ON THE ONE HUNDRETH AND EIGHTEENTH DAY OF THE YEAR

The Sun throws clouds away

from around it, the landscape

floods in golden light, all that was

cold is warm, and then, the Sun

wraps the tattered clouds around

itself again, and the bleak land lies

under clouds like the snows

that fell last night.

30.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE ONE HUNDRETH AND SEVENTEETH DAY OF THE YEAR

Beyond the little brook

begins the spring, greening fields

- on this side, the autumn

in dead grass.

29.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

WHITE LIGHT

White light over white fields

beyond the brown road, sharp

lines of water running on the

window glass; and briefly

tempted to go out and walk

amidst all that, but why

on this late hour to do

more than let all flow like

the slow clouds, white

banners haphazardly thrown

on the chill sky...

12.-28.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE ONE HUNDRETH AND SIXTEENTH DAY OF THE YEAR

Cold midday, sunlight

abundant, touching

the brown leaves of

yesteryear like seeking

a resurrection.

28.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE ONE HUNDRETH AND FIFTEENTH DAY OF THE YEAR

Rain has given up beating the roof,

the birds are, cautiously, starting to sign.

It's a gloomy morning, the clouds stay

entrenched on the sky, ready to unleash

more on the soaked landscape. Sleet

might come, they prophecy, and in a

few days, snow. And rain, cold,

cold rain, beating on the roof,

beating on the panes, in

the long cold spring.

27.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE ONE HUNDRETH AND FOURTEENTH DAY OF THE YEAR

In the cold spring night, I'm

going through the third pot of coffee,

listening to English chamber music,

from that mythical long Edwardian

summer, before all the well-mannered,

well-dressed men wandering in the

summer fields decided to have a

machine-gun shower. Painted with

soot and filthy were the Englishmen's

slums under the tall factory chimneys,

when lords in their hats, canes in

their hands, and their ladies in

their long skirts tiptoed their way

through flower-covered meadows.

This is propaganda, this bourgeois

musical realism, as much as

Stalin and Mao with smiling

children in colourful posters.

These endless days of sunshine

and long, soft shadows, and

the well-tailored suits walking

around bags of flesh and bone,

this is high art, Art with a capital

letter, fancy Potemkin facades,

fair to listen, and full of lies.

26.-27.04.2023

#Runo #Runoja #Runot #Runous #Runoutta

LIKE A BLADE SLIPPING IN

Oh, sorrow is in your heart,

it rises from the land as the mist

after the long, cold rain that

lasted through the spring night.

It gives you images of the days

that were, gloomy spring morns

like this, and of the dawns

that shall not be.  

Moose are eating on the fallow

fields in the long morning's mist,

and the regrets of your life

that sight brings flowing back.

On many long morning's like this

there were people on your side,

watching the moose and the deer,

and they have gone to from where

they shall never re-emerge.

The moose, they will come back if

not caught by the hunters' shots

or steel on the breaking asphalt,

but all those people who with

you saw them in the first light

of dawns, slowly fading in the green

forest wall, they will never stand

here on your lonesome side again.

26.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

RETURNING TO LE GUIN

How can you have something

like this written in Oregon, emerging from

its shores kissed by the long-travelling

cold waves of the Pacific, from its evergreen

forests of filtered sunlight, mist and snow,

and when you go east, across the mountain

passes, in the drier land of Idaho, you

find a fucking white ethnostate being built.

And then you remember what was

the intention for Oregon, a white ethnostate,

and you think all this an aberration, like

all those Beat writers you loved as a teenager,

tracing their travels across the continent

from maps, and that most good comes

from the minorities, the genocided

indigenous, those brought enslaved

or indentured, to work the cotton

field and build the iron paths to

bind Manifest Destiny, and you feel pity

and sadness for all that could have

been and could be, if only all the

Caucasian masters of Turtle Island's wide

loins would be like this, how could you

but love them? But that nation

has chosen AR-15s and abortion bans

- what should she say and write about

that! - and fascism with blonde Jesus

over this, and you despair. Oh yes,

the land will endure, thinned,

and new beasts will come in place

of those driven to extinction, and

perhaps, one day, there will only be

people always coming home

amidst the living land

breathing in tune

with it.

26.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

LITTLE PAINTING OF FIR-TREES(1922) BY PAUL KLEE(1879-1940)

 I thrice read a collection of poems by

Bo Carpelan only about your paintings,

Klee, and pretty sure this painting

with the little fir tree under the red,

bloated sun, wasn't in it. Those,

painted like children draw them,

make a landscape out of this;

oh, they are not out of place, they

fit snugly in, Klee, like pieces

in a jigsaw puzzle. Yet the abstract

becomes familiar, the mind forces

everything to find shape according

to the fir tree and the sun, from

their corner they assign order,

the fir tree still gaining height,

a bloated red sun, a summer dusk,

shaping a grassy cliff, a green field,

and the approaching night.

This would have been out of

place, in that collection thrice read,

because with your little fir tree

and the bloated, red sun, Klee,

you lead the watcher's thoughts

to a corralled pasture.

25.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

DOOMSDAY

To PRC

You were fine on that day,

fair and full of hope, and

fragile like a frozen flower,

and I was a fool, a fool who

who led you to grief

while doubting all the way.

Oh if I would have stopped

that day from ever happening,

the day on which you were

fair and full of hope,

and I was doubting, doubting

like only a fool can.

25.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE ONE HUNDREDTH AND THIRTEENTH DAY OF THE YEAR

You wake up, and the day's done,

and midnight is past too. What

did you do with your day,

the gray hours under the clouds?

You wrote this and you wrote that,

and you drank your coffee,

and you cursed how the world

is going, and after two in the noon

you pulled a blanket between you

and the world going down the drain,

and you slept and you dreamed

and your dreams were nightmares,

mind whipped with guilt and sorrow.

And here you sit with your coffee now,

in the deep bosom of the night,

and you write this and you write that,

and under the clouds hidden in the dark

the world is going down the drain.

25.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

YOU THINK YOU ARE OLD

You think you are old, but there

are alive people born in 1906.

Your paternal grandmother's parents

were planning to get married

when these people were

screaming in their cribs,

your grandmother's great-grandmother

was still smoking her pipe at night,

and she was born in 1827,

when these people were greedily

sucking their mothers' breasts,

these people still alive in 2023.

You think you are old, but there

are alive people born in 1906.

25.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE ONE HUNDREDTH AND TWELFTH DAY OF THE YEAR

Sometimes it happens that you come away

from reading the words of the dead

with a copy of their death mask

slipped on your face,

and you write words

they might have used, and

the subject is one from their oeuvre,

and the tone is theirs, but the theft is yours.

23.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE ONE HUNDREDTH AND ELEVENTH DAY OF THE YEAR

I'm listening to the most silliest

and cruelest of songs; a collection

of chamber music about vagabonds

and vagrants by ennobled English

composers, praising the life of

the homeless wanderer as filled

by the spirit of English freedom;

the state which made knights

out of these composers imprisoned

those homeless travelers of the

drenched moors trudging

under cold English moons. Threw

them in prisons, chained them

in galleys, send them across

the seas to be worked to death

far away from cold English

moons, drenched moors and

soot-painted cities with their

rivers running black from sewage. 

In thunderous voices and sweet

melodies, the knights of the realm

merrily praise the long-hunted as

symbols of English freedom,

chained in the dungeons of

the ennobling English state.

23.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

WE ARE OUR OWN PRISONERS

Our past is the shackles

with which we are fettered,

the shackles to which

we have the key of

forgetfulness in

our trembling hands,

and which we know

we will never use.

23.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

AT THE DIVIDING LINE, OR THE PLURALITY OF BEING

Tired of life, tired of death,

tired of the long languid hours

spent in the summer dusk,

tired of the short and fleeting

hours racing through

the quick winter days,

tired of things great

and tired of things small,

tired of life, tired of death,

yet they all come, walking

hand in hand, across the same

fields of snow and flowers,

as the cold winter moon chases

the dawn sun of spring through

the broken bowl of heaven.

23.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

CROWN PRINCE THUTMOSE(FL. CIRCA 1360 BCE)

Of the crown prince Thuthmose,

uncle of Tutankhamen, this is

known today: That his death

brought his younger brother

Akhenaten the throne, and that

he had a pet cat, Ta-miu, buried

in a sarcophagus which survives

when his own is lost.

23.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

LONG APRIL EVE

Evening, long shadows

pierced by shafts of orange-hued

gold. Silent stillness hangs

light over the fallow fields,

the woods gathering dark,

the blue skies separating these

lands in spring's resurrection

from the eternity beond.

22.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

LIFE MAKES SORRY BEASTS OUT OF US

Life makes sorry beasts

out of us, when it has done its

work: Caricatures of our

worst traits, crudely drawn;

withered husks of our

former looks, weakened

in body. Gives us some menial

tasks to do, one outside

the walls of what is cast as

home, another menial task

outside. All our high and

mighty ideals, in rags in

the hands of this thief

which them stole and spoiled.

Like scarescrows then are

we left to stand at life's fringe,

near its end, sorry beasts;

maliciously done sketches

of what was, in the golden

spring of this existence.

22.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

IN THE MORNING DUSK

Another morning, golden light

through curtains, cast across

the room, and birds cackling

outside, in the hum of

distant engines. To sleep

and dream of other days,

or go and open a door

to that alien light?

Into the light of others,

across hours that should

be spent drifting in the cool

waters of dreams... Between

dream and light one wavers,

a dark image mirrored,

distorted, in the shimmering

surface of time.

22.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE ONE HUNDREDTH AND TENTH DAY OF THE YEAR

Feeling slightly content, in the

warm light of the long, freezing

dawn; three poems from old

Yeats translated, however

haphazardly, a pot of coffee

still dripping, and an hour of

this silent, tranquil morning 

to be before light comes

flooding the fields, a wave

that will sweep me into

the depths of sleep.

22.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ALREADY AN EVENING

Already an evening, soft hues

after brightness, growing

shadows mating on last

year's dead grass.

21.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE ONE HUNDREDTH AND NINETH DAY OF THE YEAR

All these days,

wasted. Not that

it matters in the great

scheme of things, but

for a illusion to sustain

in the small scheme

of life, one should

not let them go

like this.

21.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE ONE HUNDREDTH AND EIGHT DAY OF THE YEAR

We don't need Far-Right billionaires

for manned flights - except to throw them

from the airlock, perhaps.

20.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ONLY ONE OF THESE TWEETS IS GROUNDED IN REALITY

On Twitter, which now promotes Neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers,

two tweets follow one another on my timeline. The one from the Auschwitz

Museum has a black-and-white photograph of a smiling young boy, and this text:

21 April 1931 | A French Jewish boy, Maurice Dubensky, was born in #Paris.

He arrived at #Auschwitz on 6 February 1944 in a transport of 1,214 Jews

deported from Drancy. He was murdered in a gas chamber after the selection.

Just below it, a tweet with a photograph of a massive oak tree in leaf,

filtering through its leafy branches golden light of the Sun, and casting shadows

on the ground. The tweet from The English Oak Project has this text:

Take comfort, for there is an angel watching over you

Where was Maurice Dubensky's angel, believers?

21.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE ONE HUNDREDTH AND SEVENTH DAY OF THE YEAR

Little mistakes,

big errors - from

them the days,

without a pattern,

sew our lives.

19.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

BUT YOU KNOW BETTER

Strange how

a few poems of dead

men, translated,

give a very good

illusion of satisfaction,

a job well done.

19.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

LESS THAN MIRAGES

These days, they sink

back to the same foam

of time from which

they emerged, like

us; less than mirages

on the desert or

at the horizon on sea,

for when the mirages

disappear, the desert

and the sea remain.

18.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

HOW ARE YOU NOW?

To PRC

Drinking coffee amidst

books I shiver, keep

thinking about you

and that kiss on

the beach, and

how I played

the gentleman

when no one

has ever accused

me of being one.

18.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE ONE HUNDREDTH AND SEVENTH DAY OF THE YEAR

Cool, almost cold

in the shadowy

rooms, and

outside, in

golden light,

the wind

sways the

trees, bare

the branches

dance in

its embrace.

18.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

IN THE DUSK

The evening

slips into the flowing

waters of the night.

17.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE ONE HUNDREDTH AND SIXTH DAY OF THE YEAR

A day, this too,

and soon over -

purple horizon

slipping in the dark

rising from

the black trees.

17.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

CHARLES HAMILTON SORLEY(1895-1915)

If anything good can be said about wars,

then let's say they are good of getting rid

of people whose poetry collections

are named after exclusive private schools.

Even if the war almost made

a human being out of him.

Am I unfair?

Of course.

He didn't name his collection,

his parents did - but they showed

that what most mattered

was the privilege he enjoyed.

17.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

YOU WILL NEVER HEAR PAGANINI PLAY HIS VIOLIN

I have to admit, I feel certain mirth

reading about all the great artists

whose works are completely lost

to us, only their fame an empty

memorial to that which we

will never experience.

They are famous now, because

once their art was famous -

art long gone, without a trace

except that fame.

A poet whose all verses are

lost, a painter of whose paintings

burned, a sculptor whose bronzes

were melted down, a famous

singer or a violinist performing

before recordings, an actor

famous before film - all lost,

except the facade of fame.

Yet, my mirth is misplaced -

for only fame matters, not art.

You will never hear Paganini

play, yet you know his fame.

16.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE PEOPLE WHO DON'T MATTER

Without meaning,

without a mark left behind

in this ever-shifting world,

our brief lives.

16.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE ONE HUNDREDTH AND FIFTH DAY OF THE YEAR

Emerging from under

the melting snow, brown leaves

that fell last autumn,

like wasted lives.

16.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE ONE HUNDREDTH AND FOURTH DAY OF THE YEAR

I heard birds singing

before dawn, but awakening

understood I heard

them in my dream.

15.-16.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

LADIES OF THE HEIAN COURT

Reading poems of the aristocratic ladies

of the Heian court,such intimate poems -

yet from women whose personal names are lost,

all known only by the names of their fathers

 and husbands; names which now give them

their identity, a male veil over female lives.

Yet I'm thinking of the common women of

the time, whose lives are now utterly lost

beyond the items dug up from the dirt and soil -

lives on which the courtly love intrigues,

and everything else in the shining capital,

was built. What do these aristocratic

authors give to the other women?

Nothing. Their poems an another

kind of veil that hides. It gives

the voice of the nameless

and hides the voiceless.

16.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

IF ONE WOULD DEPOSIT IT FOR THE FUTURE TO FIND

A dead tooth, and it might last longer

than any memory, any other part

of the body or whatever movement it

caused in the forward stream of humanity.

A single tooth, that is what one might

be for the far future, and from it

they could remake a twin to give

the standard tour of utopia or dystopia

for those estranged from their 'own' time.

14.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE ONE HUNDREDTH AND THIRD DAY OF THE YEAR

A curse to an elderly man who tried

to play the role of a slightly condescending

person. Regretted it later, such a vulgar,

pointless thing to do, and perhaps he paid

it with some inconsiderate words or actions

towards someone else, and who knows where

that kind of chain will lead? Back to

the original culprit, perhaps. Words

have consequences, as does anger. Let

it gather and it rots you from the inside,

let it control your mouth and you might

unleash worse. All we are left with is a world

where our actions and inaction are too

complex to predict, if we fathom them at all.

One can only hope he rose above it

and was the much better man.

14.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

GOVERNORS IN AMERICA

The Republican in Texas rules

that if you are a right-wing man

you have a right to kill

a complete stranger if you wish,

and suffer no punisment.

The Republican in Florida rules

that if you a pregnant man

you have no right to live

if a man made you pregnant

with a fetus which will kill you.

15.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

PAZIGYU, BURMA

At least 165 dead, but many bodies

in so many pieces, a jigsaw puzzle of flesh,

that one might never know for sure.

There won't be any consequences from the

"international community" - after all,

it keeps "rule-based world order" up

only in one country at a time,

and that is not Burma now. Like

leaders of the 'West' tell us openly,

even when their bodies were whole,

they weren't people "who look like us".

No need to arm those who fight against this,

no need for Kamran Khan to visit

and ask tens of millions to investigate.

No, this is easy to ignore, one of those things

which just happen, and is forgotten.

13.-14.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

TOOTHACHE

No army of men to grow

and fight each, if sowed

would be these teeth.

But if in lakeshore mud

would them bury, perhaps

in some future aeon

would make some being's

paleontological career.

14.03.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

WHEN THE ARTISTS WERE MORE INNOCENT TOO

Such a coy girl, the Aphrodite

of Knidos, in the oldest copies;

nothing of the mature woman

of the later sculptures of renown,

instead innocence which cover her

more than any robe could. 

13.03.-13.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

CLUMSY PEOPLE BREAK FRAGILE THINGS

Like fragile vases or bowls

shattered on a kitchen floor

we in our lives drop so many

precious people; broken they

lie on the floor of our life,

and we stand there with bleeding

wounds and scars in our trembling

hands from their edged shards

we try to pick up in vain.

13.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

IN THE END, ONLY THE BEGINNING WILL REMAIN

Poets who wrote on clay tablets

will be read long after

poems printed

on paper are like the dust

over desolate Mesopotamian ruins.

13.04.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse