DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT

"It happens in a billion years,

you don't have to worry about it;

humanity will die

if nothing is done,

but you don't have to worry

because then you are dead and gone",

was said about the end of Earth

as the Sun grows old.

"It happens in a ten million years,

you don't have to worry about it;

humanity will die

if nothing is done,

but you don't have to worry

because then you are dead and gone",

was said about the end of Mankind

when the fate of Dinosaurs

comes from the skies.

"It happens in a hundred years,

you don't have to worry about it;

humanity will die

if nothing is done,

but you don't have to worry

because then you are dead and gone",

was said about the greenhouse

hell to come, the glaciers

collapsing into rising seas.

It all will happen to

different sons of Adam and Eve,

different daughters of Ardi and Lucy.

Your daughters and your sons,

close or far away in the branch of Womankind.

So don't worry about the end

of your line and the end of Humankind,

it will happen when you are dead and gone

because you did nothing

when you were alive and here.

26.02.2019

TO THOREAU

The land you so praised, the men

who dwelt in there in your time

- stolen land and

sons of thieves; a land

whose true names were torn

away, replaced with names

to sooth the minds
of heirs to brutes

who burned the villages of

tribes whose languages

and the land were one.

You praised what was

a blighted, lesser place

after a crime was done,

when the soil in its bosom

hid the bones of its true

dwellers. Oh, Thoreau

you made an idyll out of

a land in the shadow

of a genocide!

24.-25.02.2019

AT THIRTY-NINE

To P. R. C.

You are not too old, at thirty-nine, to

set forth on sails of hope

to something else in a land faraway.

You have left behind

the first raging bloom of youth,

you have not entered

the years when

hands and eyes seek out

the first gray hairs.

You are not too old,

nor too young, at thirty-nine.

You leave to arrive,

on sails of hope.

Is it an escape? Is it

a voyage of discovery?

Is it a leap of faith

into the unknown?

It's an act of courage,

and perhaps all of those above

too; when life has become stale

and all doors are closed

you make a new door

into the walls surrounding you

and leave. Whatever may

wait beyond, remember -

you made the door

where none was,

you opened the wall

and there, in that great

unknown, you can create

a life for yourself, land

on your feet or in arms,

and if latter, stand tall

even if keeping hand in hand.

You are, at thirty-nine,

the captain of your fate,

you have set sail

to discover a life

that will be your own.

20.02.2019

FOR THE DEAD

When you write

for the dead,

you write

for yourself;

there will

come a day

when you

cross from

life to death

and cease.

Yet the dead

read nothing.

The dead

don't exist

for themselves,

only for

the living.

So, now

you are the

rare dead

reading words

written for the dead.

19.02.2019

A MIDDLE-AGED MAN'S LOVE SONG

To P. R. C.

I will not be like Kafka,

who could find no woman to his taste

enough; I am, my love,

no Pygmalion seeking a female

only to be found in stone -

I don't seek perfection,

I don't demand unchanging beauty,

no maid and Madonna and Mata Hari

in one female flesh; to

be blunt, milady, I want you.

I will take you, if you have me,

I will stay along if you bear me

until I tire, fall

asleep and you

have to lay me down

on the same stone-walled plot

where they sleep. If

before that you regret

and say 'Go!' ,

I will go like an

abandoned dog

waiting its mistress

to call him back.

19.02.2019

TWO CONMEN OF OLD

You well-connected poets,

monks and samurais,

playing poor in Kyoto or Edo,

pretending you wouldn't

know from where to get

your next meal; all

an act, an artistic statement

for men who could afford

to turn themselves into actors

with the city and the street

their stage; no wonder

Baisao wrote about

young gentlemen buying

his tea, not of beggars;

no wonder Bashõ

though a small abandoned child

something he could leave

to die on the roadside

and write a poem about it.

Never in their lives

did they experience poverty,

which they mistook

with poetry.

19.02.2019

NARCISSUS IN POMPEII

Narcissus drowned in volcanic pumice

brought to the surface, resuscitated

to that eternal moment beside the pool,

the image and the man gazing at each other,

serenely, enticed, through two millennia.

A talented hand shall cover the scar

running across the figure,

unblemished beauty restored

to keep the hunter enraptured

with his own naked form.

19.02.2019

WORDS FOR A WORLD BEYOND THE FIREWALL OF DEATH

You are writing for a world

where you don't exist;

a separate world from this one

where you are the epicentre,

the mountain of Sumeru

with creation falling down

as your foothills;

the world that came

to existence in your mother's womb,

the world that will experience

Big Rip with your last thought.

You are not writing for this world,

but the world to come,

the strange realm without you;

there is no mathematics

to explain this strange space

where the centre of this world

is absent; no,

this world beyond understanding

with its own pocket-universes of minds

reading your words, sentences,

your poems cast

into the alternative dimensions

where no cyclical process

shall bring you back

from the void.

19.02.2019

ART CONQUERS DEATH BUT MIND, ALAS...

The words of the

celebrated dead

are alive to us,

but dust to dust

when it comes to the

hands that wrote the letters

and the minds that created them

and weaved art out of sentences.

The past lives only

for the fleeting 'now' of today,

beyond past is dust to dust,

and tomorrow we

shall be ash, dust and bone,

mute memories of the gone.

18.02.2019

AFTER THE ROBES OF FLESH HAVE BEEN SET ASIDE

What garbs of flesh

we have while we breath

and think and waste

these fleeting years

shall be set aside

in the cold earth;

from under these guises

of faces and names,

bodies beautiful

and decrepit,

only our common humanity

in bones shall be left.

On this pedestal of death

you see solely human beings.

18.02.2019

COME PALE MORNING OF WINTER

Come pale morning of winter,

come the silence of the landscape in

dreamless sleep, come

the desolation that grips

the mind like ice the frozen ground.

This short day, under

overcast skies born in gray light,

with its slowly flowing time 

a stream that carries us,

without helm or sculls

down, down from the heights

where our home in time and space

once was, with faces loved

and lost, with voices comforting

and silenced. Lost, we castaways

in this world grown lesser

drift through this vast cut

through our bleeding self

towards the evening dusk

and the greater darkness

that lies beyond the night;

there, flesh and thought

shall be torn away

and at last pain

shall shed us in the void.

18.02.2019

THE CARPENTER AND THE SMITH

I was the smith who made the nails.

With my nails they crucified the man

from Nazareth who rode on a donkey

through the gate of Jerusalem to his death.

I saw him, enraged, in the Temple before
that day on Golgotha came

and I knew I watched a man whose days were few.

I was the carpenter who made the cross.

Good, stolid wood that could have raised

the roof over a family house for many years.

Instead it raised a man up in the blood-dripping air.

What a waste of good wood,

to put a man between earth and heaven
as a sign to all.

I was the smith who made the nails.

I was in the crowd that shouted for Barabbas

(for when given a choice we know that there

is no choice, that is implied) and I shouted with them.

I chose Barabbas, because there was no choice.
Roman steel told to that to us
and taught us well.

I was the carpenter who made the cross.

I watched my cross being carried to the hill

and him on his last travel before darkness.

When the crowd shouted, I shouted with it.

When the crowd spat, I spat with it.

When the crowd threw stones, I threw with it.
This is the wisdom granted by Roman steel.

I was the smith who made the nails.

I saw those nails of mine hammered

through flesh and wood. Deep

did my nails go and they kept a man suspended

between life and death until death won

as the soil under my feet shook.
Even in the shattering of the land they held.

I was the carpenter who made the cross.

I saw my cross rise against the blazing sky

with flesh nailed on it; a man beyond life,

not yet embraced by death; I saw

and watched soldiers throw dice,

felt the earth tremble and heard his final scream.
Even the agony of the soil didn't fell my cross.

I was the smith who made the nails.

Well did I make my nails,

well did they do their work.

Many a house, many a barrel

have my nails held together,

like it held him to his fate.
Yet I feel those nails crucified us all.

I was the carpenter who made the cross.

There is no shame in working and shaping

the wood into a cross; the only shame

is in its use, to bind a man to his death

with wood and iron nails,

to bind we who watched his passing
to some mystery that eludes us.

17.02.2019

THE JAVELIN-THROWER AT TWILIGHT

To my father

Sun going down, the land

in deepening blue, the Moon

stuck in naked branches

beside the road, the empty

road, beyond the forest

rises up the hillside, on the

ridge the highest firs

bathing in orange fire,

calm, silent twilight

at five pm, a moment

if not beyond time, then

in time crawling in

deep, blue snow as

Sun falls to other skies.

Absent, the human

- whose loss is a javelin

piercing the landscape

with the burning

embers of the Sun -

with crossed hands

sleeps, beyond time

and almost alive

in these moments when

the eternity stands an

atom's width away.

17.02.2019

MATSUO BASHÕ ON THE ROAD

Sleeping beside prostitutes

in the roadside inn,

something to do while away

from the capital,

to write down,

weave few poems

out of it; not

something to do at the capital,

to talk to,

sleep next to common prostitutes

when you

have invites to poetry night

after another at fashionable villas,

Moon watching trips

with people of 'standing';

no, this is

just a bit of exotica

for the poet samurai mistaken

for a monk

living on the roads

instead of just tasting them

to feed his poetic stream.

17.02.2019

SHADOW OF GRIEF

Well, it's a nice mid-Winter day outside

and you, you are dead,

not sitting at the garage on your chair

enjoying the Sun, with

the dog laying near you

in love with the snow.

You should be there, sunbeams

in your eyes, glittering

snow seeded with diamonds

forcing you to look away,

at the shadow you make

on the snow-covered ground

with your chair, silhouette

extending to our

memories, our lives,

that long silhouette

growing to a shadow

full of sorrow.

In that shadow

we will fade

and perish.

17.02.2019

LIKE DEW IN THE MORNING LIGHT

Poetry took a misstep

when the poets stopped

making their poems meaningful

for their audiences,

and began a Gargantuan effort to

make them meaningful

for themselves; they

wrote about themselves

for themselves, and as

the poets' understanding

of their work and self grew,

the audiences went the way

of dew in the morning light.

Sons and daughters

of Pantagruel, stop!

17.02.2019

SOL INVICTUS

Sun throws its beams

gilding the white snows,

but in the February shadows

the blue banks

warm my aching mind;

I shun the light,

the golden rays

for they are not for you

and thus not for me,

I crave the shadows

where I can hide

from the world that went on

and on when it should have stopped

like I did, rooted on your graves.

The Sun shines, the Sun sets,

the Sun rises after abyssal night -

yet not for you

and thus not for me;

stand still or leave

the globe in darkness,

Victorious Sun;

you who stand gazing

with million rays

at the planet, graveyard of man.

17.02.2019

THE FROZEN RIVER OF GRIEF

I betrayed you; the pain,

unbearable to contain like the

ice starting to move in the great rivers

of the north at spring,

is eased with these words,

it starts to move, flow

with a sound like child

sobs after a lost parent,

flow through all these years,

to the past and the future

alike, and where I am

is but an island in the stream

of grief, it's shores

lapped by the waters

of sorrow until

all the soil is gone,

the island is no more,

the figure on the riverbank

has been carried away

in the waters of remorseless memory.

I betrayed you.

14.02.2019