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