At its corners, there’s no movement to recall the drawn-out breathing of other days. Not even air brings news of its dead. I walk along the secret shore of things and in them I see myself, in their coat of dust as if to shield them from their own fate. I think of the men who are now sinking tepidly into sleep. To what uncertain sea do they surrender? What wind propels their ships? To what port are they pushed? Dark the moment when my memory tries for a phantom dialogue reflected in stone, in the vigil of the dispossessed. Long, silent, like the death not uttered by these streets.
Made ghosts in all their country’s wars they come, the young men in my dreams with shattered skulls, intestines trailing in the sand, the mud, the stuff the TV doesn’t show unless it’s Africa. Or someplace else where colour doesn’t count, democracy a word they carted like a talisman, a passport to the candles, bells of sainthood.
Restored to wake indoors alive, blanketed, dreams fallen away like ash in birdsong, sun filtering the blind slats, I’m reprimanded. My ghosts keep talking: “You thought you knew it all. Tonight maybe your book and candle, night light burning infantile, shoes tucked neat beneath will douse your eyelids closed with ash, shut them down for good. Our dreams were yours.
You’ll sleep all right with us and never never wake. Night lights, books and candles lost the war against our childhood, growing, long ago, their power to charm away the everlasting dark a myth: silence lasts forever. Listen, while you can, to unseen saplings somewhere falling. Young men, you dear young men, I’m listening.
I’m not concerned with the bloodiest wars of the world I’m not bound to its decline towards the silliest of its abysses Battle-fronts, public interests, the peaceful histories of nations, killers of Jesus Christ, the right wing, its extreme the north, its nearest side.
Concerned am I with the primordial matter of darkness, the exiles of clay descending from the dynasties of fools, the dwellers of the underground halls where the river is my sleeping place, the seven skies prayer-rugs to my sinful soul, and women are shadows to some lust, or the groaning of a fighter dying close to his military equipment, his hand on his heart and his eyes bulging out of his cheeks.
The Athenian boy in person, the boy climbing the stairs of betrayal, the grandson of Father Kairos, discovered at once that wisdom is the refuse of the mills of stupidity, that the horizon is narrower than the gate of Troy, and that nothing deserves dying for, far away from the perfume of Venus, closer to the mirage of victory
He, then, wished he had extra breath to wed his burnished sword to fire, and roam the earth. His guide the astrolabe of desire and lust his refuge.
And wished the heart broadened a little to contain Aphrodite’s splendor that is close to the borders of extreme drunkenness.
And wished God gave him the earth as a present so that the islands of language become his own moons, and he become the Lord. To him letters and the howdah of meaning bow. To him the windmills appear.
And when he realized that death is the chant of the moment he put fire in his coffin and mounted the cloud of his exhausted heart.
The Athenian boy in person, the runaway of the Acropolis The boy whose footsteps I pursue, the ever-travelling boy. His shadow became a cloud of questions.
We present this work in honor of the 205th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Usman dan Fodio Nigerian 1754 – 1817
Leave us alone with recalling what Father used to do… Leave us alone with relying on what Is practised in the east; These are grounds for those who Stayed astray from Sunnah Leave us with the idea that it is Practised at Medina Both Mecca and Medina are inferior to the Sunnah.
We present this work in honor of the 90th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Vera Gedroits
Russian
1870 – 1932
Don’t – no – don’t open your arms Don’t let me out – no words needed. Your kiss is so burning fragrant And, like a tent, our alcove is starless. Another – again – centuries to live out in an instant, Let me die – die with me. The silent night pours the spell of frenzy, Dew ringing on the ground brings heat. Here the star chambers opened wide, In a kiss, merging with one life, Don’t – no – don’t open your arms, Let me die! Die with me!
From golden showers of the ancient skies, On the first day, and the eternal snow of stars, You once unfastened giant calyxes For the young earth still innocent of scars:
Young gladioli with the necks of swans, Laurels divine, of exiled souls the dream, Vermilion as the modesty of dawns Trod by the footsteps of the seraphim;
The hyacinth, the myrtle gleaming bright, And, like the flesh of woman, the cruel rose, Hérodiade blooming in the garden light, She that from wild and radiant blood arose!
And made the sobbing whiteness of the lily That skims a sea of sighs, and as it wends Through the blue incense of horizons, palely Toward the weeping moon in dreams ascends!
Hosanna on the lute and in the censers, Lady, and of our purgatorial groves! Through heavenly evenings let the echoes answer, Sparkling haloes, glances of rapturous love!
Mother, who in your strong and righteous bosom, Formed calyxes balancing the future flask, Capacious flowers with the deadly balsam For the weary poet withering on the husk.
The silver trumpets rang across the Dome: The people knelt upon the ground with awe: And borne upon the necks of men I saw, Like some great God, the Holy Lord of Rome.
Priest-like, he wore a robe more white than foam, And, king-like, swathed himself in royal red, Three crowns of gold rose high upon his head: In splendor and in light the Pope passed home.
My heart stole back across wide wastes of years To One who wandered by a lonely sea, And sought in vain for any place of rest: “Foxes have holes, and every bird its nest,
I, only I, must wander wearily, And bruise My feet, and drink wine salt with tears.”
Poets Corner 