looking at the portrait of james taylor,
i am waiting for both sides now to finish
shedding raindrops on the window sill.
i envy him that relaxed smile, his hands
folded behind his head, and that dreamy
look into the distance. all my portraits
are at a crossroads. if only i had painted them
differently.
Category: English poetry
when the lights are off
Two paradises ‘twere in one,
Andrew Marvell, Thoughts in a Garden
To live in Paradise alone.
i am trying to remember the sky
over berlin as i leaf through my old
pocket edition of berlitz’s guide
and wonder if i could still walk
from tiergarten to potsdamer platz
in just twenty-five minutes?
i had long forgotten that summer
at jepsen’s when i tripped over
the old jens’s bike, and all the hopes
embedded in my fear-lined fascination
with the elegant kurrent of handwritten
notes found on the vacat pages.
and only now, when out of the blue,
someone asked sprechen sie deutsch?,
did i realise that when the lights are off,
my mind is still stuck in the place
where i left you alone the last time
you failed my unfair expectations.
an exercise in doubt
the man who exists is infinitely interested in existing.
Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life
if no word is worth its weight in silence,
why should i waste any on the stillness
of this wicked chamber, let alone trifles
like prescribed daily exercises in doubt
over its provisional soul?
a swollen wound of my soul
when i was young, no aces were mentioned,
so first i put it all down to her shyness.
then i thought it was because of her religiosity.
but a year after the wedding, i ran out of possible reasons
and asked for a divorce. and if it had ended then,
maybe we would have been happy now, apart.
but there was this woman, her friend, a dragon by name,
a snake by nature, a religious devotee with manipulative skills
trained in psychology school. she somehow managed
to dissuade me from my intentions and disappeared.
so all she had in mind was to prevent me
from breaking the religious marriage vow.
i never thought i could hate someone so much.
it still feels like a swollen wound in my soul.
every time i think of her, i curse her name and swear
i will spit on the ground in front of her if our paths ever cross again.
then, all of a sudden, a reflection appears. is my inability to forgive
the result of a wound in my soul, or is it my soul itself?
murmurs in the rose
A tender heart, a loyal mind
George Darley, The Loveliness of Love
Which with temptation I would trust
i wish i had managed to convince you
to visit eighty-four charing cross road.
you can still change your mind and buy
a plane ticket twenty years in advance,
and in the meantime, in the evenings,
listen to the distant murmurs in the rose
envelops.
two perfect strangers
Why rove my thoughts beyond this last retreat?
Alexander Pope, Eloisa to Abelard
Why feels my heart its long-forgotten heat?
from the distance of the kind words you wrote,
let us meet once at our favourite spot, nestled
on the corner of waverly place and west tenth,
so, pretending to look at the books on display,
we could smile at our reflections in the glass,
two perfect strangers to the outside world,
for now.
legends
Helen, left her most noble husband
Sappho, Fragment 16
and went sailing off to Troy with no thought at all
for her child or dear parents
a little girl watched an armada
of biremes hurtling to the north-east
with the lacedaemonian army
and their proud king, her father.
he did not tell her why. he just left.
but she heard it had something
to do with someone called paris,
and as she looked questioningly
at a beautiful woman standing
next to her, she stroked her cheek
and, sighing thoughtfully, replied,
“you see, men need their legends
to excuse their wars.”
mirrored me
I can not doubt that I am.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness
when i look at my naked body in the mirror,
all i see is a history written in the surgical scars.
so i am that longing corpse, not quite old yet,
but not as lively as it used to be, still continuing
the daily cycle of absorption and excretion
but increasingly failing in one way or another,
although annoying rather than threatening so far.
every now and then it reminds me of the meaning
of the word lust, although more and more often
all i think about is holding someone’s hand while
walking on the beach or cuddling on the sofa
during a film. exchange a smile above anything else.
when i look at my naked body in the mirror,
all i see is a history foretold in the navel scar.
a cold fire
i think i am falling for you,
although i have a feeling
that what really attracts me
is the idea of you made up
of pictures, words, and your
voice. how foolish of me.
it took me twenty years
to understand that the one
i had previously fallen
in love with did not exist
and was always just a figment
of my imagination.
but the pain is real.
and that is probably why
i am playing it safe this time,
hidden behind an insurmountable
distance barrier, where i can dream
about fire without fear
of getting burned again.
only i am freezing.
hidden pilcrow 