THE LIGHT IS REPAINTING AN OBJECT AMONG THE LANDSCAPE

 So suddenly the clouds,

now ominous, conquer the sky,

and gloom falls over the landscape,

bathing in the golden light

of the long summer evening

only a moment ago; and all my bright

thoughts dim and dissolve,

and darker, despairing images

from deep, black pools emerge -

thus the nature of the light,

with its Old Master's sure brush,

creates and shapes the landscape's

powers that sculpt the human mind,

which, believing itself separate,

is a mere reflection.

31.05.-01.08.2021

MIDSUMMER 2019

The empty avenues are straight

for a ghost cavalry to charge -

to keep up law and order by crushing a strike

for eight-hour work-week, or to win

a civil war with flashing sabres

cutting deep into flesh wearing

the wrong colours.

The past via its geometries

channels us through

to our own tragedies,

gives them shape,

makes them into framed pictures

in our minds -

Here is where she lost

her faith into you,

and, horrified, understood

that it had been

a terrible mistake -

minds in which old mistakes

like sharp swords cut deep

from atop foaming mounts

of human folly.

31.05.2021

THE GAME OF PREY AND HUNTERS

The full Moon hangs on the sky bright and heavy,

your sins made manifest, mortal man,

as you hear the howling in the distance,

as you hear the rustling in the woods

beside this lonely span of road

in your life; yes, we feel your fear,

we hear your heart beating faster,

as you grow more frantic, mortal man,

you who hear my words echo inside your skull.

Your sins have called us here,

your sins and the bright full Moon,

and the flesh and the blood and the marrow.

You don't find us in the ruins of ancient castles,

you find us here, in the last stretch to home.

You hear us moving amidst the trees,

your steps grow faster and faster,

and soon, as we rise from the darkness

and howl to the bright full Moon,

those steps shall turn into a desperate run,

and the game of prey and hunters

shall be played to the end;

how fast shall your heart beat then

as you run towards the distant lights

you shall never reach,

how the chill night air shall fill from your cries

as you stumble and fall and beg,

before rich blood shall flow and bones shall crack,

and sweet marrow, and even sweeter sins

in your brain, shall be devoured,

mortal man - you in your last stretch of road,

who will never see the pale light of dawn

glimmer on our blood-stained fangs.

15.03.2021

JUST ONE OF THOSE MORNINGS

 Just one of those mornings

when you only want to sit outside

in the sun, drink coffee,

listening to the birds singing,

and imagine it's a day

years and years ago,

the mistakes not yet made,

the graves empty.

And so you do,

and blissfully lift the

shroud of time.

23.05.2021-03.06.2021

THE APPEARANCE OF THE DIVINE IN THE MORTAL REALM

 Religion is, in essence,

simply human longing -

an omnipotent god

would have no need of it

- nor of human beings.

What need a god has

for the holy scriptures,

and devout prayers,

stylite saints,

and flagellants?

In all of these

human beings

are speaking to

human beings

in absence of god.

Abrahamic God's appearance

turns mountains to dust,

Zeus burns his lover

with his mere presence.

True godhead annihilates.

21.04.2021

THE CAPTIVE MAJESTY

Over the pale green

of the late-coming Spring

the massed clouds have hanged

their light gray banners,

taken the Sun as their honoured captive,

leaving the birds to sing like a bard

under the window of the cell

where the massacring

crusader king lies

and his fate

in French curses.

20.05.2021

BEFORE THE PERFORMANCE

In the wan light of the overcast morning

the landscape, a stilled stage

lacking actors, awaits;

the young birches in their

pale green at the back

props for the burning

sunrays' awakening touch,

the tall pine memorizing

its script of calm immobility

over the stumps of the

long-fallen firs

symbolizing the passing

fate of even its kind.

17.05.2021

ETERNALLY BURIED IN DARKNESS

The principle of good is eternally absorbed in light: the principle of evil eternally buried in darkness.

Edward Gibbon(1737-1794): The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire(1776-88), Chapter 8.

Light, born from darkness,

is not eternal in the universe,

but a mortal flicker,

shining brightly,

shining briefly

as stars and galaxies

against the vast,

dark cosmic night

giving it its splendour,

magnifying it,

and in which the embers

of the dying light

shall fade

in the long cosmic dusk,

to be eternally

buried in darkness.

16.-20.05.2021

OUR BITTER SACRIFICE TO LIFE

 The Greek myths got one thing right:

Almost everyone gets a bad end.

It's just how the world is,

that is what they have

taught to us since Homer,

and who we are to argue,

we who have drank bitterness

like the souls in Hades

sacrificial blood?

Almost everyone gets a bad end,

yes, and who are we to argue,

in our own long defeat,

that the end, although preordained,

was not deserved?

Time's swift arrow flies straight,

through all our mistakes,

impaling our years to our fate.

Let us drink

our bitter sacrifice to life.

09.05.2021

BRIDGE BETWEEN THE DEAD AND THE DYING

Reading a balm to the brain,

elixir distilled of thoughts

of the dead, who, through

the pages of books, come

to live in your mind -

for a moment short

or decades long -

until it too, dies

into the void.

01.12.2014-01.05.2021

READING "AT THE WEDDING MARCH" BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS(1844-1889)

No unmarried man or woman

should sing praises to matrimony

and to marital bed and what is done

in it, and what it produces,

Hopkins; a self-declared eunuch,

you should have just put the thought

aside when it came to you,

left the poem unwritten,

and written of the things

in which you had a share,

the wide and wet and wild

world of nature beyond humanity,

opening outside your flesh,

where the exile is embraced

by what was before him

and will be after him,

and which will never remember him

after he has gone to the great dark,

leaving no ripples

on the surface of the living globe.

01.05.2021