AFTER THE ROBES OF FLESH HAVE BEEN SET ASIDE

What garbs of flesh

we have while we breath

and think and waste

these fleeting years

shall be set aside

in the cold earth;

from under these guises

of faces and names,

bodies beautiful

and decrepit,

only our common humanity

in bones shall be left.

On this pedestal of death

you see solely human beings.

18.02.2019

COME PALE MORNING OF WINTER

Come pale morning of winter,

come the silence of the landscape in

dreamless sleep, come

the desolation that grips

the mind like ice the frozen ground.

This short day, under

overcast skies born in gray light,

with its slowly flowing time 

a stream that carries us,

without helm or sculls

down, down from the heights

where our home in time and space

once was, with faces loved

and lost, with voices comforting

and silenced. Lost, we castaways

in this world grown lesser

drift through this vast cut

through our bleeding self

towards the evening dusk

and the greater darkness

that lies beyond the night;

there, flesh and thought

shall be torn away

and at last pain

shall shed us in the void.

18.02.2019

THE CARPENTER AND THE SMITH

I was the smith who made the nails.

With my nails they crucified the man

from Nazareth who rode on a donkey

through the gate of Jerusalem to his death.

I saw him, enraged, in the Temple before
that day on Golgotha came

and I knew I watched a man whose days were few.

I was the carpenter who made the cross.

Good, stolid wood that could have raised

the roof over a family house for many years.

Instead it raised a man up in the blood-dripping air.

What a waste of good wood,

to put a man between earth and heaven
as a sign to all.

I was the smith who made the nails.

I was in the crowd that shouted for Barabbas

(for when given a choice we know that there

is no choice, that is implied) and I shouted with them.

I chose Barabbas, because there was no choice.
Roman steel told to that to us
and taught us well.

I was the carpenter who made the cross.

I watched my cross being carried to the hill

and him on his last travel before darkness.

When the crowd shouted, I shouted with it.

When the crowd spat, I spat with it.

When the crowd threw stones, I threw with it.
This is the wisdom granted by Roman steel.

I was the smith who made the nails.

I saw those nails of mine hammered

through flesh and wood. Deep

did my nails go and they kept a man suspended

between life and death until death won

as the soil under my feet shook.
Even in the shattering of the land they held.

I was the carpenter who made the cross.

I saw my cross rise against the blazing sky

with flesh nailed on it; a man beyond life,

not yet embraced by death; I saw

and watched soldiers throw dice,

felt the earth tremble and heard his final scream.
Even the agony of the soil didn't fell my cross.

I was the smith who made the nails.

Well did I make my nails,

well did they do their work.

Many a house, many a barrel

have my nails held together,

like it held him to his fate.
Yet I feel those nails crucified us all.

I was the carpenter who made the cross.

There is no shame in working and shaping

the wood into a cross; the only shame

is in its use, to bind a man to his death

with wood and iron nails,

to bind we who watched his passing
to some mystery that eludes us.

17.02.2019

THE JAVELIN-THROWER AT TWILIGHT

To my father

Sun going down, the land

in deepening blue, the Moon

stuck in naked branches

beside the road, the empty

road, beyond the forest

rises up the hillside, on the

ridge the highest firs

bathing in orange fire,

calm, silent twilight

at five pm, a moment

if not beyond time, then

in time crawling in

deep, blue snow as

Sun falls to other skies.

Absent, the human

- whose loss is a javelin

piercing the landscape

with the burning

embers of the Sun -

with crossed hands

sleeps, beyond time

and almost alive

in these moments when

the eternity stands an

atom's width away.

17.02.2019

MATSUO BASHÕ ON THE ROAD

Sleeping beside prostitutes

in the roadside inn,

something to do while away

from the capital,

to write down,

weave few poems

out of it; not

something to do at the capital,

to talk to,

sleep next to common prostitutes

when you

have invites to poetry night

after another at fashionable villas,

Moon watching trips

with people of 'standing';

no, this is

just a bit of exotica

for the poet samurai mistaken

for a monk

living on the roads

instead of just tasting them

to feed his poetic stream.

17.02.2019

SHADOW OF GRIEF

Well, it's a nice mid-Winter day outside

and you, you are dead,

not sitting at the garage on your chair

enjoying the Sun, with

the dog laying near you

in love with the snow.

You should be there, sunbeams

in your eyes, glittering

snow seeded with diamonds

forcing you to look away,

at the shadow you make

on the snow-covered ground

with your chair, silhouette

extending to our

memories, our lives,

that long silhouette

growing to a shadow

full of sorrow.

In that shadow

we will fade

and perish.

17.02.2019

LIKE DEW IN THE MORNING LIGHT

Poetry took a misstep

when the poets stopped

making their poems meaningful

for their audiences,

and began a Gargantuan effort to

make them meaningful

for themselves; they

wrote about themselves

for themselves, and as

the poets' understanding

of their work and self grew,

the audiences went the way

of dew in the morning light.

Sons and daughters

of Pantagruel, stop!

17.02.2019

SOL INVICTUS

Sun throws its beams

gilding the white snows,

but in the February shadows

the blue banks

warm my aching mind;

I shun the light,

the golden rays

for they are not for you

and thus not for me,

I crave the shadows

where I can hide

from the world that went on

and on when it should have stopped

like I did, rooted on your graves.

The Sun shines, the Sun sets,

the Sun rises after abyssal night -

yet not for you

and thus not for me;

stand still or leave

the globe in darkness,

Victorious Sun;

you who stand gazing

with million rays

at the planet, graveyard of man.

17.02.2019

THE FROZEN RIVER OF GRIEF

I betrayed you; the pain,

unbearable to contain like the

ice starting to move in the great rivers

of the north at spring,

is eased with these words,

it starts to move, flow

with a sound like child

sobs after a lost parent,

flow through all these years,

to the past and the future

alike, and where I am

is but an island in the stream

of grief, it's shores

lapped by the waters

of sorrow until

all the soil is gone,

the island is no more,

the figure on the riverbank

has been carried away

in the waters of remorseless memory.

I betrayed you.

14.02.2019

MY MOTHER

You,

my mother,

now being lost

to me again

through waning

memories,

were Jesus Christ

and I,

 I was Simon Peter

who thrice renounced you.

Nothing will be built

on the crumbling sand

I am.

Time

shall wash

me away.

29.01.2019

LIFE

Life is a gamble

you will

lose;

the trick

is to stay in

the game

as long

as possible.

Gambler,

you play

to roll

dice once

more.

29.01.2019

HAPPY ARE THOSE

Happy are those

who learn late

that the life

is not a comedy,

not a romance,

not a rousing adventure

but a tragedy

full of pain, grief

and sorrow -

and death,

above all else death,

and in the end

- death.

29.01.2019

WINTER DUSK

16:31 and

the short winter day is over;

the cold white of the snow

has become warm blue in the dusk

under the overcast sky.

The trunks and snow-laden branches

of the trees

are threading the blue

with black veins.

All movement

has ceased.

In this moment

so fleetingly balanced

between the pale light

of the late January day

and the long dark of the starless night,

timeless eternity

touches the

buried landscape

with delicate bird feet.

26.01.2019

LIFE

What is life?

An attempt

to keep

the gaze

away

from

death.

To

take eyes

away from the

inevitable destination,

to fill the mind

with everything but

the end.

That is life.

26.01.2019

WORDLESS IN MY OWN SORROW

I tried to find words of comfort

for a grief that has shattered a heart;

but I had none,

for my mind was pierced by the same

loss, and wordless

in my own sorrow I was mute

to the pain of my friend.

The dead unite us in loss,

but the loss binds us

in silence.

I turned to the wordsmiths,

to Catullus on his brother's grave

in Troy, on Auden on Yeats,

and more of the same.

But these were monuments

hacked in eternity by the great,

and ours is a sorrow and pain

of the nameless

for their loved ones,

not an ennobling feeling,

not a fine emotion for the learned

of millennia to savour;

ours is the grief of the orphaned child,

ours is the rage against

losing the hand that held our own hand

when we took our first steps

and comforted us against the fears of the night

with the certainty of

loving warmth shielding us forever.

23.01.2019

PYTHERMUS OF TEOS

Nothing else matters, it seems, apart from gold.

Pythermus of Teos (fl. before 540 BCE),

translated by M. L. West(1937-2015)

Pythermus, son of doomed Teos,

writer of songs for drinking wine

in good company, his name

writ in history with one sentence

and Hipponax underlined it.

23.01.2019

ONE WINTER DAY

To Mary Oliver(1935-2019)

Brief is your life,

brief like the sunlight

on a short winter's day.

Late the light

that fills the landscape,

early the twilight

that buries the sun.

From darkness

you came,

to darkness

you return.

Only once did the sun

rise for you,

only once will

you see it set.

All you have

is this one winter day,

sunbeams on the snow,

sunrays on your face.

21.01.2019

ONLY WHEN

Only when

your suffering

matters to me

as much as my own,

only when

my suffering

matters to you

as much as your own,

only then

will our suffering

come to an end.

20.01.2019

DEATH IS NOT SLEEP

Death is not sleep,

for sleep ends

and the dreamer surfaces;

a sleep has a beginning

and and an end

like the life itself,

and like a dream

once dreamed

life never

comes again.

20.01.2019

AFTER IT SNOWED DURING THE NIGHT

The morning's cold

makes me shiver; emerging

in the faint light

blue-tinged snow knee-high,

bitter memories,

sharp like razor-blades

cutting the mind

that knows them.

What lies under

the snow can't rise with the spring,

that which past laid to repose

can never rest in the mind

that remembers; the

past lies with the beloved faces

in a reality beyond years,

beyond the coming and going

of snow and leaves and grass,

bound to the mind

which remembers

and shivers in the cold

of the winter morning.

16.01.2019

AUTUMN IN OCCITANIA

The beautiful lands

of troubadours and 'heretics',

the great flowing cloth

of blood thrown

over the shimmering hills

and green orchards,

the stones of towns

under northern shadows,

the parchments of inquisition

replacing the songs;

the fires on squares

where flesh fell

from hands grasped in prayer;

the great river flows

past fallen arches

carrying bodies of

the plague years.

14.01.-15.01.2019

TURN AWAY FROM DEATH

There is no more pointless subject for poetry

than death;

grief, sorrow, fear

of live's end -

yes, but death itself?

The antithesis of everything that is

or can be?

No.

Let the void be,

look away from it,

write dirges for the lost,

elegy for your years

gone and growing

shorter; give voice

to the fear.

But death, death

beyond that?

Let it be.

14.01.2019

THE ABSENCE

The old childhood fear

in a middle-aged man's heart,

the old words

in a middle-aged man's thoughts:

Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep,

If I should die before I 'wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

But no warm mother's hand

to reach for in the dark,

no celestial being in the firmament

to hope to save him from the void.

The sleep is the foyer

of death, and

in the morning's resurrection

he knows his fate.

13.01.2019

A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC

To Lucius Shepard(1943-2014)

If there is music

to be heard after the heart

beats no more and

no blood circulates in

our veins, when our

bones or ash rest

on the palm of the earth,

if there is music

in the shadows past life,

if there are those shadows

or blinding light, if

if if... Then you have heard

what the cosmos sings

to its children ripped

from flesh, wrapped

in its fabric of void and particles.

If there is music,

if there is silence,

if there is thought,

if there is flickering...

If, if, if... you have heard,

you have heard it,

beyond the veil

in the cooling universe

you've come part

of it's song of life

and death -

the dirge before oblivion

embraces the fading

web of matter.

10.01.2019

THE SHROUDED ONES

Mother Life gives her

weary children

to the waiting arms

of her severe sister, Death.

Warm and crying

she brought them to this world,

cold and with stains of tears

in their faces they leave it.

Sister Death has

the compassion of eternity;

she will take ash and dust

and turn them into stars.

10.01.2019

WHAT WE HAVE GAINED

Beautiful person is good, as

external beauty can't exist without inner beauty;

virtue is tied to person's wealth and status,

like external beauty to inner beauty -

only in together can we have

the perfect man of ancient Greece:

The beautiful, virtuous aristocratic male

not defined by his deeds

but what he possess through birth.

His character is of the hardest marble,

of bronze that can not corrode.

It doesn't change, it endures

from birth to death and to the shadows

of the realm of Hades as Parmidean One.

To the Hellenes in their brightly painted

abodes Dorian Gray would

have been as impossible as Zeus ruling the seas.

10.01.2019

I hear my death coming

in the silence of the January midnight,

see it in the weeping trees

in their white shrouds

crossing their branches.

The night without stars

is descending to entomb me.

10.01.2019

Two cats purring

atop a man on bed.

His chest moves not,

he is like the living

sphinxes on his

cadaver, out of time.

10.01.2019

ARNOLD BENNETT(1862-1931)

No cup of hemlock for him,

tap-water willingly drank

his death-bringer;

his guilt that of the heroes of Hellas:

Hubris challenging fate - but

of the bourgeois kind.

10.01.2019

DAMNATIO MEMORIAE

Living people write

poems in the voices of the dead;

they give words of the living

for the dead to perform,

and among the dead

they place themselves,

like in death they would exist

and have the gift of speech still.

These puppets from their graves raised
speak of how no sorrow

should be felt, how good

were their lives, and

how those passing their tombs

should read the words and remember

them. The old Roman

magic of those not forgotten

still surviving.

They write, the living

with their beating hearts

and brains like oceans of thought,

their veins with full of red blood

swiftly coursing; they write

and see death but life

slower flowing, a lucid dream

with moments of wakefullness interrupted.

A long rest, that good dream of Socrates.

They delude themselves

and those who read their verses;

they comfort themselves

and those readers with lies,

as the truth hurts and devours

all hope and leaves an abyss:

For death is but annihilation, oblivion

of all thought and consciousness;

more escape the grip of the event horizon

of a black hole than escapes the maw of death.

The dead have been erased from the universe.

This is death: Damnatio memoriae.

04.01.2018

AFTER JUDE

What did all those novels

bring? A dreary house of

his own making, where

a barren marriage died -

bitterness that stopped the

pen, when all was bought

and cold was the hearth

and cold were the words given.

So, thirty years, and

back to poems; engraving

on medallions what

he had painted on frescoes -

yearning, stumbling,

falling, noose in the neck

and cold hearth, grave

and conscience's sharp dagger.

All there, those broken

shards of dreams that

kept bleeding the hands

that hold them to write.

02.01.2018