VENICE

I think I have translated a poem

feeling

     satisfied

for a job done

only to find out

I have translated a fragment

of a much longer poem

it works better

than a fragment of Sappho

on its own

has the fullness

of a poem

even when it's just

the torso of a marble

statue

     defaced.

09.10.2026

THE WITNESS TO THEIR IMMORTALITY

Every falling raindrop

tells me

Write a poem

about me

But I have

written a poem

already

about all of 

you

I answer

You have come

before

and you

will come again

from the clouds

and to the clouds

and again

from the clouds

You are permanent

I am the one

who is fleeting

in this world

Yet the raindrops

don't listen

they keep telling me

Write a poem

about me

That is why

you are here

09.10.2026

NAVI PILLAY WINS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

Navi Pillay

former South African chair

of United Nations Independent Committee

which concluded Israel

has committed a genocide

in Palestine's Gaza Strip

was announced

Nobel Peace Prize winner

just hours after

Zack Polanski's defeat

in a by-election in the United Kingdonm

was blamed

on his Green Party's

opposition to the genocide

by Israel

in Palestine's Gaza Strip

opposition to genocide

by Israel

in Palestine's Gaza Strip

had been declared

"a niche issue"

by the "sensible moderates"

of the British commentariat

now reluctant

to mention genocide

Israel

and Navi Pillay

in the same article

09.10.2026

13:39

All the waken hours
of the autumn day
spent listening
to the sound of rain

and even asleep
the sound of raindrops
on leaf and pane
and mind.

09.10.2026

AT 19:43

Night, already,

those short, 

         dark blue

summer nights

gone,

    a vast 

black quilt

         spread

over almost

         half the day

and no stars    

embroidered

in its

     cold

         fabric.

08.10.2026

LISTENING TO THE SOUND OF THE RAIN AT DARKNESS JUST BEFORE SEVEN O'CLOCK IN THE EVENING ON A MID-AUTUMN NIGHT

Years fall into the

abyss

     as crumbling

ruins,

     time

the great

devourer

       eats

its own

      offspring,

ever hungry,

ever fertile,

ever hungry

until in the cold

cosmic distance

beyond the death

of the last

black hole

meaningless

it exists

unbegetting

until

quantum fluctuation

in the vacuum

rebirths

the Phoenix.

08.10.2026

GETTING BACK FROM A WALK AFTER SIX IN THE EVENING

Getting back from

my walk,

in thickening

rain,

    as the autumn

day

rushes

     towards the night,

I think of poems,

explore

      words,

yet can't forget

the guns

       speaking

with the voice

of the powerful

against

      the poetry

of beating

        human hearts.

08.10.2026

BUT BEFORE I RECHARGE MYSEF

It's getting very dark.

If I want

        to go

for a walk,

         I need

to go,

     now.

I gulp down

last of the still

hot coffee,

get up

      and head for

the door

as the fire alarm

in the ceiling

chirps

     like a bird

reminding

me

      it's time

to change 

the battery.

08.10.2026

POEM WRITTEN BETWEEN 17:06-17:10 O'CLOCK

Over an hour to sunset,

but the Sun

and its beams

hidden the whole day

by zealous clouds,

keeping its piercing

lances of light

for themselves

in the celestial

realm, it's

now gloomy

already, almost

like midnight

on Midsummer night.

08.10.2026

1989 AND ALL THAT

How foolish I was in 1989,

happy seeing

what was taking place

in eastern Europe,

thinking it freedom,

buying into

the "1989 is new 1789"

nonsense

when it was a royal

counter-revolution,

1814 not 1789,

disruption in the correct

flow of human history,

turning back the clock

to 1933,

except now

the Fascists

have few adversaries

among the nations,

all those liberals

declaring the victory

of their world order

in 1989

waving white flags,

welcoming

the Nazis

as rulers of humanity,

stamping

on their own

supposed

laws, values

and virtues

as they did

on ours

in 1989.

08.10.2026

ADMISSION

I have never read

a word

from Anne Carson

before today,

being

barely aware

of her existence,

so it's unfair

of me

towards the author

to think

the Nobel Committee

wanted to give

the Prize

again to a Canadian

as a show

of political support,

like to Sillanpää

in 1939,

yet didn't dare

to give

it to Margaret Atwood,

being afraid

it would be

too much

support,

angering

the Nazis

in the United States.

(Unfair,

yet I have

to shake this

thought

as a poem,

like a tree

its leaves

in autumn.)

08.10.2026

THE SOUND OF RAIN ON AN EARLY OCTOBER AFTERNOON

Just audible

the sound of rain

from beyond

the windows

but as I go

and gaze outside

at the withering

landscape

beyond the panes

seemingly

frozen in timeless

autumnal hour

I see no sign

of the rain

on the puddles

on the gravel road

too far

too see

raindrops

breaking their surface.

Yet the sound

tells me

what my eyes

fail to see,

and I see

in my mind

raindrops falling

on dark firs,

on still green

wet grass,

on fallen leaves

brown, red and yellow,

a landscape

inside me,

and the flesh

another pane

separating.

Three different landscapes

for two senses

and the mind,

and I inhabit

all of them,

briefly,

ephemerally,

less rooted

in them

than the trees,

more like the raindrops.

08.10.2026

OCTOBER WINDS

Winds, all day

winds blowing

from the morning light

onwards,

winds

across the hours of the day.

Winds and midday sunshine

and winds as shadows lenghtened,

winds and sunset,

and now

winds blowing

in the pitch black night.

06.10.2026

AUTUMN POND

On a green autumn pond

a little frog smiling

among fallen leaves.

05.10.2026

PASTICHE

The lone bird

that sings

in chill morning

sings

with a voice

half-remembered

from undated days

when such

mornings

evoked something

more than weight

of years.

05.10.2026

BEGINNING

Day dawns slowly,

devoid of sunbeams

pale gray in dim

October light

to misted horizon

in space and mind.

05.10.2026

AT 20:34 ON OCTOBER 4TH MMXXVI

Two hours ago

bright,

     almost cloudless

dark blue sky,

            mist

hanging

      on the fields

and orange

         leaves

on the birch

trees

    still waiting

for the wind

to cast 

them

in the clear

          air,

and now,

all

   sunk

into

    darkness.

04.10.2026

LESBIA HARFORD ARRIVES IN HEAVEN

Surprised

to be there,

as religious

as she had been

once,

before giving

up heavenly

Paradise

for a goal

of an Earthly

one,

there she stands,

on land

as it was

before the ships

at Botany Bay.

04.10.2026

HALF PAST FOUR ON OCTOBER THIRD MMXXVI

Just half past four

on a dark day,

not a sunbeam

through its gloom,

and already

the day feels over,

the darkness

perching

on a dark branch

untouched by the Sun,

waiting to throw

itself into the air

becoming

starless night.

03.10.2026

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS ARRIVES IN HELL

It was not the place

he had expected

or wished,

for he had thought

he had been here

while alive,

and now

he realized

alive he had had no understanding

of what kind of place

and what torments

the Hell posssessed.

And what sin

had brought him here?

Perhaps no greater than that.

03.10.2026

PEACH BLOSSOM STREAM

Following peach blossom stream

up to the source

in the misty mountains,

unlike the wanderer

knowing you

can always return

to these pages,

only secondary

to her gifts

brightening,

warming

the chill autumn night.

30.09.2026

05:51 A. M.

Black night air

behind the window,

and after the rain

and the wind

fell silent,

sharp edge of being,

tendrils of senses

that reach beyond

meeting only that black void

until the wan

gray dawn.

29.09.2026

EXCEPT

Rainy day,

wet leaves

cover the road

that leads 

away

never arriving

anywhere

except 

tomorrow.

29.09.2026

WASTED DAYS

Days adrift, sunshine
giving way to wet leaves
falling, hours
in gloom light passing
from starless night
to starless night.

30.09.2026

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