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