mirror

tousled hair

a contented face

edging on middle-age

this life

that has become silence

between emotions

appearing disappearing

on the mirror

caress of the Sun

04.01.2017

The Grave of John O'Hara(1905-1970)

Writing his own epitaph

only ensured rebukes

left as final words on him;

you would have to be

Julius Caesar to be remembered

based on your own words.

He - a writer from Spoon River,

now dust begging respect.

02.01.2017

That Hideous Sight

The success of an author's career is based
and written in her or his face

in our times; or lack of it,

to remember Thomas Pynchon. He must have a very ordinary face,

a working class face - the face of a car mechanic

or a factory worker. Something

out of place, not fit to adorn

the back-covers of his novels.

We all know that an author of novels like his

must look like the professor

of a small town New England college with a fine pedigree

going back to Ralph Waldo Emerson's circle.

Ashamed, perhaps only after an intervention by a publisher

at the beginning of his long career,

Pynchon hides his features like a turtle inside its shell

to let his work live without the connection to a visage

that would drag them down with it.

He must often be mistaken for a retired plumber,

electrician or a train driver by cardigan wearing people

carrying his volumes in their hands

to read among falling autumn leaves

caressed by sunlight from a major Indie film.

How wise to hide, how disappointed we must be

the day we see his low-class features posthumously

revealed to the world, how disdainfully

people will turn away from new editions featuring

his face, that less than mediocre face,

that will makes us feel like we are
carrying dirt by connection,

unwashed, smelling of sweat,

seeking solace from the editions in which his

grim features have not been printed,

those unsoiled messengers of pure art

disconnected from an aesthetically unworthy author

more Hephaestus than Apollo.

01.01.2017