COLOURS

The world rips from us
our original colours
given at birth,

gained in the years
of growing,

stains us with its soot
if we are lucky,

or washes us with rough
hands with the blood
of others or our own.

17.02.2026

ACROSS WINTER DAYS

Words come slowly

back from absence,

threading themselves

into something

like poetry,

like memory

of loss,

between the words

the empty places

full of silence

and words

slippery rocks

across the stream

running cold

across winter days.

12.02.2026

CONJOINED

You dream you feel
her hips under your hands,
and that you are
where you long
to be, inside
her, in a moment
of rhythmic motion
that stretches beyond
mere male endurance,
conjoined flesh,
carving your unity
into existence.

18.02.2026

YOUR FRUIT

Could never 

have enough

of your fruit -

I, more wise
and older than Adam,
would eat

leaving it intact,
impaling it
leaving it whole.

18.02.-20.03.2026

MORE THAN THAT

Needs more

than kisses,

more than

short and sweet

ones

or long

with wandering tongues,

more than

that,

needing

the whole

haphazard, feverish

engtangling

in lust.

20.03.2026

TRANSLATING SYNGE

Translating Synge

he falls into thinking

of more than long kisses

with her,

long kisses

just a beginning,

hands are wandering

across her skin.

20.03.2026

NOT YET

I resist falling

into shouting

the news online,

for a moment,

the whole day

would go counting

the attacks

and the deaths,

the injustices

of this fallen,

broken globe,

so I drink

rather bad tasting

coffee, turn

to one simple Synge

after the gyres

and perrning

of an average Yeats

and tell myself

after this

I will walk

in the radiant sunshine.

20.03.2026

OUTSIDE A TURMOIL IN WHITE SNOW

Still thinking

about that blue dress

how it

would feel

when I would

press you against me

taking a good grip

of your buttocks

with my hands

and kissing

you, pushing

my tongue

to meet yours.

26.02.2026

FIFA SIDES WITH ISRAEL

According to the World Court,

the United Nations Security Council

and the United Nations General Assembly

Israel must withdraw from Palestine's

occupied West Bank

and have no claim on it,

but FIFA declares

it knows better

and the West Bank

might still belong to Israel

so nothing Israel does there now

is wrong.

20.03.2026

WHOSE DEATHS SCAR THE CENTURY

An afternoon

in the early spring,

the most recent war

has taken half a day

and more from you

today

and the lives of people

whose deaths are

yet to be quantified

into neat numbers

that give no room

for such things as identity

and all that made them

individuals

whose deaths

scar the century.

They lost everything:

Achievemements that could have been,

mundane joys and sorrows

died with each of them,

and you some hours

you would've have spent

not recounting events

but doing idle things,

scribblings

that live and die

with you.

16.-20.03.2026

HARSH VERSES THAT NEED NO TRANSLATOR

End of the day,

it slips beamless

away and you

didn't even

finish that Yeats

of beast, demon

and the freeman

you forced into a raw,

slow, muddy flow

of unhewed words;

it and everything

left lying where

your mind dropped 

them, casually,

for the bleak coming

day - and how many

will be murdered

while you sleep

the content sleep

of the privileged

word-player, asleep

when entire families

will be torn into dead

flesh, their blood

writing on the dust

harsh verses

that need no translator.

16.03.2026

A DIVINE SWAN BEFORE A MAN

A god in the form of a swan,

a swan touched by the divine -

why not? Women say

they choose facing a bear

before a strange man

and are wise in this,

for men are the true beasts,

the self-pitying wolves who see

smiling shepherds in the mirror

while the lambs cower in fear,

and who has ever heard

of a swan killing anyone?

16.03.2026

AIR-STRIKE BY AIR-STRIKE

Waking up, making coffee,
sitting down to witness
the world end air-strike
by air-strike.

18.03.2026

FIGURES OF HISTORY

Beastly men and saintly women,

and even the men with haloes

around their consciences

have their animal moments

when they grab the fruit from the tree

and blame the woman

they claim to be but part of themselves.

No wonder women choose the bear

or the alien as in Tiptree,

no wonder in Russ' utopia

a man is a lobotomised home accessory

for the most basic needs.

It would be the best use of him.

20.03.2026

TRANSLATING YEATS I

At dawn I promised

myself rising up

a morning walk

after a pot of coffee drank 

to the last bittter slug,

after finishing

translating a lesser Yeats,

and through the curtains

now mid-morning

sunshine penetrating

dissolves the gloom

and here I sit

and fight with a pernning bird

on a little Dublin lake

and think I need another

pot of coffee,

and will do a midday walk

and think of the myriad sins

that made the world as it is.

20.03.2026

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

During Obama's presidency the Republicans

in the United States Congress declared

that Israel's Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu

"is the true president of the United States",

intending this as a proud praise,

and now ordering 

a United States ground invasion of Iran,

when even of Republicans

only fourteen percent support it,

he shows this to be true,

Benyamin Netanyahu, president

of the United States of America.

20.03.2026

TRANSLATING YEATS II

I spend hours finishing

translating Yeats' Demon and Beast,

four glorious hours from dawn

until the late morning grew in brilliance

towards the zenith of the spring day

and Yeats' notables hanging

on his mind's walls

and his greenheaded bird

on a Dublin pond

and starving monks

on the shores of a dying lake

went from page 

through my mind

on to a flickering screen

and the golden hours

dissolved into words.

20.03.2026

TRANSLATING YEATS I

The pale rose of morning

bloomed and grew

into radiant sunshine

of an early spring

day, and I sat inside,

drank mug after mug

of coffee, translating

the words of a dead man

for an audience of one

and felt content

when all had been done.

20.03.2026

THE EAGLE HAS LANDED

Imagination turns the lunar

desolation fecund, brings back

from the mantle the erupting

magma that makes the seas

liquid fire anew, casts

a volcanic atmosphere

to drive back the void,

melts the ice in the cold traps

held in eternal darkness.

Vater vapour condensing

into raindrops falling on regolith

bringing back sound

after a silence of billions of years

to a landscape alive.

12.03.2026

THE CENTRE DOESN'T HOLD

The Centre doesn't hold,

neither does it want. It flies

a white flag, opens wide

its rusting gates, rushes out

to greet its gibbering conquerors,

declares them its rightful

suzerain under the burning

Cross and the Swastika.

History has ended,

the liberal declares,

and cheers, relieved.

12.03.2026

LUNAR DUST

Trying to find an uplifting

poem about the Moon landings

to translate is harder

than you would think;

Auden grumbling won't

do, Dickey's Moon poems

only on audio, not

in his collection of poems 1968-79

(which tells something),

Sweason writes about probes

(Surveyor?), and so it goes,

when you wander

lunar seas through

the dark hours of the night

seeking a LEM on the Moon,

poetic take on

"The Eagle has landed"

and you end up having

have lunar dust

running through your gloves.

12.03.2026

NOTHING

Entire day wasted.

all the bright sunlight,

but the powerful and corrupted

are wasting entire nations,

so what is my Sunday

compared to that?

All the poems unwritten,

translations not done,

long-delayed messages unsent,

the images of the dead 

and dying unposted?

A great sin.

08.03.2026

WHAT INNOCENCE DO WE HAVE?

If morning be bright

and the day one glorious

glow of light

on the fading snows,

they will still be dying

in the broken lands

as we gaze into the azure

hollow and think

of spring, dreaming

of May ripening

into June and summer,

and they will still be dying,

in our glimmering hours,

the innocent ones,

the smiling children

in the photographs

that will bw published

beside the images

of their shrouded bodies.

08.03.2026

FOR HER

He wishes her hand

would be holding

what she has

brought up,

hardening,

for her,

standing for that

that hand

to which it belongs,

waiting it to play

with and guide it

wherever she wants

it to go.

08.03.2026

INTO ONE MONTH OF PEACE

Hundreds will be

killed today,

just like hundreds

were killed yesterday,

and the day before,

and the days -

not like this in these

last three years,

how many days

not like this

from Palestine to Sudan,

Lebanon and Iran?

Can you combine

the days of few deaths

even into one

month of peace?

One month of peace,

resting, quiet isle,

in the blood-dark

sea of these years.

08.03.2026

UNBROKEN

Midnight,

should go and see

if stars unconquered

stand against the clouds

on sky unbroken

by explosions.

The privilege

of Global North,

nightsky on which flames

don't rise high

from burning cities,

burning human beings.

07.03.2026

GONE TO DEPTH OF NIGHT

Gone to the depth of night

the clear, bright day,

midnight here

with its darkling wings,

and the blood-red morning

how many

innocent deaths away?

07.03.2026

ANOTHER GAME

Always terrible

in tennis, not really

my game,

but I know

another game

I play better,

my muse...

And in that

you can still play

with balls...

07.03.2026

THE DIFFERENT VALUE OF HUMAN LIVES ACCORDING TO THE ISRAELI REGIME

At least 8500 and up to 11 500 Palestinians are missing

in Israeli occupied Palestine's Gaza Strip as a result

of the genocide Israel began after October 7th 2023.

Last night Israel killed at least 44 people, 41 of them civilians,

in Lebanon seeking remains of a single Israeli occupation forces

pilot shot down and missing since 1986.

07.03.2026

THE IMMENSE ARROGANCE OF ISRAEL

Israel carried out 10 000 attacks

during the ceasefire in Lebanon,

killing nearly 400 people,

the last one a 16-year-old Syrian boy,

and now Israel, having killed

339 more people, demands

that "Lebanon returns to the ceasefire"

that Israel has never followed.

07.03.2026

WINTER, BALANCING

Winter, balancing

on the edge of spring,

but not quite

there yet,

the spring

waiting,

waiting for the snow

to sing flowing

in the brooks,

waiting that song

for the first green

blade of grass.

17.02.-07.03.2026

HOW MANY PEOPLE?

How many people

are being killed

while I write these words?

Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran,

Kinshasa's Congo,

Lebanon, Pakistan, Palestine,

South Sudan, Sudan, Syria,

Western Sahara, West Papua,

even the Gulf despotates,

how many

as I write these words?

Lives lost as easily

as I write

my impotent words.

07.03.2026

NOTHING BUT SNOW, YET

Snow, snow -

the landscape

nothing but snow,

yet month

and a half

and all this snow

is gone,

is gone,

like this moment.

17.02.-07.03.2026

IN THEIR LONG ABSENCE

The world absence

and you wish

for the touch

of a ghost,

words to be heard

from an empty room,

creaking of stairs

on which no one walks,

when you are alone

in the long hours,

when you are alone

in their long absence.

15.02.-07.03.2026

WHAT THEN WHEN THE WORDS ARE GONE?

And what then

when the words

are gone?

Gone like

the human beings,

the prisoners

of late years

amber, and we

on the receding wave

of time, approaching

the shore

where it comes aground,

dissolving in foam

and spray these

words we use to build the world.

14.02.-07.03.2026

THE UNREACHABLE BLUE

Sky sea of Mediterranean

warm blue and the land

local winter's cold white,

and between breathing

mist rises

towards the unreachable blue.

12.02.-07.03.2026

BEFORE YOU SLIP AWAY

Holding in my cold

hands

your breasts

burning under my touch,

dream fading

yet after awakening

still feeling

your sensitive flesh,

your hardened

nipples

for one

moment

of wonder

before you slip

away.

07.03.2026

TO HIS MUSE

My fingers

feel the itch

to wander

across

the undiscovered

country

of your skin.

07.03.2026

OCEANIC SKY

Oceanic sky,

and gazing

at the blue

depths above

you think

"How warm",

and its thirty

degrees below

zero, coldest

day of the winter,

yet your mind

feels the warmth.

12.03.-07.03.2026

THE FROZEN LANDSCAPE

Blue sky,

ocean-like,

and below

the frozen landscape,

its cold beauty.

12.02.-07.03.2026

SENSE OF WONDER

Trees decorated 

by the frost

on both sides 

of the street

and still, even now,

you feel wonder,

in this late year.

12.03.-07.03.2026

EVENING WALK, AFTER FOUR DAYS

Bare gravel crunching under

my feet as I walk

under a solitary planet

serenely distant

from earthly woes

on the darkening sky.

Snow when I last walked

here, now this bare gravel

four days later, dead grass

on the field rising

from under the faltering snow.

You could think of spring

coming early, like peace,

here in the bloody-winged of dusk.

But peace is not like spring,

waiting for peace

is like waiting for Godot,

and all the world a stage.

07.03.2026

NO SOLIDARITY, NO SYMPATHY FROM THE EUROPEAN UNION

No politicians

from the European Union

standing looking sombre

at the bombed school

in Iran, holding

hands with Iran's

president,

                 like they did

in Israel.

                 No, Iran

gets the same treatment

as Lebanon and Palestine:

No solidarity,

no sympathy.

07.03.2026

AS HE HIS MUSE

Back from an evening walk,

the first in four days,

clear, evening fading

into night, in the dark blue

Jupiter, solitary,

waiting for Venus,

her graces.

07.03.2026

THE LACK OF POEMS

The words have

not been there, or time

not made for them

inside a mind a hive

of buzzing news

of latest atrocities,

latest blossoming

fireballs growing

and the others

still there, rising

among rooftops

of thoughts.

07.03.2026

NOT EVEN A BROOK

Some translations wrought

hastily between videos

of streaking interceptors and missiles,

fireballs, ruined buildings,

ruined human bodies,

and war criminals

making declarations

divorced from reality,

but otherwise, just

a few poems, answers

to my muse's photographs,

not even a brook

running beside

the stream of blood.

07.03.2026

MONSOON OF PEACE

Days have gone by

without anything but news

about the wars

since they began

this latest one,

days spent

posting online the slaughter

and the belligerent,

bombastic words,

like it could have an effect,

one pair of butterfly wings

frantically beating

among myriad others

so that storm might break

bringing war-quenching

monsoon of peace.

07.03.2026

NO CAT PICTURES

No cat pictures,

my muse,

are enough,

you are correct,

on a time like this,

they are not enough,

we need more

than cuteness,

unthinking comedy in fur,

so no cat pictures,

a more primeval response

of flesh.

07.03.2026

WHEN THE NEWS BROKE OUT

When the news broke out

of the armistice in London

on November 11th 1918

strangers made love

with each other,

strangers brought up

in prim Victorian and Edwardian

days having sex

with strangers

because life had endured war,

there would be years and years

opening into the far distance of time,

no more bodies sinking

skulls grinning

into the mud of battlefields,

no more strangers

killing strangers.

07.03.2026

RIVER RUNNING THROUGH

River running 

through late winter,

on the edge

of spring

withered grass

and reeds,

the summer

that was

still here

in hues of brown

before the green

flood.

07.03.2026

"MAIS OÙ SONT LES NEIGES D'ANTAN?"

The snow melted, leaving

dead grass, bare trees, autumn.

Clouds, distance all mist

beyond the farm house.

Engrave this scene, this

moment, into your mind,

soon it will be gone like

the snow - the mist, gray

light, the sombre desolation

dissolving into spring's cacophony.

05.03.2026

AND NOTHING UNDER IT

I would like you

to come 

wearing a skirt

and nothing

under it,

so I could

just put my hand

under

your skirt

whenever

I wished,

letting it wander

on your smooth

skin.

26.02.2026

EQUAL TREATMENT

He imagines

holding her breasts

in his hands,

firmly,

and kissing,

licking them,

biting,

sucking

the nipples,

giving equal

attention

to both,

no cause

for sibling

rivalry here.

26.02.2026

LIFE INTERNAL

Life external is timid,

going through its routines

across cycling days,

yet the imagination,

wild with lust for flesh

and wanderlust,

rages in its cage

of unchanging days.

26.02.2026

ON THE 57TH DAY OF THE YEAR

Outside everything

is white, in the last

stretch of the winter

white infinity

in white space.

26.02.2026

THE FLAME THAT BURNS TROY

Two beautiful creatures

mating, the great swan

cold white as the snows

of Olympus upon

Leda's sun-tanned form,

her legs wide open,

her back arched

as she receives him,

her great-winged lover

descending

into her flesh,

begetting from desire

the flame that burns Troy.

06.-07.02.2026

ON THE 38TH DAY OF THE YEAR

All the cold brightness

of the long gone morning

still light in my mind

that slept its long waning.

07.02.2026