LAST DAY OF 2018

Last day, gray clouds
sending snowflakes
to fall on snow,
white the land spreads
from forest to wood
in shrouds of white and gray.
Two colours, the
last day in its funeral
garb lies in state.

31.12.2018

ANSWER TO ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH(1819-1861)

There is a god, the weak say,

there is life immortal

after death has shut

our brain and heart

and worms have eaten our flesh.

There is a god, there is hope,

you just need to believe

and forget the stench of death

and the look in the eyes

which see no more -

so the weak say,

who, walking toward the abyss,

cling to their holy books and their faith,

who call 'wicked' those

who know them fools.

'But, everyone afraid of death,

the last thought and the void,

believes!' Yes -

believes in fear

and clings to a lie!

31.12.2018-21.02.2022

EACH NIGHT WE DIE

You are afraid of death, 

the oblivion

in which every thought

ends; yet

when falling asleep

each night,

is that not a death

you experience,

and the person

awakening to the dawn

sattled with an illusion

that he is you?

Each night a death,

each morning a rebirth,

or a mirage of

the continuation of self.

You die, and

someone else

rises to die, and

each stranger

thinks he is you

and lives in fear

of death and the void.

30.12.2018-21.02.2022

MEMENTO MORI

Remember, you too will die

and all light, sound

and thought

will cease. There

will be nothing.

Not even death.

29.12.2018

ALL THAT IS

Twenty-one minutes past three in the afternoon,

and all that can be seen are

are black silhouettes

on a dark-blue background;

the day is giving birth to night

in the painful silence of the dying hamlet.

Overcast, the sky of the emerging night

will not give bright diamonds of stellar light

to be wasted on this graveyard landscape,

where lives in misery end as

the lungs and hearts struggle on,

and minds in cages of bones drown.

29.12.2018-21.02.2022

WINTER SOLSTICE

It's snowing outside in the gray,

brief light of the shortest day.

In my mind the cold of the

sleeping land.

Dark the trees rise from the white

of the land to the white of the clouds,

dark my thoughts in these days

of the dying year, veiled

the lanscape of the mind

with a burial shroud.

The year is dying, a light in

the darkness will grow

from the candle in the midnight

to the blaze of the late spring Sun.

Yet no rebirth for us with thoughts

in the cold under the frozen earth

where our hearts lie.

Gray the light of the solstice day
as the snowflakes fall.

Cold my feet that forever

walk the too soon disturbed ground.

21.12.2018

MIDDLE-AGED

How bitter to hear from your lips,

my darling, that:

'You are not young and neither am I.'

How bitter to go and see

in the mirror my gray beard

with the white streaks.

Yet so odd to see you young

and merry, with those bitter

words coming from your lips.

20.12.2018

TIMOLEON OF CORINTH(d. 337/336 BCE)

Timoleon rooted out
the weeds in the Greek garden
of Magna Graecia
with their roots and seeds
from every flower-bed
except the one he began from.
There he ripped out the bush
but forgot the roots and the seeds.
So a malign bush grew
and took over Syracuse.

18.12.2018

THE BITTER FRUIT OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Immortality is an illusion,

a dream to escape the harsh fate;

sentience a bitter gift

of evolution,

a moment to reflect

on what you will lose forever.

18.12.2018

WHY ARE THESE PILES OF SKULLS HERE?

Nobody can keep

a good man down

without breaking

his skull.

18.12.2018

SANTERI "SANTTU" MÄKINEN

In the shadow of the red castle

where some fragment of his shade

may linger, we talk of him, the

patriarch too poor to be

buried in a common grave.

His wives, his children, the

son-in-law who stole

money left for his medicine

as he lay dying; a life

ending in tuberculosis and a stroke

after those few splendid months he

wore a red armband and fought at Tampere.

Here he worked, drove

the horses, where

light now rises up the

red brick and the windows shine

with black. There

may linger some

fragment of his shade.

14.12.2018

IN PLUTO'S REALM

The day has sank

to the abyss of the night,

the Sun on its golden barge

gone to rule

over distant lands.

From his bleak realm

has Pluto risen

to rule over those

in dream sharing

the sleep of the dead.

To those watching

the ink-blank night

behind their barriers

of fire and light,

the lord of silence tells:

'You too shall sleep,

you awake

in the night of the dead,

you too shall dream

and never awaken.'

03.12.2018

THE PANTHER

The panther is not subtle,

she doesn't play with you,

she won't mislead you

thinking she is your friend

and then put her claws

on your back.

No, the panther

comes directly at you,

her fangs reaching

for your throath.

She doesn't play with you,

she will tore your throath

open and feed on you.

03.12.2018

THE RESURRECTED MAN

They flocked to him,

eager to know

what lay beyond,

what would wait

when the last breath

had been taken.

But he just shook his head,

smiled sadly, some

enormous sorrow

filling his being,

and could not say.

"Lazarus, tell us!"

they demanded.

"Will we live as shadows,

shall we sleep

without dreams?

Tell us!"

"I have no words,

he whispered,"

"to describe life,

I have no words

to describe death.

I, claimed by both,

part of neither."

"My waking hours

are spent among shadows,

my nights

memories of eternal cold.

What is life

and what is death?"

"Are you my last dream,

do I awaken

once again in the tomb,

to life, to death?

Or am I your dream

of shadow and light,

set to live

by the magician's hand?"

28.11.2018

DOMINION OF NOVEMBER

Crisp frosty morning,

light gray

with an edge of silver,

silence hangs

in place of the Moon

over the landscape

rolling into

tree-laden vistas.

24.11.2018

THE JOURNEY INTO NIGHT

The night calls,

a walk down the pavements

with glimmering pools

reflecting electric stars.

There I go,

a shadow among shadows,

merging, vanishing, appearing.

The night devours and gives birth.

From one circle of light

to another, from womb

to grave of darkness

and resurrection in light.

22.11.2018

AT THE PRECIPICE OF HISTORY

'It's sad to be alive at this time,'

she tweets of people making Hitler salutes

as Bannon debates at Oxford Union.

Sad, yes; but this our fight,

a battle for humanity

to be fought now, so that

others can live in happier times.

The poison of the Fascists,

the global warming and the sixth mass extinction,

the oligarchic capitalism

- our fights, one fight

against a many-headed Hydra.

A battle to be fought

so that others

can be alive at happier times -

a battle to be won

so that there will be later times,

when people can forget

that there ever was this struggle,

this abyss in human history we face

and must cross. If we

fail at this precipice,

this will be the last of times.

22.11.2018

IF, AT THE MOUNTAINS

If you come upon

Lacedaemonians standing at the pass of Thermopylea,

facing the might of Persia,

then, my friend,

find a way to their rear

and go and tell the Persians.

Do not hesitate, go

swiftly. Do not think

of the great reward

the Great King will bestow

upon you, think,

oh Ephialtes,

of the smile on the face

of the Helots in Sparta

when they hear of Leonidas' passing

and listen to the wailing

of the Spartan women.

19.11.2018

THESE LATTER DAYS

Mild sunshine of late November,

of these latter days,

the end times; winter

something to tell children

about, strange white dream

of the past. Now, 

autumn in late November,

hospice for humanity

under a brown shroud.

18.11.2018

METAMAMORPHOSIS IN MISSALONGHI

Greece, the land where myths

are still made, where

strange metamorphoses heroes make;

to there, to strife

his skin to make

the incestuous Lord came.

In this country deaths

immortals create,

Protean change

wreaks a god from the

suffering flesh; pyre

of disease to cast high

up on the Olympus a Phoenix

that flies from Byron's corpse.

18.11.2018

HAMLET IN HELL

Farewell, sweet prince -

rot in hell, with demons

devouring your falling flesh

for new to grow, gangrenous;

in Hades a modern Prometheus

lacking a Heracles, only

the drowned maiden

her nails in your empty sockets

forever seeking way

into your worm-riddled brain.

18.11.2018

TRINITY

They had three crosses,

but only one

was well used;

the other two

given to robbers

when God and the Holy Ghost

should have

completed the Trinity.

11.11.2018

CROSSING A DAY OF NOVEMBER

A bleak gray day

between two black continents of time

approaching each other,

closing the sea between,

that sliver of pale silver

with silent absence

from forest to field to

prison of cement; ghosts

the people on these streets of puddles,

passing without notice

absorbed by lost life-time of pain

and self-destroyed dreams.

From darkness to darkness,

across a sea of silver

hoarding the Sun,

bleak gray days

cold waves; o ghost

on the sea of time, dying,

you shall find no peace

but the void.

06.11.2018

CURATOR MATTHIAS WIVEL'S INTRODUCTION TO LORENZO LOTTO'S(1480-1556/1557) PORTRAITS

Heavenly Jerusalem

against the Dolomites,

very familiar subject,

but if you look at the Virgin

she looks like a middle-aged woman;

it is the Virgin in Glory,

perhaps the resurrected Virgin

or the Virgin of Immaculate Conception,

born without sin of human parents,

very troubling concept in the Church.

But why is she Middle-Aged?

Because she is a noble woman,

deposed as a queen of Cyprus

by the Venetian government.

She also build a myth around her,

living in celibacy; it

looks presumptuous to us,

but these kind of things happen

in this time. He is

described in a document

'a very major painter',

international, so to speak. It

is a tour-de-force, briefly

mentions the death of his putative master,

the attention he pays to objects,

draperies and books. The

Dead Christ with angels and Mary Magdalene

and Joseph of Arimatia, he is

present in his picture, his

graphic sensibility, the different hues

of skin, the sun-burnt of the male figure

beyond her. Very interestingly

changes, changes quite a lot in

the years to come. He

comes to Rome, ends up working

for the pope Julius II. You

can see how differently it is painted

from Raphael, it is highly controversial

but possible. You can see before

Rome, after Rome. The discipline

has given way to disorder, strangely

unsettled figure, composition -

of course influenced by Raphael. 

He can't go back after seeing what

he has seen, had to leave Rome,

liberates him, takes away

from fifteenth-century to sixteenth century

art. He stays there about

a decade, on the edge

of Venetian dominion. With

a strong local community. This

is an altar-piece for a Church

when Bergamo was
coming back to Venetian rule

after years of French. Lotto

brings his specific weirdness to it.

He was paid a lot of money for it.

06.11.2018

TO P. R. C.

You give thorns from

the rose on one day,

and the head of

the flower on another day.

You drew blood

with the thorns,

and painted the flower

red with it;

this is your red

rose, all blood

and thorns

and love.

06.11.2018

LET'S FORGET DEATH

Let's forget death,

for it will not forget us.

It will come,

slow like a traveller seen

far before recognized

and met, or

like a lightning without

sound heralding

it's strike.

Let's forget death,

for death shall not forget

us; in it's arms,

cold, we shall look

at eternity.

05.11.2018

IN THE SEASON OF FADING SOULS

The year grows bleak with the

season of leafless rain,

the stars hidden beyond the clouds

the world shrunks in gloom.

People walk past each other

on the wet roads as strangers,

no hand rises in greeting,

no gaze is met, eyes avert from eyes.

In their holes they hide, in

their caves of cement and wood

their flickering souls from light

seek what only fire can give.

Loneliness rises in naked branches

to the milk-gray blanket of clouds,

they shiver in rain, they feel the night

in the bleak wind and bleached dusk.

The afternoon like spider makes its

web, but the black silk

comes from the cold living souls

lonely, adrift in the dread November.

05.11.2018

A COSMIC MATING DANCE

All the gas sripped off, 

orbiting each other

with tidal tails

the two galaxies like lovers

exhausted, now dance

slowly; their final embrace

no starburst shall celebrate,

as the black holes unite.

05.11.2018

HOW QUICKLY IT IS OVER

You build sandcastles on low tide,

excitedly, forgetting

that the high tide is coming.

It comes, washing away

your ramparts of sand

and carries you away,

in to the blue.

01.11.2018

DEATH ETERNAL

There is no Eternity, no Infinity

for us mortal 'souls' -

there is the void,

the swarming sea of particles

appearing, disappearing;

a quantum dance that gave

terrible sentience, consciousness

that flees in the face of

the reality it inhabits:

The cosmos, a film

on the surface of something greater

forever hidden

from the ape that came down

from the trees, who fashioned a stone

and struck blood with it;

the marrow devourer who

yearned the brights lights

above in the night, who

yearned life beyond life,

who tore away the veil

and saw his death eternal.

31.10.2018

THE THREE DEAD BOYS IN GAZA

Their eyes open,

their mouths open

in the surprise of death,

small bodies side by side

torn by shrapnel.

They went off

to have an adventure,

to show the defiance

of thirteen-year-old boys

against the guns

behind the barbed-wire

and the fence, the buzz

of drones in the sky.

In this world of oppression

there can be no adventures

against evil adversaries

like in the boys' books,

suspension, threat and victory

against all odds. In this world

there was a man or a woman in a uniform

who gave a command, there was

a drone, a missile

and an explosion. There was

 a tear on a cheek in darkness.

Soldiers firing at ambulance crews.

There was no return in the first light of dawn

with clapping of shoulders and laughter,

evil and terror of the night cast down.

There was the return on stretchers,

under white blankets, in darkness.

There was death,

eyes that looked but no longer saw,

mouths open that could no longer utter a scream

for all the pain of that moment

that brought death

from those who fly the drones

to kill young boys in the night.

30.10.2018

OCTOBER MIRACLE

Suddenly I realize, seeing

the bare branches through the living room window

against the blue sky, mind

wandering away from the voice

lecturing science on the laptop screen,

that I am, oddly, at peace

and even, happy. Trembling, I

handle the feeling and the moment

with care, lest it wither or

escape, but it stays,

this strange feeling no reason

gave birth to, water bursting

from dry ground on the desert.

It will not last, but for now

it stays, like a curious bird

roosting on one of those autumn branches,

a messenger from happier eons.

19.10.2018

THE GORGE OF THE BLACK RIVER

Beside the black river

the alders and aspens stand bare;

their leaves given

for the dark waters

to carry away from the autumn.

The firs rise dark green and black

on the sides of the gorge,

climbing towards the gray sky,

reaching the birches in yellow

standing on the side of the late autumn fields.

The old snake, the black river,

ten thousand years has run

since the glaciers gleaming white

towards the north and their death

on sides of fells crept.

Autumns have come and gone,

winters turned to spring,

and during them and summers bright

the black river its way deeper and deeper dug,

carved this gorge into eternity.

10.10.2018