DUBLIN III

 In the summer night

I sit listening to distant complaints,

this voice that just won't stop,

while my mind is full of relief

and gladness

over two foolish escape artist

felines back in the fold,

and your birthday

is approaching,

and I should be listening

to you, not this poor being

imprisoned in a prison

cell of his mind,

with an unlocked, opened

door and he can't leave,

because misery and suffering

is the safe

iron maiden womb

of his existence,

and he can't leave

its spiked shelter

for the uncertain world,

because what would

he be without his pain

and fear?

Instead of this,

this act of playing some kind of

Catholic priest listening to

litany of hopelessness instead of sins,

this occasional saying

of a word in the flood

of his endless repeating

of the same dreadful things,

instead of listening

how there is no way out,

how this being

has no rights,

again and again and again,

I should be doing

something for you,

and he just keeps repeating

the same things

I have listened to

since November,

but someone has to,

even when this clinging

being, this desperate suicide

artist, will never

leave that cell

he beliefs

he is in.

Because who I am

to send him to

his death,

this moth circling

the flame,

when I have sent

people I loved?

03.06.2021

JUSSI

Happiness is finding a cat,

who opened a locked front door,

waiting behind the kitchen door

in the inner foyer,

after you had given up

looking after him

in the warm summer night,

were thinking of foxes feasting

as you sat in the kitchen,

having left the front door open

in the chance that he would

avoid the fox and the lynx

and the raccoon dog and the wolf

and the tire. That

is happiness.

03.06.2021

EVEN ITS LIFE MATTERED

 I kill the first fly this year,

absent-mindedly, not realizing

what I am doing,

until I am rolling its

little, crushed body

as a black ball

between my greasy fingers,

which lured it

to its death

which I now regret.

02.06.2021

FOLLY

In the evening, the still pale

green landscape bathing in light,

I sit inside before the laptop, translating

a pretentious poem about life and art

by a young Aldous Huxley, full

of the the 'wisdom' of a well-educated,

well-read and little-lived youth,

instead of being outside,

in the light, living,

and why?

My act of translation

doesn't matter; his poem,

when it was still being read,

didn't matter - second-rate

words from a first class talent

who would write only one immortal work

(and that not his best),

so why bother?

It's warm outside, and light

would drive out the shadows

from the mind, sooth

the vengeful conscience,

but this pointless act,

this time wasted,

gives me a shard of joy,

like a ray of sun,

yet earned,

more lasting.

 

02.06.2021

THE LIGHT IS REPAINTING AN OBJECT AMONG THE LANDSCAPE

 So suddenly the clouds,

now ominous, conquer the sky,

and gloom falls over the landscape,

bathing in the golden light

of the long summer evening

only a moment ago; and all my bright

thoughts dim and dissolve,

and darker, despairing images

from deep, black pools emerge -

thus the nature of the light,

with its Old Master's sure brush,

creates and shapes the landscape's

powers that sculpt the human mind,

which, believing itself separate,

is a mere reflection.

31.05.-01.08.2021

MIDSUMMER 2019

The empty avenues are straight

for a ghost cavalry to charge -

to keep up law and order by crushing a strike

for eight-hour work-week, or to win

a civil war with flashing sabres

cutting deep into flesh wearing

the wrong colours.

The past via its geometries

channels us through

to our own tragedies,

gives them shape,

makes them into framed pictures

in our minds -

Here is where she lost

her faith into you,

and, horrified, understood

that it had been

a terrible mistake -

minds in which old mistakes

like sharp swords cut deep

from atop foaming mounts

of human folly.

31.05.2021

THE GAME OF PREY AND HUNTERS

The full Moon hangs on the sky bright and heavy,

your sins made manifest, mortal man,

as you hear the howling in the distance,

as you hear the rustling in the woods

beside this lonely span of road

in your life; yes, we feel your fear,

we hear your heart beating faster,

as you grow more frantic, mortal man,

you who hear my words echo inside your skull.

Your sins have called us here,

your sins and the bright full Moon,

and the flesh and the blood and the marrow.

You don't find us in the ruins of ancient castles,

you find us here, in the last stretch to home.

You hear us moving amidst the trees,

your steps grow faster and faster,

and soon, as we rise from the darkness

and howl to the bright full Moon,

those steps shall turn into a desperate run,

and the game of prey and hunters

shall be played to the end;

how fast shall your heart beat then

as you run towards the distant lights

you shall never reach,

how the chill night air shall fill from your cries

as you stumble and fall and beg,

before rich blood shall flow and bones shall crack,

and sweet marrow, and even sweeter sins

in your brain, shall be devoured,

mortal man - you in your last stretch of road,

who will never see the pale light of dawn

glimmer on our blood-stained fangs.

15.03.2021

JUST ONE OF THOSE MORNINGS

 Just one of those mornings

when you only want to sit outside

in the sun, drink coffee,

listening to the birds singing,

and imagine it's a day

years and years ago,

the mistakes not yet made,

the graves empty.

And so you do,

and blissfully lift the

shroud of time.

23.05.2021-03.06.2021

THE APPEARANCE OF THE DIVINE IN THE MORTAL REALM

 Religion is, in essence,

simply human longing -

an omnipotent god

would have no need of it

- nor of human beings.

What need a god has

for the holy scriptures,

and devout prayers,

stylite saints,

and flagellants?

In all of these

human beings

are speaking to

human beings

in absence of god.

Abrahamic God's appearance

turns mountains to dust,

Zeus burns his lover

with his mere presence.

True godhead annihilates.

21.04.2021

THE CAPTIVE MAJESTY

Over the pale green

of the late-coming Spring

the massed clouds have hanged

their light gray banners,

taken the Sun as their honoured captive,

leaving the birds to sing like a bard

under the window of the cell

where the massacring

crusader king lies

and his fate

in French curses.

20.05.2021

BEFORE THE PERFORMANCE

In the wan light of the overcast morning

the landscape, a stilled stage

lacking actors, awaits;

the young birches in their

pale green at the back

props for the burning

sunrays' awakening touch,

the tall pine memorizing

its script of calm immobility

over the stumps of the

long-fallen firs

symbolizing the passing

fate of even its kind.

17.05.2021

ETERNALLY BURIED IN DARKNESS

The principle of good is eternally absorbed in light: the principle of evil eternally buried in darkness.

Edward Gibbon(1737-1794): The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire(1776-88), Chapter 8.

Light, born from darkness,

is not eternal in the universe,

but a mortal flicker,

shining brightly,

shining briefly

as stars and galaxies

against the vast,

dark cosmic night

giving it its splendour,

magnifying it,

and in which the embers

of the dying light

shall fade

in the long cosmic dusk,

to be eternally

buried in darkness.

16.-20.05.2021

OUR BITTER SACRIFICE TO LIFE

 The Greek myths got one thing right:

Almost everyone gets a bad end.

It's just how the world is,

that is what they have

taught to us since Homer,

and who we are to argue,

we who have drank bitterness

like the souls in Hades

sacrificial blood?

Almost everyone gets a bad end,

yes, and who are we to argue,

in our own long defeat,

that the end, although preordained,

was not deserved?

Time's swift arrow flies straight,

through all our mistakes,

impaling our years to our fate.

Let us drink

our bitter sacrifice to life.

09.05.2021

BRIDGE BETWEEN THE DEAD AND THE DYING

Reading a balm to the brain,

elixir distilled of thoughts

of the dead, who, through

the pages of books, come

to live in your mind -

for a moment short

or decades long -

until it too, dies

into the void.

01.12.2014-01.05.2021

READING "AT THE WEDDING MARCH" BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS(1844-1889)

No unmarried man or woman

should sing praises to matrimony

and to marital bed and what is done

in it, and what it produces,

Hopkins; a self-declared eunuch,

you should have just put the thought

aside when it came to you,

left the poem unwritten,

and written of the things

in which you had a share,

the wide and wet and wild

world of nature beyond humanity,

opening outside your flesh,

where the exile is embraced

by what was before him

and will be after him,

and which will never remember him

after he has gone to the great dark,

leaving no ripples

on the surface of the living globe.

01.05.2021

WINTER IN LATE APRIL

 Chill evening begets

winter in the

gray, late April,

rebirth of a

white landscape,

a dreary mirror

for the mind's angst -

to melt away

in the starless dark.

28.04.2021

APRIL DIORAMA

The wind arises

in this diorama

of an autumnal landscape, 

bends bare birch branches

under a milk-white sky of clouds;

silences the birds

which sang Spring

in this April desolation;

departs, the bleak land

gloomy in the dusk.

26.-28.04.2021

SUNRISE IN THE EVENING

'Sunrise' at

eight in the evening;

after twelve hours of gloom,

one-fifth of Sol above

a mass of violet clouds,

under the now dark buds

on the branches

of a solitary linden tree.

27.04.2021

GAIUS CORNELIUS GALLUS(c.70-26 BCE)

You should not have been so eager

to wash away the shame of ambition

with death's bitter remedy,

as one pentameter and nine lines 'of inferior quality'

now stand as your legacy;

after all, time more merciless than Octavian

has wrought its punishment,

and left these as your poetic monument. 

You should have put words down

and sought Octavian's forgiveness

through flattery and praise,

and your too audacious ambition

would have been forgiven, if not forgotten,

and, perhaps, your poetry would

have stood time like a lesser Sphinx,

and would be remembered,

not your death in disgrace.

14.10.2015-21.05.2021

IN BLEAK APRIL

The landscape a frozen diorama in the autumnal gloom

of a dim afternoon, the wind stilled, birds silenced,

and I, stuck behind this window looking out,

glued and painted by the untiring hands of years

which created this moment of April desolation

like apes write Shakespeare's collected works.

When shall the sluggish time move its dials

to the moment when other trees than these

stand bare and dark over disturbed soil,

on some bleak day when in uncounted

dimensions Juliet and Romeo live

happily in consummated love,

and Hamlet sits crowned on the throne?

26.04.2021

NEFER 2

 The lack of news is telling on its own,

or so our fearful mind tells itself -

news delayed can only be bad.

Yet we hope in the face of these whispers, yearn

for a message crushing our fears, yet dread

the sound announcing the arrival of a message,

those seconds between the knowledge

we have the answer and reading it.

Everything is possible in those seconds,

and all is set after them, forever.

26.04.2021

WAITING FOR THAT WHICH BEFORE THE WINTER FLEW

 Hope is a migratory bird,

long lost in its sojourn

to southern lands.

Here in the spring,

waiting for its arrival

in vain,

when it surely lies

dead in some distant place,

stuck in a net it couldn't escape.

26.04.2021

IN LATE APRIL

In this cold, dim mid-day land

the only sings of Spring

are the buds on the linden tree,

palest green against the gray

of the overcast sky.

26.04.2021

FROM THE VOID YOU CAME, TO THE VOID YOU SHALL RETURN

Do remember, you human

being, that nothing

that you do in this span of

time we call life

has any meaning

after your brain

has thought its last thought,

after your heart

has beaten its last beat.

From the void

you came, and the void

is the end

of you and all your doings.

Your name is

not written on water,

what you create

is not sandcastles on a beach

washed away by the high tide.

No, you

and everything you built,

everything you achieved,

everything you believed

you would leave behind

was nothingness

built on void.

25.04.2021 

THE FOAM ATOP THE EXISTENCE'S OCEAN

Let us, briefly, think not of the foam

atop the existence's ocean, the foam

which our media wants us to observe endlessly;

none of the fascists which it promotes,

the thick athletes and their sponsors,

the idiots in the game and 'Reality TV' shows,

the cardboard celebrities through which

the media tells us to live our lives;

no, let's look at the Mediterranean's mass graves

in the blue, the people drowned in our name,

let's look at Brazil and India, at the

endless graves and pyres, in which

the handiwork of the world order

build on ignorance's foam can be seen,

these human sacrifices by the same powers

whose local heralds grinning from the screens

are giving us the fascists,

the thick athletes and their sponsors,

the idiots and the celebrities,

sucking the oxygen from our brains,

telling us that we need our own

Bolsonaro, Modi and Trump,

repeating from one vast mouth their gospel

that we need to hate the weak

and kneel and grovel before

the famous and the rich and the malignant -

this inbred media that hides from us

the breaking of the world

so that wealth can coalescence

into standing, stinking pools

even in our flaking little horror of a land.

25.04.2021

APRIL MALADY

Landscape frozen on the threshold of light

awaits the Sun breaking through the clouds' gray,

solitary drops keep falling from the eaves

through pallid air in the long afternoon silence.

Yet the unconquerable Sun fails before the wall

of the overcast sky, and suddenly the rain starts

again; a hard, insistent shower; the wind rises

and bends the trees in their dark and pale

colours to its puppetry, briefly, and then,

it's over again, only droplets from the eaves

and the branches falling, wind becalmed

in the gray of the long April afternoon,

as the sluggish tide of wan light from the Sun fails

to give the autumnal land a spring of rebirth.

25.04.2021

ALL THE VICTIMS

 At some point, one needs

to understand that enough is enough,

and that a spiral wreaking suffering

must come to an end.

It can't go on,

the injuries and deaths,

until all have been swept

away and only oneself remains.

The master of

the innocents' suffering,

all the pain and fear and sorrow,

architect of a slow armageddon.

All who trusted

and loved, their lifes and bodies

wrecked, taken from them

by utter incompetence.

Not malice,

just utter, total inability

to see, to think, to act

destroys them all.

10.04.2021

TARA

Fear grips the mind

after another innocent

suffers for the horrible

mistake of a man

who refuses to see,

refuses to see

what is right before him,

and refuses to think,

refuses to think about

what he sees,

and refuses,

refuses to act correctly.

When does it end?

Oh no, he doesn't

want to hurt them -

but hurt he does,

and he hurts them

far, far more

than many who

with clear thinking

seeks to torment.

How many horrible

mistakes can one

unthinking man

inflinct on the innocents?

When does it end?

09.04.2021

AFTER THE PASSING OF THE PRINCE CONSORT

When it comes to kings and priests,

I'm with Denis Diderot;

never lament the passing of a prince

until it's time to rejoice

for the going of the last,

his laurel held on the neck

picked from the final

priest's belly.

09.04.2021

PRINCE PHILIP IS DEAD, AT 99

Finally, flesh

is cold,

the thoughts

have ceased,

and all the years

are ash and dust,

and the bell

is tolling not

only for the

devoured dead,

it chimes too

for the coming

death of the

crowned head,

as mortality

dawns in red

dusk, shedding

the outer skin

between privilege

of a century,

and the waiting,

hungering void.

09.04.2021

EVENTIDE

The Sun bloated, orange-red

sinks behind the crest

of the treeline turning black;

the evening soundless,

this day of crisp light

didn't bring back birdsong,

silenced by three days

of snowfall and rain,

leaving the breezeless

April landscape

a lifeless painting

being covered by

the grime of

the descending night.

08.04.2021

YOU WERE SO FULL OF LIFE WHEN YOU CAME BACK IN THE MID-AFTERNOON

how frail

the greatest of men

I knew

you my father

were on that

terrible night

stolen of life

by me

who didn't rise up

and wake you

who didn't listen

what you said

who sent you

to your death

with a glass

of water &

a magnesium tablet

27.06.2017-08.04.2021

DIM REFLECTIONS

It was the spring the day before yesterday,

sunshine, birdsong, and a fly

hovering against a windowpane.

It was the winter yesterday,

endless fall of snow in a

grim, gray land.

It's the autumn today,

rain falls on patches of snow,

disinterring fallen, brown leaves.

Each day the landscape

makes itself anew,

and us its dim reflections.

07.04.2021

THE GODDESS AND THE BEAST

astronaut Sam

untouchable in her heavenly abode

watching us

too small to be seen

an Earth without humans

a goddess in space

to gain that lithe figure

wrapped around me

that short hair in my fingers

to be one floating

hands on smooth skin

cold nipples against chest

i would be that visitor

who on return

from goddess' embrace

ages a thousand years

floats as dust

back to her

so sorry Sam

but men are men

we are the weaker sex

base beasts

without control

we would burn with wax wings

reaching for you

our beautiful smiling 

goddess in heaven

08.02.2015-06.04.2021

LIKE PALE LIGHT IN SHALLOW WATER

 Like pale light

in shallow water

reaching the

ice-moulded pebbles,

sorrow enters

the remaining days

of life, illuminating

them - as time

wavers.

12.05.2010-06.04.2021

NEFER

  It seems we
will never be free of fear

of loss, until that final day

erases all fear with the world.

Until that moment, when

 the world is taken from

us, this fear of loss of beloved

ones, cherished ones,

has our mind and

heart in the grasp

of its iron-hard fists,

tightening its hold

until that concluding day,

when the world passes away

with all the fear

which being alive

holds.

03.04.2021

JUST BEYOND GRASP

 Here, on this bleak,

far shore of a life,

still reading the poems

of the Chinese masters

dust for a millennia, still

feeling that a veil, between

this transient existence

and some permanent state

of being / non-being

beyond, has been pierced

by their sharp words, carved

and flung into time

as poems, reaching

past mere meaning

towards essence.

03.04.2021

APRIL

The sun breaks through the clouds,

briefly; bright light floods

a resurrected spring landscape,

then the tide turns, colour

drains from the landscape,

leaving a lifeless husk

of a dead autumn

dug from winter's grave.

03.04.2021

CHRONIC INFLAMMATION OF THE SKIN

the weary sun of a

long august evening

a distant cold globe

yet trickles of sweat run

across the bloated frame

and the tingling in

limbs heralds

the old torture

of inflammated skin

for hours to come

under the distant cold globe

of long august evening's

weary sun

10.08.2015-03.04.2021

IN THE FIRST LIGHT OF THE SPRING

A long walk with the dogs

to the village centre

in the bright evening light,

lost between the landscape

in its first moment of spring,

and the memories it evokes,

the pain of which makes

the churning mind

try to change the past,

chart a different path

around the shoals of life

to this same moment -

the old useless quest, ending

only at our own oblivion -

which takes us from the living

moment, and fetters us

to the dead moments surviving

only in memories reshaped

by tragedies of our doing;

taking this cool, crisp

April landscape of light

which should be a balm,

and with each painful

thought hammering

it into one more link

in the long chain which

binds and dooms us.

01.04.2021