WINTER IN LATE APRIL

 Chill evening begets

winter in the

gray, late April,

rebirth of a

white landscape,

a dreary mirror

for the mind's angst -

to melt away

in the starless dark.

28.04.2021

APRIL DIORAMA

The wind arises

in this diorama

of an autumnal landscape, 

bends bare birch branches

under a milk-white sky of clouds;

silences the birds

which sang Spring

in this April desolation;

departs, the bleak land

gloomy in the dusk.

26.-28.04.2021

SUNRISE IN THE EVENING

'Sunrise' at

eight in the evening;

after twelve hours of gloom,

one-fifth of Sol above

a mass of violet clouds,

under the now dark buds

on the branches

of a solitary linden tree.

27.04.2021

GAIUS CORNELIUS GALLUS(c.70-26 BCE)

You should not have been so eager

to wash away the shame of ambition

with death's bitter remedy,

as one pentameter and nine lines 'of inferior quality'

now stand as your legacy;

after all, time more merciless than Octavian

has wrought its punishment,

and left these as your poetic monument. 

You should have put words down

and sought Octavian's forgiveness

through flattery and praise,

and your too audacious ambition

would have been forgiven, if not forgotten,

and, perhaps, your poetry would

have stood time like a lesser Sphinx,

and would be remembered,

not your death in disgrace.

14.10.2015-21.05.2021

IN BLEAK APRIL

The landscape a frozen diorama in the autumnal gloom

of a dim afternoon, the wind stilled, birds silenced,

and I, stuck behind this window looking out,

glued and painted by the untiring hands of years

which created this moment of April desolation

like apes write Shakespeare's collected works.

When shall the sluggish time move its dials

to the moment when other trees than these

stand bare and dark over disturbed soil,

on some bleak day when in uncounted

dimensions Juliet and Romeo live

happily in consummated love,

and Hamlet sits crowned on the throne?

26.04.2021

NEFER 2

 The lack of news is telling on its own,

or so our fearful mind tells itself -

news delayed can only be bad.

Yet we hope in the face of these whispers, yearn

for a message crushing our fears, yet dread

the sound announcing the arrival of a message,

those seconds between the knowledge

we have the answer and reading it.

Everything is possible in those seconds,

and all is set after them, forever.

26.04.2021

WAITING FOR THAT WHICH BEFORE THE WINTER FLEW

 Hope is a migratory bird,

long lost in its sojourn

to southern lands.

Here in the spring,

waiting for its arrival

in vain,

when it surely lies

dead in some distant place,

stuck in a net it couldn't escape.

26.04.2021

IN LATE APRIL

In this cold, dim mid-day land

the only sings of Spring

are the buds on the linden tree,

palest green against the gray

of the overcast sky.

26.04.2021

FROM THE VOID YOU CAME, TO THE VOID YOU SHALL RETURN

Do remember, you human

being, that nothing

that you do in this span of

time we call life

has any meaning

after your brain

has thought its last thought,

after your heart

has beaten its last beat.

From the void

you came, and the void

is the end

of you and all your doings.

Your name is

not written on water,

what you create

is not sandcastles on a beach

washed away by the high tide.

No, you

and everything you built,

everything you achieved,

everything you believed

you would leave behind

was nothingness

built on void.

25.04.2021 

THE FOAM ATOP THE EXISTENCE'S OCEAN

Let us, briefly, think not of the foam

atop the existence's ocean, the foam

which our media wants us to observe endlessly;

none of the fascists which it promotes,

the thick athletes and their sponsors,

the idiots in the game and 'Reality TV' shows,

the cardboard celebrities through which

the media tells us to live our lives;

no, let's look at the Mediterranean's mass graves

in the blue, the people drowned in our name,

let's look at Brazil and India, at the

endless graves and pyres, in which

the handiwork of the world order

build on ignorance's foam can be seen,

these human sacrifices by the same powers

whose local heralds grinning from the screens

are giving us the fascists,

the thick athletes and their sponsors,

the idiots and the celebrities,

sucking the oxygen from our brains,

telling us that we need our own

Bolsonaro, Modi and Trump,

repeating from one vast mouth their gospel

that we need to hate the weak

and kneel and grovel before

the famous and the rich and the malignant -

this inbred media that hides from us

the breaking of the world

so that wealth can coalescence

into standing, stinking pools

even in our flaking little horror of a land.

25.04.2021

APRIL MALADY

Landscape frozen on the threshold of light

awaits the Sun breaking through the clouds' gray,

solitary drops keep falling from the eaves

through pallid air in the long afternoon silence.

Yet the unconquerable Sun fails before the wall

of the overcast sky, and suddenly the rain starts

again; a hard, insistent shower; the wind rises

and bends the trees in their dark and pale

colours to its puppetry, briefly, and then,

it's over again, only droplets from the eaves

and the branches falling, wind becalmed

in the gray of the long April afternoon,

as the sluggish tide of wan light from the Sun fails

to give the autumnal land a spring of rebirth.

25.04.2021

ALL THE VICTIMS

 At some point, one needs

to understand that enough is enough,

and that a spiral wreaking suffering

must come to an end.

It can't go on,

the injuries and deaths,

until all have been swept

away and only oneself remains.

The master of

the innocents' suffering,

all the pain and fear and sorrow,

architect of a slow armageddon.

All who trusted

and loved, their lifes and bodies

wrecked, taken from them

by utter incompetence.

Not malice,

just utter, total inability

to see, to think, to act

destroys them all.

10.04.2021

TARA

Fear grips the mind

after another innocent

suffers for the horrible

mistake of a man

who refuses to see,

refuses to see

what is right before him,

and refuses to think,

refuses to think about

what he sees,

and refuses,

refuses to act correctly.

When does it end?

Oh no, he doesn't

want to hurt them -

but hurt he does,

and he hurts them

far, far more

than many who

with clear thinking

seeks to torment.

How many horrible

mistakes can one

unthinking man

inflinct on the innocents?

When does it end?

09.04.2021

AFTER THE PASSING OF THE PRINCE CONSORT

When it comes to kings and priests,

I'm with Denis Diderot;

never lament the passing of a prince

until it's time to rejoice

for the going of the last,

his laurel held on the neck

picked from the final

priest's belly.

09.04.2021

PRINCE PHILIP IS DEAD, AT 99

Finally, flesh

is cold,

the thoughts

have ceased,

and all the years

are ash and dust,

and the bell

is tolling not

only for the

devoured dead,

it chimes too

for the coming

death of the

crowned head,

as mortality

dawns in red

dusk, shedding

the outer skin

between privilege

of a century,

and the waiting,

hungering void.

09.04.2021

EVENTIDE

The Sun bloated, orange-red

sinks behind the crest

of the treeline turning black;

the evening soundless,

this day of crisp light

didn't bring back birdsong,

silenced by three days

of snowfall and rain,

leaving the breezeless

April landscape

a lifeless painting

being covered by

the grime of

the descending night.

08.04.2021

YOU WERE SO FULL OF LIFE WHEN YOU CAME BACK IN THE MID-AFTERNOON

how frail

the greatest of men

I knew

you my father

were on that

terrible night

stolen of life

by me

who didn't rise up

and wake you

who didn't listen

what you said

who sent you

to your death

with a glass

of water &

a magnesium tablet

27.06.2017-08.04.2021

DIM REFLECTIONS

It was the spring the day before yesterday,

sunshine, birdsong, and a fly

hovering against a windowpane.

It was the winter yesterday,

endless fall of snow in a

grim, gray land.

It's the autumn today,

rain falls on patches of snow,

disinterring fallen, brown leaves.

Each day the landscape

makes itself anew,

and us its dim reflections.

07.04.2021

THE GODDESS AND THE BEAST

astronaut Sam

untouchable in her heavenly abode

watching us

too small to be seen

an Earth without humans

a goddess in space

to gain that lithe figure

wrapped around me

that short hair in my fingers

to be one floating

hands on smooth skin

cold nipples against chest

i would be that visitor

who on return

from goddess' embrace

ages a thousand years

floats as dust

back to her

so sorry Sam

but men are men

we are the weaker sex

base beasts

without control

we would burn with wax wings

reaching for you

our beautiful smiling 

goddess in heaven

08.02.2015-06.04.2021

LIKE PALE LIGHT IN SHALLOW WATER

 Like pale light

in shallow water

reaching the

ice-moulded pebbles,

sorrow enters

the remaining days

of life, illuminating

them - as time

wavers.

12.05.2010-06.04.2021

NEFER

  It seems we
will never be free of fear

of loss, until that final day

erases all fear with the world.

Until that moment, when

 the world is taken from

us, this fear of loss of beloved

ones, cherished ones,

has our mind and

heart in the grasp

of its iron-hard fists,

tightening its hold

until that concluding day,

when the world passes away

with all the fear

which being alive

holds.

03.04.2021

JUST BEYOND GRASP

 Here, on this bleak,

far shore of a life,

still reading the poems

of the Chinese masters

dust for a millennia, still

feeling that a veil, between

this transient existence

and some permanent state

of being / non-being

beyond, has been pierced

by their sharp words, carved

and flung into time

as poems, reaching

past mere meaning

towards essence.

03.04.2021

APRIL

The sun breaks through the clouds,

briefly; bright light floods

a resurrected spring landscape,

then the tide turns, colour

drains from the landscape,

leaving a lifeless husk

of a dead autumn

dug from winter's grave.

03.04.2021

CHRONIC INFLAMMATION OF THE SKIN

the weary sun of a

long august evening

a distant cold globe

yet trickles of sweat run

across the bloated frame

and the tingling in

limbs heralds

the old torture

of inflammated skin

for hours to come

under the distant cold globe

of long august evening's

weary sun

10.08.2015-03.04.2021

IN THE FIRST LIGHT OF THE SPRING

A long walk with the dogs

to the village centre

in the bright evening light,

lost between the landscape

in its first moment of spring,

and the memories it evokes,

the pain of which makes

the churning mind

try to change the past,

chart a different path

around the shoals of life

to this same moment -

the old useless quest, ending

only at our own oblivion -

which takes us from the living

moment, and fetters us

to the dead moments surviving

only in memories reshaped

by tragedies of our doing;

taking this cool, crisp

April landscape of light

which should be a balm,

and with each painful

thought hammering

it into one more link

in the long chain which

binds and dooms us.

01.04.2021