FIGHT FOR THAT FUTURE

Refaat Alareer would have turned 47 today.

In two and a half months

it will be the third anniversary of his murder

with his relatives by Israel.

And in the spring to come,

the third anniversary

of the murder of his daughter, grandson

and son-in-law by Israel.

The murderers are still free

and boasting of their crimes,

planning new atrocities.

They killed again today,

just like yesterday

and the day before,

and they will kill again

tomorrow

and the day after tomorrow.

But there will come a day

when their boasting is at an end,

when there will be no killings,

when they are defeated.

The dead will still be dead,

but the seeds they became

will spring and grow and bloom

rising from the graves

and the rubble

towards the Sun

in an infinite future.

23.09.2026

THE DEVIL'S ELIXIRS

It was a sunny day,

the day that was,

an Indian summer

among autumn,

something out of Bradbury's

The Dandelion Wine,

and you could forget

the coming great dark,

and this evening -

a Gothic novel,

The Devil's Elixirs by Hoffmann,

gloomy,

      rain, wind, 

and gazing

         at the window,

odd shapes in the fog,

where the withering trees

let the imagination

               return

to its childhood roots.

23.09.2026

IN WARM SEPTEMBER

The days oscillate

between the last breath

of a gone summer

and all the weight

an autumn brings

on the human heart.

19.09.2026

IN A DREAM

Kissing your breasts

with cold lips,

giving burning

touches.

11.09.2026

13:52 IN THE AFTERNOON ON A MID-SEPTEMBER DAY

It starts to rain,

only knowable in sound,

the boughs sway

as they did before

behind the window-panes,

and I ponder

what to do,

I who have but

illusion of endless time,

so I go and make

coffee, come back,

and start translating

and writing

and put on music

to hide the sound

of the autumn rain.

19.09.2026

VULGAR VERSE

In my profane mind, reading

poems where devout poets write

of ploughing the land

for sowing the seed,

thoughts arise of the more

vulgar verse where

such things symbolize

what I yearn to do with you.

10.09.2026

LIFE

The days, 

they flow

feeling endless

away

and away

from the birthing

source,

like would

be lacking

an end

that is so near,

so near

approaching.

14.09.2026

YOU CAN ADMIT THE DEAD LITERARY EMPEROR'S SOCKS HAVE HOLES

You don't have to praise T. S. Eliot

while admitting his antisemitism,

you can acknowledge The Waste Land

is great, that he treated his first wife

abominably, and that Burbank with a Baedeker

is trash and antisemitic, not finding

any saving grace among its forced

imagery, its facades of modernism;

without his name it would be dismissed

- so dismiss it, declare it garbage.

This belief that one must praise

to criticize, because someone's

plaster head collects dust atop bookcase,

is servitude to fame,

appeasing those who keep up

the faltering flame.

19.09.2026

WITH MY WORDS

Your garments

can't hide

what my mind

and flesh

yearn for:

With my words

I undress,

cloth by cloth,

you for my gaze.

12.09.2026

AFTER MATHILDE BLIND

Hollowed out

and filled with the voices

of others

as that cave

echoing the sea

to the dying poetess,

echoing

the eroding

waves.

11.-12.09.2026

UNWORTHY OF YOU

Crude lustful thoughts

from beautiful images

fair gifts

that deserve

more than profane

acts and words

that fail to capture

the wonder

of you,

but on this night

against its dark

I have but crude

lustful thoughts

and words

like a caveman

of a passing age of ice

carving image

of vulva.

11.09.2026

IT WILL BE A POOR SUBSTITUTE FOR YOU

The morning dawns in thin shroud

of clouds, pale spreading shimmer

of golden hue where the Sun

is ascending, and in the distance

gunshots where the life

of some creature is the target

of men in vests carrying out

their autumn ritual of slaughter,

and what I need, beyond your embrace,

is hot coffee and some better

music for this season of decay,

uplifting the mind with melodies

to wistful embrace of what is yet to wither

- as, alas, I can't uplift your skirt

and let our flesh find their harmony

and play out their shared song -

before I can write better verse.

But, it will be a poor substitute for you!

12.09.2026

ON AN AUTUMN MORNING

The Sun breaking

its pale veil

all what was dim

in the fall morning

now brightens

with flickering

golden fire.

12.09.2026

AND PRAISE EACH PART

Of the subjects of poetry,

death, love, lust, nature

and poetry itself,

I prefer to join

all but one

and write of how

among the morning dew

as the sunlight

plays with the colourful leaves

I would play

with your naked form

and praise each part

in verse.

12.09.2026

LEDA AND THE SWAN IN AUTUMN

On the cold autumnal waters

glides the white swan

darkly reflected

in the water

rising to her breasts

as she shivering

faces the ripples

of his approaching

form,

awaits

the merging

of their images.

11.-12.09.2026

HALF PAST EIGHT IN THE MORNING

Soon half past eight

in the morning,

such a brilliant sunshine

and all green

under deep blue sky

if you don't gaze

too closely at the foliage,

see the bright gold

among the green.

07.09.2026

AT SIX IN THE MORNING

The dawn a protracted

unveiling of the landscape

from the autumn night,

beyond the fields

running from black

to darkest green

in the horizon the pale gold

of the sun long

still hidden,

above, the zones of

different hues of blue

being repainted

as the gaze

rests on them

discarding nocturnal thoughts.

07.09.2026

AT FIVE IN THE MORNING

At five in the morning

in complete darkness,

temperature outside

close to zero,

remembering the bright

summer dawns

after nights

that never went dark.

07.09.2026

AT FOUR IN THE MORNING

Something moves in the darkness

outside at four in the morning

(gone are the bright mornings of summer

when sunlight would show the fields in green)

like a great hand touching

the trees and the roof

in one long movement,

and my mind

makes it into wind and rain

at the same time, showing me

tree branches swaying

in wind and roof hammered

by a fast, short shower of rain

as the sound already expires

into silence

and I start to write

(and the pale gray autumn morning

is more than hours away).

07.09.2026

IN THE AUTUMN NIGHT

I feel the itch to write

on this night,

the coldest night

in four months,

after abandoning

the bright day

to the vague

nightmares of sleep,

sunlight hours

passing restless,

marooning me

into this circle

of tired artificial

light, and here,

in this remembered

and dreaded dark,

the words come

stumbling

from the starless dark

asking

to be written down

to the company

of others

saved, for now.

07.09.2026

THE SUPPORTERS OF UKRAINE

Germany makes genocide in Palestine possible

but that shouldn't matter, I'm told,

because Palestine is allegedly far

from Deutschland (über alles)

and Ukraine is supposedly close

and you don't have to care about a genocide

you yourself keep going on 

if its taking place three thousand kilometres away

and there's a war one and half thousand kilometres away

which involves people with the right pigment,

religion, language and ideology

and the right enemies.

07.09.2026

UKRAINE VS PALESTINE'S GAZA

The killing of twelve people,

including six munitions depot workers,

in Russian attacks in Ukraine

gets far more attention in the 'West'

than the murder of eight people,

including four children,

a woman, and a 73-year-old man

by Israel in occupied Palestine's Gaza

on this same day.

01.09.2026

THE SILENCE OF THESE LAST DAYS

Sometimes, often, 

what you translate

feeds your own writing,

and you write verses

from mere pastiche ¨

to passionate response

written in anger or admiration,

or it gives flavour and order

to distracted thoughts,

but then there are times

when translating

your own voice grows mute 

under the pleasant,

overwhelming shadow

of the metamorphising words

you try to move to your language,

their power on your lips

makes you dumb.

07.09.2026

SEPTEMBER 2ND

After reading September 2 byWendell Berry(1934-2026).

A short walk in the dusk,

a pale imitation of those summer

trips down to the lake, taken

in the dying light as the harvest Moon

is burning red low in the horizon

over the fields and now silent machines

that all through the day brought

down the soaked gold,

treading the autumn day becoming

autumn night, in my long autumn

unbroken by changing seasons,

and coming home I read a poem

carrying the date of this day,

and on it flocks of birds migrating

over huge sunflowers, like

the ones growing by the road to the lake,

huge still in late August light

now gone, and the skies

empty of migrating birds and their cries.

02.09.2026

GERMANY AND ISRAEL

Germans say they didn't kill

six million Jews just so

that Ben Gvir, Gallant, Herzog

Netanyahu and Smotrich

would go to prison

for committing genocide -

no, they must stay free

or it would have been all

for nothing, the Holocaust.

31.08.2026

THE PAST HAS AN IRON GRIP

The past

has an iron grip

on everything

to come,

no matter

how often

it's rewritten,

its hold won't break,

the Potemkin's Facades

have the ruins

standing behind them

waiting for them to fall.

30.08.2026

THE CHANGE HAS COME

The change has come,

the long summer is ending

through dim weekend

of rain, and walking

in the dusk I feel it

in the breeze, hear it

in the sound it makes

as it goes caressing

the trees, absently tearing

leaves from the brances,

scattering them, slowly

upon the unwithered grass

and the brown gravel

and the black mud

under my feet.

I smell it, the autumn,

in the wind, the edge

of the chill

of the days to come,

a blade being sharpened

to cut the withering

dress from the landscape,

leaving it bare and barren

as the white shroud

is cast under the endless

gray of clouds,

before the starless

winter darkness.

30.08.2026

AS SHE SEES THE SWAN

Of the many different Ledas

from the terrified virgin

to the mature mother

this one goes wading 

to the swan

gliding in the stream

knowing what lies

behind its eyes

leads it to the bank

and lies among the grass

and the reeds

opening her thighs

in control over his feathered form

as his wings close over her

as much as a mortal

fated to live this moment

can be over a god

caught with her

in endless transformations

29.08.2026

LIKE THE SWAN

Like the swan mounts Leda

among the reeds

on the river bank,

like Silenus,

having caught the running nymph,

mates with her

among the meadow

flowers broken

by their bodies,

as the centaur

rides the kneeling nymph

carried away on his back,

so would I

have you,

my Leda, my running nymph.

29.08.2026

THE HORSES OF POSEIDON

Whether the statue or the words

of a holy poet

about marble temples

both evoke

the marble of your thigh,

and desire comes

like The horses of Poseidon,

the lifting seas

sweeping me away.

28.08.2026

THE TWO OF YOU

Gazing at you two

I thought how

it would feel stroking

the little bunny,

feeling its fur

under my hand,

it's little heart

trembling,

and I thought

how it would feel

to stroke

and caress

your naked thigh,

kiss it,

and follow it

up and up...

28.08.2026

TODAY A SWAN

Yesterday I dreamed

of being a bunny

resting gently

on your thighs,

today a swan

my wings over you.

28.08.2026

THE LITTLE BUNNY

I'm envious of the little bunny

who got where I dream

of laying, snuggling

between your thighs

so comfortable. Perhaps

you could send a gentle

hound to fetch me

to rest between your thighs?

28.08.2026

AFTER SWIMMING

I lie down on the pier,

dripping cold water

from the again unbroken lake,

watch the clouds above

among which I just swam.

26.08.2026

HEAVEN

Clouds float on the surface

of the azure lake,

a mirror for the heaven

mirroring it,

some realm

beyond them both.

26.08.2026

BREAKING CLOUDS

Cold rushes through the limbs

as I break the azure surface,

touch the muddy bottom

with my feet

and then start to swim

on the sky below the sky,

breaking clouds.

26.08.2026

EUROPEAN VALUES

To the European Union

the lives of Ukrainian Slavs

and Israeli Zionist Jews

mean everything

and the lives of Palestinians

and the Lebanese Arabs

and the Sudanese non-Arabs

and the Papuans in West Papua

mean nothing.

And this,

we are told,

is "European values".

11.-14.08.2026

AS AN AUGUST NIGHT IS ENDING

Trees are starting to emerge

from the darkness

outside

at eleven minutes past five

in the morning

and a solitary bird thrills

suddenly, briefly,

like on those

spring mornings

when many voices

would have joined it.

14.08.2026

BEFORE SUNRISE ON A LATE SUMMER MORNING

At eight minutes to six

in the morning

one can say

it's morning allright,

the Sun still below

the horizon

but the landscape

awash in its light.

13.-14.08.2026

MANY PEOPLE NEED TO SEE WHAT GENOCIDE LOOKS LIKE OR THEY WILL JUST SHRUG THEIR SHOULDERS

A genocide 'sanitized' by the press

to protect audiences 

from 'graphic' images is a genocide 

whose culprits are more likely to escape justice

and act as successful role models

for future genocidaires.

14.08.2026

WHO THE CENTRISTS ADORE

According to 'moderate' politicians,

those "sensible adults in the room"

the billionaire, the fascist,

the genocidaire, the misogynist,

the racist, the Zionist

is always right,

made easier for them

as so many of those

who the Centrists adore

tick most of those boxes

so they rarely

have to choose

between them.

13.08.2026

JUST BEFORE SUNRISE

On the Tuesday morning

when I should have been making

myself ready to leave

for a routine blood test

in the medical centre

I couldn't find my eye-glasses

and spend forty minutes

searching for them,

growing exasperated,

until finally I remembered,

long after I should have left,

and went to the living room

and found them atop

a drawer before the windows

where I had laid them down

three and a half hours earlier

when I took a photograph

of the landscape outside

at dawn, brightening

just before sunrise.

13.08.2026

THE NIGHT AIR IS GETTING CHILL

The night air is getting chill,

so I will get up,

close the window,

silencing the night

that feeds the words,

and walk to the inner foyer

to close the door between

it and the outer foyer,

then make my way

to the kitchen,

flick the lamp on,

make a pot of coffee,

listening to the sound

of the coffee machine

until I can fill

one cup, drinking

it quickly, filling

another, coming

back here

to do something useful,

carrying warmth

in my hands

and in my belly.

13.08.2026

BUT NOT YET

It's sort of an addiction,

writing poems,

translating them,

one that

I believe

can be cured,

words set aside

forever,

the days

becoming normal days

lacking words,

streaming unmarked

to the end.

13.08.2026

THEY ASSUME

Why don't you care

about Sudan?

ask the people

who haven't seen

nor bothered to find out

the hundreds

of social media posts,

the dozens of poems,

about Sudan.

They assume

just because

they don't care

then those who criticize

and oppose

genocidal

Apartheid Israel

won't care

about Sudan

either.

13.08.2026

THE SOUNDS OF THE LATE SUMMER NIGHT

The window is half open

to the cool night air,

to the sound of distant

car engines

cutting the black

enclosed space,

and suddenly,

the chirp of a bird,

quick, and gone,

followed by the chirp

of the fire alarm

reminding

it's time to change

the batteries.

13.08.2026

PARTIAL SOLAR ECLIPSE

I went to watch the Sun,

low above the treeline,

nestled among wispy clouds,

be partly hidden by the Moon,

remembering how thirty-six

years earlier partial eclipse

had silenced the birds

with little change in light,

but now there were no birds

to silence, only the steady,

distant hum of the traffic

in the already

dimming evening,

and I laid down on the terrace,

listening, as the Moon

and the evening

made the light wane,

and awoke

shivering in dark midnight

to the distant hum

of the unceasing traffic,

untouched by eclipse

or time.

13.08.2026

FLESH AND MIND

I took out and spread

your gifts

before me

and was all desire,

flesh and mind

consumed by lust

as I always am,

dreaming of having you

spread out before me,

your open thighs waiting

my trembling touch.

10.-11.08.2026

ONE LUSTFUL THOUGHT

One lustful thought

after another

and they are all

about you,

one lustful thought

after another

wandering

on your form.

10.-11.08.2026

IN MAY

The day garbs late

itself in sunlight,

but here, in the suburban

silence, an oddness

in the absence

of the sound of birds,

that turns the sprinting

spring into a gate

you want kept closed.

22.05.2025

AT DUSK IN AUGUST 6

The Sun had already set

when I arrived at the lake,

on the shore of its calm waters,

and swam out, away

from the glowing horizon

towards the thickening night.

09.10.-08.2026

AT DUSK IN AUGUST 5

At fifteen past nine the Sun

descending

still set ablaze

the horizon

when I left for my evening

swim

yet when I stood

on the pier 

in the cauldron

of the lake

twenty-five minutes

later

only embers

of the Sun

glowed in the clouds

and the bright

evening

now a twilight

darkening into night.

10.08.2026

AT DUSK IN AUGUST 4

When I undress

in the thickening gloom

for my evening swim

I wish that I could

also strip you,

and wade with you

into the dark waters

of the emerging night.

10.08.2026