Occasional Poetry

Abstract

THE POETIC PERSONA I want to construct him, at long last: someone who can substitute for me, so that I can hide behind his back when he says something that I would rather not express. He will have my head, and never fail to think as I do. Whatever he says will be as I indicate, yet he won't be a ventriloquist's dummy. INSPIRATION Suddenly the thought came; before I expected it I knew how it would be. But I couldn't understand what was murmured, what could not be explained because it was not there. The ink fades from this poem before it is written down. It is too old, it does not generate life; it does not sing, it mumbles. WAITING What am I waiting for? The end of memories, of all the little gray things which only I still know, that people will soon forget for good. RHYME Rhyme is my crutch: without the rhymes’ echo I can't step forward. Look: it's limping already. NEW YEAR's EVE It seems that time goes on in an orderly fashion adding up to a single meaning, year after years. It's just not true: all that passes becomes silent. THE OLD RIVER The water is muttering to the quays; maybe it's a last complaint about being so slow, and incapable. The current's discharges its load here. The Rhine is exhausted, only a lazy canal remains, a ditch with no depths that you could cross on foot, a waterway for barges, lightly loaded, and useless yachts with no cargos. URBS ANTIQUA RUIT Still protected by Saint Peter and Saint Pancras, the ancient town, once famed for Pallas. She lost that luster long ago, and was overgrown by nameless suburbs. The fire pit at the tower was once the hub within the circling moat, but burns no more. WALK Grey day I step outside a gray pigeon flies up flapping grey day. Now there's gold on the streets autumn. IN KONYA WITH RŪMĪ Wrapped up against the chill of this hour he's resting among the poor, the numbed, who come to warm themselves from the sparks of his smoldering fire. We others, rich and mindless, only see some oddities, the knickknacks of piety; glazed eyes, open and shameless, not looking through the surfaces of things.

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