AN EPITAPH FOR A LIFE WELL LOST

All was vanity paired with futility,

begetting stillborn hopes on

their bloodless marital bed,

for weakness was in the very

marrow of his being, cultivated

by a world indifferent and

hostile at turns. Some would

rise above such predestined

fate, if briefly. He sank

without a trace.

31.03.2023

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NOT SO DIFFERENT FROM HIS OLD BASTARD SWEDISH TEACHER AT THE LYCEUM THEN

A weak man railing against the feeble

people who long ago doomed him -

hand-in-hand with his own, ample

flaws  - and only casually recognizing

that while letting himself to sink

he is clutching innocents bringing

them down with him, and leaving

others, who could be saved, to drown.

31.03.2023

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ON THE EIGHTY-NINTH DAY OF THE YEAR

An hour of darkness

remaining, black shapes

emerge against darkest blue,

the night slowly undressing

for the dawn.

31.03.2023

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EXTINCTION EVENT

In the galactic inquiry

for the fate of Homo sapiens,

conclusion:

Controlled flight into terrain

of hard facts.

31.03.2023

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IN A WORLD FULL OF SUFFERING

There can be no happy lives

in an unhappy world

full of suffering.

Those who claim otherwise

have closed the reality

of the world outside

the bubble they

have chosen

to live in.

It will burst.

31.03.2023

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ON THE EIGHTY-EIGHT DAY OF THE YEAR

On the horizon clouds,

smoke rising from

the lumberyards' smokestacks

purple in the light

of the sun that set.

30.03.2023

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ON THE EIGHTY-SEVENTH DAY OF THE YEAR

The cat hisses while I cut

her tangled fur as

sunshine envelops us

on the living room floor.

It's a cold day.

29.03.2023

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ON THE EIGHTY-SIXTH DAY OF THE YEAR

Snow, snow, snow...

White desolation on

the threshold of spring.

28.-29.03.2023

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ON THE EIGHTY-FIFTH DAY OF THE YEAR (2)

At the threshold of spring,

a wide white space,

a world of snow.

27.-29.03.2023

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ON THE EIGHTY-FIFTH DAY OF THE YEAR (1)

Reheating old coffee

black as the enclosing night,

putting a mug beside the laptop,

listening to a lecture about extinct

South American mammals, writing

these lines, letting time flow

like stars behind clouds,

while drinking black,

bitter night.

27.03.2023

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ON THE EIGHTY-FOURTH DAY OF THE YEAR

This night doesn't have music.

It has silence. Utter, total silence.

Some nights have. From classical

thunder to the jazz of a howling

wind, rising and falling. This has

none. Except music of silence,

unnerving, leaving you waiting

for the first chord that never

comes. A night composed

by John Cage.

26.03.2023

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THE DEATH OF ADAM

To Laurence Binyon(1869-1943)

Adam died.

One moment he was alive,

old and grizzled

and cursing the loss

of immortality,

the next moment

he was a carcass, dead

flesh laying in the sun,

his tongue sticking out

from a toothless mouth,

his eyes glazed over

in one last moment

of wonder, and

the last piss and

excrement of his bodily

existence entered

the dusty soil.

Adam was dead.

26.03.-03.04.2023

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ON THE EIGHTY-THIRD DAY OF THE YEAR

United States' policy towards

Israeli occupation of Palestine

has been described as

'kicking the can down the street'.

But the street is a cul-de-sac.

25.-26.03.2023

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RENE TYK

Rene Tyk(25th March 1936 Paris - 21st August 1942 Auschwitz).

 If only your life could have been

frozen at the moment that photograph

was taken. You leaning a little backwards,

gazing towards the photographer

a bit apprehensively, guardedly,

your little hands resting on

your thighs, almost crossed.

It would have spared you from

the train carriage, the fear you read

from eyes of the adults, the railway

platform where they chose death

for you. You were just too small;

a decade and they might have

made you a slave labourer,

and you might be telling your story,

in great old age, remembering

a family you lost.

But you were just too small.

You had to suffer the concrete

walls, the door locked and sealed

behind you, the gas and the last

moments when murdered people

struggled to live. Perhaps a mother

held you, so that you weren't

trampled by your fellow dying.

Perhaps... We can continue,

but you didn't.

They made you a dead rag-doll,

broken flesh and unseeing eyes,

those little hands limp, those

apprehensive, guarded little eyes

open only towards death,

in terror and fear.

If only your life could have been

frozen when the photograph was taken,

and you would have been, these

eighty-one years, preserved

beyond the immense cruelty

of this stained world

we humans made.

25.03.2023

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WHEN THE LAMBS ACCEPT THE SLAUGHTER, DON'T BOTHER TO INTERVENE

Tis' a nation not worth saving,

not anymore, a country where

rulers comdemn people to die

through virus, and people are

too stupid to wear a mask

and demand a booster.

If they are too lazy to save

themselves, and don't care

about protecting others,

who am I to demand that

they should be saved?

24.03.2023

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BLACK IS THE LATE MARCH EVENING

Darkness fell quicker today

than yesterday evening; the clouds

made all the difference. Then

the embers of the sun amidst

glowing clouds, now just

overcast sky, like the undulating

snows on the ground raised

up to cover the sphere of the air.

24.03.2023

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DEATH POEMS

I picked up a poem of

Japanese death poems,

and surely that was a

book meant to kill

anyone who chose

to open and read it;

for it was ninety pages

of introduction, a scholarly

essay of great erudition,

before I finally got to

the first poem, and by

then was ready to perish.

24.03.2023

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THERE ARE MEN I HAVE MOURNED LESS THAN DOGS

There are men I have mourned

less than dogs; for men know

they are mortal, they know death,

and that all their days are lived

under its spell, that the hair can

break, the sword can fall, and

the man can die at any time.

But a dog knows only life,

a dog is immortal, as is any being

that doesn't know it has to die,

that all the years of running

will end in a breathless still.

Death is not a realm a dog ever

explores with its mind, yet where part

of a man lives from his early days,

ever going farther through his years,

until the hair breaks, the sword falls,

and he inhabits it fully.

So there are men I have mourned less

than dogs, for when a man dies

a mortal dies. He knew his fate,

now it's here, and that's all there is.

But dogs I have mourned like

one mourns an immortal broken

by some great god's wrath

at the bright noon.

24.03.2023

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ON THE EIGHTY-THIRD DAY OF THE YEAR

What is this bleakness,

the unpenetrable darkness

surrounding? It's the night,

the greater one, closing.

Of it the lesser night is

but a sombre herald.

24.03.2023

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ON THE EIGHTY-SECOND DAY OF THE YEAR

A long evening, the snowfall gone

and winds quieted, no sound,

and the light fades ever so

slowly from the landscape,

and night comes quietly,

softly, all-consuming.

23.03.2023

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YOU WOULDN'T GO FOR A HOLIDAY IN INDONESIA IF YOU WOULD HAVE SEEN WHAT I HAVE SEEN

 The first social media account I lost

was due to having graphical images

of people killed... no, slaughtered

in occupied West Papua

by the Indonesian occupation

forces; until then I had never seen

human flesh cut open, intestines

pouring out, in that manner.

And so very little interest towards

the torment that had broken them.

So I shared them. But, in this

world such images are not intended

to be seen - how else could

the occupation and the genocide

go on? And the looting of

natural riches which those enable?

So, the dead erased; the broken

flesh that suffered unmade

as in an unmarked grave dug

on some Papuan hillside.

23.03.2023

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AS IT HAPPENS

It's not the life that, however

weakly, is in our flesh and bones

and mind, we should lament

and until the bitter end regret;

that was ours to waste and

dispose as we saw fit; if nothing

good would come out of it,

a small pity, and little else.

It's the lives we have touched,

however briefly, however lightly

- and so often, they know, more -

and turned from their correct path,

or did nothing and just gazed, all

promise left unfulfilled in endless

waiting, and what they have done

to themselves, that's what we

must regret and lament until

the bitter end, theirs and ours.

For we had no right to step in

and derail one, and left another

without aid. When we should

have acted, we pondered and denied,

when we should have let them go

without our interfering hand,

we stept forward, hailing. That,

again and again, through the long

and winding, drab decades, one life

touched, malignly, after another,

in a foul succession of errors.

We had no right, and yet we

did, one mistake honest, another

less, until this bitter end.

23.03.2023

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EVEN A NOBEL DIDN'T MAKE A DIFFERENCE

'Funny' how those who scream about

Ukraine whisper about Belarus,

and even then many only to say

that if you want to help Belarusians

you have to first help Ukraine.

22.03.2023

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FROM NOTHING

Thoughts given form

to fill an emptiness

like matter the primal

void, fading back,

particles and minds

loaned from the vacuum.

21.-22.03.2023

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AUTUMNAL EVENTIDE

The evening, in all its warmth,

lies down, rests in the shadows

deepening so slowly into night,

like a life departing it awaits

the cool hours under the dim suns,

the last breath of the summer

sighing among the rustling leaves.

Autumn 2022 - 22.03.2023

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ON THE EIGHTY-FIRST DAY OF THE YEAR

The night doesn't have

"a thousand eyes",

it doesn't even have one;

blind it drifts through time,

towards the shoals of dawn.

21.03.2023

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ON THE EIGHTIETH DAY OF THE YEAR

If you don't oppose military invasion,

occupation and annexation in

Cyprus, Palestine, Tibet, Western Sahara

and West Papua etc, don't

bother to oppose those things in Ukraine

either. At least be consistent.

21.03.2023

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IF YOU TRAVEL FAR ENOUGH IN TIME AND SPACE

It's strange how we abandon

the dead in time, like a dog beside

a country road from our car,

and drive on, to other years

and other people, while

the dead, like a loyal dog

confident of their master's return,

still wait for us, beside that

road, in an another day

as real the ones we go

to experience. Yet, one day,

we will come to a familiar

patch on our path, and

suddenly remember as

a person is there, standing,

waiting, starting to turn

as they hear us come.

20.03.2023

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ON THE SEVENTY-NINTH DAY OF THE YEAR

Between the white snow-veiled

ground and the white-clouded sky,

this vast, pallid whiteness

of landscape and time,

moving like the snow

driven by the wind

onwards into

the gloom.

20.03.2023

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KEEP IT SHORT

Too many words, and

the vision is lost and what

is left will be words,

sentences, not an image,

weaved from them,

complete.

20.03.2023

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AND DESCANT

It's strange how words

suddenly appear, unknown

until then, and are soon

everywhere - such words

this month for me: Guerdon

and hie. Suddenly everyone

is after guerdon, suddenly

all need to hie. Well,

everyone in poetry

century gone.

19.03.2023

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AND ICE

All is dust, cold dust

between the stars, begetting,

hot dust of the desert

under the unmoving sun,

extinguishing. All is

dust, swirling, these

thoughts that make

up you, the winds of life

let you rest on the cold

moonlight dune.

19.03.2023

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ON THE SEVENTY-EIGHT DAY OF THE YEAR

There is a lot of snow atop the cold,

frozen earth, and there are a lot of days

to go until the cold and rainy spring,

and many a night like this, when

the wind has calmed and the night

is a silence of snow falling on snow.

Many a dark night, many a gloomy day,

until the cold and rainy spring,

when all this snow will flow as water,

and night is imprinted with the soft

sound of the water running in ditches.

19.03.2023

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ON THE SEVENTY-SEVENTH DAY OF THE YEAR

Snow, Snow, Snow!

Falling snow darkens the afternoon,

brings an early evening, night.

18.-19.03.2023

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EVA GORE-BOOTH(1870-1926)

Poems - its rhymes are

iron fetters, industrial hammers.

The One and the Many, something

changed; this flows, this leaps,

this flies. The mechanical rhymes,

like great engines dourly striking,

gone. This is natural, this lives.

Six years do wonders make.

17.03.2023

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COME THE DAY

What should have never began

must end, and be like it never was;

the great error swept away, smoothed 

the wrinkle in the fabric of time.

Erasure will heal what remains.

17.03.2023

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ON THE SEVENTY-SIXTH DAY OF THE YEAR

The day dies feeble,

like a dead body thrown

into a lake it vanishes

in the black liquid

of the tranquil night

smoothly, silently.

17.03.2023

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GOD BEING REVEALED TO HUMANITY

 The hidden god whose great wings' sound

filled the night with dread and terror

the morning finds but a small bat,

nailed from its leathery wings on

the barn door, still struggling,

still squeaking, still dying.

17.03.2023

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A UTOPIAN VISION

One day human beings will live

a ten thousand years or more,

and will cast themselves to the stars

on vast and fragile wings,

to live a hundred life-times

under strange and alien skies.

One day, if human beings now

will do what Diderot knew,

and strangle the last billionaire

with the entrails of the last theocrat.

17.03.2023

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BLOOD SACRIFICES DON'T ERASE GENOCIDES

Those who bring up the Holocaust

as a defence of the Israeli Apartheid

and occupation should go and invent

a time machine if they want to do

something about the Holocaust;

sacrificing lives of Palestinians

in 2023 won't save Jewish lives

at German destruction

camps in 1943.

17.03.2023

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IT'S A PITY TO BE A FOOL

A fool is a fool forever,

but a sage can become a fool

and even recover.

17.03.2023

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RUPERT BROOKE(1887-1915) 1

Even when they buried you

on the island of Skyros, beside

the wine-dark sea, and compared

you to Byron, and wide and far

in the Empire children read

that poem, sorry was your lot;

you had the fame of Paris,

but Helen you didn't embrace;

and all those ships that sailed to war -

they sailed to the command

of other men, who would die

of old age in their own beds,

and your life and memory

theirs to spend.

16.03.2023

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TAKING IN THE AIR

A warm day, a short walk,

all the world lies rusting

in the noon sunshine,

and cars come and go

from the neighbour

where something bad

has surely come to pass.

16.03.2023

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