Standing
Being, that is to say, standing
It is far more heroic than departing
Out of the deepest wound
In agony without lust or friends
You still can see the birth of sorrow
Surviving, without inspiring hopes
Beauty shining on the deepest night
Without consciousness of previous nights
On crowded passages and silent brooks
We share the blindness of the shattered lion
The far-off cry of the children in Chocó
The horror of our defeats, our decay
Life is far more valiant than the void
Standing before the fall and after
On the certainty of a quiet rest
That will unveil the mystery of the dead
Sybil
We were lost in eastern Rome
When a distant relative called us to a blooming house
This is the Sybil of Cumas, he said
Who sees through your secrets and your past
We waited in a narrow room of dried-up lilacs
Where a volume of Origenes was laid
On the raise and fall of angels in Caná
And it was written in the language of the dead
She read our lines, according to the orbs
Past lovers, enemies and cities
Came to her mind like flakes over the snow
And the secret promise of our home
But then her dark countenance was pale
You were sent back from the columns of the dead,
She said, to suffer betrayal and deceit
And you die to see that happy time to come
London, September 19, 2005
Bloodless Moon
This house was mine—I built it
With my own hands—in her garden
I fed squirrels, pheasants and foxes
Now see how it collapses by decay
I seized the hands of other men
Remote—their clutch was so infirm
Other grieves had weakened them
Grieves more ferocious than tonight
I drop my breath over the stars
And a moon eclipse bleeds on the sky
A merciless fox slays a pheasant
Had I felt its agony—had they felt mine
Farewell that blears my eyes
On this garden my whispers will return
Cleanse me from these, my weary thoughts
Bloodless Moon, in agitation born
Hale, January 9, 2001
Aurora to Eternity
Life is a walk over a fenceless bridge
Where mist and vile desires lurk
Narrower passages appear at every step
Tramps—we jostle, as stifled
Sometimes the sun shines over the slopes
The rainbow bruits harmony—dandelions
And poppies sprout—sap springs
Until the clamour of excess returns
Words that swapped eroding ire with tears
Unforgiveness that stained a tranquil prairie
Nightly storms that became tenacious journeys
Despair vainly cured by pride and labour
Thoughts that go on—they patiently ache
Feeding on the dregs of lenience
Let me leap and cross from here to there
From this uncertanty to certainty
Hove us in your arms,
Am I not prepared to leave this jaded flesh?
Your pain was cured with further pain
Unbeloved I fall in love with love
Hale, January 10, 2001
Life
Again our journey has no end
Our provisions are spent
Sleepless nights had sickened us
I feel the frost gangrening your hands
Yet you once believed in me
In the island I promised our sons
Now, before these furious waves
Only the reefs echo in our ears
We surmounted many abysms,
We endured collisions and a blaze
Dead marshes, the highest cliff
The earth looked so small beneath
Now, then, go take that cargo ship
It will convey you gently to your port
Leeward my canoe wades—behold
The end of my journey seems so close
This sea is merely an impetuous pond
Of whirls, titans and thunderstorms
I will arrive, my love, to call you back
Or if I die I'll gently wait for you
Books
Seeds of skies, unlock the beauty
That the rose merely insinuates
Modest air of newly-born sparrows
That nested in unclouded cliffs
On your pages nations and walls fade
Through road fences I advance
Levelling towers to the ground
All happy times with you return
Lonely solace that retrieves
Friends marooned in distant seas
Breeze that gently feeds my ceaseless thoughts
Furnace of sentiments bygone
Dawn and dusk, clamour and whisper
Yeast of cheerfulness and despair
Along a bureaucratic hallway
You make buoyant every wait
Heaven within voluptuously palpitates
You sustain every joy, every grief
Wallowing in lukewarm waters
The ablution of spikes lurking in my veins
I have cleansed your eyes with patience
Eyes the moonlight on a page reflects
Women and men of fervent heart
In a land where journeys are so scant
On the road
Every man and woman walk
If they speak they are confused,
If they cry they are off the road
Nobody dares to stare aside
They may pause over a puddle
Lured by a decaying mien
A bodiless reflection, so dim
That they drown in quicksand
A charring sun scalps them
Their entrails spawn disease
Yet they are togged up—they brag
Of gilded lipsticks and clay masks
Every man and woman walk
Nobody dares to stare aside
As a slave who fears the stars
I follow their pace—so far behind
Inmortality
Inmortality is a feeling
I can not prove, I can't deny,
So let me a feeling be,
Hope for this living clay that is no clay
The Wreck
Across the frozen arctic seas
A pitiless tempest agitated our ship
We fell in a ferocious island
Of wolfs, cats and fellow men
Our seas rebuked us
As our bright prospects dimly sank
Drops of water cuddle your hair
As fairies, a gleaming halo over your head
Hymns tamed the coldness of the wind
We prayed rhapsodies of love
As nights passed so quietly away
Quenching restless desires
Our solace a pot of blistered beans
The moon—white giant of the sky
Earth and time, stillness and desertion
A marooned couple unable to survive
Forced and solitary in foreign land
We learnt to dwell—battered and dead
And yet our heart prolonged the world
Endless agony, the life we chose
Sunday evening
When I am taken by the glum
That frustrations distils upon my heart
On all my misery, vexation and regret
My mind, desperate to be healed
Seeks your tender face, my sweet companion
However, since I have you now,
Unending source of joy and honey
That deadens every fall and every pledge,
I see that sadness is a shadow from the past
Or of the nights I fear to spend away from you
Lot
A child once heard,
Unfair men cannot sleep at night
And yet I withstand darkness
Stung by bees, scorpions and disease
I listen to the clamors of the drunk
Ceaseless whispers on my ears
Amongst psalms that seem forgone
Pool of well-fed voracious sharks
With intrigue as their milk
Hidden in the rocks
Drawn in futile friendships
They claim victory in defeat
Their struggle is tremendous
A punishment for the unfit
And yet forsaken on this baleful sod
I sense your care in every thought
London, August 24, 2005
To a suicide poet
That was the end after the end,
Unable to go on, he jumped over the fence
From a conflagration to a distant shore
Void where mistreat and desolation bred
Had he died in that relentless crash
His agitated soul would have found relish
But anguish was his token and his bread
In a land of well-off campuses and courts
Uttering verses of condolence
He sold his backbone to the State
His limbs were sold to the best buyer
Reduced to cinders by the mob
The view of the horizon was bleak dark
Turning his foes into his mourners
With an empty space beneath his feet
All his efforts were shattered by the winds
London, September 30, 2005
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