ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND FIFTY-FIFTH DAY OF THE YEAR

Today I'm old like

the Svecofennian mountains,

eroded to my roots,

listening to the gravel

under my feet muttering

our shared memories,

to the light whispering

of those long gone moments

at the edge of remembering;

eroded to my roots,

all my sky-reaching youth

carried off in the torrents

of the swiftly rushing time;

today I am as old

as the mountains that were;

embedded to the landscape,

soon out of sight

as the years smooth

the fallen peaks of my years.

15.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON EZRA POUND

Oh, I do enjoy the poems of Pound,

but don't think that I would have

mourned learning he would have

faced the fusillade for his Fascism.

For I am one of those who

justify the execution of Brasillach.

Instead, first reading of him caged

in Pisa, so long ago for both

of us, I remember satisfaction;

they should have never set him free.

15.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

YOU WANT US ALL TO DIE

Indifferent people, you

who don't see yourself

in the people of Derna,

seeking bodies among the ruins,

not in the people rafted

among the submerged houses

of Thessaly,

you who rage against

climate protestors

or laugh at them,

smug in your denial,

you indifferent people,

you want us all to die.

15.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THEY ARE WRONG

People claim that Moroccans are entitled

to three things after the fatal earthquake:

Plentiful aid, continuation of the war

in occupied Western Sahara,

and to the claim that there is no war

in occupied Western Sahara.

15.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ALAS, PREFERENCES

If only the Moroccans would be

as eager to help their stricken

countrymen after the earthquake

as they are to deny the war they

wage for the fourty-ninth year

in occupied Western Sahara...

14.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

IN AUTUMN TIME

So bright and warm sunshine

you might miss the yellowed

leaves that garb the trees,

so bright and warm sunshine

you might forget the years

that garb your brows.

14.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE FINER THE MATERIAL, THE BETTER POEM YOUR BRAIN COMES UP WITH

The poems that left the minds of the poets

died with them as they saw them; what

you have before you on those printed pages

is what you construct in your own mind

from the building blocks they left.

14.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND FIFTY-FOURTH DAY OF THE YEAR

Sunshine, again, outside

beyond the walls and panes,

and here I sit before the computer,

uninstalling this, installing that

and translating minor poems

from great beams of poetic light.

14.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

SIX PEOPLE KILLED TODAY BY ISRAEL'S OCCUPATION FORCES IN OCCUPIED PALESTINE'S BESIEGED GAZA STRIP

Israeli occupation killed today

six young men in occupied

Palestine's besieged Gaza,

over two hundred and forty

people killed this year by

Israel's regime forces and

illegal colonialists, and

the 'West' rages against call

for boycott and sanctions.

13.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

AFTER KOBAYASHI ISSA'S(1763-1827) HAIKU

Like Issa in his autumn

I ask, to which particular hell

am I bound, o winds of fall?

13.09.2023

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AUTUMN TAKES OVER

Yesterday summer haze,

today autumn fog

on the same fields.

13.09.2023

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ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND FIFTY-THIRD DAY OF THE YEAR

In the midst of cascading computer

problems I suddenly remember a man

from Libya being carried by fast

brown flood-waters. I doubt he

made it. Perhaps ten thousand

dead. Ten thousand dead after

thirteen years of warfare.

And there was I, exasperated

by Device Manager and

an unknown USB device,

yet safe and sound, not

being carried to my death

by brown waters among

thousands of innocent people,

sacrificed to the fossil

fuel industry's greed.

13.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THEY DIED BEGGING US TO REMEMBER WHO WE WERE

The people we were we bury,

and hard lies the earth on

their hopes and dreams, and

blood still remains on the

blade of the shovel with which

we killed and buried them.

They died begging us to remember

who we had been, those hopes

and dreams we once had, yet we

raised the shovel and allowed

it to fall, and now on their grave

we sit down in regret and grief.

12.09.2023

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ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND FIFTY-SECOND DAY OF THE YEAR

Reading Herman Hesse in English

translation, I notice the American

translator has put God where there

is none, this obsession about God of

theirs so strong that it overcomes

the voice of the son of missionaries.

12.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE PROBLEM WITH BROKEN PEOPLE

The problem with broken people

is that so many of them will stay

among the shards of their past

lives if given the opportunity

to move on. Of those shards

they have built a rickety

hovel against the world, and

it has become a sheltering

home and a confining prison.

If you offer to lead them out,

so many will say no while

asking you to help them.

12.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND FIFTY-FIRST DAY OF THE YEAR

It takes time for me to recognize

the sound I have been listening to -

the sound of migrating cranes,

the sound of autumn, in the clouds.

11.09.2023

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ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND FOURTY-NINTH DAY OF THE YEAR

I thirst to begin

my morning

with you.

09.-11.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

 

THE WORLD WILL BE JUST FINE

They say the world and the environment

will be fine when we are gone, fatalism

masquerading as hope - like the world

on its own would be all that we imprint

on its lush wonders from our own

beliefs. Yes, the flora and fauna would

be fine, after ten million years, and

nothing but be, and there would be

none to value it until all the seas run

dry, and all the flowers and all the insects

the hot winds from the dune seas could

meet would be but fossils embedded in

eroding rock in a world enduring just fine.

'10.09.2023

#Poems #Poetry #Poems #Verse

FAR FROM THE STRICKEN WORLD

To PRC

On a bed should I be, your smooth

shins on my shoulders resting,

my quivering hands gripping

your hips, and my very being

nestling inside your warm wonder.

Far from the stricken world and its ills

should I be, on a bed with you.

'10.09.2023

#Poems #Poetry #Poems #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND FIFTIETH DAY OF THE YEAR

We thirst, but when offered

a brimming cup to drink, we

hesitate, and when finally

taking it, set it aside, hands

quivering - and yet, we will

never stop wondering how

it would have tasted.

'10.09.2023

#Poems #Poetry #Poems #Verse

SUMMING UP THEIR LIFE AS THEY WRITE

Betrayed the person who they were,

betrayed the person who they could

have been, betrayed the persons that

came and left the group photograph

of life; betrayed those who could have

been and who now shall never be.

'09.09.2023

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THE GIANTS OF THE MEADOW

Such lives people lead boastful

of the feats of their scant decades,

of what they have gathered from

the world's plenty under their name,

thinking it will make a difference

in a galaxy of two hundred billion

stars, in a universe of one hundred

and fifty billion galaxies, in a

multiverse of infinite variations.

Grasshoppers on a meadow

before the autumn chill.

04.06.-09.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE SABOTAGING OF SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGNS FOR PRISONERS GOING TO BE EXECUTED IN IRAN

If you want to save the live of a person going to be executed

by an oppressive regime, you won't be using their name

as a hashtag while calling those who are going to hang him

"terrorists" and "mullahs". No, if you do that, you are just

using them for your own propaganda, untroubled that these

words of yours might be read by those who are going to put

the noose around their neck. No, you have no eagerness

to save them. You care about them almost as little as

those who tortured 'confession' out of them, who

condemned them in a show trial and who are going

to kill them. To you this is just a performance

for foreign audiences. When they are hanged,

you move on to the next one to be killed

and replay your act, helping to make

sure they too die, their neck snapped.

09.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

AS THE SUN AROUSES THE SLEEPING LAND

To PRC

The golden fingers of the Sun

move slowly, hesitantly

across the landscape undulating

across morning, touching

its curves, its hollows,

its smooth, firm limbs,

drowsy after the darkling

hours of the night, the naked

body of the land, your

craved for wonders restored

to my lusting eyes, so

deeply have you imprinted

yourself into my being.

09.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

 

BASILICA OF SAN VITALE, RAVENNA

Ducks on the mosaic waters

of San Vitale, swimming fifteen

centuries bright in the blue

waters of eternity, beyond

corrupting time.

08.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

WHEN THE 'WRONG PEOPLE' DO RACISM

The people who ignore the racism

of the occupiers thunder condemnation

at the racism of the occupied, for the licence

of racism is a precious gift, deserved

for those who have the guns and

the armoured bulldozers, not for

those who have the stones

and the destroyed homes.

08.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND FOURTY-EIGHT DAY OF THE YEAR

As I walk in the warm afternoon air

to get the mail, on the gravel road

there lies dead, beautiful and pathetic,

a slow worm, run over by the car of

the people I just passed, talking

and laughing happily in the sun.

08.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse 

AS I WALKED PAST THEM ON THE MAIN STREET

No money to keep the police station

open through the summer, but enough

money for two private security guards to

wander, lazily, trying the doors of bankrupt

stores, hoping one would be open, broken

into, and let them play daring cops.

07.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

NAGORNO-KARABAKH IN 1988 AND 2023

I was eleven when I watched on television news

reports from violence in Nagorno-Karabakh,

and now I am fourty-six and I watch military

convoys on their way towards Nagorno-Karabakh,

and these thirty-five years have seen immense

indifference; when it was Armenia winning,

indifference, when it's now Azerbaijan winning,

indifference. The least effort for peace, a fig

leaf for that indifference, from the globe, then

and now, and the world's eyes watching calmly

as another round of bloodshed is set to begin.

07.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND FOURTY-SEVENTH DAY OF THE YEAR

To PRC

My thoughts wander back

to you, taking their usual

way, and they find your

image, unrobened and

unsmiling, among the

still green fields where

all the flowers have died.

07.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

 

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND FOURTY-SIXTH DAY OF THE YEAR

And for one day,

the summer is back

in its golden robe.

Shy your eyes

from the frayed hems,

and welcome it,

for this final day,

before dour autumn

rides on chill wind

and makes her

tent of fallen leaves

under dim skies.

06.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND FOURTY-FIFTH DAY OF THE YEAR

400 million years into the future

the seas start to evaporate as

the aging Sun brightens.

1 billion years into the future,

a Venusian Earth, for

some star-farers to terraform.

05.-06.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

BREAKING MY PROMISE

For I was nothing

and became

less.

04.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

FOR THERE ARE OTHER THINGS TO BE DONE AS THIS MORNING'S LIGHT GROWS

To stop myself scribbling,

I will name this the last poem

of this autumn morning, so

as to make it the closed gate

that bars a passing mind

from writing itself

more deeply in time.

04.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

WHAT THE AVID READER OF WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS FINDS

In the Internet Archives' 'copy'

of Yeats' In the Seven Woods,

a photograph of someone's

black, gray and white sandal.

04.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

SUDAN PEACE-TALKS

Only those who kill,

pillage, torture and rape

are allowed around

the negotiating tables

to talk about peace,

and those who save

lives, keep hospitals

running, and agitate

for the captives

to be liberated

from these men,

only men, in

suits, are

closed out.

04.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

DON'T SELL OTHERS' DEMOCRACY

A confession. I still

think ECOWAS

should enter Niger,

and Mali and Burkina Faso,

and all those who have

put feeble geopolitics

above people, preferring

men in uniform, should

really just shut up.

04.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND FOURTY-FOURTH DAY OF THE YEAR

A thud against the window,

a body, cast into the air

on wings sculpted from

dinosaur limbs, encountered

the abode where the primate

hid after emerging from

the trees. Once those wings

tore the flesh of cowering

beings transfiguring from

reptiles into glass-blowers.

04.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE MIND IN ITS CAGE

When I move, the city walls move too;

When I nap, I'm sure, the walls stand firm.

But when I die, the walls will all

come tumbling down.

From a Buddhist poem found in Dunhuang, attributed

to Fang Wanzhi, translated by J. P. Seaton.

The dim hours of the day have

gone, washed away in sleep,

and I have awakened into

darkness from darkness,

and only the faint sounds of

rain and wind tell the greater

 world has endured my hours of

non-being, the primordial

waters of chaos kept at bay,

this shroud of matter cast

upon the great elemental

mystery surviving. Else

the cosmos of gyrating wheels

of stars and dust might be gone,

but these aged rooms in shadow

and candlelight, the flickering

light of the computer screen.

The mind, in its cage, thinks

the world will not go on without

its presence; but the phase

transition of death will

leave the suns face their

billions of years none

the lesser, and the maws

of the black holes will still

call for the last human.

04.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE FORMER PRISONER NOW STAND ON GUARD AT THE GATES OF PRISON CAMPS

As the Estonian politicians believe

that all the occupied and oppressed

nations except Ukraine can be

sacrificed, their torment supported

by Estonia, I have to wonder why,

so many years ago, I was so keen

to see Estonia free, when Estonia

is so adamant that the chains

binding others must not be broken,

because the slave-masters will

help guard the liberty of the Baltics

- or so they think, the fools, who

have become what they once chided.

Oh, they have their excuses,

withered claims repeated across

the gore-stained years of man,

but beyond all the tired claims,

they believe others' blood

will pay for their own

sacred liberty.

04.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

FOR LAZARUS SLUMBERED IN THE TOMB, AWAITING HIS TOUCH

The French call orgasm

'the little death'; they must

never sleep, for sleep is

the antechamber of

death, and that which

they assign to death's side

is the greater awakening,

resurrected, to true life.

03.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE RAIN IN THE REALM OF THE NIGHT

The night has swallowed

the intricate movement

of droplets of rain-water

across the window-panes,

as it has the rain itself

but for its incessant sound.

03.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND FOURTY-THIRD DAY OF THE YEAR

Nine hours of rain,

a constant sound that

dimmed the bright

day and brings

darkness throughout

the hours of the night.

03.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

THE LIMITS OF HUMANITY

There are people who weep seeing images

of occupied children murdered in 1943,

yet seek to justify the murder of occupied

children happening right now in 2023. 

This is nothing new, it has ever been like

this, empathy having hard borders,

but it must end - so that people

won't be weeping for occupied

children murdered in 2023, while

trying to justify the murder of

occupied children in 2103.

02.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

WHEN THE DAWN COMES

Never have had I such

a full belly as after a night

spent translating; when

you scribble your own

thoughts into words

you famish yourself,

but with the words of

others you feed your

mind and body.

02.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THOSE LATE, BRIEF MIDWINTER MORNINGS

Let the dead be alive, and

allow the living go on

living, and me -

let me be the dark shadow

seen at winter dawn moving

across the blue snows.

02.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND FOURTY-SECOND DAY OF THE YEAR

Another day, and they may be short

in number coming, but vast are they

in the gaze I turn to the years that

were, when among fallen leaves on

autumn days I was happy and came

back not to an empty house.

Vast are those brittle days, and short

were they and the years, in the gaze

from evening's hill, where light

dwindles and never grows again.

02.09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

AN AUTUMN SONG

So briefly was life

about gaining things,

of a sapling growing

into a tree;

so soon became life

a story of loss,

of a tree giving up

its leaves at fall,

before the winter

storm that would

deny it the buds

of one more spring.

01,09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse

READING WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS' "IMITATED FROM THE JAPANESE"

There is, for the

less exalted person,

a perverse, flickering

joy reading such lines

where those, who have

reached the heights

where clouds give

way to the endless blue,

profess disappoinment

for things not done.

O jealous one, it's

a minor matter, for

them on the eternally

frozen peaks of fame;

for when one has had

all the great and

glorious things, even

minor things ungained

become irritants when

remembered, for gods.

01.09.2023

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ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH AND FOURTY-FIRST DAY OF THE YEAR

For twenty-eight years

I have been dying, a lich

of the person I was

growing to be; that

is common enough,

little reason to lament.

We and the world both

are keen to put obstacles

on our upward path.

And we, not the world,

decide to wait and see

if the obstacles would

rotten and decompose

before we ourselves do.

So I have the flesh of

my mind, the true garb

we wear, fallen off my

skeletal frame, and

still the obstacle stands,

and still I stand waiting

without tearing it down.

01,09.2023

#Poem #Poems #Poetry #Verse