TWO POEMS ON BOOKS

1

People who don't read books

will rarely write books, no

matter how many audio

readings they might listen to.

You might tell of the blind or

the paralyzed whose books

you have read, yet they are

few and lived in a world

of written books, aspiring

to be between covers,

a voice read, not only

repeated by a tongue

in different mouth.

2

Books, books are

the spine of civilizations

and cultures, the blood

coursing in their veins,

the glue that binds

the leafs of years

and ages together

and makes a narrative

out of them, a connecting

story that makes from separate

people a diverse unity.

01.03.2025

FOR THE MIND TRAINED ON CALENDAR

March, and the dim overcast

hours lengthening between

the dark of night and dawn

already easier to bear, for

the mind trained on calendar,

in the orderly march of months

through the cycle of seasons,

sees in pale March stripping

the melting snows of winter

and baring again the autumn's

poetic withering, hope. In

February the mind saw only

the coming March as winter's

slow fading, but here, after

crossing this Rubicon of

the mind everywhere it seems

April, and all the grewn

things it will birth, are

flickering in and out

of existence among

that returned autumn.

01.03.2025

ON THE FIRST DAY OF THE MARCH

March, and the dim overcast

hours lengthening between

the dark of night and dawn

already easier to bear, for

the mind trained on calendar,

in the orderly march of months

through the cycle of seasons,

sees in pale March stripping

the melting snows of winter

and baring again the autumn's

poetic withering, hope. In

February the mind saw only

the coming March as winter's

slow fading, but here, after

crossing this Rubicon of

the mind everywhere it seems

April, and all the grewn

things it will birth, are

flickering in and out

of existence among

that returned autumn.

01.03.2025

PICKING UP BOOKS AT THE FLEA MARKET

At the flea market I pick up a translation

of Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath

for 50 cents, Vihan hedelmät,

third hardback edition, and Borges'

novel collection for 2 euros, Soviet

classics one euro per book, east

and west and a better past for all,

if you didn't happen to live

under one of those dictatorships

Borges was apt to support,

remembering his grandfather,

cavalry colonel Borges, who,

riding to a minor war in 1874,

dressed brightly so that

the Paraguyans could see

him more easily, a conservative

patriot riding forth and

never riding back.

01.03.2025