I
Just past the moon-curved waterfall
a woodland goddess changes
into a slender girl with red-brown hair
bent over in reverie,
then into a broken tree trunk
with white-brown bark
torn to show the inner red wood...
Cloud-smoke floats over a grassy plain:
six horses graze in slow motion,
light rain washes their red-brown hides.
A score of pigeons circle twice
before winging out of sight.
II
Tai Kwan Do aspirants
in white swirls of abrupt gestures
envelop their instructor
deep in concentrated calm,
beyond those still attacked and attacking...
Somewhere nearby,
a bigot's mind is healed:
cut down by cancer, he is cured
by chronic pain from causing hurt,
prays for life, all life, his life.
Between partners divided by doubt
the Choice coils, ready to strike.
III
Again Joseph is summoned.
Dreamers proclaim his speech
as lucid as sharp colors converging
on a fauvist canvas,
as spontaneous as two dancers leaping
through shared space.
Playing Shakespeare's Hermione
an actress adds subtle inflections
to each night's performance,
steadily turning Character into Self.
Three dancers gather imaginary flowers,
fling them over an embracing couple.
IV
A young poet drops his pen, astonished
by the twenty lines he has just written,
certain it is the Poem of Total Realization...
A blind Cyclops cries for beauty,
King Fool pants for a purifying stream,
the youngest priestess stares into the oracle fire.
An alien astronaut,
hurtling across Jupiter's lordly orbit,
in a blink of light speed,
feels Space Rapture
for the first time in six hundred years
of space flight.
Daniel, what about having 'WONDERS' in the new compilation? * * ebook to be published at the end of January [or more probably in February '17] Let me know
Fabrizio, I'd love to see this incorporated into the larger whole of OUR CHAINS, OUR DREAMS, I was jusr re-reading it by chance this past week and wished more people had read it. So, an enthusiastic YES,
From the first lines I understood that it is a sight of a person travelling. Because it's just watching and description of what you see. it is unburdened with pain or some great ideas that usually bother us when we sit at one place as a stone, It reminded me some poems of late Brodsky, only in last stanza - you return to you favorite images of ancient times and flight to Cosmos from there (common to Joseph too!) interesting - what do you mean by Total Realization...?
I have been taken in a lovely and lively journey through all these beautiful, peaceful and vivid imagery as I was reading this interesting poem; I felt as being part of it...such an extraordinary feeling!
I like how you have this poem written in different parts. That's something I haven't seen before. Your descriptions are excellent, as is your imagery. In my opinion, the only truly important opinion is your own. If you like it you need no ones liking but your own. Great job!
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
.......................GREAT! ................... :)