THE LAST AFTERNOON OF AUGUST

THEN

Briefly, under an azure sky

the golden leaves

fell in sunshine

& hope soared

in my mind

which knew

there was none.

NOW

Under white clouds

pregnant with cold rain,

tree branches shed

their faded leaves

into a rising, sharp-edged

breeze, which

brings back

memories of the

vast desolation

of the treeless Lapland tundra

during deep-buried years

and my parents

are there,

just beyond

vision.

STILL

My foolish mind

embraces

these wind-awakened

memories, and

leaf-like, hope

rides the cold wind

as the last August

afternoon grows old.

31.08.2020

24 YEARS

Tero(1968-1996)

You are in an eternal autumn

in our memories,

in the season of fading youth

and fading life,

when the landscape in final

bright display

flourishes in the growing

cold and goes to sleep.

There won't be a coming spring

in which to wake up,

no new buds of leaves

emerging as gnarled roots

grow in thawed soil,

deep below rising, bright

green grass.

No, only an eternal

autumn of golden leaves

falling, suspended

in the calm azure of the sky

reaching beyond

for the dark depths

of the October nights.

31.08.2020

THE IMMORTALITY OF ACTAEON

To see the divine Artemis bathing,

the form of the great huntress

reflected in the cold,

shimmering liquid,

and to run with tiring hooves

chased by your own hounds

through the beloved hunting grounds,

where many a stag and boar

fell to your arrow and spear;

shall we lament this,

the fate that befall to Actaeon,

or note the immortality

his sight of the proud goddess

gave to him? Ever running

through the woods and meadows

where the bees of his father

gather their nectar,

ever feeling the sharp teeth

tearing his flesh as he falls

to the ground, succumbing,

only to once more step to see

the waters of Mount Cithaeron

and Artemis and her maiden host,

once more and ever more,

undying, ever-living, the hunter

and the hunted chasing life.

25.08.2020

#Poem #Poems #Poetry

A GREEK VAMPYRE IN HADES

Butchering maidens

on his tomb

the Greeks

let the shade of Achilles

in Hades

to drink their blood

and taste an echo

of the life

Apollo's arrow

had broken.

Then they sailed

off, to

shipwrecks and assassinations

and to sorceresses and cyclops

and so forth,

while the hungry shade

lingers in Hades hungering,

awaiting for cut arteries

to sprout red liquid

on his grave.

21.08.2020

TO THE PRIMEVAL OOZE

Let us go back

down to the deep black waters,

in the slow, strong currents

where no one can swim,

past the skeletons of

extinct whales;

let's us seek the embrace

of the abyssal mud

in the lightless sediments

of the world's memory.

Here it began,

four billion years ago,

and we shall not go

from ashes to ashes,

earth to earth or dust to dust,

but from mud to mud.

03.09.2015-20.08.2020

#Poem #Poems #Poetry

BETWEEN THE SEASONS

Is it the first night of the autumn? Or

the last night of the the summer?

Under the few, pale stars scattered

on the sky, 

the tree branches still pregnant with leaves

rustle in the sharp breeze;

the summer leaves and the

shiver-carrying herald of the long

ice-edged months when the leaves will lay

frosty and glimmer

in the light of bright stars,

above and distant and unreachable,

like the beloved dead

in their abandoned graves.

17.08.2020

WIND IN LATE AUTUMN

Cold wind rips yellow

and orange leaves

from the branches

of trees, alders
and birches and junipers,
scattering the last
harvest of ther year.

08.10.2014-16.08.2020

WHAT REMAINS

To PRC

Haven't spent

an hour in the

overgrown backyard

since you left;

in the soft light

of mid-August evening

I still can see you

sitting there

a year ago,

as all your dreams

and hopes

had turned to dust

in my fumbling hands.

Now messages

have stopped,

and I'm leaving;

and on the glass

table of the backyard

a dead plant

I bought for you.

15.08.2020

GOTHIC AUTUMN

A gothic sort of autumn evening

brooding weather, rain

and clouds threatening;

perfect for reading

The Monk, Melmoth The Wanderer

or The Devil's Elixirs,

but all I've got is Joseph Andrews

by that guy who died in Lisbon,

and his ghost never met

all those poets

inhabiting Fernando Pessoa.

10.09.2017-14.08.2020

I KNOW WHICH ONE I AM

1
Everybody is going

to die,

but some people

will live

before they die,

and some people

won't.

2
I know
which one I am.

I could have
died

the day
I came out
of the womb

the wrong way
blue bruises
on my hips,

and I
would not have
lived a day less.

14.08.2020

HERE, WHERE IT ALL ENDS

The days fall into

oblivion's crushing arms,

petals from a withered rose

dead amidst a drought

beside a fountain

which once ran lush;

here we among crumbling,

parched stone

remember and lament the days

that were

and the future

we made out of them.

11.08.2020

2020: THE WORLD SAVED FOR DYING

These are the years when the old

is dying painfully, 

and nothing new

is allowed to take its place -

the future yearning to be born

is aborted with batons

and the old Caesars

are brought back

to gaze wisely over

the spreading flames,

serene in the knowledge

that it shall be like this,

the Messiahs not coming

to be crucified, just massacred babies

in Bethlehem among the many,

the world saved for dying.

11.08.2020

THIS BRIDGE IS FALLING

The days now are bitter

and they are short,

even the summer days

with the tethered Sun

have passed in the shadows

of my entombment like the

days of the winter solstice,

dying as they are born

of the feeble embers of the stricken Sun.

They hurry, across this teetering span

thrown over time

which is still what, in desperation,

is called a life,

crumbling in the lightless abyss

before them.

11.08.2020

THE RENEWING OF THE WORLD

1

I know that when I am gone,

and become dust with your bones and ash,

the summer Sun will shine as bright as then,

snows shall glitter as scattered diamonds

under the glowing winter Moon, and

rainbows shall arch across the skies

when all smells fresh after spring rain.

I know that, but I also bitterly know

that after you went, the pale Sun

has never shined as bright,

the snowfields have been dim under a lesser Moon

and no rainbow has crossed the sky

when the cold, hard rain has stopped falling

and I have smelled decay in the air.

2

The world awaits its renewal

on the day after the impaired senses

and the despairing mind

have found what they shall call peace

when they encase the remains in the soil.

The Sun shall shine bright,

rain shall fall and the grass growing

shall smell good to passer-by's,

and the snow shall glitter when the

winter Moon drowns the stars,

but I, I shall not have

back what is now achingly gone,

I shall have not peace in the grave,

for I shall not be.

11.08.2020

MONTE CRISTO

How many hours have I been

outside this summer? Not

many. I am separated from the

yellow light shifting,

wave-like, across green foliage,

and bright grass, moist from dew,

by these prison walls of my own

actions, built by my own bumbling

hands with stubborn

and fatal inadequacy. In

this foul-aired darkness I

am buried until red and brown

and pale yellow fall the leaves.

11.08.2020

AFTER THE FALLEN TREE WAS CLEARED FROM THE ROAD

In the bright light of

the October morning,

the warm blue sky drawn

over the storm-wrecked landscape

fails to cast away

the chill of autumn.

03.10.2015-11.08.2020

AT THE END OF THE LONG DAY

At the end

of the long day

the Sun, 

low, burns

the treetops,

the last light

almost reaching

my overgrown yard.

21.07.2013-09.08.2020

LIFE IS A GRIEF

Life is a grief

which breaks us

piece by piece,

with endless patience,

until nothing

is left.

09.08.2020

NRA

Some people love human beings,

some people love guns,

guns that end the lives

of loved human beings.

03.08.2020

QWERTY

An early

May morning,

my greasy hair itches

as I sit here,

typing with two

fat fingers

moving upon

the keyboard,

smelling coffee

being brewed,

and I contemplate

the action needed

to be able to drink

some of it.

24.05.2014-03.08.2020

AT PEACE

A calm, warm night of June,

alive with the sounds of birds,

I write this beside an open window,

letting my mind merge with

the sights, sounds and smells

of the summer night

I am at peace,

finally at a moment of peace

and

I could let

this moment go and on,

live my whole remaining life

frozen in this one moment

of peace,

when everything feels right

and I'm not hurting.

26.06.2013

REST BEFORE RISING AS MOUNTAINS

Life should be

a rest from death,

from the heavy soil

crushing us to dust,

scattering our atoms

and throwing them up

in mountain ranges

and beating wings

soaring above

with lungs breathing

us in, one

air molecule

after another.

01.08.2020

FOLDED LIGHT

Somehow,

after awakening to the soft light

of five am, slept again

to the fuller, deeper light

of nine am, hours

scattered upon dreamless slumber

that might have been death

if not for resurrection

to this plane of bitter heartbreak,

full of echoes of doppelgänger

light from gone years

shimmering in melancholy.

01.08.2020