Poem Hunter: Poems - Poets - Poetry

Reubens, river of forgetfulness, garden of sloth,
Pillow of wet flesh that one cannot love,
But where life throngs and seethes without cease
Like the air in the sky and the water in the sea.

Leonardo da Vinci, sinister mirror,
Where these charming angels with sweet smiles
Charged with mystery, appear in shadows
Of glaciers and pines that close off the country.

Rembrandt, sad hospital full of murmurs
Decorated only with a crucifix,
Where tearful prayers arise from filth
And a ray of winter light crosses brusquely.

Michelangelo, a wasteland where one sees Hercules
Mingling with Christ, and rising in a straight line
Powerful phantoms that in the twilight
Tear their shrouds with stretching fingers.

Rage of a boxer, impudence of a faun,
You who gather together the beauty of the boor,
Your big heart swelling with pride at man defective and yellow,
Puget, melancholy emperor of the poor.

Watteau, this carnival of illustrious hearts
Like butterflies, errant and flamboyant,
In the cool decor, with delicate lightning in the chandeliers
Crossing the madness of the twirling ball.


...

He was outside his porch, all crumpled up,
Eyes shrunken, weather-beaten, bent and weak,
Coughing, hands trembling, puffing hard
At his old hookah, when the siren's wail
Reached him, a long and ripplingnote, across
The lake at Chapiagachi and the docks,
Over the rows of trees at Hanna, like
Soft music from an old piano which
Breaks in upon the calm of villages
Nestled among tall trees.

...

Lonelines is a silent killer
It is always there
Whether you are alone or not
It is lurking everywhere
But when it's silent
When you are truly alone
Loneliness will get you
And no one will know
...

A wink from Hesper, falling
Fast in the wintry sky,
Comes through the even blue,
Dear, like a word from you…
Is it good-bye?

Across the miles between us
I send you sigh for sigh.
Good-Night, sweet friend, good-night:
Till life and all take flight,
Never good-bye.
...

When I got to his marker, I sat on it,
like sitting on the edge of someone's bed
and I rubbed the smooth, speckled granite.
I took some tears from my jaw and neck
and started to wash a corner of his stone.
Then a black and amber ant
ran out onto the granite, and off it,
and another ant hauled a dead
ant onto the stone, leaving it, and not coming back.
Ants ran down into the grooves of his name

...

The kettle hums before the light arrives,
and someone in the next apartment
turns a dial through static and weather.
Morning enters in a small key —
a half cup of coffee gone cold,
a sparrow arguing with the gutter.

I have started keeping notes
on the smallest hours:
how the stairwell smells of rain at six,

...

As bronze may be much beautified
By lying in the dark damp soil,
So men who fade in dust of warfare fade
Fairer, and sorrow blooms their soul.

Like pearls which noble women wear
And, tarnishing, awhile confide
Unto the old salt sea to feed,
Many return more lustrous than they were.

But what of them buried profound,
Buried where we can no more find.
Who ( )
Lie dark for ever under abysmal war?
...

What simple profundities
What profound simplicities
To sit down among the trees
and breathe with them
in murmur brool and breeze —

And how can I trust them
who pollute the sky
with heavens
the below with hells

...

He was never part of our picture,
just a stranger crossing sunlight,
caught forever mid-stride,
one foot in our family's summer.

Years later we still zoom in,
laughing at the borrowed face,
how randomly memory keeps
what the camera never chose.


...