UNDER THE APOLOGETIC EYES

The vast,

Harvard-educated belly

of Wallace Stevens

makes him look

in old age

like he would have

been pregnant

with more than

just words
and stomach cancer.

24.09.2017

PYGMALION

The marble image

now quivering warm flesh

of muscles and curves

steps down from the pedestal,

and past the kneeling creator,

steps out of the door

without looking back.

Dreams given life

escape from the constraints

of the imaging mind.

24.09.2017

Late The Autumn Sun

Thanks To Anne

Among the white

clouds the Sun, faded.

The wind rustles

the remaining leaves,

orange, yellow

bathing in the cold

sunlight. It's September,

mid-day, a tree

branch is knocking

in the window.

I think of the heather,

the fallen leaves

on your graves.

23.09.2017

Love is lust

that has time to stop

and think.

21.09.2017

THE ARCHITECT OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

Without Judas,

what would have Jesus been?

A traitor makes the martyr.

A betrayer prepares the resurrection.

A divine plan depends

on one kiss.

21.09.2017

THE MOST BORING STORY EVER TOLD

Lucifer was loyal.

There was no snake in the Garden of Eden.

Adam and Eve didn't pick and eat the apple.

They were not cast out.

Everything stayed as it was. Forever.

21.09.2017

#SAVEHEBRON

Telling the truth is telling only one side,

a Zionist tells me;

his lie matters as much

as the truth I have given him.

I gave him photographs of

two dozen of those killed by Israel,

their faces, their ages,

dates of death and places of death.

He gives me fiction of imaginary people

'killed each day'; and

when challenged, comes up

with three real ones killed two months ago.

When I tell him

what Israel did the accused assailant's family,

he stops. No more fiction for today,

hasbara run dry.

21.09.2017

CLAY MOULDING CLAY

We are to the world

what others perceive us to be,

not what and who

we think we are,

or yearn to be.

We can't define ourselves,

only others,

in an endless circle

of imprisonment,

of shedding identity.

21.09.2017

Catalonia and the Republic of Spain

How could I choose

between the Republic's

red, yellow and violet flag

and between

Catalonia's red, yellow and blue?

Yet choose I must.

20.09.2017

The question without an answer,

and the answer without a question,

crossing, passing one another

without acknowledgment.

20.09.2017

CHAIN OF DAYS

This sunless day,

one in a chain

of days like this

stitched through my life,

evokes all those

before, those days

when you lived,

when the world

was complete,

not this shattered

bowl glued back

together with pieces

missing, missing

but on those days

in this endless autumn

throughout the years.

19.09.2017

Boris Pilnyak(1894-1938)

The fate of the artist in

a society where

literature still matters

is to be wheat grinded

in the mill of the state.

Some live, some die,

all perish.

18.-19.09.2017

SAND-CASTLES AT THE SHORES OF TIME

This is the lesson

the vastness we inhabit

in time and space carries:

Enough time, and

no word or deed of ours,

no act undone matters.

18.09.2017

A SEPTEMBER AFTERNOON

An autumn landscape devoid of movement.

Still. Stopped. Perhaps, ended.

Whatever word you want to use.

Or silence. Silence howls through it.

Enraged, impotent silence.

Above, the milky-gray abyss.

Below, orange, green and shades of brown.

It looks like a well-made prop for a stage.

As long as you watch it from the one,

correct direction to keep up the illusion.

18.09.2017

LEGACY

To Ernest Hemingway

What is left? Your

cats, with their six-toes,

riding out a hurricane.

18.09.2017

FAREWELL TO CASSINI

Just lights around the ringed planet again,

those worlds of seas and geysirs,

the rivers running to methane lakes

a billion kilometers away, shrouded

from our sight.

Our watchful eye has gone, eaten by

the hungry Kronos.

18.09.2017

MONDAY BEGINS ON SATURDAY

This night I'm falling ill, as the sound of rain

comes from the utter black behind the windows.

Headache, probably flu. I threw a blanket down

on the floor, beside the piles of books. Half a

dozen pages of Strugatsky brothers, but I'm

not in the mood for reading, thinking or

sleeping. I'm in the mood for the sound of

rain, falling in lightless void, beyond the

cavern the electricity carves inside. These

hours tunneling into the gray light of morning.

I exist somewhere between the headache

and the rain, defined by them.

16.09.2017

RABID DOG BITES FASCIST

Martin Amis

has condemned Donald Trump 

and 'his Neo-Nazi' followers.

Martin Amis

who says Israel can't be criticized

until it has inflicted on Palestinians

all the sufferings the Jews have ever experienced.

Pot and kettle,

two peas in a pod,

Martin and Donald.

15.09.2017

TO JOHN KEATS

"Here lies one whose name was writ in water."

The water the name 'was written on' evaporates,

the continent the water was on dives into the Earth's mantle,

and the planet itself is engulfed by the Sun, dying

in a Cosmos fated to whither to matterless void. 

15.09.2017

225 DAYS LATER

There's sunshine, a crisp breeze

and an abundance of green for mid-September,

I have a coffee to drink from a glass mug you

and mother bought, I have this terrace

you made to sit on, the cottage you build

for J before my eyes, your cars still

here on the yard. Sometimes I catch

myself thinking when you

will come back, waiting

to see you stepping out from your

carpentry, walking down the road

back from visiting the neighbours.

An emptiness pregnant with absence.

11.09.2017

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

September 11th 1973.

Democracy in Chile falls to CIA and Milton Friedman.

The bourgeois tell us

that if only Salvador Allende wouldn't have been elected,

the coup wouldn't have been necessary.

As long as voters make a wrong decision,

coups are necessary.

Forward to Honduras.

11.09.2017

Instead Of Translating Bob Kaufman

I wash my face, pour another glass - yes, glass,

dark yellow glass mug - of coffee, sip

the bitter taste and sit down again,

but now having enough of translating poems

no one ever reads I close down the open pages,

think of writing something of my own

that no one ever reads. But,

dear Descartes, what has been written, is.

So, here, hunched over the laptop, I

write these lines as
the morning emerges from the night.

11.09.2017

THE EYES OF QUTAYBA ZIAD ZAHRAN(17)

After two and a half weeks in a freezer

you come back home

glazed eyes wide open in wonder

frozen looking somewhere beyond death

beyond the guns that were pointed at you

beyond the checkpoint and the occupation

and the martyrdom

There is a question in your eyes

and perhaps

perhaps a hint of an answer

09.09.2017

LIVING DANGEROUSLY

When looking for

new poets & poems to discover

online, I

make sure that in the search engine

'Safe search' is 'Off'.

07.09.2017

A Landscape In September

An absent-minded autumn rain falls behind the windows,

the clicks of the coffee machine in rhythm with its sound.

A bloodless landscape bleaching towards winter, casting

away the useless summer outfit, frayed, reflecting itself

in muddy pools, with blackbirds. I have my words to shed,

my leaves to cast out, my long hours bleached, mingling

with the rain, falling.

07.09.2017

The Flesh That Feeds Us

At the Christmas dinner we eat

the flesh of our saviour to honour him -

but the schism, alas, has divided

our faith, so that when we

eat and honour the pig,

they in error bless

the turkey in their bellies!

Oh lord Pig who for our sins

and hunger gave your life,

from their heresies our brethren save

- make them burn the turkey

and let them eat thy flesh

that opens the heavenly gates!

06.09.2017

In The Footsteps Of The Apostle

Finally, we arrive at the end empty-handed;

all the knives we carried at the backs of our victims.

And we even didn't get the thirty gold coins

which our lord and mentor gained with a single kiss.

06.09.2017

Autumn Afternoon

Wind rustles the trees

dressed in green and gold -

a summer wind in autumn, warm

- yet the leaves still fall, gently,

in the September light.

05.09.2017

JUDAS

I am the betrayer, the one who can't be trusted,

the one who can't keep a promise, the one

who won't stand on your side, the one

that won't have your back -

except to put a knife into it.

Behind your back I will tell your secrets,

behind your back I will hurt you;

behind your back I will forge a blade of lies

to carve you open and in blood spill

your life and trust, as a traitor must.

05.09.2017

THALES OF MILETUS

From Phoenicia, studied in Babylonia

and visited Egypt. If you believe

Diogenes Laertios. The first of the natural

philosophers of Ionia, predicted

the eclipse that occurred during the battle

on the Halys river between Lydian

and Median empires. Water was

the 'first cause' for him. Never married.

Fell into a well or a hole while

watching stars, berated by an old

woman that he saw what was far

but not what was at his feet. Made

a fortune to show he could do it. We

give him dates 624 to 546 BCE

and forget about Phoenicia, Babylonia

and Egypt and make him the father,

the childless begetter of 'Western' science.

If he wrote something, none survives.

05.09.2017

To Men Of God

You who know what

a God knows and wants:

God is silent, so be silent.

God is absent, so begone.

05.09.2017

EPITAPH TO A DOOMED FLY

Three cups of coffee on a September afternoon

before I ran out of milk, brilliant sunlight

and a late survivor, a buzzing fly

from the lost world of Summer amidst a golden Autumn

flies around the room. Doesn't it

know we don't take refugees?

Your place is out there, to die

on a cold night, in the embrace of the silver

moonlight, frost covering your wings

that then only know earth.

05.09.2017

Fragments

Stars, drowning in the white moonlight,

bright,

as breeze rustles the trees, in darkness.

The night in September

cloaked in autumn, watches

with eyes of owls and mice and fox.

We walk, the gravel crunching

under my feet, the road

shadows and lunar light.

05.09.2017

P. G. WODEHOUSE(1881-1975)

They say fascism can never be funny

yet laugh while they read my books

and watch comedies made out of them.

03.09.2017

TO EZRA POUND

Poems saved your life,

but how many those of who died

while you praised fascism

and carried out Mussolini's deed

wrote poems themselves?

03.09.2017

GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS(1844-1889)

What god these frail reeds gathers,

escaping the petty sins of their dreamy minds

and the fear of living, what god

these sticks of woods would put to bear

the weight of the godhead, terrible and alien,

spread to men? What god

would call the weak and failing, those lost

and on solitary paths to silence, to

stand and preach and be

more solid than the muscular statues adorning

the temples on whose corridors they

like shadows of lost bats flutter?

03.09.2017

THE TRACHILOS HOMINID

On that far shore you stood

on the precipice of everything to come,

all our transformations, successes

and sufferings awaiting,

as the waves of the dying sea

came to meet the river delta

and you stood there, watching,

all these millions of years

the abyss for you step in.

01.09.2017

My Father

This morning, in a dream, you came through

to me from there where you are now,

spoke, so clearly and with full of life

- and I, surprised, grasped after those words

already fading; grasped after your presence

- and fell into this bleak day, into this

day in which you are dead, even when so clearly

everything here is ready for your appearance,

everything waits you, expects your return...

31.08.2017

The Heliades

Those foolish sons, Icarus and Phaethon

- what if they would have met, each set

to spiral into their deaths in the embrace of

Poseidon's waves and Gaia's soil;

Icarus' wings burned by Phaethon's chariot burning the Earth.

These sons, heralds of Greek wisdom

that sons should not try to equal or exceed their fathers,

that golden age can't follow silver age.

After greatness, only living in shadow

or the long fall, the arms waving in the sea,

the sisters, crying, turned

into trees on the shore of the fast-flowing Rhone.

28.08.2017

The Email Sent About Tabucchi's Isabel

There is certain kind of idiocy which

knows no bounds, the kind of which, blind, doesn't

recognize Slowacki written on a page when it sees it.

The kind of idiocy that, not willing

to be one in a faceless mass of wrong,

rushes forward like a long distance runner

in the very beginning of the contest, just

to be seen - and ashamed. Like a kamikaze

pilot that crashes beside his target ship,

sinking in defeat and meaningless death.

28.08.2017

Evening swathed in gold

that avoided the day, languorous

light on land draping herself

for autumn; like old lovers,

meeting again.

28.08.2017

G. K. Chesterton(1874-1936)

1

It takes much for a man

to be his own caricature;

but some, with great devotion,

this height scale.

2

Many a man has written

himself to face the noose or

barrels of guns, some - alas! -

failed, while tried.

3

If I would err, and in

 Christian Heaven myself find

 one thing would console

- I wouldn't run into you!

24.08.2017

To the apologists of Apartheid

Let's not defend what can't be defended;

the blood on the ground can't be made to be the fault

of the one who shed it,

different hands than his held the gun,

different hands than his pulled the trigger.

You try to shield the one who aimed and fired,

behind your back you try to put him

who watched his victim bleed.

The words you utter deserve no

counter-argument than the blood on the ground,

the body in the freezer - they are enough.

24.08.2017

Hilaire Belloc in the fireplace fell

There is certain irony, perhaps cruel

but irony nonetheless of the sort we

might call 'appropriate', that a man

who had done so much to stoke the

fires of antisemitism would, after a

million bodies had been burned in

Auschwitz, die of burns himself. The

fire had found its way to one of its

begetters and he who had burned with

hate now literally burned himself.

24.08.2017

What are we?

What are we, we humans?

Thoughts,

that no one will

think again.

24.08.2017

The wind comes in its cold fury,

makes the trees bend; an autumn

wrath, scattering gold.

24.08.2017

August, the month of my grandfather,

he of the imperial name, son

of a Red Guard, once

dying of stroke and tuberculosis

in a freezing hut. Our

family, repeating the scenes

from generation to generation:

The dying father, the son
helpless to save him.

24.08.2017

Two blocks of ice

My feet two blocks of ice, blood

weakly flowing in them. One day

they might be chopped off

and freely mingling with the limbs of others,

as smoke rise to the sky.

Just like your leg, in 1967;

it's lack never defined you, not to us,

so the lack of these blocks of ice

won't define me.

24.08.2017

To the dead

The dead, sleep and rest.

So little have you lost,

for the living sleep also;

sleep and dream

and pass from life

without ever waking.

24.08.2017

Autumn and all that

Autumn and all that

Which comes along,

The falling yellow

Leaves in the cold wind;

The dying grass

On a new grave.

From death, death.

23.08.2017

What shall be one, again

Let the dead be dead

and the living alive,

but soon, the dividing line

erased, they will be one.

The dead can't live again,

the living must perish

and what heartbeats divided

the cold silence shall unite.

23.08.2017

Our Global Consciences At The Ground In Barcelona

Bodies laying on the ground, unmoving,

and you, the one recording and those two walking

just before you, you all just walk. There

was the man with the water bottle, vanishing

quickly, perhaps he at least, unseen

to us, went to help, and let an injured to drink

- at least we hope that, despairingly.

None of you stop to help, not

even to check that child laying twisted on the ground,

if she has a pulse or not. Nor

that woman, with deep red, spreading

halo around her head. No, you three

- our representatives on the ground, through

which we live this, our consciences -

walk on, treating yourself detached

from all of this; it doesn't concern you,

the one who records this for us,

except as an observer, and those two ahead

- they act like it's some unpleasantness

that they must escape, something

they can leave behind them. You,

of course, already see your video spreading

around the globe, and perhaps congratulate

yourself on your good luck, not

just surviving, not just those

seconds or minutes that separated you from 

the metal and tires of the van,

but being there to record this. Your

fifteen minutes of the fame, like

the driver of the van's.

17.08.2017

A Modern Eustache Dauger, Or A Christian Sage

There is certain irony, like cold sunlight

dancing on red and yellow leaves on a cold autumn morning

with illusion of warmth, when

a man who could not give answers

to the mysteries of his own life, whose

relationships were Gordion's Knots no sword ever tested,

when such a man gave a fountain of answers

to those who sought guidance and hope

in a world where he himself couldn't find solid ground

to stand on and to remove his mask. (Yet,

would there have been a face behind

that velvet cloth?) The sage

who had no answers to give to himself

poured them to others; the man enchanted

by Pagan myths telling how to live a Christian life

in a modern world while pining for the medieval world

that never was. There is certain irony, of the

bitter sort, like when a panthalassic ocean Eden

is revealed to be a volcanic Hell

that once was Perelandra, a planet of seas.

13.08.2017

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON(1850-1894)

He looks like he has clammy hands,

sweat on his brow.

You feel that as earnest as his eyes are,

you can't trust him. There

is an element of a scared readiness

to betray, like the man

in Western movies to come

who will betray the heroes to the villains,

with some regret, and

will get shot in stomach,

dying immediately.

You decide that this meeting

out of time must be short.

12.08.2017

Ludwig van Beethoven's(1770-1827) Piano Concerto No.1 In C Major Op.15
(1795-1800)

It's raining, one of those insistent rains at the end of a summer,

that go on and on, cold rain on a cold day, while flowers still bloom,

and the leaves are still green, deep green under these rain-pregnant

clouds of milk, a landscape of full of coming loss to human mind,

human mind living always in the tomorrow through memory of yesterdays;

the summers that ended live on in this summer, yet

they live on for trees too, that remember, remember and adapt,

without nostalgia, full of purpose, while the human mind, paralyzed,

knows, but filled with the past, like Buridan's ass, succumbs between plenty.

04.08.2017

Great American Novels are

written with blood

on the skin of other nations,

with the real victims forgotten

beside black walls of names

used as mirrors.

04.08.2017

A cobweb of mist on the fallow fields at night,

the Moon a yellow orb hanging over a gothic treeline.

Something is in limbo between twilight and morning,

not knowing whether to die or to be born.

03.08.2017