THE RESURRECTED MAN

They flocked to him,

eager to know

what lay beyond,

what would wait

when the last breath

had been taken.

But he just shook his head,

smiled sadly, some

enormous sorrow

filling his being,

and could not say.

"Lazarus, tell us!"

they demanded.

"Will we live as shadows,

shall we sleep

without dreams?

Tell us!"

"I have no words,

he whispered,"

"to describe life,

I have no words

to describe death.

I, claimed by both,

part of neither."

"My waking hours

are spent among shadows,

my nights

memories of eternal cold.

What is life

and what is death?"

"Are you my last dream,

do I awaken

once again in the tomb,

to life, to death?

Or am I your dream

of shadow and light,

set to live

by the magician's hand?"

28.11.2018

DOMINION OF NOVEMBER

Crisp frosty morning,

light gray

with an edge of silver,

silence hangs

in place of the Moon

over the landscape

rolling into

tree-laden vistas.

24.11.2018

THE JOURNEY INTO NIGHT

The night calls,

a walk down the pavements

with glimmering pools

reflecting electric stars.

There I go,

a shadow among shadows,

merging, vanishing, appearing.

The night devours and gives birth.

From one circle of light

to another, from womb

to grave of darkness

and resurrection in light.

22.11.2018

AT THE PRECIPICE OF HISTORY

'It's sad to be alive at this time,'

she tweets of people making Hitler salutes

as Bannon debates at Oxford Union.

Sad, yes; but this our fight,

a battle for humanity

to be fought now, so that

others can live in happier times.

The poison of the Fascists,

the global warming and the sixth mass extinction,

the oligarchic capitalism

- our fights, one fight

against a many-headed Hydra.

A battle to be fought

so that others

can be alive at happier times -

a battle to be won

so that there will be later times,

when people can forget

that there ever was this struggle,

this abyss in human history we face

and must cross. If we

fail at this precipice,

this will be the last of times.

22.11.2018

IF, AT THE MOUNTAINS

If you come upon

Lacedaemonians standing at the pass of Thermopylea,

facing the might of Persia,

then, my friend,

find a way to their rear

and go and tell the Persians.

Do not hesitate, go

swiftly. Do not think

of the great reward

the Great King will bestow

upon you, think,

oh Ephialtes,

of the smile on the face

of the Helots in Sparta

when they hear of Leonidas' passing

and listen to the wailing

of the Spartan women.

19.11.2018

THESE LATTER DAYS

Mild sunshine of late November,

of these latter days,

the end times; winter

something to tell children

about, strange white dream

of the past. Now, 

autumn in late November,

hospice for humanity

under a brown shroud.

18.11.2018

METAMAMORPHOSIS IN MISSALONGHI

Greece, the land where myths

are still made, where

strange metamorphoses heroes make;

to there, to strife

his skin to make

the incestuous Lord came.

In this country deaths

immortals create,

Protean change

wreaks a god from the

suffering flesh; pyre

of disease to cast high

up on the Olympus a Phoenix

that flies from Byron's corpse.

18.11.2018

HAMLET IN HELL

Farewell, sweet prince -

rot in hell, with demons

devouring your falling flesh

for new to grow, gangrenous;

in Hades a modern Prometheus

lacking a Heracles, only

the drowned maiden

her nails in your empty sockets

forever seeking way

into your worm-riddled brain.

18.11.2018

TRINITY

They had three crosses,

but only one

was well used;

the other two

given to robbers

when God and the Holy Ghost

should have

completed the Trinity.

11.11.2018

CROSSING A DAY OF NOVEMBER

A bleak gray day

between two black continents of time

approaching each other,

closing the sea between,

that sliver of pale silver

with silent absence

from forest to field to

prison of cement; ghosts

the people on these streets of puddles,

passing without notice

absorbed by lost life-time of pain

and self-destroyed dreams.

From darkness to darkness,

across a sea of silver

hoarding the Sun,

bleak gray days

cold waves; o ghost

on the sea of time, dying,

you shall find no peace

but the void.

06.11.2018

CURATOR MATTHIAS WIVEL'S INTRODUCTION TO LORENZO LOTTO'S(1480-1556/1557) PORTRAITS

Heavenly Jerusalem

against the Dolomites,

very familiar subject,

but if you look at the Virgin

she looks like a middle-aged woman;

it is the Virgin in Glory,

perhaps the resurrected Virgin

or the Virgin of Immaculate Conception,

born without sin of human parents,

very troubling concept in the Church.

But why is she Middle-Aged?

Because she is a noble woman,

deposed as a queen of Cyprus

by the Venetian government.

She also build a myth around her,

living in celibacy; it

looks presumptuous to us,

but these kind of things happen

in this time. He is

described in a document

'a very major painter',

international, so to speak. It

is a tour-de-force, briefly

mentions the death of his putative master,

the attention he pays to objects,

draperies and books. The

Dead Christ with angels and Mary Magdalene

and Joseph of Arimatia, he is

present in his picture, his

graphic sensibility, the different hues

of skin, the sun-burnt of the male figure

beyond her. Very interestingly

changes, changes quite a lot in

the years to come. He

comes to Rome, ends up working

for the pope Julius II. You

can see how differently it is painted

from Raphael, it is highly controversial

but possible. You can see before

Rome, after Rome. The discipline

has given way to disorder, strangely

unsettled figure, composition -

of course influenced by Raphael. 

He can't go back after seeing what

he has seen, had to leave Rome,

liberates him, takes away

from fifteenth-century to sixteenth century

art. He stays there about

a decade, on the edge

of Venetian dominion. With

a strong local community. This

is an altar-piece for a Church

when Bergamo was
coming back to Venetian rule

after years of French. Lotto

brings his specific weirdness to it.

He was paid a lot of money for it.

06.11.2018

TO P. R. C.

You give thorns from

the rose on one day,

and the head of

the flower on another day.

You drew blood

with the thorns,

and painted the flower

red with it;

this is your red

rose, all blood

and thorns

and love.

06.11.2018

LET'S FORGET DEATH

Let's forget death,

for it will not forget us.

It will come,

slow like a traveller seen

far before recognized

and met, or

like a lightning without

sound heralding

it's strike.

Let's forget death,

for death shall not forget

us; in it's arms,

cold, we shall look

at eternity.

05.11.2018

IN THE SEASON OF FADING SOULS

The year grows bleak with the

season of leafless rain,

the stars hidden beyond the clouds

the world shrunks in gloom.

People walk past each other

on the wet roads as strangers,

no hand rises in greeting,

no gaze is met, eyes avert from eyes.

In their holes they hide, in

their caves of cement and wood

their flickering souls from light

seek what only fire can give.

Loneliness rises in naked branches

to the milk-gray blanket of clouds,

they shiver in rain, they feel the night

in the bleak wind and bleached dusk.

The afternoon like spider makes its

web, but the black silk

comes from the cold living souls

lonely, adrift in the dread November.

05.11.2018

A COSMIC MATING DANCE

All the gas sripped off, 

orbiting each other

with tidal tails

the two galaxies like lovers

exhausted, now dance

slowly; their final embrace

no starburst shall celebrate,

as the black holes unite.

05.11.2018

HOW QUICKLY IT IS OVER

You build sandcastles on low tide,

excitedly, forgetting

that the high tide is coming.

It comes, washing away

your ramparts of sand

and carries you away,

in to the blue.

01.11.2018

DEATH ETERNAL

There is no Eternity, no Infinity

for us mortal 'souls' -

there is the void,

the swarming sea of particles

appearing, disappearing;

a quantum dance that gave

terrible sentience, consciousness

that flees in the face of

the reality it inhabits:

The cosmos, a film

on the surface of something greater

forever hidden

from the ape that came down

from the trees, who fashioned a stone

and struck blood with it;

the marrow devourer who

yearned the brights lights

above in the night, who

yearned life beyond life,

who tore away the veil

and saw his death eternal.

31.10.2018

THE THREE DEAD BOYS IN GAZA

Their eyes open,

their mouths open

in the surprise of death,

small bodies side by side

torn by shrapnel.

They went off

to have an adventure,

to show the defiance

of thirteen-year-old boys

against the guns

behind the barbed-wire

and the fence, the buzz

of drones in the sky.

In this world of oppression

there can be no adventures

against evil adversaries

like in the boys' books,

suspension, threat and victory

against all odds. In this world

there was a man or a woman in a uniform

who gave a command, there was

a drone, a missile

and an explosion. There was

 a tear on a cheek in darkness.

Soldiers firing at ambulance crews.

There was no return in the first light of dawn

with clapping of shoulders and laughter,

evil and terror of the night cast down.

There was the return on stretchers,

under white blankets, in darkness.

There was death,

eyes that looked but no longer saw,

mouths open that could no longer utter a scream

for all the pain of that moment

that brought death

from those who fly the drones

to kill young boys in the night.

30.10.2018

OCTOBER MIRACLE

Suddenly I realize, seeing

the bare branches through the living room window

against the blue sky, mind

wandering away from the voice

lecturing science on the laptop screen,

that I am, oddly, at peace

and even, happy. Trembling, I

handle the feeling and the moment

with care, lest it wither or

escape, but it stays,

this strange feeling no reason

gave birth to, water bursting

from dry ground on the desert.

It will not last, but for now

it stays, like a curious bird

roosting on one of those autumn branches,

a messenger from happier eons.

19.10.2018

THE GORGE OF THE BLACK RIVER

Beside the black river

the alders and aspens stand bare;

their leaves given

for the dark waters

to carry away from the autumn.

The firs rise dark green and black

on the sides of the gorge,

climbing towards the gray sky,

reaching the birches in yellow

standing on the side of the late autumn fields.

The old snake, the black river,

ten thousand years has run

since the glaciers gleaming white

towards the north and their death

on sides of fells crept.

Autumns have come and gone,

winters turned to spring,

and during them and summers bright

the black river its way deeper and deeper dug,

carved this gorge into eternity.

10.10.2018

THE JUDGEMENT OF THE GODS

I avoid the gods; let others

their favour seek,

I give them no libation,

no smoke from an altar of mine

shall rise to their abodes above.

Let them come to me,

being to a being,

I will judge them like Paris

his goddesses on the meadow did

and for the fate of Ixion,

kingly Sisyphus or the titan Prometheus

as my reward

all them guilty find and curse.

08.10.2018

KILLING GOD

We need to

put God down

like the

diseased, rabid

beast

it is.

Come here

God,

it only hurts

for a

a moment

in eternity.

06.10.2018

Soap bubbles

inside a cosmic soap bubble,

planet Earth and human lives.

See them drift away.

06.10.2018

red twilight

how many times

i saw this with you

going back

& now

only i

the fallen sun

bathing the road home

with heavenly blood

03.10.2018

EXTINCTION

In the death

of a one person

is the death

of the whole humanity.

The essence

in a fragment,

the fate of all

in one, the

fate of the species

in one breath stopping.

01.10.2018

ON THE DEATH OF CHARLES AZNAVOUR(1924-2018)

The lips don't move,

the heart doesn't beat,

the mind has swivelled

down the black hole of death.

Death has come

to the boy who sang

from the age of nine,

sang for eighty-five years.

Death has come and

the song has ended;

the last grain of sand

in the hourglass fell.

Only the echoes

remain, echoes of the

song and murmurs of a life,

slowly starting to fade...

01.10.2018

RAINDROPS FROM THE MOON

An autumn night,

an autumn forest,

an autumn rain

- cold rain,

sound of rain

on blackness

enclosing, sliver

of ivory Moon

behind shroud.

The raindrops

keep falling,

messages

from the

unchanging

heaven.

30.09.2018

THE RIVER FLOWS AWAY, AND US

Caught in the stream of time,

we are carried away

from those we loved,

who loved us; torn

away, we enter

strange lands, strange

times, the current 

discards us on some

solitary riverbank,

alone; so far, far away

from where

we came we die.

29.09.2018

THE VOID BENEATH

Remember, all you are,

what you have been and done

and what you still

will be and do

will soon cease.

You are no longer,

and what you were

and what you did

will be erased

from existence.

Existence, the cosmos

- a fleeting mirage

on the surface

of the void beneath,

will soon cease.

27.09.2018

On the Death of Katherine Mansfield(1888-1923)

1

Run up the steps

in a hurry

and in the landing

at the top, die.

1

Walk slowly,

move your hand

on the wooden

rail, feel it's

weathered surface

polished by

so many hands

like yours. Stop

and wonder

about this,

these lives

connected. When

you reach the

final step, then

gaze back

down, imagine

the hands

that will polish

the wood further,

touching yours

through time.

Then go

to your

death.

27.09.2018

WILLIAM BLAKE(1757-1827)

Beauty, beauty, beauty!

He walked on streets covered with horse shit, blood

from slaughterhouses and all trash

imaginable; skies

clouded with coal smoke, houses

black from coal ash and smoke,

grand manors of the Tudor lords tottering hovels

for the poorest, and he

walked in paradise

with an angel on his side,

the whore and the pimp, the pickpocket

and the starving child in their

earthly hell far away

from his godly thoughts.

25.09.2018

THE LORD TRIUMPHANT

God reigns in Hell,

the Heaven's mansions lie in ruins.

In chains the demons moan,

the Saints with barbed whips beat the lot.

The fiery lakes

still have their victims,

on their shores the blessed sleep

and fart in their dreams.

Jesus feasts on Judas' bones,

marrow screams in his mouth.

Lucifer is crucified

and his blood the wine of Angels.

20.09.2018

BEFORE THE NIGHT FALLS

Dark just before dawn,

beyond the curtains,

beyond the glass

the sounds of children

approaching, passing.

The day has began

to them, life

has began.

They rush, they

run

to catch it.

Evening, autumn

darkness;

beyond the curtains,

beyond the glass

the sounds of children

come

and go; they

play and run

in electric circles

of light

like fireflies

they come

and go.

The day is ending,

their lives

are growing

through the

autumn dark,

rushing,

running

to the years,

so soon

so soon here,

when

behind the

glass, behind

the curtains,

in an electric circle

of pale light

they listen

and they wait

for the

sounds to grow

distant, for

the life

to pass, for

the night.

18.09.2018