In the mist
of the evening
Above the rooftops
Hanging,
In grey of night ,
The stars concealed
From the naked eye
All except
For the high sweet
Light of heaven,
In the dark of a latent sky,
And a distant sound of
Gentle wings In flight,
Is heard
from above,
light as the air,
Falling

Man in a Leather Shop

He looked at me
He was 73
He had had open heart surgery,
And colon cancer,
He took 16 pills a day,
And yet somehow
He was younger
Than most people
That I know.

The Moments Notice

The water casts
Its waving
chain link net,
Moving up and down
fluorescent,
a shimmering
ultra blue and rose.
It glides,
A haunting melody
of the Dream boat queen
That only a single listener
Rider
Truly knows.
Single song, familiar ode for two
Your wistful staining of
The night paths,
Is soaking though
All the evening pavement
And into pedestrian clothes,
As the children sing in
Unison,
In a single chorus voice, while

Playing all the games that children play A.D.

The chefs in their
Whites,
morose, are wondering,
Behind their tall black bars, pondering their Woes, taking off tall hats,
Wondering,
just what they did,
To have to serve their time.
Who knows ?
Botero’s  ladies sit in twos, talking, fast food fed and airing folds by laundromats.
The mounds of load, low lying,
suffering road;
Seated, their half brick walls
Are fed with stress.
And the flaneur’s eyes,
are eyeing
All the spaces
now presenting selves
between the buildings
as he goes.
Spaces that become the upward arrows
of rose bud, blue and mauve,
the odd one
Crowned with arches or a pale leaf gold
And all this time, not knowIng
just what and
How close death
may really be;
hanging on
The certitude of
thread
and flower,
Low lying fruit
waiting
for the unexpected
moments
notice to arrive at the appointed hour.

Afternoon Interlude

1

Lapping of waves
Against the shore,
The blanched
felled tree trunk
white with sunlight,
Stones, pebbled,
and worn,
elemental
formerly of
balustrades and curbs.

2

The pillared courtyards
Of existence
Nascent
Olive skinned
With dark long
Hair

The saunter of bones
Across the road
Svelte
With eyes dark, deep
Believing
The flesh bound
Masquerade,
Over the eternity;
Existence beyond
The curves.

3

Beloved curves
With your hidden
Revelations,
Opening up
To absolve
The will.
Certainty engulfed,
lost in waters,
that the winds caress
and skim,
As if one holding,
waving with ease,
Three black feathers,
While sandals
Dangle in another hand,
A demiurge’s
companion
Moving the poplar leaves of trees
That dance and flicker
in the sun,
That are casting midday
shadows
In the sand.

To many who will be celebrating Father’s Day this way tomorrow. I still miss my Dad after over 41years. A father & mother are meant to be cherished. I have always thought our purpose here in this world is to hopefully learn and progress, not to regress, if we have the courage to profess what we’ve learned, our faults. I’ve learned a few lessons as a result of this early event of loss in my life but I’m still earnestly trying to figure it all out to the best of my ability. The main takeaway I see is that all things in this world are temporary except for authentic love; the kind that includes forgiveness.

” As much as you wish for, as you hope for, a remembrance of your childhood, for those who left, those that were lost in their sleep…that ever, ever, endless expanse of tombs, as much as you ask for the bodies, the forms that you once loved, to bow down before the harsh boughs of the plane trees….”

-George Seferis “Epiphany”

The days without sugar

Are many.
The brain
Tunneling its
Thoughts
along paths.
A solitary journey
among the glare
Of crowds
Crows fly up
Into the sun
From the wheat field.
Only in the drop
Of the heart
and of the
Eye
Are handles
to
Heady
Sweetness,
To love,
And to kingdoms
of
The western flower.

Life reveals itself
In the smallest
Of things
A rip,
A tear

A line
The murmuring of
Spring
The first step
of children
And the butterfly wing

Translation of George Seferis “Epiphany ”

There is something about translating a poem from a different language, that brings you inside the words, forces you to go around them, and clearly delineate them. As Scott Griffin has recently said, a translation causes you to “recreate the original work of poetry” into its’ twin born by the translator, which contains the combinations of letters that replicate the poem in strands, one by one, genetically, like DNA. This is my translation of what I believe is a very beautiful and very original poem.. “Epiphany” by George Seferis. At the end of the poem is a link to a very relevant, and interesting lecture on Seferis and his work.

Epiphany 1937

The blossoming expanse
And the mountains,
Drowned in the crescent moon.
The large stone
By red flowering cactus and white asphodel,
And that urn that
Refused to stand upright
At the end of the day.
And the cloistered bed
Near the cypress trees,
And your hair golden
As the celestial swan stars of the heavens,
And that one single star Aldebaran.
I held and kept my life,
I held,
And kept my life
Travelling
In amongst the yellow trees
Towards the one side of the rain,
On the silent shores
Loaded with the piles of leaves of autumn,
With no fire in their midst, at their peaks.
The darkness is falling.
I held and kept my life.
At your right hand is a line,
And a gash is at your knee.
Would they still be there
In the sands of the now past summer ?
Would they remain there
In the gusts of the northern winds, as I hear the foreign voices round the frozen lake ?

The faces I see do not ask, neither does the woman walking, hunched over, breastfeeding her child.
I climb the mountains,
Into the dark pines.
The snow filled valley,
So far across, the snow filled valley; nothing do they ask. Neither the times brought to a close …Neither the hands that stretch out to ask, to beg;

and the roads … I held and kept my life in a constant murmuring, in silence unending. I don’t know how to speak anymore, how to contemplate the murmurs that are so like the breathing of the cypress trees that night, like the humanlike voice of the night waters on the pebbled shore.
Like the memory of your voice saying…”happiness, bliss”.
I close my eyes seeking the secret and mystic meeting of the waters under ice, the laughing smile of the oceans, the hidden deep wellsprings, high flowing in my veins; those veins which seek to spirit away to the places where the water lilies end, to that place where that man wanders blind on the snows of silence. I held, I held, and kept my life, with him, yearning for the waters that so lightly brush and caress against your body, heavy drops on green leaves; on your face… in the empty garden. Drops on the still wellspring, find a dead Cygnet In between its pure white wings. The trees are alive, and your eyes, facing towards the sun. This road will not end. There can be no change in it. As much as you wish for, as you hope for, a remembrance of your childhood, for those who have left, for those that were lost in their sleep…that ever, ever, endless expanse of tombs; as much as you ask for the bodies, the forms that you once loved, to bend below the harsh boughs of the plane trees, at that place where a single ray of sunlight stood naked, and the dog bolted, and your heart fluttered; this journey cannot be changed. I held and kept my life….the snow and the water frozen, in hoof tracks of horses in earth.

On Seferis: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5s_312nScyo

The Elder

I had a certain
Older relative
who was a man
Of passions,
Somewhat charismatic,
Who had no time
For tears,
Except perhaps
In private.
No one really ever knew.
He frequently
Called his martial heart
a whore,
And was concerned
With what he called
the little
Man
And thought
That little man
was quite a bit
More
than consequential.
A man of action and
Of no fear
He had blazed trails alone,
Opening ways for others.
He believed real men
Had broad shoulders
And narrow waists
And was often
Prone to a savage
resolve.
He and I,
We had an unspoken
Bond, never quite revealed,
but only in the odd
sideways glance,
That never faltered much,
That once might have released a tear,
But did not,
Only a side
Crossing of his
Arms which
sometime
Later
I realized
was as close
To an embrace
As it would ever come.
I have made friends
Of such men
at times
Not realizing
That I was always
leaning back
To him.
He passed away
Unable to do very much
but barely breathe,
And I remember
I told him
He was loved.