Gentlemen of Courage and Ladies of Excellence,
Toast to stolen prayers with rarer player’s hands;
Soft in defiant laughter,
when drinking their wine from the bowels of brines

Sing along the Ballads of Heritage with Melodies of Exception;
Boast, not a breathe,
though sullen heirs ghost to fairer wearer’s air(s) of land—
A settlement of Rapture and Resurrection, arid, amid dirt and sand

and King and thy Kingdom sprout flowering tomb, and rosebud temple reach to the sky during the showers of spring
Devours the crescent Moon

in big pink petals of bloom;

A garden so fertile
it could look pretty in wartime—
with Gardeners of Courage and Laborers of Excellence;
(Lapse, not into digressions of Being and Essence
but hands in the soil and planting the actions of kingdom come,
       patient building of Spring Reign sure
as the flame, the architect of rising Sun is
(Daughters and Sons of kingdom came,
      the soldier in a land been conquered and named; abandoned
for the greenness of hope.
)May it never come, Be All The Same; (


be gentle, though whispering wind)

Seeds of Nextyear and the spores of Awhile,
carried by the Wasps and the Clouds
To the Gentlemen of Excellence and Ladies of Courage,
illuminated, eyes from the flora of stars faraway forest floor of foreign

      fears,
      as the hungry Owls of Time prepare a final feast—
      Consume the years between Here and Now;
      Watching from blank perch, among
      the Trees of Afterall; a place beyond expectance.
      Sing the branches of experience, to wake
      in Siren’s cipher; inelegant forms
      of waking,

ugly sleep on rocks of seabed; once was aboard a marooned skyline—

Those Who Are Will Be
again, again a serf in a wave of Time’s refraction. Neverending neverbeginning;

                          Those Gentlemen of Courage and Ladies of Excellence,
on the Day That Is, arrays of seers sayers doers displayers
optimists and pessimists, toast to them
        and their rarer player’s hands,
Boast they, not a breathe, though sullen heirs ghost
to fairer wearer’s air and land;
Laugh and howl and dine, they drink their wine
from disemboweled gourds
        of their own divine—
Warped, in jowls of hungry fix,
no feast they fear, for they prey to the Owls of Time.

at first an unrelenting green covers everything:
the trees, the lawn, the hillsides, the marshes, the windbreaks,
everything is completely and totally green, the deepest, truest green,
so green you might even forget that it wasn't always green,
so green you might not stop to think that it won't always be green.
school children look out windows during their exams,
longing to be free amid all that greenness,
lovers sit in parks near the water, under perfectly green leaves,
listening to the wind, watching the stars come out
and making their wishes, forever joined with that unrelenting green.
artists dip their impressionistic brushes in the green and dab on canvas
pictures of people gathered at picnics in dappled, green shade,
joined with the greenness, enveloped and absorbed by it,
becoming green themselves. they paint pictures of leafy trees reaching beyond the canvas with patches of sky showing through, a perspective of endless summer that you have to look at a long time
to see and feel, but once you find it beyond the greenness, in the
blue beyond the hill, you will be part of it always: through the fading mid-summer and pale, yellowing late summer, even into the multi-
colored fall and the stark, grey-white winter, and you will know life, and hope and love,  and nothing will ever seem the same again

When your creator took her crayon box
That day she thought to draw you all alive,
She found a certain green to sketch your locks,
Another green to show you grow, you thrive;
A green of richest thought unlimited,
A green to match the green of your creation,
A green to go, to boldly forge ahead,
A green for lands of peaceful meditation;
  The Greene King, standing proud with all his queens,
  Jack-in-the-green, surrounded by his trees;
  A thousand other shades of other greens;
  The greenness of the deepness of the seas;
And I, I fall and marvel at the light,
A million greens, like fireworks in the night.

That day she thought to draw you all alive
She drew your outline, sketched you, and refined
And shaped your eyes, that surely saw arrive
The laughing people in the frame behind,
The humans, dogs and kittens, trailing plants,
Who fill your background; all you love are here
Around you in the middle of the dance,
And as you watch, still more of them appear
  Beyond your face within the frame advancing
  Children and relatives and loves and friends
  Holding their merry hands in merry dancing
  Extending off beyond the picture's ends;
I know your other folk would say the same:
It's such an honour dancing in your frame.

She found a certain green to sketch your locks,
A deeper green, a perfect green attaining;
And now another from her crayon-stocks;
Refreshing and repeating what's remaining:
She bleaches it and tries another shade
Then leaves it for a while and grows it out,
Returns it to the colours that she made
Begins to work again, and turns about;
  And why this careful labour to provide you
  With perfect colours captured in your hair?
  She knows your colours mirror what's inside you,
  Eternal greens within you everywhere;
And still beneath, the ever-growing you
Shall dye, and yet shall live with life anew.

Another green to show you grow, you thrive;
Out from the snow the snowdrop breaks in flower.
Who could have called this sleeping bulb alive?
Yet buried patiently it waits its hour,
Counting the snowflakes slowly settling
Their weight upon the heavy earth above;
One day its Winter changes to its Spring.
Who can predict the power of life and love?
  Hope that at last the final frost is dead.
  Faith that the Winter dies and Spring shall rise.
  Love for the life that up through blades has bled.
  Joy to a hundred children's waiting eyes;
For every hour it slept beneath the ground,
A thousand wondering eyes shall gather round.

A green of richest thought unlimited.
I try to say I love you every day:
I know I keep repeating things I've said.
Perhaps I'll try to phrase another way:
Suppose I counted all the money ever
From now until when Abel risked his neck
With my accountants, who were very clever,
And wrote it on a record-breaking cheque...
  It wasn't half your empathising, was it?
  Your thoughts are treasured more than bank accounts;
  The bank won't put your loving on deposit.
  And could they take it, given such amounts?
The jealousy of cash makes misers blind,
And who needs money when you have your mind?

A green to match the green of your creation!
She took her time in sketching out your features,
Shading you well, and, drawn with dedication,
You took the pen she gives to all her creatures
And set about some drawing of your own,
Filling the art with arc and line and shade,
Showing your work the care that you were shown,
And making them as well as you were made;
  And much as life your drawing hand was giving,
  Another life from deep within you drew:
  A life, not merely likeness of the living,
  So separate, yet such a part of you:
Who finds your baby-picture on the shelf
And smiles and finds you, showing you yourself.

A green to go, to boldly forge ahead,
Should shine on traffic lights for every person.
If you should find a colour in its stead
That stops you-- not an arrow for diversion,
To Edmundsbury, Hatfield and the North,
Or any other place that's worth the going--
But rather reds that block your going forth;
If traffic signals freeze your days from flowing,
  Your life is green and you deserve the green.
  And if you try to go about your day
  And greens are coming few and far between,
  And reds and ambers blare about your way:
If so, I pray your days to hold instead
All green, and never amber, never red.

A green for lands of peaceful meditation.
You call: Come stand upon my sacred ground,
Come sit and breathe the peace of contemplation,
Come feel the grass beneath, the lilies round,
Come sleep, come wake, and drink the quiet waters,
Come to the maytree, blackbird, waterfall;
Come know yourselves the planet's sons and daughters.
The people pass and pause, and still you call:
  It's waiting for you when you ask to try it:
  Peace (and the air) cannot be bought or sold.
  You'll never gain it if you try to buy it:
  It's not an asset crumpled fists can hold.
All that you have is nothing you can lose;
You stand on sacred ground. Remove your shoes.

The Greene King, standing proud with all his queens,
Guarding a land of oaks and aches and cold.
It's not a normal place, by any means,
This island of the oldest of the old,
Where bow the ancient oak and ash and thorn
In homage to a figure on a hill;
Deep in the hills where Wayland Smith was born
You stand, an English body, English still.
  For odes and age and air and ale have filled you,
  Made you their own and promised you belong;
  And since their homesick longing hasn't killed you,
  I think you'll be returning to their song;
Come, take your time, and sit and drink with me!
What say you to another cup of tea?

Jack-in-the-green, surrounded by his trees,
Had given birth to leafy life aplenty,
He'd introduced his firs by fours and threes,
And sowed his seedling cedars by the twenty;
The field was filled with trunks and twigs and roots,
The soil was sound and fertile, and the fall
Would fill the forest floor with growing shoots,
And none but Jack was there to watch it all
  Until you came to wander through this field,
  To walk within the ways within the wood;
  Your mind was brought to peace, your spirit healed,
  The forest given form and blessed as good;
Jack-in-the-green will wonder all his days:
your presence never ceases to a maze.

A thousand other shades of other greens:
"Leaf", "emerald", "sea", "bottle", off the cuff;
"Viridian" (uncertain what it means),
But there's so many. Names are not enough.
Yet, in another life, your maker might
Have picked you out among primeval glades
To work as keeper of the rainbow's light
And in another Eden name the shades;
  If so, the planet's poets will rejoice
  That, given life together with a name,
  The colours sing a stronger, clearer voice,
  And every hue will never seem the same:
Each of the shades looks loving back to you,
Its namer and the one who made it new.

The greenness of the deepness of the seas:
A home to fish of many a scaly nation.
Follow the shoals; the smallest one of these
Swims as a fishy summit of creation.
Yet every one's indebted to the shoal,
All subtle in their difference from the rest:
A fish of friends, a member of the whole,
A mix of traits, a taking of the best.
  So you and those of us you love so well
  Will grow along with other friends' increase,
  Required ingredients in the living-spell:
  Each person brings a necessary peace.
The level-headed people mix with mystics,
And both are living mixtures of holistics.

And I, I fall and marvel at the light,
This changing light that grows throughout the years,
Extinguished not by hardship nor by night
Nor foolishness nor sadness nor by tears.
When we were separated by the sea
I wished myself amidst your myriad days.
My wish was mirrored in your missing me;
Your maker joined our wishes, joined our ways;
  She placed our hands on one another's heart,
  And you and I began a lifelong learning
  Of one another, like a magic art
  Whose telling grows with every page's turning,
And holds our friendship as a growing bond
Till seventy years old, and still beyond.

A million greens, like fireworks in the night.**
I fear this sonnet never can be done.
So many colours burst upon my sight
I cannot tell the tale of every one.
But I can tell how vast excitement fills me
When all the flying sparkles fill the sky;
I want to tell the world how much it thrills me
To hold you close, reflected in your eye;
  I want to tell in all my earthly days
  And yet beyond, of what you mean to me;
  I want to say I love the myriad ways
  Of what you are and what you'll grow to be;
These counts combining made the building-blocks
When your creator took her crayon box.

A cumulonimbus caused the gloom that day. It went shedding drops of rain that looked like bead of pearls glittering in the grey autumn sky, vanishing as they plunge on leafless laurel trees and solitary cypresses. He watched them dance to pitter-patter on every umbrella that opened towards the heavens, their colors of rich black calling out to such empathy. Finally, the drops kiss the graze of withered grasses and thirsty dandelions, reviving their foliage and greenness. Slowly, the rainfall collect to become one with soil and mud crawled down to the six feet depression where a coffin was laid. It was white like ivory and carved with elaborate insignias as a token of love and undying memories. Soon, it was all covered with crimson roses that carry the last parting words of the bereaved. The priest waved out his hands above with mournful eyes, lisping his beseeching of earnest favors while spades of loam filled up the burrow. He saw faces of despair around the pit, gasping for reprieve and sympathy. If only the rain could also bring back her life, he implored.

This, in his senses, was belongingness. This, in his heart, was death.

It had been two long weeks since Roxanne’s death and Vincent couldn’t get his feet back on the ground. He still couldn’t believe he had lost her and that their seemingly endless love has flown away from him for all eternity. He’d make believe that this was all just a dream and at some point of this nightmare he would finally be unchained and awakened. Days became niches of shackled memories that kept haunting his love-fletched soul and nights were nothing more than a requiem of lovelorn longings that still linger in his mind. He remembers it all, the feel of her name on his lips, the smell of her hair, and the sound of her laugh. Everything is still as fresh as the dewdrops of June and as vivid as the most cinematic imagery a mortal could immortalize. The ultimate fight of this melodramatic transition was to remain whole when all the strength Vincent has built up begins to crumble by a mere reminiscence of the tragedy that gets freeze-framed from beginning to end over and over again.

It was a rainy Friday evening on the 22nd of May and everyone’s feeling the smell of the weekend rush. Vincent was already at a friend's house party and called Roxanne that he’ll be waiting. Roxanne was driving the Lexus behind a small truck that seemed to plod toward the upcoming red light. She was a few minutes late on her way and watching these two people ahead of her jabber away in that truck was getting her out of her ecstatic  mood. The light turned green, but the truck too slowly moved forward. Roxanne became frustrated as the driver fixated to the right. He visibly gasped at what was just about to come into her view. A brand new grey-blue Chevy Silverado blazed through the opposing stop light to broadside his little truck. Roxanne tried to stop, but her car slid into the Chevy's rear side and went tossing down the highway to an explosion.

All these is what Vincent needs to drown himself to agony. It’s as if Atlas gave up the bearing of the world for him to endure. Wretched and perplexed was he, blaming the world for such a prejudiced conspiracy. How could an angel like Roxanne be bound to such an end? How could an invincible love become vulnerable on the visage of death? But then again, his heart starts to concoct a spell of phantasm, bringing back the most prized memories of him and her together, infiltrating his whole system and gaining power over the bitterness and pain. In this test of sensations, he himself wasn’t sure if this two-edged delusion is a boon or bane. But one thing was becoming clear to him-he cannot be like this for the rest of his life. If this nightmare must be proven real, he must find a way out. Whatever may lie ahead, he must keep going, recreate his own world and be able to break free from the fetters of this mishap that surely promises him nothing but living scars, frustrations and sorrow.

Two years have passed and the town of New Hope has undergone a lot of changes. New coffee shops and cafes run down a block away from the University premise as well as convenient stores and parlors. New establishments stood welcoming and billboards mushroomed the skyway. The streets are crowded with more and more busy people, indicative of a metropolitan evolution of lifestyle. Summer has ended and without a trace, the arid autumn and the frigid winter fluttered to oblivion.

The same is true for New Hope University which, in its current enrollment period, has its student population increased by two thousand. The institute’s remarkable performance rating in board examinations and national competitions attracted other towns to invest their education to the latter. It was nearly the start of class and everyone is busy catching up the enrollment pace. But not Vincent, who, in the first day of inception has already completed the enrollment process. He was ecstatic, more of curious how his life as a senior student could turn into this academic year. He met faces of different kinds-some familiar and some entirely strangers. Those he doesn’t recognize would just pause and pay a smile while others he knew jsut pass by and make him feel invisible. On a ledge in front of his course department’s office he sat. He in himself was New Hope town in human transfiguration- braver, brighter and better. He looked from afar, with eyes playing on the nimble of heads and shoulders of people passing through the corridor. He drenched himself to an illusion of how each head turns toward him with a infectious smile, that once in a while, happiness is sought even in the gallows of solitude. Solitude-it wasn’t a strange name to him anymore. It never was. He was entangled with it on that day the sickles of death took his love away. Somehow, through the passage of time, the wound that was scourged deep in his heart has mended and the thought of being alone became amusing that he has managed to laugh about it over the seasons. He is more human now, away from the devious portal of his mundane imagining.

The daydream was shattered when out of the blue a silhouette of a familiar figure took the stage. She was elegantly tall, with hair of pure ebony lolling on her shoulders. Each step enraptures, and each gentle sway of a hand is a compelling rhythm. She draws closer to where he was and he's left slack jawed. She entered the office and he was back to his senses. Maybe not. What he beheld was something farfetched, something that he cannot comprehend. Vincent saw it all coming back to him. A remnant of his long buried love has come to life. It was Roxanne and it is more certain than breathing. He couldn’t explain what he felt. It was a maelstrom of joy and surprise, of hope and fear. It was the face he yearned to see, so long that the yearning turned to hate and despair. But now that it came to pass, his humanity fell apart. Although he is a mere victim of his own circumstances, the serendipity took a shot straight to his heart and there is nothing he could do about it.

Perhaps there is, and he is now pretty preoccupied. He wanted to know her. He must unknot this puzzle that has challenged his whole conviction. He must find every answer and throw all of its questions behind. Whatever there is that the road has in store for him is not essential anymore. He couldn’t care less to fathom this enigma and once more, find something worth living. But now that he is hanging in midair, he planned to fall back. He jumped out of the ledge and headed out the campus, afraid that she might be at sight and all the strength in him shall subside. He was up all night, thinking of how he could get a chance to meet and talk to her. He had thoughts of crafting schemes, devising methods and inventing tricks.

And nothing of it worked.

The first day of class commenced. New Hope University is buzzing with ecstatic students. Vincent giggled with utmost excitement, carelessly bumping shoulders and brushing elbows with other students in the corridors.  He molested his tattered COR and skimmed for his first class. It is in room 101 scheduled 9:00. He reviewed through the digital clock and he hurried as it ticked to 8:58. Luckily, he is safe from prime tardiness, though he seemed to be the last comer. He seated at the back, knowing that after thirty minutes, he’d helplessly succumb to napping since it is his favorite subject-English 8, Technical Writing.

And so she happened.

It was her, Roxanne’s doppelganger who broke the charts. She was 15 minutes late and unforgivably beautiful with her sequined tee and skinny jeans. She realized what she has gotten into and apologized with the kindest gesture. The professor gave her a hand and led her to the seat beside Vincent. She felt awkward. He was worse. They both sat like lifeless puppets with the puppeteer gone until she broke the silence.

“I’m Katherine,” she muttered. “Katherine Evans, glad to be your block mate”. She took it off with a smile that sent Vincent to hyperventilation. He couldn’t shake her hands. They’re already shaking with butterflies. The poor guy mounted his strength. He could not afford to lose the chance. “Vincent, Vincent Smith”. That was all and a nod. It was rare for Vincent to survive the thirty-minute nap attack but he did this time, although the victory seemed unnoticed. They enjoyed the remaining hour sharing thoughts and ideas with Vincent succeeding in all his attempts to stint his best jokes. He has come to know who she is at the basics-a transferee from Dakota University, a cheerleader and an adventurist. He also looks forward to know more about her in the days to come- hoping that she likes cheese, watching live wrestling fights and attending Sunday mass.

Perhaps she doesn't.

Two weeks was enough a time for the two of them to get closer to each other. They were both open to let the affinity they share to grow and blossom. It was very apparent that the two knew where their relationship is going and they both seemed ready for it.

Months have passed and the two were no more than couples. But Vincent was too overwhelmed of what he had let enter his life. Katherine is no Roxanne. She doesn’t like cheese, wrestling or Sunday masses. She was more self-driven, conceited and unwelcoming. Sooner he realized that he isn’t in love with Katherine, nor will he ever be. He just created his Utopia by painting Roxanne’s memories on Katherine’s facade. He believed to have loved again and he believed in vain.

It was a candlelight dinner at Katherine's and it was all set. She suggested it herself. She would always do this, steering their affair on a one man tag and turning the tides whichever she likes it to be. She seemed obsessed about Vincent, about their friendship, about their bond. This was her biggest mistake: to let Vincent get drowned in her self-consumed devotion.

Vincent is on his way. To break her heart.

When he came, Katherine pranced in glee. She presented the menu. And the drinks too. She was on the midst of telling Vincent her summer getaway plans when he told her to stop and listen. He undid it to her gently by taking all the blames, that it was his butter fingered actions which led them both bruised and bleeding. It was a self-defeating battle preordained by the gods. A tear fell down from Katherine’s eyes, and she didn’t want to show him more. She fled her way out the dining room with a tormented soul, like Aphrodite torn by Adonis, and hurried to her room with the banging of the door. Vincent was left with only the deafening silence, keeping his severed heart together.

As he sat out there slowly losing substance, he began to notice a set of picture frames that showed two happy faces, one of them Vincent was able to recognize in just a matter of seconds. But what puzzled him most is the picture's relevance to Katherine. He thought of a reason to make his way out the riddle. He looked closer to the girl beside Roxanne and found a spot of mole that was identical to Katherine's.

Vincent stumbled to a discovery he wished he had never known.

On the night Roxanne met death, she was not alone. She was with company. The girl that happened to live is Vicky Duran, Roxanne’s best friend. She was secretly in love with Vincent. And she was prepared to change her entire life for a streak of a chance that she’ll have what she was living for.

And she almost succeeded.

Vincent, still staggered on how things turned out insane, went to Roxanne’s grave. He shattered from an implosion of mixed emotions and he cried out like a child who lost his treasured toy. He curled on the ground with so much pain and bearing contained inside him. He called out Roxanne’s name with pure longing, bringing back his old self and his memories of that grey autumn, of that unwanted Friday that took her life away.

Footsteps cracked from the ground and Vincent ceased his outburst of melancholy.

“Let me end your misery,” a trembling voice came from behind him. It was Vicky, whose face is neither Roxanne’s nor Katherine’s. It was a face of a hopeless woman, wretched and determined for something. She was wearing rugged clothes and she held a gun on her hand. To Vicky, living is no different from death. She has now understood why the very person she loves has turned away from her when she gave all that she never was. But the realization priced too much of her reality that she cannot anymore take back. She decided to **** him and then take her own life.

She pointed the gun towards Vincent. He jumped at her to take the gun away. They grappled on the ground, the weapon still on Vicky’s hands. Vincent managed to overpower her but she kicked him, tumbling back to the gravestone. A shot was heard from afar with a man’s cry.

It rained that day. Brown withered leaves of tall laurels hovered with the wind while branches of solitary Cypresses dance to every whirl. The breeze whispered to the clouds of grey, a mark of autumn’s return. Vincent crawled to Roxanne's grave. It was a weeping of a true love that echoed away. Raindrops keep descending from the heavens, washing away the blood that kept flowing to the ground of mud.  Perhaps, on the last moments of his life he found happiness, even from a love that was never his to keep.

 

- by Larry Potter

Azure was the sky, and leaden was the sea;
Not surprising would the discord be
For him who has read Wordsworth.

What ailed his thoughts were the debris
Of broken glass fishermen-in-boats
Might have thrown into the ocean
On a night of 'Celtia'* with no pairing,

Or the sight of a woman’s dress
Whose swollen darkness was
A sea urchin, whose quills
Were plucked by the greenness of rust;

Or a German parachute
Over Kasserine pass**, my thyme nest
And the center of Tunisia.

©LazharBouazzi, July 15, 2018

They enter as animals from the outer
Space of holly where spikes
Are not thoughts I turn on, like a Yogi,
But greenness, darkness so pure
They freeze and are.

O God, I am not like you
In your vacuous black,
Stars stuck all over, bright stupid confetti.
Eternity bores me,
I never wanted it.

What I love is
The piston in motion ----
My soul dies before it.
And the hooves of the horses,
There merciless churn.

And you, great Stasis ----
What is so great in that!
Is it a tiger this year, this roar at the door?
It is a Christus,
The awful

God-bit in him
Dying to fly and be done with it?
The blood berries are themselves, they are very still.

The hooves will not have it,
In blue distance the pistons hiss.

To me eternity lies in thy eyes,
and thy rejection my demise.
If so but accept and heal me likewise;
whilst shun and stab my sore heart, otherwise.
Thou hath always been to me a surprise;
Though a doubtful, but sparkling surprise,
So any dejection of thine shall be odd,
And a thousand times bitterer than a cold rapid retort;
For thou art pure; and sometimes too pure and fine
As how thy immortal soul stayest still, and growest not old
And in toughness and roughness is to remain,
So long as thy dried flesh shall age, and afford;
And with such songs so prolific as prayers
By friendly laudations like bewitching storms
Thou shall forever stay, and newer grow fader
And in such coldness thou shall offer me warmth;
Beside yon raging fire, and about thy manly arms,
Thou shalt but lull and cradle me like a baby-
until sleep comes and whispers dreams onto me,
Thou shalt be far more tender and smart-
Unlike that ungrateful preceding heart,
Which claimed to be civil, but uncivil,
United but then left my unsuspecting heart apart;
So unlike thee, who is but a smart little devil
Thou who earnestly tempted my soul, and lured my blood
Thou returned my blushes, and caught away my heart
Ah, and now-whenever I thinkest of thee,
All pain and gloom shall revert to oneness,
But how still I know not, as whose days remain but a mystery
For everything in which is at times barren and colourless;
But when alive, they are just as simple
as those brief dreams of thine and mine,
With a love but too sufficient, majestic and ample
Delicately shall they turn troubled and unseen,
But caring and healing and blinding and shaking,
taking turns like oceanic birds which go about
swimming and singing and strumming and swinging,
like a painting of prettily sure clarity-but unseen,
or perhaps a pair of loving, yet unforgettable winds.

To thee whom I once loved, and now still do,
To thee towards whom my hardened heart-again, turns soft,
To thee whom my delirium is all kept safe and true,
To thee for whom I canst feel never reproach-and only love,
And to thee-ah, to thee, thee only-by whom
the grandeur of the blue sky shalt melt;
Ah, thee! And betwixt thy gaze,
All fictitious sunsets shalt perhaps become wet-
Just like those azure spirits in thy fair eyes,
Sometimes too indignant but unquestioning,
and too pure-as to whom even the Devil hath no lies;
To thee only, to whom this enduring love is ever assigned,
And forever, even its temptation be mine, and only mine,
Like unforgivable sins, which are sadly left unatoned
In its eternity standing still like a statue;
beside its wrathed, and bloodied howling stone
And to thee merely, to whom this impaired heart shall ever return,
As it now does, with cries and blows that makest my heart churn
And canst wait not 'till the morn, for on morns only,
thou shalt creepest down the stairs, and stareth onto me,
Often with eyes full of questions;
Questions that thou art too bashful to reflect,
So that turn themselves later on, into emotions,
Which withereth and dieth days after, of doom and neglect.
Ah, but still I loveth thee!
For this regret makest me but loveth thee more and more,
and urge my soul greater, to loveth thee better-than ever before.
For 'tis thee who yet stills my cry, and silences my wrath;
The one who kills my death, and reawakens my breath.
Thou on whom my love shall be delightfully poured,
A love as amiable as the one I hold for dearest Lord,
A love for thee, for only thee in whom I'th found comfort,
A comfort that is holier than any heaven, or even His very own divine abode;
Thou art holier than the untouched swaying grass outside,
Which is green, with greenness so handy and indulgent to every sight,
Thou who art madder than madness itself,
But upon Friday eves, makest my joy even merrier,
And far livelier-than any flailing droplet of rain
Showering this earth's clustered soil out there,
Which does neither soften nor flit away my pain
But makest it even worse, as if God Himself shan't solicit, nor care
Like any other hostile love, which thou might kindly find, every where.

To thee whom I once loved, and now still do,
To thee towards whom my hardened heart-again, turns soft,
To thee whom my delirium is all kept safe and true,
To thee for whom I canst feel never reproach-and only love,
And to thee-ah, to thee, thee only-by whom
the grandeur of the blue sky shalt melt;
In my mind thou art the lost eternity itself,
And by its proud self, thou art still even grander,
For thou makest silence not any more silence,
but joy, in return, even a greater joy.
Ah, thee, thou who the painter of my day,
and the writer of my blooming night.
Thou who art the poet of my past,
and the words of my courteous present.
Thou shall ******* flirty orange blossoms,
And cherish its virtue, which strives and lives
As a most sumptuous, and palpable gift-
Until the knocking of this year's gentle autumn.
Ah! Virtue, virtue, o virtue-whose soul always be
a charm, and indeed a very generous charm-
to my harmonious, though melancholy, *****.
Ah, thee; o lost darling-my lost darling of all awesome day and night,
My lost darling before starlight, and upon the pallid moonlight,
My lost darling above the reach of my sight, and height;
Thou art still a song-to my now tuneless leaves,
and a melody to their bottomless graves,
Thou shalt be a cure to their ill harmony;
Thou art their long-betrayed melody.
And even, thou art the spring
my dying flowers needst to taste,
fpr being with thee produces no haste;
and or whom nothing is neither early, nor late;
And whenst there be no fate, thou shalt be
yon ever consuming fate itself-
And by our inane eyes, thou shalt makest it
but adorable and all the way strong,
For thou, as thou now do, nurture it better
than all the other graciousness among;
Thou art the promise it hath hitherto liked; but just
shyly-and justly refuted, for the bareness of pride,
and often inglorious resistance-all along.

To thee whom I once loved, and now still do,
To thee towards whom my hardened heart-again, turns soft,
To thee whom my delirium is all kept safe and true,
To thee for whom I canst feel never reproach-and only love,
And to thee-ah, to thee, thee only-by whom
the grandeur of the blue sky shalt melt;
Ah, thee! Even in undurable haste, thou art still like a butterfly,
fast and rapid flowing about the earth and into the sky;
Thou who art grateful not for this earth's soil;
Thou who saith 'tis only the sky that canst make thou feel.
Thou who cannot sit, thou cannot lay,
but on whose lanes thou always art secure,
as though from now thou shalt live too long
And belong to this rigorous earth
to whom our mortal souls do not belong.
And as to its vigour, death cannot be delayed,
and words of deadness shalt fast always, be said.
Ah, yet but again, I cannot simply be wrong;
for thou art immortal, immortal, and immortal;
To death thou art but too insipid and loyal;
that willing it not be, to take thy soul into its mourning,
and awkward prayers so scornful and worrying.
Thou who needst not be afraid of death;
for breath shalt never leave thee, and thou shan't breath.
Unsaid poems of thine are thus never to remaineth unspoken,
and far more and more thoughts shalt be perfectly carved, and uttered;
Unlike mine; whose several mortal thoughts shalt be silenced, and unknown
And after years passed my name shalt be forgotten, and my poems altered.
But thou! By any earth, and any of its due shape-thou shalt never be defaced,
and whose thoughts shalt never, even only once-be rephrased,
for thou art immortal, and for decades undying shalt be so;
And to life thou remaineth shalt remain chaste, and undetached;
as the divine wholeness whenst 'tis all slumped and wretched,
and white in unsoiled finery, whenst all goes to dirt and waste;
For grossness shalt escape thee, and stains couldst still, not thee fetch.
To every purity thou shalt thus be the best young match;
Ah, just like my mind shalt ever want thee to be;
but thou art missing from my sight-ah, as thou art not here!
Our paths are far whenst they are but near,
and which fact fillest me still, with dawning dread and fear
Unfortunately, as in this poem, my words not every heart shalt hear;
And to my writings doth I ever patiently retreat, the one,
and one only; whom to my conscience so dear.

To thee whom I once loved, and now still do,
To thee towards whom my hardened heart-again, turns soft,
To thee whom my delirium is all kept safe and true,
To thee for whom I canst feel never reproach-and only love,
And just to thee-ah, to thee, thee only-by whom
the grandeur of the blue sky shalt melt;
How fate but still made us here and meet,
That clue shall never makest me blind, and forget!
Now blighted I am, by dire ungladness and regret,
for having abhorred, and slighting thee too much!
For should I still cherish thee before my mortal death,
and be bitter and testy not; much less grim or harsh.
For fate is what fate is, as how love is just it looks;
and God's doings cannot be wrong; and true and faithful
as words I found crafted, and deciphered in old books.
Ah, and God's blessings are to arriveth in time,
and to taste whose due I indeed needst to be patient.
Be patient t'wards the love on which I climb,
ah, as for me-and whenst the right time cometh-
thou shalt be my sole wealth; so dear and sufficient!
And so for thee, no matter how thou hath my heart now torn,
Still I canst, and shalt reward thee not-with scorn;
for thou art my fate, my path, and my salved destiny;
For of which I am assured, definite, and convinced-
with all my degrees of humble pride, and vivid certainty-
Ah, darling, and thou art my humbleness, but also too many a time-my vanity;
For whom I shan't go and venture but anywhere-
As long as thou stayest and last-verily and for yon whole eternity, by me.

Are you fleeing from Love because of a single humiliation?
What do you know of Love except the name?
Love has a hundred forms of pride and disdain,
and is gained by a hundred means of persuasion.
Since Love is loyal, it purchases one who is loyal:
it has no interest in a disloyal companion.
The human being resembles a tree; its root is a covenant with God:
that root must be cherished with all one's might.
A weak covenant is a rotten root, without grace or fruit.
Though the boughs and leaves of the date palm are green,
greenness brings no benefit if the root is corrupt.
If a branch is without green leaves, yet has a good root,
a hundred leaves will put forth their hands in the end.

Sure thou didst flourish once! and many springs,
  Many bright mornings, much dew, many showers,
Pass’d o’er thy head; many light hearts and wings,
  Which now are dead, lodg’d in thy living bowers.

And still a new succession sings and flies;
  Fresh groves grow up, and their green branches shoot
Towards the old and still enduring skies,
  While the low violet thrives at their root.

But thou beneath the sad and heavy line
  Of death, doth waste all senseless, cold, and dark;
Where not so much as dreams of light may shine,
  Nor any thought of greenness, leaf, or bark.

And yet—as if some deep hate and dissent,
  Bred in thy growth betwixt high winds and thee,
Were still alive—thou dost great storms resent
  Before they come, and know’st how near they be.

Else all at rest thou liest, and the fierce breath
  Of tempests can no more disturb thy ease;
But this thy strange resentment after death
  Means only those who broke—in life—thy peace.

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Besides the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

Through the vales to my love!
  To the happy small nest of home
Green from basement to roof;
  Where the honey-bees come
To the window-sill flowers,
  And dive from above,
Safe from the spider that weaves
  Her warp and her woof
In some outermost leaves.

Through the vales to my love!
  In sweet April hours
  All rainbows and showers,
While dove answers dove,--
  In beautiful May,
When the orchards are tender
  And frothing with flowers,--
  In opulent June,
When the wheat stands up slender
  By sweet-smelling hay,
And half the sun's splendour
  Descends to the moon.

Through the vales to my love!
  Where the turf is so soft to the feet,
  And the thyme makes it sweet,
And the stately foxglove
  Hangs silent its exquisite bells;
  And where water wells
The greenness grows greener,
  And bulrushes stand
Round a lily to screen her.

Nevertheless, if this land,
  Like a garden to smell and to sight,
Were turned to a desert of sand,
  Stripped bare of delight,
  All its best gone to worst,
For my feet no repose,
  No water to comfort my thirst,
And heaven like a furnace above,--
  The desert would be
  As gushing of waters to me,
The wilderness be as a rose,
  If it led me to thee,
  O my love!

Sunflower stood in the middle of the greenness that is Grass.
She was folding her yellow crown jewels,
singing with the wind about the ray of luminescent light
that sometimes is there in the darkness that is Sky.

Sunflower was planted in the dirt that is Earth.
She was extending her curly roots,
touching the tips to the core of terra,
burning the ends of Her,
but she knows a little pain is needed to experience Love.

Sunflower still stood on Grass,
looking towards Sky,
experiencing Love,
and Little Moon was ready to give all of that to Her.

The rejuvenated year has finally shed
It’s twinkling leaf on my greenness,
Oh yes, my years have tasted the darkest
Side of the seasonal stainless moon,
Causing juvenile mango trees to bath
The malleable aurora dews,

This is my wind howling fiercely in the dark
And sobbing streams of tattoo tears,
My dreams have even caused my essence
To conjure the wordless spells of the ancestress,
Lest the dreary thunderstorm of thirst
Swims over my horrendous firmament,

Give a voice to the air!
For there is not a breath of air stirring
At my munitions of peace,
I can even feel the dry pulse
And the heartbeat of the naked Gods
Piercing the calm natural day,

Oh no, the Sun-Gods has drunk the
Stream behind my coloured walls,
Causing the stretch marks on the
Back of Mother Earth to bleach,
You dare ask Tweaduampon Kwame
To weep on your scorching pepper,
For the friendship of the pregnant clouds
Was indeed for the raining season only.


© PRINCE NANA ANIN-AGYEI
Email: nanaspeaks@gmail.com

by
rgpage

In this quiet time of night, I lie alone and prey to the bitter pain of
joy's absence. Lost in my mind's shallow thoughts the sharp fragments of
happy memories since shattered ***** at the sensitive fringes of my sleep.

Sleep: Nature's sanctuary

A quiet haven, an island set apart
from the daily consciousness of life
where my thoughts may at last run free.

An island with white sandy shores as
far as the eye can see. Blemished only
by my solitary figure walking the blue
water's edge.

And the forests of my paradise, their
deep green density gives substance to
my world. Often I stop to ponder their
far reaching greenness.

The warm subtle breeze carrying the
fragrance of this foliage across my
face, fills my nostrils with the pleasures
of nature.

And occasionally a gull overhead,
drifting unchallenged on the soft
warm currents of the azure, as free
in his world as I in mine; lends companionship.

All of the sudden in the beat of a heart,
from no where a large black cloud appears
to smother the sun's warm light, turning
the blue sky and green foliage black
and the white sand that I once walked
upon a cold gray.

And just ahead of me lying there in
death's humiliation, my winged companion;
soaked and scorned at the dark water's
edge.

I awaken:

This cold room and bed the greatest part of my conscious moment, and the sound of a distant train bell mocking the destruction of my comfort; its havoc upon my sleep done it now moves on. Saddened I once again wade through the shallow bogs of my loneliness, and the pains of memories of the love and life i'd wasted return. This painful sleepless night a most cruel retribution for my past. So firmly entrenched it seems I may never return to my paradise; yet remain in this cold room to suffer the long night's tortures.

Returning:

The warm sunlight, and gentle caress
of the water's pulse upon the white
sand.

And overhead my pure white friend
again drifts on the warm currents of
air, heralding not my return
but praising my presence....

...for my presence alone, gives
life to this warm yet oh so precariously
balanced paradise.

The white beach with its warm sand
leads me on my journey to the morning,
as I walk the blue water’s edge.

I stood flat-footed upon an eroding hill

Here the sweet peas, on tip-toe for a fight
With wing of coarsest black o'er delicate night
And spiteful fingers grasping at all beauty
To bind us all in deeds unworthy

Oh, toxic wind and fertile rain
Disperse the fragrance of this pain
In healing gardens root a seed
Sprout the bliss we sorely need

This tiny pulse of life we hold
Thrives in soil tilled with love
And tender vines create a bower
Of sweet pea tended, brought to flower


I stand bare foot on an erupting volcanic mount

Here the sweet peas, on tip toe for a flight
With wing of justice verity o’er delicate sight
And nails that compassionately snowball serenity
To bind us all with concord and altruism

Oh, acidic rain share the tears
Wash thy tainted eye-sight
Then crux us in the high-yield land
As we germinate to heaven’s height

The seed so robust and fertile
A shell encased with human forms
The greenness of reflected sextile
Oh Sweet pea, our mirrored storm



Inspired by a stanza from Keats' poem:

I stood tip-toe upon a little hill

Here are sweet peas, on tip-toe for a flight:
With wing of gentle flush o’er delicate white,
And taper fingers catching at all things,
To bind them all about with tiny rings."

'Tis about time I said goodbye;
to thyself-t'at is but full of deceit, and lies.
Ah, just yesterday, rainbows wert snared by thy eyes;
but soon t'eir soul flickered like a flame, and died.

Ah, thee, th' son of night, and th' beauty of day;
My love for thee was, indeed, more t'an what poems canst say.
Oh, but why didst thou, with a smile so sweet,
flirt with me, as last Monday we w'rt fated t' meet?
My love, thou should'a stayed behind;
if thou wanted me not; with all t'ose secrets
thy so dearly kept and cherished, in thy mind.
I am now th' one to blame;
I am like one infinite morning, whose innocence
led me to believe in th' foreign falsehood of fame.
Ah, as how my heart jumped about like a selfish swan
Whenst thy lips silenced mine; oh, all wert just a good sign!
But how couldst thou stomp away and leave me alone?
Thou bask now, in my seedless cries, raw tears, and scorn;
Thou art cruel, cruel, cruel! Oh-thou filled me with disgust!
Thou art like disdain, and its mean garden;
Yes, thou art a semblance of whose ungratefulness!
Ungrateful and smeared with greedy terror;
Sending sane souls and spines about running with tremor;
And in which t'ere are neither flowers, nor hills, nor mountains
Everything is glaring; everything is burnt-
and under a nightless sky, a pitiful; yet irregular sky,
With rage thou shalt destruct my lavender;
thou art now an enemy, but yesterday a fake lover!
Ah, canst I believe it not-how I first came to love thee,
whenst thou wert just but a soulless entity!
Oh, how stupid I was-yes, too credulous and insipid;
for falling for a mask so infamous, and putrid.
I am now turning away-hopefully I am still late not,
and towards a better lover my whole conscience canst afford.

Ah, thee, but at today's moonless dawn
I sprang from sleep whenst I rigidly dreamed of thee;
I had hoped t'at thy shadow would never show
But kept it venturing to stay t'ere and haunt me.
How I would mock things t'at are stubborn;
t'ese hath I vowed, so deeply and heartily-
ever since I first was born.
Thou art a wicked, wicked witch;
thou treated me like litter;
like I was but a gouty piece of filth.
Thou art bright not, like th' river,
but th' sinned soil and clawed greenness under;
thou art not th' glow thou used to be,
ah, neither art thou th' angel t'at spoke and joked with me.
Thou art mean, mean, mean;
thou art a mean man and creature altogether;
Thou wert once part of my breath;
but now even thinking of thee
shalt goodly fill me with dread, and images
of erotically defeated triumph;
and flavourless, ye' anonymous, death.
But even if thou wert to die, I would grieve not;
for thou art not worthy of any more of my tears;
instead I would raise my hands and sweetly thank our dear Lord;
for returning my pride; and destroying my wounded fears.

Thou shalt from now on-liveth in my mind not,
and in which, in t'is most dignified, though absurd, conscience-
I sweareth t'at thee canst no more rejoice;
for I prefer stopping our unfinished story short;
and I detest now, every bit of thy flesh,
much less th' delusive meanness of thy voice.
Thou art to me but a bad dream,
and thy presence is even less meaningless
t'an a lad's pleading ghost;
Thou art trapped in stillness, as thou may seem,
ah, and may thy sins lead thee only, in th' years
to come, to thy worst.
Thou art worthy not of t'is grand earth!
In a marred graveyard should thy now dwellest,
'fore ruining thyself more, and makest all thy sins 'ven worse.
Ah, thou who art not a being of neither th' West nor East;
as even in God's mind, thou should be th' least,
I dread thee as how His Majesty spurns a fiend;
thou art neither my lover, nor playmate, nor any friend.

I hope by t'is poem th' world shalt see;
how notorious and vicious thou hath been
to one sinless me.
I am just a writer, with t'is poem in my hand-
but despite-I am just a woman, a fragile, and sometimes
infantile; lover and friend.
A lover, to a man worthy of my love;
a loyal friend, to all fellows-thoughtful and honest;
With whom my poetic soul shalt live;
and with whose courage,
t'is loving breath shalt ever thrive, in my left years-
and ever continue to joke, gather, and laugh.

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

Helicopter in the air
Searching for those on the run
Holding the greenness of shattered glass
A tight embrace of the natural beauty

A rock tied to mine locks
Padlocked as I creep the stairway of life
Evolution of flames and fallacies
A sly that promises no tears

Compelled to paste the puzzle together
A locomotion of pieces to a system
Never to be afraid of who we are
United uniqueness to be the ones of a kind

Are we the loyal dogs who bark by the rivers?
Waiting for the tides to wash us away
Singing as the sun reflects beautiful ways
The tales of a long ago uncovers my soul

T'is silence leaps from one self to another. Betrayal, o betrayal, doth greet it-so violently and startlingly, along th' entirety of its journey! Undelightful as 'tis, but made worse by t'at hostile dubiousness. Another fact aside from its ambivalent hatefulness: recognisable to every questioning eye-is t'is downright scary on its own, with unmolested quietude, and ******, but involuntary, unspokenness. Resolutions made within undesirable ambiences! Sacrifice t'at outwardly suggests th' presence of glam profuse in rich elaboration-but bland enough! And on top of all, t'is brimming immovability, and 'tis pool of doubts is causing me but to commence feeling weary about 'tis raising thorn. How didst I send myself into ferocious wanders-about t'is airless rooms, heated like sunflowers bathing themselves to death on th' giggling surface of raging snow. Battle of nature-and war of its childlike beings! Like a stoical plant in th' midst of 'tis glittering forest; vacant and idyllic-passive and unquestioning towards th' blades of farmers t'at come to exploit 'em: with morbid and futile, savage desires for rebellious treasures-unbecoming in t'eir temporariness, and unavoidability of sincere devotion as t'ey wilt soon leave t'eir offspring bereft of t'eir provisions once more. Yet look, look how red t'eir eyes are in t'eir hunger-eccentric vivacity gloweth in t'eir eyes, but mockery governs 'em-as ruptured t'eir weak souls are, by loathsome uncertainty and severe senses of greed. How t'is consideration made aggravated; agitated my soul is-o, seriously agitated! Yes, indeed! No longer doth vanity boast away about being my pride, but th' sultry pointlessness of my power of self-esteem. How melancholy t'is life is! O, and th' raising thorn itself, th' one aforementioned so discreetly within my fourth phrase up t'ere-growing dominantly and selfishly-aye! every day, is unlikely to be abashed by any remorseful incarceration, or stony suicidal attempts hurled by t'ose disgraceful beings out t'ere; but in t'is case, yon disgracefulness is comprised of grateful swarms of exquisite laughter, divine in its own roots, like th' sacred nook of a moonlit river. And how t'ere, on its most godlike slice of rock-so dearly scented by nature and innocent greenness-a sight be so dear to my longing eyes, shalt thou dwell with thy poems, and heart trembling with thy fullness of passion. For me, yes, for me, selfishly! O, my love! Cannot help I uttering thy name-thy very name, whom I am undeniably besotted with, like a feverish storm mooning over its lifelike sea, and whose eager cruelty so invincibly blanched by 'tis romantic tides-gone as it is, in just a seeming couple of cordial seconds! My love, whose name is so unmistakably dear to my heart, and indisputably belongs to 'tis greedy layers-ambitious, my love, desirous of,  and bland to solely th' dormant rains of thy love! O, t'ose pristine tears of blessings t'at are volatile but decorative to my half life-for thou art unarguably th' other half of me! And splendid in t'is very breath, t'at recognition t'en beats furiously along with t'is frail voyage of my humanness-grounded inevitably by unremarkable velocity are my wheels, and sometimes imprisoned in helplessness amidst th' pursuit of my fierce dreaming. But I admire 'tis core-as it is but thy warm, genial slumber; and 'tis skin is but th' very depths wherein I conceal my very whole love for thee. My love, my darling! If only thou wert here-yes, here, querida, to indulge t'is pr'saic quietude, shalt I shrink into nothing but a piece of thy fallen star; and t'ese feeble hands shalt t'en thou own, just as thy heart I should'th won.

SELECTED FROM THE IRISH NOVELISTS

THERE was a green branch hung with many a bell
When her own people ruled this tragic Eire;
And from its murmuring greenness, calm of Faery,
A Druid kindness, on all hearers fell.
It charmed away the merchant from his guile,
And turned the farmer's memory from his cattle,
And hushed in sleep the roaring ranks of battle:
And all grew friendly for a little while.
Ah, Exiles wandering over lands and seas,
And planning, plotting always that some morrow
May set a stone upon ancestral Sorrow!
I also bear a bell-branch full of ease.
I tore it from green boughs winds tore and tossed
Until the sap of summer had grown weary!
I tore it from the barren boughs of Eire,
That country where a man can be so crossed;
Can be so battered, badgered and destroyed
That he's a loveless man:  gay bells bring laughter
That shakes a mouldering cobweb from the rafter;
And yet the saddest chimes are best enjoyed.
Gay bells or sad, they bring you memories
Of half-forgotten innocent old places:
We and our bitterness have left no traces
On Munster grass and Connemara skies.

The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry
Came loud, -and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
’Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny ***** and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birthplace, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man’s only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor’s face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger’s face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My playmate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the interspersed vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

I have produced tons of intimate letters; none of them are real. They are true in just an uncertain sense; they don't lie in the hands of any liberty. The whole of them; the utter, entire thoroughness! Sad, I know. Most of them are of no interest to anyone but my heart. My only heart. That sings in horrid uncertainty and unloved freedom. My love, my darling, the second half of my being - is lost, and will forever lay out there, astray. The very own flower of my being. My sin, my soul. The dearest letter of my sacrifice, inner thoughts, depth, and pleasure. It is my mistake, I know; my fault as it has always been, to be unable to desist from my loving feelings. I can't resist the eagerness I feel whenever I am close to him; when I can hear his thoughts, when I listen to his distant heartbeat. How I am addicted to, and obsessed with the sensation - the ****** warmth, and vibration when I catch his agile sight in my vicinity, in the polished blandness of my greedy solitude. O, how I feverishly long for more, as always! I who can't hinder myself from moving about in peculiarity - just to cast a glance at him, as bizarre a loving curiosity as it might possibly be! I who but feel forlorn when he is not around, when his pulses are unseen, hideously invisible, encroached by silence and chaos of the day - vicious but all of these to my sight! How undear! How I am unbelievably hungry for which, so ravenous as I am, it becomes no longer a singular desire to me. I am afraid I shall be accustomed to this singularity; what a simultaneous treachery that shall be trampled upon, and grossly abashed - with acute meticulousness and strands of powerful lamentation. I am so greedy about my destiny - for I believe utterly that he is the sole bird, and butterfly of my life! My butterfly, o guileless butterfly, who is as frail as a stem of lavender, scented as it was by nature's comely quietness, sickly it may be, in facing the relapse of its wrong and evil doings. He is my swan, his beautiful wings never relent although deeply wounded; he flies away from tragedy and blends swiftly into harmony. Tragic but true! As I may never be worthy of his love, he is the manifestation of my princely dream; he lives in the dreamland, the haven in which his stately princess resides; he belongs to her, and only her that is deserving of his affection. Like a desiccated lake, from its long sleep now awake, I will be the thirsty snow when spring comes to life, and greets the bashful moon aloft! I am the weeping window to all this solitude, I care for no life beneath; I dwell on the tedious edges of my prince's marriage. Frames of beauty, paints of greenness, and all those gracious perks of womanliness; all belong to his wife, and carved under her name. Not my name; awfully not, and shan't ever be. The stars sneer at it; the skies none but spurn it for its undesired but designated misfortune. Hurtful as it is but I pray that Heaven watch my steps! As to this I am but cursed and shied away from his love, o, in this drear I am like a lifeless tree when the roots are old and severed. My branches are tired and longing to embrace death; call for it so that it can come to lull them soon, from amongst the hills! I am one of its deadly shadows that makes fate even more haunting to myself! My remains afterwards are not missed by the angry earth - they are sullied so it despises my leaves, thorns, and bushes; thus my fruits will wither without proper notice; I am praising myself, with these words, to no avail! Defying my fate is indeed of no advantage! I will yell but at nothingness, I am dull and unspoken, my unfortunate thoughts are boldly sounded in the murky state of no astonishment. I am a haunting melody to a giddy song! I am not for anyone's possession, pathetic as I am; my soul can't help falling in someone's grace, in this wondrous breaths of hesitation! O but I detest it! This desire, this flame, and all their demonic flutes - those soulless songs! I can't help passionately and tenderly loving him; and his ecstatic features that nature has been so proud of! I who love him with all the might of my joy, as awkward as it might be, I long but for the rainbow in his eyes - the rainbow that duly reminds me, of how warm the sun used to be! O I love thee, I dearly love thee, my sweet, the prince of my soul! I love thee so gently, I love thee bluntly, frankly, and unconditionally. My love for thee is vivid, mortal, and pretty; I love thee graciously, I love thee gratefully, and so childishly! I love thee selfishly, but it is just because of my faith in thee, my generous, loyal faith! As I have professed utterly - I love a man but only thee, thee who rules my soul, whom I so awfully adore, needst, and care about. My kingst is thee, this I admit with all the power of constitution; strengths and weaknesses; and sincerity of my comeliest gratitude. Thou art the sole lad, master, and conquerer of my soul! The solidity of my being, poems of my tongue, and joyful veins of my blood; thou feedst my life, mind, and sanity! I love thee as how a woman loves a man; I love thee not as my guidance, no more! Therefore I shall choose thee, only thee, and as irrevocable as this love is to be, no matter how strong I restrain; I'd only love thee once again.

There was a green branch hung with many a bell
When her own people ruled this tragic Eire;
And from its murmuring greenness, calm of Faery,
A Druid kindness, on all hearers fell.

It charmed away the merchant from his guile,
And turned the farmer's memory from his cattle,
And hushed in sleep the roaring ranks of battle:
And all grew friendly for a little while.

Ah, Exiles wandering over lands and seas,
And planning, plotting always that some morrow
May set a stone upon ancestral Sorrow!
I also bear a bell-branch full of ease.

I tore it from green boughs winds tore and tossed
Until the sap of summer had grown weary!
I tore it from the barren boughs of Eire,
That country where a man can be so crossed;

Can be so battered, badgered and destroyed
That he's a loveless man:  gay bells bring laughter
That shakes a mouldering cobweb from the rafter;
And yet the saddest chimes are best enjoyed.

Gay bells or sad, they bring you memories
Of half-forgotten innocent old places:
We and our bitterness have left no traces
On Munster grass and Connemara skies.

TO A GREEN THOUGHT IN A GREEN SHADE

The rose appeared
as if it had been created

that very morning
that very instant.

It's newness almost
shining.

Grass seemed to have fallen
out of a sky

like little green rain
piercing the earth

blade after blade after blade
delighting in its very greenness.

Dandelions and daises
dancing together

sharing the same lane
with the early worms.

All meeting
as equals.

Not a Garden
in Eden- but Guildford

humble in its own
creation.

This moment plucked
from many many moments

as the one to be
remembered.

Time and Infinity
getting it together

eclipsing the fact
that this is

an ordinary 25th of
whatever

turning into
a forever.

I
Ancestral Houses
SURELY among a rich man s flowering lawns,
Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
Life overflows without ambitious pains;
And rains down life until the basin spills,
And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
As though to choose whatever shape it wills
And never stoop to a mechanical
Or servile shape, at others' beck and call.
Mere dreams, mere dreams! Yet Homer had not Sung
Had he not found it certain beyond dreams
That out of life's own self-delight had sprung
The abounding glittering jet; though now it seems
As if some marvellous empty sea-shell flung
Out of the obscure dark of the rich streams,
And not a fountain, were the symbol which
Shadows the inherited glory of the rich.
Some violent bitter man, some powerful man
Called architect and artist in, that they,
Bitter and violent men, might rear in stone
The sweetness that all longed for night and day,
The gentleness none there had ever known;
But when the master's buried mice can play.
And maybe the great-grandson of that house,
For all its bronze and marble, 's but a mouse.
O what if gardens where the peacock strays
With delicate feet upon old terraces,
Or else all Juno from an urn displays
Before the indifferent garden deities;
O what if levelled lawns and gravelled ways
Where slippered Contemplation finds his ease
And Childhood a delight for every sense,
But take our greatness with our violence?
What if the glory of escutcheoned doors,
And buildings that a haughtier age designed,
The pacing to and fro on polished floors
Amid great chambers and long galleries, lined
With famous portraits of our ancestors;
What if those things the greatest of mankind
Consider most to magnify, or to bless,
But take our greatness with our bitterness?

II
My House
An ancient bridge, and a more ancient tower,
A farmhouse that is sheltered by its wall,
An acre of stony ground,
Where the symbolic rose can break in flower,
Old ragged elms, old thorns innumerable,
The sound of the rain or sound
Of every wind that blows;
The stilted water-hen
Crossing Stream again
Scared by the splashing of a dozen cows;
A winding stair, a chamber arched with stone,
A grey stone fireplace with an open hearth,
A candle and written page.
Il Penseroso's Platonist toiled on
In some like chamber, shadowing forth
How the daemonic rage
Imagined everything.
Benighted travellers
From markets and from fairs
Have seen his midnight candle glimmering.
Two men have founded here.  A man-at-arms
Gathered a score of horse and spent his days
In this tumultuous spot,
Where through long wars and sudden night alarms
His dwinding score and he seemed castaways
Forgetting and forgot;
And I, that after me
My ****** heirs may find,
To exalt a lonely mind,
Befitting emblems of adversity.

III
My Table
Two heavy trestles, and a board
Where Sato's gift, a changeless sword,
By pen and paper lies,
That it may moralise
My days out of their aimlessness.
A bit of an embroidered dress
Covers its wooden sheath.
Chaucer had not drawn breath
When it was forged.  In Sato's house,
Curved like new moon, moon-luminous
It lay five hundred years.
Yet if no change appears
No moon; only an aching heart
Conceives a changeless work of art.
Our learned men have urged
That when and where 'twas forged
A marvellous accomplishment,
In painting or in pottery, went
From father unto son
And through the centuries ran
And seemed unchanging like the sword.
Soul's beauty being most adored,
Men and their business took
Me soul's unchanging look;
For the most rich inheritor,
Knowing that none could pass Heaven's door,
That loved inferior art,
Had such an aching heart
That he, although a country's talk
For silken clothes and stately walk.
Had waking wits; it seemed
Juno's peacock screamed.

IV
My Descendants
Having inherited a vigorous mind
From my old fathers, I must nourish dreams
And leave a woman and a man behind
As vigorous of mind, and yet it seems
Life scarce can cast a fragrance on the wind,
Scarce spread a glory to the morning beams,
But the torn petals strew the garden plot;
And there's but common greenness after that.
And what if my descendants lose the flower
Through natural declension of the soul,
Through too much business with the passing hour,
Through too much play, or marriage with a fool?
May this laborious stair and this stark tower
Become a roofless min that the owl
May build in the cracked masonry and cry
Her desolation to the desolate sky.
The primum Mobile that fashioned us
Has made the very owls in circles move;
And I, that count myself most prosperous,
Seeing that love and friendship are enough,
For an old neighbour's friendship chose the house
And decked and altered it for a girl's love,
And know whatever flourish and decline
These stones remain their monument and mine.
V
The Road at My Door
An affable Irregular,
A heavily-built Falstaffian man,
Comes cracking jokes of civil war
As though to die by gunshot were
The finest play under the sun.
A brown Lieutenant and his men,
Half dressed in national uniform,
Stand at my door, and I complain
Of the foul weather, hail and rain,
A pear-tree broken by the storm.
I count those feathered ***** of soot
The moor-hen guides upon the stream.
To silence the envy in my thought;
And turn towards my chamber, caught
In the cold snows of a dream.

VI
The Stare's Nest by My Window
The bees build in the crevices
Of loosening masonry, and there
The mother birds bring grubs and flies.
My wall is loosening; honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the state.
We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty; somewhere
A man is killed, or a house burned,
Yet no cleat fact to be discerned:
Come build in he empty house of the stare.
A barricade of stone or of wood;
Some fourteen days of civil war;
Last night they trundled down the road
That dead young soldier in his blood:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.
We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart's grown brutal from the fare;
More Substance in our enmities
Than in our love; O honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

VII
I see Phantoms of Hatred and of the Heart's
Fullness and of the Coming Emptiness
I climb to the tower-top and lean upon broken stone,
A mist that is like blown snow is sweeping over all,
Valley, river, and elms, under the light of a moon
That seems unlike itself, that seems unchangeable,
A glittering sword out of the east.  A puff of wind
And those white glimmering fragments of the mist
sweep by.
Frenzies bewilder, reveries perturb the mind;
Monstrous familiar images swim to the mind's eye.
"Vengeance upon the murderers,' the cry goes up,
"Vengeance for Jacques Molay.' In cloud-pale rags, or
in lace,
The rage-driven, rage-tormented, and rage-hungry troop,
Trooper belabouring trooper, biting at arm or at face,
Plunges towards nothing, arms and fingers spreading
wide
For the embrace of nothing; and I, my wits astray
Because of all that senseless tumult, all but cried
For vengeance on the murderers of Jacques Molay.
Their legs long, delicate and slender, aquamarine their
eyes,
Magical unicorns bear ladies on their backs.
The ladies close their musing eyes.  No prophecies,
Remembered out of Babylonian almanacs,
Have closed the ladies' eyes, their minds are but a pool
Where even longing drowns under its own excess;
Nothing but stillness can remain when hearts are full
Of their own sweetness, bodies of their loveliness.
The cloud-pale unicorns, the eyes of aquamarine,
The quivering half-closed eyelids, the rags of cloud or
of lace,
Or eyes that rage has brightened, arms it has made lean,
Give place to an indifferent multitude, give place
To brazen hawks.  Nor self-delighting reverie,
Nor hate of what's to come, nor pity for what's gone,
Nothing but grip of claw, and the eye's complacency,
The innumerable clanging wings that have put out the
moon.
I turn away and shut the door, and on the stair
Wonder how many times I could have proved my
worth
In something that all others understand or share;
But O! ambitious heart, had such a proof drawn forth
A company of friends, a conscience set at ease,
It had but made us pine the more.  The abstract joy,
The half-read wisdom of daemonic images,
Suffice the ageing man as once the growing boy.

I found thee againeth t'is evening-
Bathed in naughty candlelight!
Son of th' moon, knight of th' night-
dance again, as th' day's closing!

Look how th' fir tree starts smiling-
beneath t'ose winds, t'ose hailing winds!
And 'tis force smooth on thy young skin-
as ****** as t'is pretty spring.

Swim, swim againeth in my gay soul!
O how happiness thou but spit-
into my life's dark and bland pit.
Tame as th' deer, sweet as th' foal.

And benign be t'ese stubborn horns-
by songs t'at cheer as on thou hum.
Love t'at spreads through th' airless room;
like flowers t'at nourish their thorns.

T'at tangled bush of jealousy
Swarms of grief and studied envy
All melt'd away on'th sight of thee;
like foliage and its brown tree.

And o, how thy gaze charmed me more!
Gaily didst I stretch like a rose-
or princess in an epic prose!
Ah, t'at handsome face and suit thou wore.

I smileth and stareth at th' ceiling
Composeth t'is love poem is silence.
To myself but I kept chuckling-
upon thy merry remembrance.

How I still love thee-and want thee!
'Tis still thee t'at could giveth me warmth.
One to be cradled in my arms-
my half flesh and true destiny!

Thou art my hue and sweet rainbow
Shots of purplish and violet haze.
But th' streets are a fiendish maze;
Not I seeth thee from my window.

O, and as I layeth on my pillow
Well of smoothness and pure whiteness-
unhastened by dreams and madness!
'Gain I wasth struck by'a love arrow!

I loveth thee, I loveth thee alone
Thou art th' wealth of my stories-
guilt t'at befriends fears and worries.
It's thy heart t'at I should hath won!

Selfish, o might be I but sound
To claim thee as my own mercy!
My foreign hopes and lunacy-
but not austere as t'ey might'th found.

And t'is confession doth I make-
beforeth our sky and dear'st heavens!
Undereth th' whisper of lanterns-
when all asleep ye' I'm awake.

My thee, my thee, come back to me!
Fix just on me thy glance once more-
t'ose tender eyes, just like before!
Lips grand with raw vivacity.

I'll be right t'ere-my love, my love,
waitin' for a red fallen star.
Then thou wilt cometh down from afar-
and fly my wan soul like a dove.

Fulleth of love is th' May summer,
greenness in'th front yard of the church.
And blissful am I like a birch-
as thou tied my heart one gay noon.

And raiseth I in cheers and splendour;
as thou awe me with thy fond spell!
Then joy shalt become our dell-
and love our prosperous harbour.

You notice the browning leaves,
Early victims,
In midsummer
Late July and August
And they parallel our love
Crisping stale edges
Edging inward
Inward to where growing used to be
I blame the sun
The sun of truth
Blasting unmercifully on our greenness
And returning us to the soil
Of amorous compost.

I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numbed too much for hopes or fears.
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.

My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall--the sap of spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perished thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.

There was a green branch hung with many a bell
When her own people ruled this tragic Eire;
And from its murmuring greenness, calm of Faery,
A Druid kindness, on all hearers fell.

It charmed away the merchant from his guile,
And turned the farmer's memory from his cattle,
And hushed in sleep the roaring ranks of battle:
And all grew friendly for a little while.

Ah, Exiles wandering over lands and seas,
And planning, plotting always that some morrow
May set a stone upon ancestral Sorrow!
I also bear a bell-branch full of ease.

I tore it from green boughs winds tore and tossed
Until the sap of summer had grown weary!
I tore it from the barren boughs of Eire,
That country where a man can be so crossed;

Can be so battered, badgered and destroyed
That he's a loveless man:  gay bells bring laughter
That shakes a mouldering cobweb from the rafter;
And yet the saddest chimes are best enjoyed.

Gay bells or sad, they bring you memories
Of half-forgotten innocent old places:
We and our bitterness have left no traces
On Munster grass and Connemara skies.

I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numb'd too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimm'd with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.
My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall--the sap of Spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.

My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perish'd thing;
Melt and remould it, till it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.

When the feud
transmigrated into the mind
the greenness of the poetry
has seared.
Though the seasons
Passed by,
The shoots haven’t seen.

I
He was intoxicated
by the scent of coffee
dancing in the morning
to his mother’s humming.
II
Then a blacksmith - his father -
taught him how to hammer
form out of chaos
in the muddle of force
and a sweaty anvil.
III
Now if he wished to see
the sunness of the sun
and the greenness of the tree
he would summon the image
of Fatma - an Arab maiden
who was once Berber,
to come write on his face
with her soothing finger:
“Salam, my anguished lover.”
IV
When green-eyed Fatma comes
the wreaths of coffee
Would come with her,
writing in the air;
and all the songs of history
would come marching too,
in battle array,
like an army dressed
in civilian clothing
for a dance in Rio.
V
Fatma’s hair –
a still cascade
of light goldness,
a tide of watery fire,
a flight motionless
of a millon birds who
sing in tongues
and laugh
to the stone unlettered
of his fidgety cenotaph.

© LazharBouazzi, Carthage, TUN

The springs bracken fronds swish and sway and yet there is no wind
Lying on the soft verdant grass and observing the fern, there is movement
From between the intense greenness appears a black nose followed by a snout
Shades of grey, with a little black and as the head with observant eyes appears
There is white, although a ***** one, for it is Badger who appears
No announcement, no fanfare, in fact quite the opposite, for he has much to fear
His strong shoulders follow through as he pushes out into the field
He has a muscular body, built for digging and his nose snuffles as he tests the air
Behind him, but a little shy, his sow close by his heels as she enters the scene
For a moment both stand shoulder to shoulder, their noses both a quiver
He is first; he shuffles off into the meadow in search of food, worms and snails
The sow is wary, and well so as her cubs join her at the edge of uncertainty
They, a boy and a girl are not so worried, for life to them is full if surprises now
But they have not yet met the many who would take them for their dinner
Their mother and father are a different game, but presently Fox would like a go
There is weasel and stoat and owl floats above with buzzard and hawk
These hunters all like a youngster of any breed, and if there was chance of dinner
And so, as they gambol and play upon the grasses, their mother stands on watch
These cubs, they must be taught, taught playing does not feed their stomachs
Taught that food is not free and must be hunted each and every night or die
And the food they seek, there are also many others who feel their need to gorge
With one eye above, mother seeks the juicy worm, and tries to teach her cubs
Her youngsters eat all she can deliver, fat juicy snails and the odd slug or two
And then, upon the air although very scant, a smell most awful and rank
It would appear the lord of the hedgerow is nearby, and he will be out hunting
He wears a shiny coat of red; he carries a most bushy tail and fangs of yellow
At this time of year, he will have a family of his own and need extra food
His home is not near, or the Brock badger would know and challenge
Now the sow is worried where her husband is, and if he is near to protect them
The scent becomes harder and her lips peel slowly from her teeth and she hisses
Lifting from the ground over the green grass she dimly spies a red coat skulking
The evening light is falling fast, her eyes are poor, but she can smell her enemy
She hears the pad of his paws as he draws ever near, his coat brushed by grasses
Hissing she draws her cubs to her side, the decision quickly made to fight here
Speedily they run beneath her upraised body, her scent comforting she is mother
And on comes Fox, he’s not so stealthy now, he knows he has been seen
He skirts the trio out on the meadow; he knows she cannot be guarding two
And here he thinks is a quick early evening meal, he is confident, he is Fox
Near and ready he crouches to the ground, choosing his meal with care
Now ready decision made, he rushes in, his jaws open to grab a tender morsel
His eyes are centred on one cub that wanders from his mother’s belly fur
Bam out of the blue Fox is shunted away, the brock has returned, his teeth ready
There’s a fierce tussle and this Fox learns his lesson, to leave Brocks children alone
The male Badger returns his teeth bloodied, his teeth full of fur, but triumphant
His wife greets him, his cubs adore him, then he leads them back to the bracken in the night.

she dreamed of trees that night
      branches of bone and glowing webs
flowers of flesh in a slow stir
      irises for leaves and claws as thorns

silver mosquitoes flew in the sky
      foliage trembling as they passed
proboscises with skewered humans
      fresh blood dripping, watering the moors

she ran to hide in cave of glass
      saw pale green skin, petals all around
two eyes rooted in golden wood
      weeping pollen and sap

Square planes of glass separate me from the bristling trees,
as tall as they seem,
bursting from the ground the glasses flicker,
then gleam.
Striped like the thick rings,
they sing they sing they sing.
Hiking by myself,
gazing at clean air and a sense of free fall.
See the bay across the way.
Let the greenness seep into my weary clothes
and now I know
how these square planes of grass see,
(through me…)

I
He was intoxicated
by the scent of the coffee
dancing in the morning
to his mother’s humming.
II
Then a blacksmith - his father -
taught him how to hammer
form out of chaos
in the muddle of force
and a sweaty anvil.
III
Now if he wished to see
the sunness of Sun
and the greenness of Tree
he would summon the specter
of an Arab maiden - Fatma -
who was once Berber
to come write on his face
with her soothing finger:
“Salam, my anguished lover.”
IV
When green-eyed Fatma comes
the wreaths of coffee
Would come with her
writing in the air;
and all the songs of history
would come marching too,
in battle array,
like an army dressed
in civilian clothes
for a dance in Rio.
V
Fatma’s hair –
a still cascade
of thin goldeness,
a tide of watery fire,
a flight motionless  
of a million birds who
speak in tongues
and laugh
to the stone unlettered
of his fidgety cenotaph .

© LazharBouazzi, Carthage, TUN, August 27, 2016

How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! ev’n as the flowers in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away
Like snows in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.

Who would have thought my shrivelled heart
Could have recovered greenness? It was gone
Quite under ground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown;
Where they together
All the hard weather,
Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

These are thy wonders, Lord of power,
Killing and quick’ning, bringing down to hell
And up to heaven in an hour;
Making a chiming of a passing-bell.
We say amiss,
This or that is:
Thy word is all, if we could spell.

O that I once past changing were,
Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!
Many a spring I shoot up fair,
Off’ring at heav’n, growing and groaning thither:
Nor doth my flower
Want a spring shower,
My sins and I joining together.

But while I grow in a straight line,
Still upwards bent, as if heav’n were mine own,
Thy anger comes, and I decline:
What frost to that? What pole is not the zone,
Where all things burn,
When thou dost turn,
And the least frown of thine is shown?

And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: O my only light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom thy tempests fell all night.

These are thy wonders, Lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide;
Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us, where to bide.
Who would be more,
Swelling through store,
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.

One of these days, I'll move out of this place.
The Greyness making saving throws at my shadow, but my resolve concrete, and my vision clear, each step away being a decision. 
The television will dim, and the sun'll get hotter. 
And my skin will be tanner. 
And I'll smoke more of everything. 

One day we'll be sitting in my backyard, laughing at ourselves, for ever thinking we were "far away from this." 
We'll marvel at the greenness of the grass and the blueness of the sky and the anger of the heat and the deception of the trees. 
We'll argue about whether thirty can be as big as five can be small. 
We'll mix gin with our Newports and ash cigars into Dunkin Brand Styrofoam. 
The memories will blur, but the lessons stand steadfast. 

One day is often quite a few days away. 
Quite a few rounds of poker, about a thousand movies, a couple billion YouTube clips, and at least three unfinished projects. 
The slime gets thicker every day, and we're never given the assurance that our boots can take the inevitable torment. 
But once in a while, I can think of the future. 
I get stuck on tracing the outline you'll have two years from now, coloring it in with shades of pink and red paint, and writing your name over it in grease and alcohol. 
Hoping to make the image as permanent as the ringing of someone perpetually calling out for you, reappropriating all the muted spaces in my head.
And hearing it shouted, again and again, and seeing it written in places unseen, can somehow make one day seem more like tomorrow.