Abandonment

Wandering alone in an abandoned Italian villa, past blind mirrors that no longer reflect anything, enormous wardrobes pouring out their guts, doors half closed (by who?)...

For JB, our favourite flower

Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

-- William Wordsworth

Spam Poem

Taken directly from my Spam Folder, a profound literary offering for the August Holiday:

Do you like my profile?
I know what you want!
Get a job that satisfies!
I know what you want!
Do you have the touch?
I know what you want!
Check out this site!
I know what you want!
Don’t pass this up.
I know what you want!
You have an invite.
I know what you want!
Do you like to have fun?
I know what you want!
Free groceries for a year?
I know what you want!
I’m interested in you.
I know what you want!
I live in your town.
I know what you want!

Free Aung San Suu Kyi
I know what you want.

Moving on

JB's Birthday

When I was very small and still trusting
Your hand was all-encompassing and contained mine.
You made infinity a warm blanket
And night a safe place to hide.
Your hand swept the night sky, cleaned it.
You named the stars as you named your daughters.
And now that I am grown, and you are gone,
My sisters in the sky still come each night,
And name you.

Shooting star

Last night you fell from my firmament.
Krank und kaputt, you took a tumble.
I tried for silent months to hold you.
I stuck you up with force of will.
When that packed in I tried sellotape.
Superglue failed and so did all
The spiritual trappings and inner growth.
Pardon, forgiveness, understanding,
Yoga, rebirthing, meditation,
All failed utterly as cosmic glue.
You fell my dear, you fell directly
Through the handle of Orsa Maggiore
Resting on the horizon. That too failed
To hold your inconsistency.
Lubrified by your oiliness
You greased your way down through your own
Personal flipper and entered the zone
Marked “loser”. Just one momentary scoot
Of surprising yellow (sulphur my dear?)
Marked your definitive passing for good.
Your light has gone out, you’ve pressed disconnect,
You’ve taken the ultimate nosedive and I
Have no way of knowing if your brief performance,
Your spectacular, short and distinctly downward
Journey proceeds or if you’ll just
Disintegrate for lack of substance.
You taste so good, but melt in the mouth.
No nutritional value ever hit my cells.
Could it be you were never a star?
A meteor maybe? Spatial dust?
Little or nothing. Wasn't it just.

TENDER IS NOT THE NIGHT

Tender is not the night. Indifferent rather.
What right have the stars to signify and make decree?
Never, not once, has a star warmed my face,
Lit my path or resolved my plight, my plea.
Not once has a star led seed to birth, to light,
Whenever did strife, did life, cause a star to weep?
Did ever my joy find and keep a sibling twinkle?
Don’t look for my soul on the unprimed canvas of night.
Cold and predictable, distant, elsewhere, other.
Autistic, insentient. No message, no portent, no meaning.
Overrated by poets and children and pedlars of dreams,
To them we are nothing, dust for an instant then gone.
Leave the stars to the night, turn your back on the sky.
With or without them we’re born, we live and we die

Affinities

When someone was there first, and said it all...
I wrote the first poem this afternoon. Later I showed it to an acquaintance, a brilliant poet and scholar of Italian and English language poetry of all periods, and he immediately pulled out and read the second, superb poem (from his collection of over one thousand books), by Edna St. Vincent Millay.


SPRING

Hope springs eternal, mine lies dead.
Spring stabbed it through the heart, spring shot it in the head.
I spoke to hope, I begged it, I screamed at the wall,
I shot bullets of words, I watched them fall.

I watched as they ricocheted, I watched as they bounced,
Capsules of meaning never announced.
So fragile in your parts, so ineluctable the whole
Arrogant and absolute, you must take your toll.

Spring births eternal, it grips us by the throat
And mocks this bleeding cradle and blooms only to gloat.
Oh couldn’t you have waited, held your buds in pity’s grasp?
Left your seeds to sleep awhile and your bulbs in winter’s clasp?

Spring is the cruellest time, it seeps through the cracks,
Insinuates and permeates, unstoppable its wax.
Promising and comforting, an enormous cosmic lie –
How dare you offer apple blossom and leave this child to die?

I live in dismal autumn, cold, damp, dull.
Watching and waiting for the last leaf to fall.
Bring me bleak midwinter and water like a stone,
Don’t torture me with hope, don’t paint with pain my home.

Turn down your colours spring, your scents are too loud,
Your beauty is agony, a suffocating shroud,
Stop the earth on its axis, have the sun put out its fire,
Off with spring’s head, for spring is a liar.

Your presence here should bless this child and ease its every breath,
A rattle in a baby’s bed should not be that of death.
Hope springs eternal, and spring must have its way –
For God’s sake just shut the door, just leave, just go away.

Bhuidhe, per un amico e la sua famiglia, con preghiere, 8 luglio 2008
Bhuidhe, for a friend and his family, with prayers, 8th July, 2008


SPRING

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

Edna St. Vincent Millay
in the collection Second April, 1921