"noiselessly" poems
The line didn't move, though there were not
many people in it. In a half-hearted light
the lone agent dealt patiently, noiselessly, endlessly
with a large dazed family ranging
from twin toddlers in strollers to an old lady
in a bent wheelchair. Their baggage
was all in cardboard boxes. The plane was delayed,
the rumor went through the line. We shrugged,
in our hopeless overcoats. Aviation
had never seemed a very natural idea.
Bored children floated with faces drained of blood.
The girls in the tax-free shops stood frozen
amid promises of a beautiful life abroad.
Louis Armstrong sang in some upper corner,
a trickle of ignored joy.
Outside, in an unintelligible darkness
that stretched to include the rubies of strip malls,
winged behemoths prowled looking for the gates
where they could bury their koala-bear noses
and **** our dimming dynamos dry.
Boys in floppy sweatshirts and backward hats
slapped their feet ostentatiously
while security attendants giggled
and the voice of a misplaced angel melodiously
parroted FAA regulations. Women in saris
and kimonos dragged, as their penance, behind them
toddlers clutching Occidental teddy bears,
and chair legs screeched in the food court
while ill-paid wraiths mopped circles of night
into the motionless floor.
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I gave the hero of this story trust
issues. So that when his castle fell he
wouldn't worry about the damsel still
calling from the ramparts, where I hold court
in the dust. For this is my battlefield
where the headstones will read like love letters
and the weeds will serve as the royal seal.
I gave the hero of this story hope
a magic bean and two old china cups.
But the china, brittle, the bean rotten
as these once fertile lands lie waterlogged.
You can't grow your crops here, boy, go home.
I'll drown this hero before he can stand
the sight of the muddy bank. A hero's death.
I gave the hero of this story bread
water, and melody. To help him sleep
soundly and noiselessly, still. Arms, pillows
sway to the metronome of the city
beating such a heroic retreat. Stand
with fingers touching, childlike and brave.
Until the next wave comes and holds. It breaks.
Jan 4, 2010
Jan 4, 2010 at 10:34 AM UTC
Yahya Kemal Beyatli translations
Yahya Kemal Beyatli (1884-1958) was a Turkish poet, editor, columnist and historian, as well as a politician and diplomat. Born born Ahmet Âgâh, he wrote under the pen names Agâh Kemal, Esrar, Mehmet Agâh, and Süleyman Sadi. He served as Turkey’s ambassador to Poland, Portugal and Pakistan.
Sessiz Gemi (“Silent Ship”)
by Yahya Kemal Beyatli
loose translation by Nurgül Yayman and Michael R. Burch
for the refugees
The time to weigh anchor has come;
a ship departing harbor slips quietly out into the unknown,
cruising noiselessly, its occupants already ghosts.
No flourished handkerchiefs acknowledge their departure;
the landlocked mourners stand nurturing their grief,
scanning the bleak horizon, their eyes blurring...
Poor souls! Desperate hearts! But this is hardly the last ship departing!
There is always more pain to unload in this sorrowful life!
The hesitations of lovers and their belovèds are futile,
for they cannot know where the vanished are bound.
Many hopes must be quenched by the distant waves,
since years must pass, and no one returns from this journey.
Full Moon
by Yahya Kemal Beyatli
loose translation by Nurgül Yayman and Michael R. Burch
You are so lovely
the full moon just might
delight
in your rising,
as curious
and bright,
to vanquish night.
But what can a mortal man do,
dear,
but hope?
I’ll ponder your mysteries
and (hmmmm) try to
cope.
We both know
you have every right to say no.
The Music of the Snow
by Yahya Kemal Beyatli
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
This melody of a night lasting longer than a thousand years!
This music of the snow supposed to last for thousand years!
Sorrowful as the prayers of a secluded monastery,
It rises from a choir of a hundred voices!
As the organ’s harmonies resound profoundly,
I share the sufferings of Slavic grief.
Then my mind drifts far from this city, this era,
To the old records of Tanburi Cemil Bey.
Now I’m suddenly overjoyed as once again I hear,
With the ears of my heart, the purest sounds of Istanbul!
Thoughts of the snow and darkness depart me;
I keep them at bay all night with my dreams!
Translator’s notes: “Slavic grief” because Beyatli wrote this poem while in Warsaw, serving as Turkey’s ambassador to Poland, in 1927. Tanburi Cemil Bey was a Turkish composer. Keywords/Tags: Beyatli, Agah, Kemal, Esrar, Turkish, translation, Turkey, silent, ship, anchor, harbor, ghosts, grief, Istanbul, moon, music, snow
Oct 30, 2020
Oct 30, 2020 at 4:28 AM UTC
At the last, tenderly,
From the walls of the powerful, fortress’d house,
From the clasp of the knitted locks—from the keep of the well-closed doors,
Let me be wafted.
Let me glide noiselessly forth;
With the key of softness unlock the locks—with a whisper
Set ope the doors, O soul!
Tenderly! be not impatient!
(Strong is your hold, O mortal flesh!
Strong is your hold, O love!)
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**My dad suddenly walks in,
as if nothing has happened,
and he hasn't gone anywhere, leaving
six of us behind, notwithstanding-
all these years of absence and
pain unimaginable that changed us all
to see life in a new light that gets dim
without the lamp he held in front of us.
A shadow transparent gets in to the room,
he stands near mom sitting inside her cocoon,
lost in an ancient evening, pensive, forlorn
as if she feels an absence, tangible right there.
Dad's absence stands silent, perhaps
curiously looking at her with loving eyes
that's how he was, after a period of absence.
The pantomime, tears my sense of reality
in to shreds, I sit upright,
with my hands pressed against my palpitating heart.
Do I see it really or hallucinate him looking,
wistfully at the coconut groves dancing
beyond the extending rice paddy billowing,
in front of our farm yard, sleepy these days,
for a moment I think time has
taken liberty to flow back
and everything is right there
where we'd love it to be.
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The absence was a hollow,
in the middle of everything,
breaking the mirror of reality
in to smithereens, the dark space,
in between sprang-
opening its mouth to swallow,
wherever one turned,
it stood in front defiantly,
posing a challenge at times,
it came behind hollering noiselessly,
bringing unbearable memories,
from moments hard to forget
spent in his company,
in my palmy days of yore.
3
Absence was fire within,
that needs no fuel to burn,
flood waters without a source,
that can wash away,
till one becomes nothing;
then little by little,
one comes in to terms with the absence
and at last it too is laid to rest,
and that eats a part of the soul,
causing bleeding in slushy green,
transparent white and blobs of sad black.**
Jan 17, 2014
Jan 17, 2014 at 8:11 AM UTC
Tonight I have no words.
I cannot grandly sweep my pen
In flowing arcs across the page,
Drawing little soft impressions
(little soft depressions)
That show how lovely pain can be.
I cannot play the great Creator
Who rips a vital pulsing mass
from out His chest,
And molds still-beating clay
With a sad old potter’s gentle hands
into a little melancholic harpist
who plucks the heartstrings perfectly.
No, I have no words that fit
Like others have made fit before,
composing language to fit all the inward lines and curves
(I once knew a few of her’s)
that twist and turn and come entwined,
(the twists and turns of long ago)
crying “Lacrimosa!” in some wee hour
as the breeze blows a lacy curtain back.
I am no Aeolian instrument
Sounding a sweet ethereal chord into the night.
I am the vacuous breath left behind in silence
When the musician’s music stops —
A tuneless referent —
An empty exclamation mark
Howling noiselessly in space,
Meaning nothing
And everything, all the same.
!
Sep 4, 2012
Sep 4, 2012 at 3:37 PM UTC
Rabbit tracks in the snow
padded foot, here we go:
Found beside a lake,
far away for you to seek.
Festivities of the fastidious,
i was all but oblivious.
Promising frostiness,
the air, alit and aglow.
Bombarding me
quietly
with parallelism,
banging noiselessly
off the fire
of the morning sunshine.
Mollified, the world
stirs in its lack of commotion.
Meek blunders of the fortnight,
i wish to forego.
My star,
faded from the sky.
You are
what brings me high.
I will
be with you,
upon
the epoch of
tomorrow’s
morn, come nigh.
Dec 10, 2011
Dec 10, 2011 at 4:12 PM UTC
Could it be that, for every year since
the day you stopped knocking
I have noiselessly slid in
a stopper, a stone, a slipper
Mistaking your reaching for the key
as a challenge, not a warning?
I've patted myself on the back
for making it out (but with a foot by the corner)
Just in case you one day decide to swing wide
and that I'm worth a thank you, come again.
May 22, 2020
May 22, 2020 at 10:11 AM UTC
*Wanton moonlight,
filtered through a fine white net
of cirrocumulous clouds,
so delighted by their caresses
splashing noiselessly
in to the blue pool,
wears an alluring tiara,
a crust created by fine foam,
does a squiggly dance
in the heart shaped pond,
where waves make beams
swing around non stop.
The silver white lilies,
one by one touched by this magic,
comes alive, open their eyes
drink from the fountain of
moonlight and join the dance.
The love pair, in their nocturnal
love games are lubricious to the core
having lost their hearts to both
the ethereal beauty and the arrows of cupid*
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 8:12 AM UTC
Good-byes bid one by one, like a row of candles
Glowing, but flickering with the most temporary relief.
The disbelief, a pathetic excuse to suffice as justification
Prove me wrong, but offer no reason or explanation,
Only lies.
Harbingers are callow cries
Marked by the change of season
Or waning of the moon,
Take your pick,
Pick the scabs
That flake away,
Like the broken air vents scratching your room
Noiselessly.
Blame the airwaves for failure,
Fail to deliver an honest example, a sample
Of blood you donated to a lost cause,
A ship without a sailor
Headed for a vacuum in the wrathful waters, bubbling blue.
Your blue
Crystalline eyes that spoke emotionlessly,
Evoking commitment devotionlessly.
My intention, apparent and there
Your attention limited to a direct, directionless stare.
A washed out jacket smelled of sweet dry sands
Concealed your regret, a heart held weak with grainy hands,
Like the hands of a clock
Or an hour glass, releasing a last tock
Before the neglected and battered boat
Caught glimpse of the welcoming flock
Of seagulls
Lounging lazily upon a desolate dock,
Waiting for the incoming tide
Relying on your "sick and pale"
Grieving orbital
That refuses to abide
By the laws of science, set
So stubbornly,
Setting itself for denial,
Demands that will never again be met,
A decision thought out without precision,
Finality embodied through
Hands waving away.
Those cleansing waves indicating disarray...
Or perhaps welcoming the sun's promising rays.
Dec 26, 2010
Dec 26, 2010 at 11:33 AM UTC
He led me down
To the confines of hell
And there I saw
I was no different than the rest
River Styx
Called me in
To swim its black waters
And I felt seaweed grab at my legs.
The sirens came
And they pull me down to the depths
I would breathe water in
Suffocating on the sea
Awaiting my turn to die
Waiting for eternity.
I saw the voices of a thousand fiendish angels
Take form in the air around me
As wars and battles and fights raged
And the clash of civilizations was among us once more.
Heroes and villains alike re-appeared and shouted noiselessly,
making the entire universe sound like the chaotic mess
that it once was and still is and will probably always be.
I followed Dante as he followed Virgil and we followed nobody down and down further into the depths.
Winged chariots came
And whisked me away
through the halls of fire
I crossed the bridge
Crumbling and tumbling down
To the caverns of stone
Rocks smashing
I’m falling and falling
Never to land.
The acrid smell of flesh burning
Fills my nostrils
the fires singe the hair off my body
and I burn in oblivion.
What deed hath I done
to earn the demons of Lady Macbeth?
Out, **** spot
Get me out
GET ME OUT
I will never breathe free air again.
The villainy you taught me, I executed
and now I am here with them and you.
I am a wanted, haunted man,
As my telltale heart beats louder and louder
Until I see the face of insanity
And realize it’s my own.
Jun 13, 2012
Jun 13, 2012 at 3:17 PM UTC
But not on a shell, she starts,
Archaic, for the sea.
But on the first-found ****
She scuds the glitters,
Noiselessly, like one more wave.
She too is discontent
And would have purple stuff upon her arms,
Tired of the salty harbors,
Eager for the brine and bellowing
Of the high interiors of the sea.
The wind speeds her,
Blowing upon her hands
And watery back.
She touches the clouds, where she goes
In the circle of her traverse of the sea.
Yet this is meagre play
In the scurry and water-shine,
As her heels foam--
Not as when the goldener ****
Of a later day
Will go, like the center of sea-green pomp,
In an intenser calm,
Scullion of fate,
Across the ***** torrent, ceaselessly,
Upon her irretrievable way.
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A weather rocket
vrooms through air
over the darkened balcony
noiselessly,
only the light speaks to us
of her urgency,
it resonates with
her and me.
Her full lips,seal mine
stops me from speaking
voicing ****** nonsense.
Mute witness now am I,
prompted to scale the peak,
she wishes, to take me.
I only can sigh to relay her moans
to register erupting pleasure
mounting to reach a brimming ecstasy.
A group of fruit bats,
(among them one, I imagine,myself)
dramatically fly scattering
to all eight directions.
A pale moon , eagerly study
their diverse trajectories,
as if she wishes the company
of any one, that would darken her door way
though by accident.
Mar 26, 2015
Mar 26, 2015 at 9:11 PM UTC
Some roads
are made to get lost in
this was one
it invited us
to wander blankly
without an agenda, without a destination
just following its undulating shady guidance
to nowhere in particular
to just walk on endlessly
sometimes noiselessly
sometimes talking nineteen to the dozen
but always moving
deeper and deeper
further along its contours
it haunts my dreams yet
it surfaces as a desire from the depths of my unconscious
this road,
and
that walk
when we got lost
- Vijayalakshmi Harish
18.01.2013
Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish
Jan 18, 2013
Jan 18, 2013 at 10:56 AM UTC
rest easy, sauntering children that inhabit these streets, marching endlessly with youthful rouge upon your cheeks. the ambient orange glow encapsulates your city's sky, enrapturing your scattered minds each night.
you search with strained and bloodshot eyes for the silver lined heavens
that hibernate behind blankets piled high and heavy with pollution.
you stalk these streaky sidewalks,
hands in your pockets, cigarettes dangling between crooked teeth,
billowing from your gaping mouths,
forever treading onward, gazing upward
at the luminous orb who emerges each evening,
floating thoughtlessly in its spiraling yellow haze,
glancing down with an occasional giggle at your mindless meanderings.
you venture through man-made parks, but make not a single mark of any personalized passing.
invisible, soundless.
walking not in the sand or the honest salt of the earth,
but on glittering concrete,
disregarding your worth.
you wandering specters, dragging your aching cancer ridden bodies through tireless voids,
fending off your tattered emotions that clasp their bony hands around your fleeting ankles,
begging you to stop, to engage. your shoes remain bare and battered,
lacking more and more sympathy for your simplified selves with each step.
you push onward, noiselessly.
your brittle fingers wrap themselves
around the spines of wine glasses-
clinking, clashing.
you smile and kiss surrounding strangers,
your loneliness ever consuming those enlightened, empty minds.
Nov 17, 2011
Nov 17, 2011 at 10:14 AM UTC
1. Plant yourself in his mind, the smallest, hidden seed,
slowly growing roots, winding noiselessly round his arteries.
Begin to sip from his water supply, soak up his minerals
become another branch of his being.
Eventually he will cling to your cancerous leaves like your roots cling to his soil.
2. Send him on a scavenger hunt for the many shards of your heart.
Forget to give him the map so he stumbles through the coils of your past,
ankles sliced open by jealous thorns, neck gnawed to bits by unseen insects.
Grant him a thank-you kiss for bringing them back to you;
watch him as he’s taping them gently back together.
Don’t tell him that he is nothing but an aspirin
swallowed to aid in healing a gunshot wound.
3. Keep him grasping at your vagueries.
Withhold comforts of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ even as he shivers in the downpour of your cynicism
instead slip in and out of his arms like silk sheets.
As his weak trembling hands try to pin you to reality once more,
remind him that you blew in like summer, and leaves have begun to rust.
Oct 16, 2012
Oct 16, 2012 at 12:33 PM UTC
You did not look like the knocking type,
but I found you standing at my door
just as I was about to shut it, knobby knuckles
ready to softly announce his arrival.
You never made much noise.
Your footsteps were whispers
on the creaking living room floor.
I never let you upstairs.
You might have stood at the
staircase a few times, but I wouldn't
remember. You never looked long enough
for me to see you.
Just like how you did not
so much as glance at the curtains
your fingers found their way to,
carefully caressing every inch of cloth
as if you had sewn them yourself.
How noiselessly your body
nestled against the hollow walls.
I can only be grateful that they
did not collapse beneath its weight,
or leave an imprint of your chest
on its peeling paint.
Feb 11, 2020
Feb 11, 2020 at 10:30 AM UTC
One head
Watches over me,
covered in scales of plenty
Like a slimy sea
Licking my own fate
Two heads
Engulf the air and circle the ground
Looking for something not found
A flammable screeching sound
Masks the rush of my heart rate
Three heads
Prevent me from moving on
Like foxes trying to con
Hoping that what I search for is gone.
They deviously begin to mate.
Six heads
Barricade like thick cement
Keeping me in tryin to prevent
Any and all things I present
Then with a promise, I sedate.
One heart
I aim for straight away
Noiselessly I stop and stay
Silencing voices I have let stray
My own victory I now can create.
May 16, 2013
May 16, 2013 at 4:49 PM UTC
To be refleshed at the end of your last true summer,
to have fingertips—not your own—pry away the old
skin and charge the nerves of the new,
how could you plan something like that?
You're in a new body and in an old house.
The window unit moans. ***** clothes cover the floor.
He's more than fingertips now. He's uncombed hair.
He's shirtless and he's breath and he's in your mouth
and the taste is sweet, familiar, and just far enough away
to turn nameless and evaporate from where all names
originate: the tongue.
But he still delivers his tongue to you, your back arching,
you're a lost instrument singing, the notes bending, the
melody transforming, until God's refrain rings and ricochets
noiselessly in the chambers of your skull.
In space there is no center, you're always off to the side.
And he's there, at your side, and you both stare at the ceiling fan
and laugh. What else can you do? He is still. You are still.
He starts to say your name. No more words. We are home.
Aug 16, 2016
Aug 16, 2016 at 12:40 AM UTC
Sunday
is a good day
for making love.
Worms surrender noiselessly,
as blackbirds shush each other
dozing dogs ignore cats curled up
by the embers of yesterday’s fire
napping as the mice enjoy a lie-in
No bustle or hustle
no papers to shuffle
no breakfast and shower and
dress and drive...
...just half-asleep
and half-alive;
floating in the hazy bay
of last night’s lazy chardonnay.
A day for calm –
no plans, no demands –
a drive, perhaps?
a walk in the park?
or maybe just toast and apple juice
and not getting dressed all day.
But for now, just turn over, snuggle up,
and kiss her behind the ear.
Yes.
Sunday
is a good day
for making love
Jan 16, 2013
Jan 16, 2013 at 2:15 PM UTC
*The sky above us is ablaze,
You can almost feel the heat
From the colors of dark orange and red.
Your presence is putting me in a daze,
And up me You lift,
With all that's being said.
The sea has quieted down,
And the wind is noiselessly
Swishing through the straws, the sand, my humid hair.
Looking deep in Your eyes I know
I can say those three words finally,
I am certain I am there.*
Jun 9, 2015
Jun 9, 2015 at 9:59 AM UTC
A for Alcoholic
she mutters noiselessly
to her cherub feigning sleep
in his night mare infested crib.
B for Brute
which her Knight
morphs into every night
inflicting invisible
whiplashes on
her now rusted dreams
C for the curse
which befell on
their marital vows
the day he first touched
the stinking bottle
D for Death
she sreams to the silent night
which comes neither to her
nor HIM...
Oct 27, 2010
Oct 27, 2010 at 6:34 AM UTC
Untouched snow calls!
Cold world claimed by the bold.
My dog stares mournfully.
Please, are you my sun?
Questions from the Moon and I.
Sleepily "I miss you".
Little asteroids,
accumulate noiselessly,
in the dark of space.
Rough road rage ahead!
I'm suing the pants off you,
spinal injury.
Creepy older boy.
Why is it you stare at me?
Am I pretty to you?
Apr 8, 2010
Apr 8, 2010 at 7:39 AM UTC