ENCOUNTER IN VAILIMA

To Robert Louis Stevenson(1850-1894)

Setting sail away from

approaching death to life

among the sun-drenched ocean's

scattered islands in its blue

is still - as much as it is

choosing life over death,

hope over despair in

light of knowledge that cautions;

is still setting forth

for an encounter in Samarra.

Your death has always,

since the seas first covered

the cooling planet,

waited you there, patiently,

through the immeasurable aeons.

30.07.2019

There are no

words left.

Except

those

used to mark

the absence.

Perhaps

they

are enough.

Briefly.

29.07.2019

THE DYING SUMMER

I have given up on life,

I have given up on death.

The first fallen leaves

of the autumn

on late July summer night.

I have given up on death,

I have given up on life.

A huge hedgehog

hides in the long grass

and bushes

on my backyard.

We give him water.

I dare not say aloud

that he might

be ill.

I have given up on life,

I have given up on death.

28.07.2019

YEARNING

I yearn to the reach

the road that goes

back to where you

live, all of you

in those golden-hued days

of summer light

and autumn leaves.

There life is worth

living, there future

is not written. There

hearts beat and

mouths speak

with voices

now silent here.

Here, silence,

gloom and future

set to despair.

Here the yearning

for that road

through the years

of loss to home.

That road I have

found and walked

and lost and cried

for; the road back

there, where you live,

live as much as

I don't here.

28.07.2019

THE FOREST PATH IN LATE JULY

The path runs, empty,

through forest still lush in green;

the birds are silent

in their empty nests,

random yellow leaves lie

scattered on the ground.

The river runs black and brown

beside the meandering path,

a companion on this walk

growing slower, silent

as it flows towards autumn.

We separate without a goodbye.

28.07.2019

1611

This is how myth is preferred

to harsh facts:

Four centuries enthralled

by the image of Henry Hudson

send adrift with his young son

by the mutineers -

and back in harbour in England

still stained blood on the ship's deck,

unexplained.

Having to choose between

these visions and

murder, bodies thrown

in the cold waters of the bay

the posterity prefers

slow death by 'merciful' rebels.

Our preference for myth

pardons like king James' regime.

24.07.2019

WHEN THE SONG HAS ENDED

Where does the singer go

when the song of life,

long or short,

loudly sang or whispered,

has ended?

Into silence

the singer goes,

in the silence of the night

where fades all light,

that no dawn will have.

There the singer

and the song

in silence merge

with all that came before

and gave them voice.

24.07.2019

AN OASIS IN TIME AND SPACE AND MIND

Sitting on the doorstep

ot this early sun-drenched evening,

facing the backyard

grown wild,

with a deep blue porcelain mug

full of bitter, old coffee

beside me

and a book of a thousand-year-old

poems of mountains & rivers

& human minds turned to dust

in my hands, I feel

peace, overwhelming

peace amidst

this world and life

torn apart.

It is in moments

like these

that what remains

is anchored,

that mind

rests

and faces calmly,

for once -

for once

without tears or guilt

or grief or pain

made physical -

what has

taken place,

what has been lost

and what is,

and accepts it all.

23.07.2019

FAUST

The idea that you can

get it all,

selling your soul

for your heart's desire

and escaping

the clutches of the Devil,

is not something

we encounter only

with Doctor Faust.

This phantasy

of tricking the Trickster,

gambling with your soul

and winning,

is the common theme

running through

much of Christianity:

Remorse at the death-bed,

penance made

according to your wealth

and if not Heaven,

then at least Purgatory,

opens its gates

for your soul

to escape

the Fallen Angel's reach.

Doctor Faust

is the Everyman Christian,

who wants

the World

and the Heaven

without having to choose

between Salvation

and what drives his

mortal mind.

He is

the Bad Boy 

Lottery winner

of the religious.

23.07.2019

I am a poor man

because I have no

soul to sell.

21.07.2019

Poor the man

who has only

"The God of His Fathers"

and not the

"Goddess of His Mothers"

to worship.

21.07.2019

TO NASSER MAJED TAQATQA, WHO DIED ON JULY 16TH IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT IN ISRAELI OCCUPATION PRISON

A solitary death

after a month of torture.

Why did they

kill you, Nasser?

Claims and excuses

will be given,

but Nasser -

we know why

the occupiers

killed you.

Because they could.

They killed you

because they could.

Impunity makes murderers.

19.07.2019

ZIONISM

Zionism is an ideology whose

basic idea is that oppressed people

need to start to oppress others

to liberate themselves from oppression

- and then ally themselves

with their former oppressors

so that they themselves

can go on oppressing.

19.07.2019

THE DAY MY FATHER DIED

Since that night

I have been like

a fish still struggling

to breath while

being gutted.

15.07.2019

WHEN YOU WALK BESIDE GRAVES, REMEMBER THAT...

For the blessed people

of the future, we are

dead and at rest.

They shall say they envy

our peace from us,

that we are in

a better place -

and all the rest

.

But if we could

but for a moment to live

we would thirstily draw in

the air once more,

hug the grass

that hides our dust,

and call them the fools

they shall be.

The only peace and rest

which there are for us

are in life alone.

12.07.2019

ON WAY TO GOLGOTHA

If this life is a cross to bear

then allow us Golgotha now to reach,

for long have we carried the heavy wood

which our fate shall be

and rest - even if through final pain -

we yearn after all these steps

up life's steep hills.

Let our tired limbs

be pierced with the last pain they shall know,

let us rise against the fading sun

on this cross we ourselves shaped.

11.07.2019

THE END OF POETRY

To Edward Thomas(1878-1917)

The struggle over, dedicated

to death, the mind stopped the hand

that had held the pen

and consecrated

the remaining months

for war, war

that first ended poetry

and then life in Arras.

It had been three years,

or lightly less, and

perhaps it was enough

to turn back to the Atlantic

and the words flowing

from the mind like the

waves that could've carried

him far from the butcher;

so he went, lamb among lambs

all full of doubt, and

entered the gates of the slaughterhouse

leaving verses behind him.

10.07.2019

MY DOGS

Dogs are barking,

but none of them are mine -

my dogs bark

only in dreams and memories,

my dogs sleep

except in dreams and memories.

10.07.2019

TWO WORLDS

The dying know two worlds,

the living know one -

but the dead,

they know none.

One is a world of life,

one is a world of death,

but only from the gate

shall you see it -

inside, in the land

of death, all thoughts

cease; the peace of void

cradles mind to black.

09.07.2019

IRON AGE TROY

The sea withdraws, pulls back

like an enemy force -

the siege of the town over

the ploughman brings his reforged

sword to where the great ships swam;

now those waves

distant glimmer of blue

from the hilltop still rising

with every burning,

earthquake & refounding,

Wilusa, Ilion, Troy

the inland sky its goal now.

09.07.2019

THE GHOSTS IN THE MACHINE

'I need to find my true self!'

But there is no true self.

What we think of as

ourselves, the core of our identity,

has the constancy of a mirage -

an ever-shifting pattern reforming,

dissolving, shaping, misleading.

Existence playing with possibilities.

Each day a new, changed

character emerges from sleep

assuring itself it has been

from the day of birth of the flesh

and shall only end

with the death of the body.

It misleads itself,

the poor moth set to live

a single day or less.

A distorting hall of mirrors

you are, a mirror for each day

of your life and the images

in each a true and fleeting

as every other.

You have no true self,

you are a succession of ghosts

inhabiting a machine of

flesh and blood and bone.

Each lasting that one day

or less, each period of sleep

a womb for the birth

of a new illusion of permanence,

a new moth.

06.07.2019

THE LEAF SHALL FALL

All of these days will come to an end,

this life no more important, no more lasting

than a shrivelled, brown leaf shall be

in autumn, laying wet on

withered grass where flowers now grow. 

But the tree from which the leaf came

will live! you may shout - yes, the tree of humanity

will live on and on, but what comfort

it gives to the leaf when it falls

that other leaves will sprout in distant spring?

But I am a human being!

I can guess your cry

of importance; yes, one of soon

eight billion leaves,

as important as the eight billion others.

You are not the organism,

you are a part of it, through which it lives -

and which it discards;

and the organism itself

is but a bough of a larger growth.

04.07.2019

If man is image of god in flesh manifest,

then pity the god, no matter how

badly cast the image -

for the artist cast it

itself from the mould it made.

Such a being deserves only pity.

04.07.2019

DAILY RESURRECTION

Sleep is death which ends

in resurrection, no angel

to herald the empty tomb -

the tomb is crowded,

full of sounds and thoughts

that once will fade to void.

When with dawn the world comes

back to you, you are born anew;

rejoice, human - one more day is yours!

04.07.2019

REMEMBER

There are days

when you feel it's bad

to be alive,

and when you think

it would be best

to be dead -

but every day

you are dead

is a bad day.

Only life

carries with it

the possibility of change.

01.07.2019

WALKING TO THE MARKET

Walking in the late afternoon's

ample sunlight, through

the dying village's silent streets,

reading The Sun Also Rises

once again I am trying to make sense

of my own existence via words

written by dead hands.

From the context of fallow fields

with flowers, empty houses

and a lone cyclist under

blue skies, bright green canopies

where I can't make a path

through the maze of life as it lays,

to the Paris of the roaring twenties.

Same human problems

in more elevated circumstances,

same thunder in the distance.

Yet I can't forget which way

Hemingway found to exit

his own maze; if

death is an exit

instead of fossilization in

the deep geology of human time.

To exist instead of exiting

has its own moments of briefest

redemption, when you bear

what you have done

and still want these long days

that leave no memories

to go on, in the faint hope

of a Deus ex machina

or just a metaphorical axe

to cut down the maze itself.

How many have I passed,

unnoticed?

01.07.2019