ON THE THIRTY-FIRST DAY OF THE YEAR

For a moment the Sun's

faded gold glimpsed between clouds,

then wrapped in their burial shrouds

again, no resurrection for light,

the god again lies dead on his barge

returned from his nocturnal voyage.

31.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

EVEN IF YOU CARE FOR THEM

You can't help them,

they breed their misery

on old grudges,

ancient wrongs

too beloved

to bury.

30.01.2023

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A MINOR REGRET

Brief sunshine glowed through

the drawn the lemon curtains, but I

was too keen on late Yeats, so

now will walk in the gloom, listening

to water dripping from black boughs

as the short day turns to long night.

30.01.2023

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AN INSTRUMENT WHICH EMOTIONS PLAY

The desire to touch flesh soft or firm

makes a fool out of the wise

and gives wisdom to the fool,

it strips the words from the fluent

and makes the mute to sing,

and all comes to grief

with the passing of time.

30.01.2023

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WHITMANESQUE

  You who cry about Ukraine

upset and angry, full of righteous fire,

while supporting the Israeli occupation

of Palestine and Golan Heights,

shall we take your own words

in which you defend the latter,

and change one word, just

one, that of 'Israel' to 'Russia'?

Russia has a right to defend itself!

Russia is just defending itself!

We believe in Russia!

We stand with Russia!

And then add how all

criticism of Russia is racism,

because tens of millions of Russians

were killed in the 20th century.

30.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE THIRTIETH DAY OF THE YEAR

A pale, grim day,

overcast skies over dirty

white snows,

unmoving the trees

stand, dark fingers

of the earth

grasping the shroud

over the face

of the dead land.

30.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THAT DAWN NEVER CAME

Walking to the cemetery and back,

the late afternoon turns into night.

A black curtain drops over the bleak

midwinter scene. It has been night

to you for over two thousand days,

that dawn never came, and it never

will, for either or any of us.

29.01.2023

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INTERTWINED

An ardent fire burns against

cold, unresponsive flesh, gripped

by a frost of spirit no blaze

can thaw; yet the flames go

flickering unextinguished

across the frozen form,

those red-hot touches

bringing glacial ice.

29.01.2023

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ON THE TWENTY-NINTH DAY OF THE YEAR

Reddish glow above the ridge

where the village crouches

a stain of the cold Sun in

the realm of the ragged clouds

wrapping the white landscape.

29.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE SIXTH ANNIVERSARY OF YOUR DEATH

The years, in their long cycle,

change little. The dead are quiet

in their snow-entombed graves,

there's frost on the headstones,

and the short days give birth

to long nights that bury

the flickering flames of candles

as the earth swallowed the frames

of departed thoughts.

29.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

PENELOPE'S REWARD

Those long decades of chaste

waiting on Ithaca's windswept shores,

as her youth withered in the salty wind,

Ulysses, the strange old man returned

to her bed, would repay at night by

muttering 'Circe' in his troubled sleep.

29.01.2023

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BLOOD SPILLED AT THE BALLOT BOXES

In a state where a majority of the voters

each year vote for the continuation of both

Apartheid and a brutal military occupation,

the hands of most of the adults are

inevitably bloody from the crimes of the state.

Blood gets spilled at ballot boxes too,

by casting votes for violence.

29.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

IF YOU WOULDN'T CONSIDER IT A LICENSE WITHOUT LIMITS

The problem with the sentence

"Israel has a right to exist!"

is that people who utter it

consider it to be synonymous with

"Israel has a right to do whatever it wants,

without suffering any negative

consequences whatsoever."

28.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

BEGETTING VIOLENCE

Israel is not a political state.

Israel is a state of mind,

the belief that you have a right

to unlimited violence while

expecting yourself

complete safety.

28.01.2023

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SIX YEARS

Suddenly it's cold,

external, not the internal

cold that has burned

these hours of rage

fuelled by other deaths,

and I shiver. Five

hours to go.

28.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWENTY-EIGHT DAY OF THE YEAR

Suddenly it's evening,

and in a few hours,

it will be six years.

28.01.2023

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ON THE TWENTY-SEVENTH DAY OF THE YEAR

Utter silence.

When did the world fall quiet

and descended this silence,

which impenetrates

the landscape, and existence,

shaking us?

27.-28.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

GEORGIA VS UKRAINE

All you people crying about Ukraine

in the European Union, especially

in the corridors of power, do

remember that you denied Georgia

a membership application, essentially

because part of it is occupied

by Russia. And that you did this

after the war in Ukraine began.

But just shout 'Slava Ukraini!'

and forget all about Georgia.

(And Chechnya.)

27.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

JENIN

Jenin. What is there to say?

Those, to whom the world

has given the license to kill,

have killed, and killed plenty.

Those, who the world has

deemed unworthy of freedom

and life and liberty, have been

bled, heavily. What is there

to say? The heavens have

witnessed, the earth has

drank the blood. Jenin.

Your dead have no more

equality in this broken world

than when they lived

as victims of others' guilt.

26.01.2023

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ON THE TWENTY-SIXTH DAY OF THE YEAR

On the desktop and the phone

the entire day, just shouting

about a massacre, with

some poetry on the side.

Thus goes a day when

between the curtains,

briefly, sun shone,  for

the first time in weeks.

25.01.2023

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ON THE TWENTY-FIFTH YEAR OF THE DAY

Here I am, in the pale

morning light, the snow

feebly melting, and

the demands of the day

weakly fight with

the cll of the bedding.

25.01.2023

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ON THE TWENTY-FOURTH DAY OF THE YEAR

Setting now to my bed

the dawn an hour and a half

away still, and far the silver

lands of my youth, and

the long ragged dreams

we once held. The night

in its darkness bears better

a spirit abhorring the dim day.

Comes the pale morning,

thieving over the frozen waste,

and finds deep I am sleeping,

dreaming the paltry dreams

of the tired and the weary,

far from the silver lands

of my youth, when over

the snows the dawn

burned crimson red.

24.01.2023

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SLOUCHING INTO ROME

Strange beasts to haunt

the age are not born in

occupied villages of distant

imperial provinces; they come

into the world bloody in royal

bedchambers, and suck from

the cold breast of those

who carry the purple

and the diadem.

24.01.2023

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MIDNIGHT

The shivering day

dies, frozen on

the lunar breast

of the night.

23.01.2023

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ON THE TWENTY-THIRD DAY OF THE YEAR

The night, so the poem goes,

'has a thousand eyes',

but these winter nights

with overcast skies, none;

even the cyclopean orb

of the Moon swallowed

by the Kronian dark.

23.01.2023

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SEEKING SLEEP BEFORE THE DAY BREAKS

The words, flowing away

from me, have left me drained

on the edge of the pale dawn,

and weary, I will seek

the night of dreams.

22.01.2023

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THE NIGHT, IN ITS DARKNESS

The night conceals even the clouds

hiding the stars, like the spirit

hides its sorrows engulfing

the bright years birthing them.

22.01.2023

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TONIGHT

Even the ivory Moon

sails the night useen,

behind the clouds

hidden in darkness.

22.01.2023

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ON THE TWENTY-SECOND DAY OF THE YEAR

 Daylight... when at last

I gazed upon the pale,

gray light of the short

January day?

Was it a week ago?

All these days afterwards

have been one long night

swam in cool darkness.

22.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

A QUESTION FOR THE CONSCIENCE

A piece of cheese on a cracker,

a mug of coffee with milk,

are those vegan food,

or do you cause suffering

while savouring?

22.01.2023

#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse

DON'T EVEN TRY

When we pretend to be

what we are not,

others get hurt -

that is what life have

taught us, and many the price

paid, for us to finally learn it.

Yet when we try to be

the best we as ourselves can be,

and put up ladders

and take with us rope,

to scale the peaks of ourselves,

then we slip and fall,

and down come crashing,

and alas the poor people,

who near us stood and watched,

and got themselves hurt, when we

slipped and fell trying to be

the best we can be.

22.01.2023

#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse

ON THE LIBERATING POWER OF TRANSLATING

When we taken on

the skin of other people,

and speak their words

through our mouths,

or put them down on

paper with our scribbling

fingers, something

in us is liberated,

a shade set free,

for a sliver of that other

being has unlocked, briefly,

a link in the chain that us ties.

22.01.2023

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WORDS OF REMORSE WON'T RAISE LAZARUS

Not that you doomed yourself,

when you could have it all -

in a moderate sort of way -

but that you doomed others -

now, how can anyone forgive that?

Only what can be unmade or restored

can be truly forgiven;

all else is just putting a plaster

on a tiny wound to hush the crying,

when your own spirit is breaking.

22.01.2023

#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse

THE RISE AND FALL OF POETRY

Just like the de la Pole family

went in five generations from fishermen to dukes,

and then to the Tower of London, onto scaffolds

and to be a bloody corpse trampled

on the battlefield at Pavia,

thus good poetry rises from meagre origins,

from endless peasanthood lines,

into merchant-hood of average quality,

and, breaking the limits against all odds,

emerges as a flower of chivalry and rhetoric,

challenging for the highest crown,

until finding an end, like the White Rose,

too soon, at the hands of critics and time.

21.01.2023

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1986 OR 1987

I have forgotten the name

of the boy who drowned

crossing the frozen lake,

ice breaking under him,

giving all the children

a free day from school.

I learned about him when 

I was about ten, a pupil in that same

school, almost a century late,

when its one-hundred anniversary

was celebrated, old papers

brought out to be gazed.

And while I quickly forgot his name,

even when his relatives surely

sat with me in classes,

I still remember that

all the children got

a free day from school.

21.01.2023

#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse

SECULAR MIRACLES

Secular miracles:

Chance throwing dice

across the multiverse,

once in a billion,

trillion universe

hitting it right,

again

&

again.

21.01.2023

#Poem #Poetry #Poems #Verse

JOHN GOULD FLETCHER(1886-1950)

 Only as good as the authors

he copies,

so I, who am only as good

as those I read,

find a fellow

in spirited imitation.

21.01.2023

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ON THE TWENTY-FIRST DAY OF THE YEAR

Minus nine degrees,

and suddenly it seems cold,

a chill no mugs of hot coffee

can drive away as I gaze

at the black vista of the night;

a freezing cold that comes

only partly from the weather,

some other chill wind,

from an internal waste,

has stealthily arrived.

21.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

POINTLESS IS LIFE AND POINTLESS IS DEATH

Pointless is life,

and pointless is death,

and from the former

you get little

after a long sorrow,

and from the latter

you gain a long peace

as dust only can.

21.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

A DEAD KING IS A USEFUL KING INDEED

The way the English praise

'prince Hal' almost makes you forget

how their royalty descends from those

who killed his line.

To Elizabeth I and James I

Shakespeare wrote his plays,

who owed everything to Edward IV,

and Edward he made very sure

that no seed of Henry V would

remain on this God-forsaken Earth.

Remember, when inscribing

her line, it was York, not Lancaster,

which Elizabeth claimed.

Alas, champion of Agincourt.

21.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

SO MANY BENIGHTED MAN AND WOMAN ON THE STREETS

How can we save our world

and our species, when so many of us

won't even try to save themselves?

They can be roused to hate,

they can be roused to paranoia,

but try to get them to save themselves

and they turn against you

in hate and paranoia.

How can we save our world

and our species, when so many of us

are to trying to destroy themselves?

20.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

USE A MASK, GET A VACCINE DOSE

Everything they can ignore

the people will accept, even if

they are going to pay the price

of everything that shall come,

for being deaf and blind

to suffering and death.

What shall you do

with lambs like these,

who won't even save

themselves?

20.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE DAY IS DONE

It has been over for a long time; perhaps

it was over at the very beginning; such

it is, so many still die in their infancy

in this world, yet not all are buried

until decades later. They walk among

the living, and the living go unseeing

the corpses staggering in their midst.

20.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWENTIETH DAY OF THE YEAR

My mind is almost blank,

only bland prose comes when

trying to write poetry now.

The spring has dried up. So

I scribble this, these black

letters on white digital

space, cold, lifeless.

20.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

A NEW MISTAKE IS THE CURE FOR OLD

Such crude, unworthy feelings do flaming passions

leave behind when but ash remains of that which

silenced the doubting mind and let the yearning

flesh have its way; crude feelings that do no

justice neither for what they denounce, nor for

that whose loss they lament in the brief embrace.

This unseemly regret should be buried in that very ash

and the mind given a new blaze to light its erring way.

20.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poems #Poetry #Verse

A FEAST

To sit back and read it through

after having translated a poem

is to enjoy a feast; same satiated

feeling from the mind to the body.

Yet, with own poems it's the case

of that hurriedly eaten, bland

sandwich, quickly grabbed

and with little taste gorged.

20.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE AMERICANS ON PALESTINE AND OTHER OPPRESSED NATIONS

 They shout

"Live Free or Die!"

and demand

that others

live on their knees

or die.

19.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

I WHO HAVE BEEN NOTHING

I who have been

nothing

have taken so much

from them

who were

something.

19.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

WITHOUT US

Through us

death bleeds

into the world

and life

drains away.

19.01.2023

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TWITTER

A child has been killed,

and the Zionists on their fake accounts

are posting pictures of the time

the resistance fighters gave

him a gun to hold.

- See, the Zionists declare,

he deserved to die! He once hold a gun,

justice has been done!

A fourteen-year-old terrorist is dead,

God Bless Israel!

This they declare, those who cry

if a teenager in a uniform,

from an illegal colony,

is shot dead attacking

a refugee camp

holding a gun.

This they declare to an audience

of gun-fondling Christian Zionists,

who approve death penalty for once

holding a gun, while endlessly wailing

about government trying to take

their assault rifles away.

19.01.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse