Friday, May 27, 2011

The Art of Poetry, by Jorge Luis Borges


Love and the poet, by  Bryce Cameron Liston

The Art of Poetry 


To gaze at a river made of time and water 
and remember Time is another river. 
To know we stray like a river 
and our faces vanish like water. 

To feel that waking is another dream 
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death 
we fear in our bones is the death 
that every night we call a dream. 

To see in every day and year a symbol 
of all the days of man and his years, 
and convert the outrage of the years 
into a music, a sound, and a symbol. 

To see in death a dream, in the sunset 
a golden sadnesssuch is poetry, 
humble and immortal, poetry, 
returning, like dawn and the sunset. 

Sometimes at evening there's a face 
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror. 
Art must be that sort of mirror, 
disclosing to each of us his face. 

They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders, 
wept with love on seeing Ithaca, 
humble and green. Art is that Ithaca, 
a green eternity, not wonders. 

Art is endless like a river flowing, 
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same 
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same 
and yet another, like the river flowing. 

Jorge Luis Borges 

The Jesters

Amore, by Lucia Merli (c)
It was the end of spring
the time when tired steps 
become slower, slower
they met
outside time
in another space,
the jesters,
their love was
unique, splendind, 
true, forever....
and all these crazy words
that remain sweet
to hide away the bitter taste of dreams
between bells and painted faces
tears like smiles, 
smiles like fears,
the awakening of a great love
the awakening from a great nightmare


so at the beginning of summer
they were still 
near the end of last spring
nurturing love
with the transvestite hopes
of a king's fool ... 





Thursday, May 26, 2011

What are you dreaming?




what are you dreaming
with your eyes closed  all these nights
away from me?
my lips  bleeding with  your name
my arms craving for your skin... 

Bitting




bitting every word
we make love between the lines
you and me are one
even when this sky between us
rises and falls in waves of stars...

Purple tears...




falling purple tears
behind the window melting
promise of rainbows
under the rain the heart breathes
waiting in painful silence...

Unwritten letter...



so much love
between the empty lines
of an unwritten letter
its all in the mind, you say
a battle of the heart
that hasn't finished yet... 

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Waiting for you

Right here waiting for you, by @Zeldita (c)


as the day walks out
the night slips in my heart
waiting for you
so lonely the cup on my lips
so sad the song of the sparrow...

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Parallel orbits




our dreams
at the edge of the night - 
parallel orbits

Shine

Catch a falling star, by Josephine Wall.
liquid crystal dreams
stars fall straight into my arms
as i hold you close
like a dream within a dream
both my heart and spirit shine... 

Friday, May 13, 2011

Helen, by George Seferis.


Teucer: . . . in sea-girt Cyprus, where it was decreed 
by Apollow that I should live, giving the city 
the name of Salamis in memory of my island home. 
. . . . . . . . . . 
Helen: I never went to Troy; it was a phantom. 
. . . . . . . . . . 
Servant: What? You mean it was only for a cloud 
that we struggled so much? 

— Euripides, Helen 


‘The nightingales won’t let you sleep in Platres.’

Shy nightingale, in the breathing of the leaves,
you who bestow the forest’s musical coolness
on the sundered bodies, on the souls
of those who know they will not return.
Blind voice, you who grope in the darkness of memory
for footsteps and gestures — I wouldn’t dare say kisses —
and the bitter raving of the frenzied slave-woman.

‘The nightingales won’t let you sleep in Platres.’

Platres: where is Platres? And this island: who knows it?
I’ve lived my life hearing names I’ve never heard before:
new countries, new idiocies of men
or of the gods;
                      my fate, which wavers
between the last sword of some Ajax
and another Salamis,
brought me here, to this shore.
                                              The moon
rose from the sea like Aphrodite,
covered the Archer’s stars, now moves to find
the heart of Scorpio, and alters everything.
Truth, where’s the truth?
I too was an archer in the war;
my fate: that of a man who missed his target.

Lyric nightingale,
on a night like this, by the shore of Proteus,
the Spartan slave-girls heard you and began their lament,
and among them — who would have believed it? — Helen!
She whom we hunted so many years by the banks of the Scamander.
She was there, at the desert’s lip; I touched her; she spoke to me:
‘It isn’t true, it isn’t true,’ she cried.
‘I didn’t board the blue bowed ship.
I never went to valiant Troy.’

Breasts girded high, the sun in her hair, and that stature
shadows and smiles everywhere,
on shoulders, thighs and knees;
the skin alive, and her eyes
with the large eyelids,
she was there, on the banks of a Delta.
                                                         And at Troy?
At Troy, nothing: just a phantom image.
That’s how the gods wanted it.
And Paris, Paris lay with a shadow as though it were a solid being;
and for ten whole years we slaughtered ourselves for Helen.

Great suffering had desolated Greece.
So many bodies thrown
into the jaws of the sea, the jaws of the earth
so many souls
fed to the millstones like grain.
And the rivers swelling, blood in their silt,
all for a linen undulation, a filmy cloud,
a butterfly’s flicker, a wisp of swan’s down,
an empty tunic — all for a Helen.
And my brother?
                         Nightingale nightingale nightingale,
what is a god? What is not a god? And what is there in between them?

‘The nightingales won’t let you sleep in Platres.’

Tearful bird,
                  on sea-kissed Cyprus
consecrated to remind me of my country,
I moored alone with this fable,
if it’s true that it is a fable,
if it’s true that mortals will not again take up
the old deceit of the gods;
                                       if it’s true
that in future years some other Teucer,
or some Ajax or Priam or Hecuba,
or someone unknown and nameless who nevertheless saw
a Scamander overflow with corpses,
isn’t fated to hear
messengers coming to tell him
that so much suffering, so much life,
went into the abyss
all for an empty tunic, all for a Helen.

Kaiyoikomachi A Geisha in her Lover's Room, from Futaba gusa Nanakomachi, Utamaro


Friday, May 6, 2011

Still

in the middle
of a motionless lake
i stand
still above the waters
time passes by, unnoticed....

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Breathless



breathless
bright shining love still lingers
the last day 
when all your life fits on a raindrop
upon the feathers of a dying swan...

Meaningless



meaningless


words disintegrate, dissolve


in silence


no regrets, no tears, no pain,


only sighs and morning dew.

Soft



Soft and full of Light
your eyes invite me to love
life saving beacons
guide me through the darkness home
safe unharmed into your arms

Lovers...

Lovers, by Antonio Canova



morning mist rising
dawn caresses our bodies
as we lay asleep 
skin on skin and breath in breath
you and me in one embrace

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Flowing


Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow...


phoenix rising...


Small church


French poodle


River dance



Hide and seek


Mountain view


Glorious clouds...


Lonely dandelion


Star lilies...


Prayers...


Poppy in love


Cherry blossoms


My secret


Spring in the mountain