1

I am a house, says Senlin, locked and darkened,
Sealed from the sun with wall and door and blind.
Summon me loudly, and you'll hear slow footsteps
Ring far and faint in the galleries of my mind.
You'll hear soft steps on an old and dusty stairway;
Peer darkly through some corner of a pane,
You'll see me with a faint light coming slowly,
Pausing above some gallery of the brain . . .

I am a city . . . In the blue light of evening
Wind wanders among my streets and makes them fair;
I am a room of rock . . . a maiden dances
Lifting her hands, tossing her golden hair.
She combs her hair, the room of rock is darkened,
She extends herself in me, and I am sleep.
It is my pride that starlight is above me;
I dream amid waves of air, my walls are deep.

I am a door . . . before me roils the darkness,
Behind me ring clear waves of sound and light.
Stand in the shadowy street outside, and listen-
The crying of violins assails the night . . .
My walls are deep, but the cries of music pierce them;
They shake with the sound of drums . . . yet it is strange
That I should know so little what means this music,
Hearing it always within me change and change.

Knock on the door,-and you shall have an answer.
Open the heavy walls to set me free,
And blow a horn to call me into the sunlight,-
And startled, then, what a strange thing you will see!
Nuns, murderers, and drunkards, saints and sinners,
Lover and dancing girl and sage and clown
Will laugh upon you, and you will find me nowhere.
I am a room, a house, a street, a town.

2

It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning
When the light drips through the shutters like the dew,
I arise, I face the sunrise,
And do the things my fathers learned to do.
Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops
Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die,
And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet
Stand before a glass and tie my tie.

Vine leaves tap my window,
Dew-drops sing to the garden stones,
The robin chips in the chinaberry tree
Repeating three clear tones.

It is morning. I stand by the mirror
And tie my tie once more.
While waves far off in a pale rose twilight
Crash on a white sand shore.
I stand by a mirror and comb my hair:
How small and white my face!-
The green earth tilts through a sphere of air
And bathes in a flame of space.
There are houses hanging above the stars
And stars hung under a sea . . .
And a sun far off in a shell of silence
Dapples my walls for me . . .

It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning
Should I not pause in the light to remember God?
Upright and firm I stand on a star unstable,
He is immense and lonely as a cloud.
I will dedicate this moment before my mirror
To him alone, and for him I will comb my hair.
Accept these humble offerings, cloud of silence!
I will think of you as I descend the stair.

Vine leaves tap my window,
The snail-track shines on the stones,
Dew-drops flash from the chinaberry tree
Repeating two clear tones.

It is morning, I awake from a bed of silence,
Shining I rise from the starless waters of sleep.
The walls are about me still as in the evening,
I am the same, and the same name still I keep.
The earth revolves with me, yet makes no motion,
The stars pale silently in a coral sky.
In a whistling void I stand before my mirror,
Unconcerned, I tie my tie.

There are horses neighing on far-off hills
Tossing their long white manes,
And mountains flash in the rose-white dusk,
Their shoulders black with rains . . .

It is morning. I stand by the mirror
And surprise my soul once more;
The blue air rushes above my ceiling,
There are suns beneath my floor . . .

. . . It is morning, Senlin says, I ascend from darkness
And depart on the winds of space for I know not where,
My watch is wound, a key is in my pocket,
And the sky is darkened as I descend the stair.
There are shadows across the windows, clouds in heaven,
And a god among the stars; and I will go
Thinking of him as I might think of daybreak
And humming a tune I know . . .

Vine-leaves tap at the window,
Dew-drops sing to the garden stones,
The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree
Repeating three clear tones.

3

I walk to my work, says Senlin, along a street
Superbly hung in space.
I lift these mortal stones, and with my trowel
I tap them into place.
But is god, perhaps, a giant who ties his tie
Grimacing before a colossal glass of sky?

These stones are heavy, these stones decay,
These stones are wet with rain,
I build them into a wall today,
Tomorrow they fall again.

Does god arise from a chaos of starless sleep,
Rise from the dark and stretch his arms and yawn;
And drowsily look from the window at his garden;
And rejoice at the dewdrop sparkeling on his lawn?

Does he remember, suddenly, with amazement,
The yesterday he left in sleep,-his name,-
Or the glittering street superbly hung in wind
Along which, in the dusk, he slowly came?

I devise new patterns for laying stones
And build a stronger wall.
One drop of rain astonishes me
And I let my trowel fall.

The flashing of leaves delights my eyes,
Blue air delights my face;
I will dedicate this stone to god
And tap it into its place.

4

That woman-did she try to attract my attention?
Is it true I saw her smile and nod?
She turned her head and smiled . . . was it for me?
It is better to think of work or god.
The clouds pile coldly above the houses
Slow wind revolves the leaves:
It begins to rain, and the first long drops
Are slantingly blown from eaves.

But it is true she tried to attract my attention!
She pressed a rose to her chin and smiled.
Her hand was white by the richness of her hair,
Her eyes were those of a child.
It is true she looked at me as if she liked me.
And turned away, afraid to look too long!
She watched me out of the corners of her eyes;
And, tapping time with fingers, hummed a song.

. . . Nevertheless, I will think of work,
With a trowel in my hands;
Or the vague god who blows like clouds
Above these dripping lands . . .

But . . . is it sure she tried to attract my attention?
She leaned her elbow in a peculiar way
There in the crowded room . . . she touched my hand . . .
She must have known, and yet,-she let it stay.
Music of flesh! Music of root and sod!
Leaf touching leaf in the rain!
Impalpable clouds of red ascend,
Red clouds blow over my brain.

Did she await from me some sign of acceptance?
I smoothed my hair with a faltering hand.
I started a feeble smile, but the smile was frozen:
Perhaps, I thought, I misunderstood.
Is it to be conceived that I could attract her-
This dull and futile flesh attract such fire?
I,-with a trowel's dullness in hand and brain!-
Take on some godlike aspect, rouse desire?
Incredible! . . . delicious! . . . I will wear
A brighter color of tie, arranged with care,
I will delight in god as I comb my hair.

And the conquests of my bolder past return
Like strains of music, some lost tune
Recalled from youth and a happier time.
I take my sweetheart's arm in the dusk once more;
One more we climb

Up the forbidden stairway,
Under the flickering light, along the railing:
I catch her hand in the dark, we laugh once more,
I hear the rustle of silk, and follow swiftly,
And softly at last we close the door.

Yes, it is true that woman tried to attract me:
It is true she came out of time for me,
Came from the swirling and savage forest of earth,
The cruel eternity of the sea.
She parted the leaves of waves and rose from silence
Shining with secrets she did not know.
Music of dust! Music of web and web!
And I, bewildered, let her go.

I light my pipe. The flame is yellow,
Edged underneath with blue.
These thoughts are truer of god, perhaps,
Than thoughts of god are true.

5

It is noontime, Senlin says, and a street piano
Strikes sharply against the sunshine a harsh chord,
And the universe is suddenly agitated,
And pain to my heart goes glittering like a sword.
Do I imagine it? The dust is shaken,
The sunlight quivers, the brittle oak-leaves tremble.
The world, disturbed, conceals its agitation;
And I, too, will dissemble.

Yet it is sorrow has found my heart,
Sorrow for beauty, sorrow for death;
And pain twirls slowly among the trees.

The street-piano revolves its glittering music,
The sharp notes flash and dazzle and turn,
Memory's knives are in this sunlit silence,
They ripple and lazily burn.
The star on which my shadow falls is frightened,-
It does not move; my trowel taps a stone,
The sweet note wavers amid derisive music;
And I, in horror of sunlight, stand alone.

Do not recall my weakness, savage music!
Let the knives rest!
Impersonal, harsh, the music revolves and glitters,
And the notes like poniards pierce my breast.
And I remember the shadows of webs on stones,
And the sound or rain on withered grass,
And a sorrowful face that looked without illusions
At its image in the glass.

Do not recall my childhood, pitiless music!
The green blades flicker and gleam,
The red bee bends the clover, deeply humming;
In the blue sea above me lazily stream
Cloud upon thin-brown cloud, revolving, scattering;
The mulberry tree rakes heaven and drops its fruit;
Amazing sunlight sings in the opened vault
On dust and bones, and I am mute.

It is noon; the bells let fall soft flowers of sound.
They turn on the air, they shrink in the flare of noon.
It is night; and I lie alone, and watch through the window
The terrible ice-white emptiness of the moon.
Small bells, far off, spill jewels of sound like rain,
A long wind hurries them whirled and far,
A cloud creeps over the moon, my bed is darkened,
I hold my breath and watch a star.

Do not disturb my memories, heartless music!
I stand once more by a vine-dark moonlit wall,
The sound of my footsteps dies in a void of moonlight,
And I watch white jasmine fall.
Is it my heart that falls? Does earth itself
Drift, a white petal, down the sky?
One bell-note goes to the stars in the blue-white silence,
Solitary and mournful, a somnolent cry.

6

Death himself in the rain . . . death himself . . .
Death in the savage sunlight . . . skeletal death . . .
I hear the clack of his feet,
Clearly on stones, softly in dust;
He hurries among the trees
Whirling the leaves, tossing he hands from waves.
Listen! the immortal footsteps beat.

Death himself in the grass, death himself,
Gyrating invisibly in the sun,
Scatters the grass-blades, whips the wind,
Tears at boughs with malignant laughter:
On the long echoing air I hear him run.

Death himself in the dusk, gathering lilacs,
Breaking a white-fleshed bough,
Strewing purple on a cobwebbed lawn,
Dancing, dancing,
The long red sun-rays glancing
On flailing arms, skipping with hideous knees
Cavorting grotesque ecstasies:
I do not see him, but I see the lilacs fall,
I hear the scrape of knuckles against the wall,
The leaves are tossed and tremble where he plunges among them,
And I hear the sound of his breath,
Sharp and whistling, the rythm of death.

It is evening: the lights on a long street balance and sway.
In the purple ether they swing and silently sing,
The street is a gossamer swung in space,
And death himself in the wind comes dancing along it,
And the lights, like raindrops, tremble and swing.
Hurry, spider, and spread your glistening web,
For death approaches!
Hurry, rose, and open your heart to the bee,
For death approaches!
Maiden, let down your hair for the hands of your lover,
Comb it with moonlight and wreathe it with leaves,
For death approaches!

Death, huge in the star; small in the sand-grain;
Death himself in the rain,
Drawing the rain about him like a garment of jewels:
I hear the sound of his feet
On the stairs of the wind, in the sun,
In the forests of the sea . . .
Listen! the immortal footsteps beat!

7

It is noontime, Senlin says. The sky is brilliant
Above a green and dreaming hill.
I lay my trowel down. The pool is cloudless,
The grass, the wall, the peach-tree, all are still.

It appears to me that I am one with these:
A hill, upon whose back are a wall and trees.
It is noontime: all seems still
Upon this green and flowering hill.

Yet suddenly out of nowhere in the sky,
A cloud comes whirling, and flings
A lazily coiled vortex of shade on the hill.
It crosses the hill, and a bird in the peach-tree sings.
Amazing! Is there a change?
The hill seems somehow strange.
It is noontime. And in the tree
The leaves are delicately disturbed
Where the bird descends invisibly.
It is noontime. And in the pool
The sky is blue and cool.

Yet suddenly out of nowhere,
Something flings itself at the hill,
Tears with claws at the earth,
Lunges and hisses and softly recoils,
Crashing against the green.
The peach-tree braces itself, the pool is frightened,
The grass-blades quiver, the bird is still;
The wall silently struggles against the sunlight;
A terror stiffens the hill.
The trees turn rigidly, to face
Something that circles with slow pace:
The blue pool seems to shrink
From something that slides above its brink.
What struggle is this, ferocious and still-
What war in sunlight on this hill?
What is it creeping to dart
Like a knife-blade at my heart?

It is noontime, Senlin says, and all is tranquil:
The brilliant sky burns over a greenbright earth.
The peach-tree dreams in the sun, the wall is contented.
A bird in the peach-leaves, moving from sun to shadow,
Phrases again his unremembering mirth,
His lazily beautiful, foolish, mechanical mirth.

8

The pale blue gloom of evening comes
Among the phantom forests and walls
With a mournful and rythmic sound of drums.
My heart is disturbed with a sound of myriad throbbing,
Persuasive and sinister, near and far:
In the blue evening of my heart
I hear the thrum of the evening star.

My work is uncompleted; and yet I hurry,-
Hearing the whispered pulsing of those drums,-
To enter the luminous walls and woods of night.
It is the eternal mistress of the world
Who shakes these drums for my delight.
Listen! the drums of the leaves, the drums of the dust,
The delicious quivering of this air!

I will leave my work unfinished, and I will go
With ringing and certain step through the laughter of chaos
To the one small room in the void I know.
Yesterday it was there,-
Will I find it tonight once more when I climb the stair?
The drums of the street beat swift and soft:
In the blue evening of my heart
I hear the throb of the bridal star.
It weaves deliciously in my brain
A tyrannous melody of her:
Hands in sunlight, threads of rain
Against a weeping face that fades,
Snow on a blackened window-pane;
Fire, in a dusk of hair entangled;
Flesh, more delicate than fruit;
And a voice that searches quivering nerves
For a string to mute.

My life is uncompleted: and yet I hurry
Among the tinkling forests and walls of evening
To a certain fragrant room.
Who is it that dances there, to a beating of drums,
While stars on a grey sea bud and bloom?
She stands at the top of the stair,
With the lamplight on her hair.
I will walk through the snarling of streams of space
And climb the long steps carved from wind
And rise once more towards her face.
Listen! the drums of the drowsy trees
Beating our nuptial ecstasies!

Music spins from the heart of silence
And twirls me softly upon the air:
It takes my hand and whispers to me:
It draws the web of the moonlight down.
There are hands, it says, as cool as snow,
The hands of the Venus of the sea;
There are waves of sound in a mermaid-cave;-
Come-then-come with me!
The flesh of the sea-rose new and cool,
The wavering image of her who comes
At dusk by a blue sea-pool.

Whispers upon the haunted air-
Whisper of foam-white arm and thigh;
And a shower of delicate lights blown down
Fro the laughing sky! . . .
Music spins from a far-off room.
Do you remember,-it seems to say,-
The mouth that smiled, beneath your mouth,
And kissed you . . . yesterday?
It is your own flesh waits for you.
Come! you are incomplete! . . .
The drums of the universe once more
Morosely beat.
It is the harlot of the world
Who clashes the leaves like ghostly drums
And disturbs the solitude of my heart
As evening comes!

I leave my work once more and walk
Along a street that sways in the wind.
I leave these st

It is noontime, Senlin says. The sky is brilliant
Above a green and dreaming hill.
I lay my trowel down. The pool is cloudless,
The grass, the wall, the peach-tree, all are still.
It appears to me that I am one with these:
A hill, upon whose back are a wall and trees.
It is noontime: all seems still
Upon this green and flowering hill.
Yet suddenly out of nowhere in the sky,
A cloud comes whirling, and flings
A lazily coiled vortex of shade on the hill.
It crosses the hill, and a bird in the peach-tree sings.
Amazing! Is there a change?
The hill seems somehow strange.
It is noontime. And in the tree
The leaves are delicately disturbed
Where the bird descends invisibly.
It is noontime. And in the pool
The sky is blue and cool.
Yet suddenly out of nowhere,
Something flings itself at the hill,
Tears with claws at the earth,
Lunges and hisses and softly recoils,
Crashing against the green.
The peach-tree braces itself, the pool is frightened,
The grass-blades quiver, the bird is still;
The wall silently struggles against the sunlight;
A terror stiffens the hill.
The trees turn rigidly, to face
Something that circles with slow pace:
The blue pool seems to shrink
From something that slides above its brink.
What struggle is this, ferocious and still--
What war in sunlight on this hill?
What is it creeping to dart
Like a knife-blade at my heart?
It is noontime, Senlin says, and all is tranquil:
The brilliant sky burns over a greenbright earth.
The peach-tree dreams in the sun, the wall is contented.
A bird in the peach-leaves, moving from sun to shadow,
Phrases again his unremembering mirth,
His lazily beautiful, foolish, mechanical mirth.

the preacher never wrote a poem
about dahmer's baptism:

1.

he leaned across
the jail cell table
and his eyes were honest
when he said he believed in god
deeply
his eyes were honest
when he said goodnight honey
and gently draped his body
in a tub of sulfuric acid
his open jaw glistening in the moon
dissolving in the dusty noontime soliloquy
of crickets outside his apartment window

2.

can an honest man
bathe in those kind of wounds
and be allowed to ask
for a penance?

3.

for two weeks they left
his baptismal robes in storage
they asked if he really believed it
if he could believe in all this

4.

“when i was a kid
i was just like anybody else”
he had said
he seemed to think
being like anybody else
could dull the bloodstains
reduce the skeletons
still tucked into his closet
to powder
make his wishes into holy water

5.

yes jeffrey, anyone can drink it
but getting drunk on holiness
isn’t enough to repent
all of their fingers are wrapped around
your heart
doesn’t forgetting seem foolish
to the brains in your refrigerator
isn’t it just useless
to the spare ribs, in your bureau
drink all the holy water you want
you will always carry their bodies
on your chest
have you ever had a heart
other than the ones you collected
and did you ever know
what a soul feels like?

6.

and that day
they took him to a prison tub
and his body
glistened under the water
like a drowning animal or a martyr
jeffrey doesn’t float

7.

as he opens his eyes
his mouth wide
he looks just like him
suspended in white
ripples curdling in currents across his pale skin
a solar eclipse
covers the sun
as he comes up
for air

mourning doves for late afternoons
a lament for the golden hour
the end of adventures
a little girl comes in for dinner
tiptoes upstairs
strokes her mothers hair
leaves little blue flowers by her bed.

                       I let my hair go dark again-
                          just like yours, do you see?
                           I'm a woman now, I have your mouth.

forget-me-nots for noontime
where the little girl would lay
violet blue healing shroud
and disappear
un-pixelating a photograph in the sky
the portrait that made her father cry
it was a five year old aesthetic of death.

           I guess I never really knew you, did I?
            
music box hidden in the mystery of a closet
shades of midnight, shades of dust
a ballerina's slow pirouette
called into life after forgotten years
the haunt of Sleeping Beauty.

               I know you didn't mean to miss my birthday.
                   I begged you for a music box, you remember?
                      It's my most dear treasure on this earth.


mourning doves for missing you
forget-me-nots for remembering you
my music box will live for you

How strange that such wonderful things
should make me so sad.

i.

the poem has a beginning exactly as you’d expect it:
pa in sweatshirt, ma with purse; the funny thing is
i never used to call them those names:
“pa,”
“ma,”
always found them too cowboy-ish,
too un-me, un-like

us: who held chopsticks before dinner time and shared
stories of how grandpa came over from china.

ii. (at the dinner table)

there is no symbolism here. there has been none
for a while now. this household eats and
eats in quiet. my grandmother is a poet but their
books all burned down

back in ’45 when mao stormed into fujian and
all her uncles could eloquent on was that
“the communists were coming!”
“the communists were coming!”
and instead of poems took with them their
children, and their gold to pawn

and their clothes on their muddy
mortar-stained backs

and the japanese

iii.

my grandfather now comes twice a week to the
hospital for chemotherapy. it is a nice hospital.
good view of the cleanest part of our *****

city. there are lights and white folks now. two things
my dad said did not used to be there. they

used to be spanish. they tilled
our rice fields and spent the money on living rooms
with lots and lots of space to sleep. we on the other hand,
worked. he claims.

your grandfather and his grandfather and i

iv.

awake every sunday morning at precisely 8:30.
made to go down to the temple in kalesas
and told to fetch the office paper for
noontime reading. see we weren’t spoiled: grew

up just next to the pasig river which back in
the 70s did not smell as bad as sin only
sweatshirts

and the sweat we soaked them in we reeled along
steamed fish heads and chopsticks for picking at them with
and bowls of rice we never really ate with spoons.

v. (back at the dinner table)

i listen to my mom and dad
sweat profusely in the evening heat only we can have here
he in his sweatshirt and she
with her golden purse,

preparing to leave - a wedding party awaits -
an jacket draped over his shirt just like grandfather used to do it
in a sense,
but gripping the chopsticks delicately for all us
to see:

“pa,”
“ma,”

v.

it is not cowboys that give us our names.

O Tulip Tree,
Towering titan true,
A fond memory I have
Of splendorous ventures long ago!

O Tulip Tree,
Timid and taciturn,
I remember when you,
Paragon of the forest,
Stood tall with power
And eclipsed the noontime sun!

O Tulip Tree,
Tallest tree that be,
I recall when you,
Pillar of perfection,
Were as mammoth in my youth
As you are this day!

O Tulip Tree,
Tremendous yet tender king,
I pray for you,
Noble giant,
That envious naysayer
And usurper alike
Stay their distance
From your domain!

And when the hour is nigh,
O Tulip Tree,
I shall stand tall with pride
Between these vile fiends
As you taught me to long ago!

melancholy blanketed the whites
scarred voices muffled by
a ****** mind.
an avalanche stuck in my soul
severer than a bee at a forked road
   how confused!

red-cheeked petals and afternoon birds glare
    in confusions at the footsteps :
unbalance, shaded, muted!
the green umbrella's warm, so scorchingly cold!
all embittered, by solemn beams of the soulless sun.
     their eyes widen,
     for they had never seen such lone,
for such lone, rare, is forbid to the sons of nature,
never belong to happy child's arms,
that dreams in a mother's charm.

grieving droughts in the air and grass,
no dews, why!,
   yawned the madden, soporific rabbit
Ah, so wild.

the windless noontime cross, my quivers stopped, mild.
lashes waxed, blacken like a coal,
  mind stuck in a haze, or maybe a threatening maze.

stiffness of the air injected to my nostrils
into my white tongue they will soak, like perfumes to a clothe.
Selene will gaze angrily at this and say,
      why no, it shouldn't be in there!
the midnight orchids waver and frown.

soon the frothing dreams peter,
but the bolded letters in a white board stay,
my chair stays.

creaks of an abominable burden became a din.
The smudges of grey-white dust I smelt
hover gaily in the air of pompous breath.
    spellbound by the stagnant languor,
mazy, in hallucinations of the heat and homesick.
    I sought the fount of hypocrisy and vile,
my hiding nonchalances rosen
(towards a flock of friends)
and loathes to an abominable sun frozen
(I wished it to die!)

Tilted to the windows,
I saw nothing, but fatal secrets of a heart rosed
like window dust to a nose.

I was jealous of
jade green oceans,
and the way they dance
when the sunlight hits
them just right.
Or, how I've ached
to wear a shade unbroken,
like the clear blue morning
with its cloudless skies.
I've even dreamed of dressing
in that cold steel gray,
that makes you want to stay
on those lonely rainy nights.
But, I've come to embrace
my amber sands,
that pull you in like the warmth
of the sun at noontime.
Only can my brown eyes
blossom and burst,
like the earth,
so tender and soft
after the storms subside.

Gregor Strniša (1930-1987)
THERE WAS A TIGER HERE    

I
A bright spring rain fell the day through,
the branches drip, the sand in the lanes is damp yet,
the sky has cleared, slowly you go through the park,
the sun of evening haunts it, apparition-like.

In the illumined peak of the dark tree,
a blackbird sings and sings. The evening’s very quiet,
the sunlight turns wine red,  
and on the lawn shimmers a bronze monument.

Just then you find, in the wet ground before you,
the wide and clear and deep impressions.
The park is big, sun-striped, and full of shadows.
You start, go on, but  know: a tiger came this way.

II

You still remember well the day
when first you saw the tiger’s trail.
You had just woken and there it was.
Morning was like evening, full of shadows.

That was oh so long ago.
The night of that morning you lay alert in the dark,
then fell into a mazy sleep, like gazing out a window
and beyond it softly snows and will not stop.

You live as if not much had changed, really.
Soon after that morning, autumn came,
then we had the long, damp winter,
and wet snow covered a dark city.

III

You sit, elbows on table, you look out the window.
It is late afternoon, soon to be dusk.
Not a sound will come into the room now.
You think how outside the winter day is fading.

You see just a piece of the sky and a roof. It is red.
Likely the snow slid from it in the noontime sun.
In the last of light, the chimney casts a feeble shadow.
Evening will be leadblue, you think, and a little foggy.

You go to the window. A woman in white walks in the street.
Across the way a child plays in the sand.
A summer day flickers in the darkling trees.
Like a great, shimmering cloud, fades the summer day.

IV

Maybe not much has changed, at all.
Only in rooms where once you were already,
you fail to find a favorite picture on a wall,
now there’s only a pale rectangle there.

More and more often on your familiar routes,
tall, dusty horsemen cross your path.
Places you walked in day after day,
bronze, heavy monuments suddenly occupy.

And sometimes, entering a familiar house,
you find yourself in cellars stale and squat.
They were not there before, and huge snarling dogs
are tearing at their chains outside in the gardens.

V

So you live, you’re always off to distant places,
down foggy seas, up snowy mountain ranges,
you see so many new, so many foreign cities,
in whose small, quiet squares you love to sit.

There on the smooth pavement, from time to time,
Dark, broad stripes stand out in the slanting sun.
You find a stone, you weigh it in your palm,
you murmur absently, “There was a tiger here.”

But him himself you haven’t met yet.
Whomever the tiger looks at soon dies.
Always he pads before you through summer’s dark door,
Through foggy rooms under decembered skies.
(translated from the Slovenian by Tom Ložar)

The familiar complaints, the cozy ones.
Ambling through the hedges of grievance.
I never know what I'm feeling at any one time.
Usually more of the same. Bragging my inadequacies.

Winter is coughed from the addled coalsmoke sky.
Chimneys chugging ash. Clumps of duress.
Blake's choir of children lying in a heap.
Noontime streetlamps regaled in holly and poinsettia.

A ***** moss enters from the vacant lot, cautiously.
The homeless have been scraped from under the bridge.
Geese call and flee. The snow is flakes of ash,
the sun finally burnt itself down.

Disused meanings are flushed. A carefully wrought
vocabulary we have disabused ourselves of.
Crumbling monologue.
A new grammar forms. Light and Motion dances

from the screen. A panoptican of laughs and serenades.
Sometimes there is a magazine no one has a
subscription to. It is the digest of a human heart
dressed to the nines in thorns and flame.

Not for the faint-hearted
The highest peak is
Unconquerable is its tip
Cold and misty,
A stairway to heaven!

Bold climbers ignore
Step is the *****,
Help is the rope,
And the peak is their hope.

Surmounting the rocks
Resisting the freezing air
Holding back against the pull of gravity
Should the climbers do
With the vertical
That seemed infinite.

Escapade began.
In their heart, they held
The step and hope.
Crouching on the frosting rocks
They moved higher and higher.
'Till they could glance
At the abyss of horizons.
Passing the halfway,
Wild fortune they met.
Wind with wrath roared.
There came a snowstorm!
Hope began to melt
Their shriveling souls, too.
Buried.
Vertically jeopardized.
Lives ended with the limit.

Another team conquered
The mighty mountain.
Aroused a sense of adventure
Spirits unleashed,
Saying altogether, "We can!"
As tightly holding the guide
And pathway's light -
Their nation's proud "stars ans stripes."
Valiance flashed on their faces.

Higher and higher they went
Calmness danced with the rustling cool wind
Glaring were the ice flakes
Of noontime sun
The journey was near to its end.
Yet, a huge running bunch of snows met them.
Keen climbers bombarded
Explosive things.
Boom!
A hole was formed.
They went down
Into the hide site-like hole
Awaited the "limit" to pass by
then, it came.
The hole was filled
Shivering with cold
Heroes bombarded again...
Light rays entered as
Dazzling as their smiles.

Escapade continued.
'Till they stood and yelled
The voice of victory,
Overcoming the vertical's limit,
On their success,
On the most awe-inspiring place
of their dreams -
The earth's highest pinnacle!

Round white clouds roll slowly above the housetops,
Over the clear red roofs they flow and pass.
A flock of pigeons rises with blue wings flashing,
Rises with whistle of wings, hovers an instant,
And settles slowly again on the tarnished grass.

And one old man looks down from a dusty window
And sees the pigeons circling about the fountain
And desires once more to walk among those trees.
Lovers walk in the noontime by that fountain.
Pigeons dip their beaks to drink from the water.
And soon the pond must freeze.

The light wind blows to his ears a sound of laughter,
Young men shuffle their feet, loaf in the sunlight;
A girl's laugh rings like a silver bell.
But clearer than all these sounds is a sound he hears
More in his secret heart than in his ears,--
A hammer's steady crescendo, like a knell.
He hears the snarl of pineboards under the plane,
The rhythmic saw, and then the hammer again,--
Playing with delicate strokes that sombre scale . . .
And the fountain dwindles, the sunlight seems to pale.

Time is a dream, he thinks, a destroying dream;
It lays great cities in dust, it fills the seas;
It covers the face of beauty, and tumbles walls.
Where was the woman he loved?  Where was his youth?
Where was the dream that burned his brain like fire?
Even a dream grows grey at last and falls.

He opened his book once more, beside the window,
And read the printed words upon that page.
The sunlight touched his hand; his eyes moved slowly,
The quiet words enchanted time and age.

'Death is never an ending, death is a change;
Death is beautiful, for death is strange;
Death is one dream out of another flowing;
Death is a chorded music, softly going
By sweet transition from key to richer key.
Death is a meeting place of sea and sea.'

The noontime breeze blows through my face
Refreshing my memory of things I left behind.
The summer sun scorches my dry skin.
As I endlessly yawn and give in.

I gaze at the clear, blue sky
Humming the soothing tune of boredom.
I let out a long sigh,
To release the worry and rejection.

I can taste the blandness of the afternoon
And all the bitter aftertastes.
The tingling sound of the glistening chimes above my head,
Remind me of the lazy days lying on my bed.

She lied in the unmade hotel bed,
in nothing but dark white underwear.
Dark-green black-out curtains,
with a slit in the middle, filtered

and framed the sorrowful light
of noontime; leaving a bar of sun
That made dust waltz in the musky air,  
and illuminating the small

Of the woman’s back and hips,
making the skin shine. Her husband
stood at the foot of the bed looking
in the mirror and glanced back at her

napping and she looked so harmless,
like a child− or an animal; like she had
never been hurt, or sunk her teeth in another.
Two nights before they fought about silverware,

and he watched a documentary on wildlife survival
in which a hunter strangled a rabbit to death,
and it made him wonder how it would feel
to hold the animal by the throat, while it

squirmed and cried for breath within the hand.
For some reason, He concluded it would feel
easier to smother someone to death with a pillow.
The couple decided to leave the city,

To pretend they had a fresh start,
from the fact that it had been a whole
season since they had last touched
the room came with bed made,

and complimentary soaps on the
counter.
when the woman got up,
they walked to the shore a block away.

The sun was turning red, and falling
below the feminine silhouette of the earth,
and the wind picked up moving the water,
like a mirror unfolding and dividing indefinitely.

The woman walked farther out on the gray
sand and told the man to take a picture of her,
the sun behind her illuminating each tendril of dead
skin flouting round her head like threads of dark wine.

She laughed, and the sound carried
out through the water and came back, like an
invisible
twin.

Later that night the man stood on the porch
smoking. The moon was rising and full.
He could hear the giggling of a young couple
room beyond the courtyard. They were

Skinny-dipping in the pool; the woman embraced
in the young man’s arms legs wrapped our his waist.
The old man suddenly felt warm, recalling his flash adolescence
in extinct lukewarm nights like this. A tinge of nostalgia
and regret that rose and fell for a second and then disappeared.

He then scoffed, threw the smoldering smoke off the porch,
walked back to his room, and slammed the door.

My name is Tom Lozar. This is my translation of a poem by the Slovenian poet, Gregor Strnisa.

There was a tiger here

I
A bright spring rain fell the day through,
the branches drip, the sand in the lanes is damp yet,
the sky has cleared, slowly you go through the park,
the sun of evening haunts it, apparition-like.

In the illumined peak of the dark tree,
a blackbird sings and sings. The evening’s very quiet,
the sunlight turns wine-red,  
and on the lawn shimmers a bronze monument.

Just then you find, in the wet ground before you,
the wide and clear and deep impressions.
The park is big, sun-striped, and full of shadows.
You start, go on, but  know: a tiger came this way.

II

You still remember well the day
when first you saw the tiger’s trail.
You had just woken and there it was.
Morning was like evening, full of shadows.

That was oh so long ago.
The night of that morning you lay alert in the dark,
then fell into a mazy sleep, like gazing out a window
and beyond it softly snows and will not stop.

You live as if not much had changed, really.
Soon after that morning, autumn came,
then we had the long, the damp winter,
and wet snow covered a dark city.

III

You sit, elbows on table, you look out the window.
It is late afternoon, soon to be dusk.
Not a sound will come into the room now.
You think how outside the winter day is fading.

You see just a piece of the sky and a roof. It is red.
Likely the snow slid from it in the noontime sun.
In the last of light, the chimney casts a feeble shadow.
Evening will be leadblue, you think, and a little foggy.

You go to the window. A woman in white walks in the street.
Across the way a child plays in the sand.
A summer day flickers in the darkling trees.
Like a great, shimmering cloud, fades the summer day.

IV

Maybe not much has changed, at all.
Only in rooms where once you were already,
you fail to find a favorite picture on a wall,
now there’s only a pale rectangle there.

More and more often on your familiar routes,
tall, dusty horsemen cross your path.
Places you walked in day after day,
bronze, heavy monuments suddenly occupy.

And sometimes, entering a familiar house,
you find yourself in cellars stale and squat.
They were not there before, and huge snarling dogs
are tearing at their chains outside in the gardens.

V

So you live, you’re always off to distant places,
down foggy seas, up snowy mountain ranges,
you see so many new, so many foreign cities,
in whose small, quiet squares you love to sit.

There on the smooth pavement, from time to time,
Dark, broad stripes stand out in the slanting sun.
You find a stone, you weigh it in your palm,
you murmur absently, “There was a tiger here.”

But him himself you haven’t met yet.
Whomever the tiger looks at soon dies.
Always he pads before you through summer’s dark door,
Through foggy rooms under decembered skies.

Not for the faint-hearted
The highest peak is
Unconquerable is its tip
Cold and misty,
A stairway to heaven!

Bold climbers ignore
Step is the *****,
Help is the rope,
And the peak is their hope.

Surmounting the rocks
Resisting the freezing air
Holding back against the pull of gravity
Should the climbers do
With the vertical
That seemed infinite.

Escapade began.
In their heart, they held
The step and hope.
Crouching on the frosting rocks
They moved higher and higher.
'Till they could glance
At the abyss of horizons.
Passing the halfway,
Wild fortune they met.
Wind with wrath roared.
There came a snowstorm!
Hope began to melt
Their shriveling souls, too.
Buried.
Vertically jeopardized.
Lives ended with the limit.

Another team conquered
The mighty mountain.
Aroused a sense of adventure
Spirits unleashed,
Saying altogether, "We can!"
As tightly holding the guide
And pathway's light -
Their nation's proud "stars ans stripes."
Valiance flashed on their faces.

Higher and higher they went
Calmness danced with the rustling cool wind
Glaring were the ice flakes
Of noontime sun
The journey was near to its end.
Yet, a huge running bunch of snows met them.
Keen climbers bombarded
Explosive things.
Boom!
A hole was formed.
They went down
Into the hide site-like hole
Awaited the "limit" to pass by
then, it came.
The hole was filled
Shivering with cold
Heroes bombarded again...
Light rays entered as
Dazzling as their smiles.

Escapade continued.
'Till they stood and yelled
The voice of victory,
Overcoming the vertical's limit,
On their success,
On the most awe-inspiring place
of their dreams -
The earth's highest pinnacle!

when it slips down the stairwell
only then will you revel
in the light of the moon
passing strangers at noon
lit by the spring sunlight
imagining futures too soon.

when it all goes to hell
ignoring the noontime bell
ringing with presence
breathing remembrance
always there to remind
of your first winters hesitance.

It is noontime, Senlin says, and a street piano
Strikes sharply against the sunshine a harsh chord,
And the universe is suddenly agitated,
And pain to my heart goes glittering like a sword.
Do I imagine it? The dust is shaken,
The sunlight quivers, the brittle oak-leaves tremble.
The world, disturbed, conceals its agitation;
And I, too, will dissemble.
Yet it is sorrow has found my heart,
Sorrow for beauty, sorrow for death;
And pain twirls slowly among the trees.
The street-piano revolves its glittering music,
The sharp notes flash and dazzle and turn,
Memory's knives are in this sunlit silence,
They ripple and lazily burn.
The star on which my shadow falls is frightened,--
It does not move; my trowel taps a stone,
The sweet note wavers amid derisive music;
And I, in horror of sunlight, stand alone.
Do not recall my weakness, savage music!
Let the knives rest!
Impersonal, harsh, the music revolves and glitters,
And the notes like poniards pierce my breast.
And I remember the shadows of webs on stones,
And the sound or rain on withered grass,
And a sorrowful face that looked without illusions
At its image in the glass.
Do not recall my childhood, pitiless music!
The green blades flicker and gleam,
The red bee bends the clover, deeply humming;
In the blue sea above me lazily stream
Cloud upon thin-brown cloud, revolving, scattering;
The mulberry tree rakes heaven and drops its fruit;
Amazing sunlight sings in the opened vault
On dust and bones, and I am mute.
It is noon; the bells let fall soft flowers of sound.
They turn on the air, they shrink in the flare of noon.
It is night; and I lie alone, and watch through the window
The terrible ice-white emptiness of the moon.
Small bells, far off, spill jewels of sound like rain,
A long wind hurries them whirled and far,
A cloud creeps over the moon, my bed is darkened,
I hold my breath and watch a star.
Do not disturb my memories, heartless music!
I stand once more by a vine-dark moonlit wall,
The sound of my footsteps dies in a void of moonlight,
And I watch white jasmine fall.
Is it my heart that falls? Does earth itself
Drift, a white petal, down the sky?
One bell-note goes to the stars in the blue-white silence,
Solitary and mournful, a somnolent cry.

Golden bronze rays
shower light and
ooze heat in the
noontime hour of
the unforgiving days
of wet June warmth.

Sticky, moist, slick
skin falters under
pressure impregnated
with exhaustion and
unquenchable thirst.

Steam rises from
now viscous tarred
streets after rain
falls with no warning.

Waves of lurid heat
evolve from every surface
in sight near and far.

Wet, hot, moist, sticky,
sultry, intense, stifling.

Summer has made it’s entrance.

so here we are beneath the pallid ray
of summer noontime seeking to escape
for just one moment from the normal shape
of discreet instance so that we might play
a different sort of role where one could say
the angry words to those with mouth agape
that tell apart the angel from the ape
but those are for another cooler day
instead we look to work a better will
in places where the choice is not so bright
as underneath the growing midday roar
of silver needles passing by the hill
each flashing clearly in the brilliant light
so bidding us to join with them and soar

Dawn is yawning,
Its yellow is mellow
You're the chartered martyr.

Whatever.

Time's plot is plodding,
Your heart is nodding
Off into a wakeful slumber.

Whatever.

Then,
Out of the blue
The vein you're in dilates
Your Icarus skyscrapes
The chemicals swim
And the ocean
Is awash
With color.

Whatever, whatever.

Whatever. Whatever.

Whatever, whatever
Whatever whatever.

.
Little kitten wakes me in morning,
Before even sun has time to shine,
Little kitten wants to play pouncing,
Before I am even awake at noontime.
Why does little kitten make me smile,
Is it because she is my doll in disguise?
I shall play with little kitten, it is so fun,
She goads me with eyes, beguiling as sun
And when little kitten is finally appeased,
Maybe, then I shall nap with her, O please!

Your skin laid out
in shades of blue and teal,
the brilliant white streaks
of wind tossed hair.
Your backdrop, a sky
painted in a noontime orange
as dark wisps of cloud
paint the fluorescent atmosphere.
With everything in
perfect opposites
I wonder
if that is why you seem
so happy.

I don't know where to start
counting the days since you left.
Your love waned like the moon
hiding itself in the darkness;
its illusion accoladed by the stars
until your love vanished completely
as a new moon in the midnight.

I await the sun to break
the melancholy of the night sky
to give me a glint of hope
and a false idea of sustenance,
to nourish me in the morn
and burn me in the noontime.
To bring me to reality as it sets
the true colours of life,
the purple horizon and the orange haze
to the grim emptiness of the dark,
to find the new moon you've become.

I stand in this land of solitude
I stare at the sky every night

many moons have passed but
I continue to look for you, my love,
and wait for the moon to become full again.

i am nothing but the noontime shadow She leaves behind.
sometimes we coalesce into each other. for a fleeting moment I feel alive—
then i am nothing to Her again. nothing to anyone.
everyone loves Her, and
i am not Her.
they do not see her forked tongue like they do the faces she puts on.
they see me and say i am quite like Her.
i almost take it as a compliment.

The sun seemed to rise slowly, almost hesitantly, this morning - a yellow syrup pouring into a deep, dark blue sky. The air is hot and thick, like a low viscosity liquid. We’re going out on the boat this morning and when you have 9 passengers and crew, everyone’s toting something.

Kim and Bili have towels and a shoulder bag of sunscreen lotions and repellents, Charles has a cooler with everything needed to make breakfast omelets on the grill (the eggs have been pre-beaten, the veggies pre-chopped, the cheese grated, the meat diced).

Anna and Lisa are toting a cooler of sodas buried in ice. Leong has the “dry box” with phones, Nintendo switches, kindle readers and iPads. Leong’s rolling a luggage rack of textbooks, Sunny has a large coffee thermos, and Sophy has a bag with dry clothes for everyone.

The girls are practically running over each other in their eagerness to be last onboard because the first two get to towel the night’s condensation off everything.

I carried the lunch cooler full of Chick-fil-a sandwiches, but my main job is to check the indicators and disconnect the dockside water, drainage and electrical feeds as Charles takes the helm and begins his “preflight” before he fires up the Mercury 500-hp engines. I know we’re a “go” when he turns on the underwater lights - that’s my signal to cast off.

The engines roar to life and then purr as we slowly pull away from the dock, we girls greasing ourselves up with sunblock. The air conditioning begins to help but picking up speed is what finally breaks the hold of the oppressive heat.

As we exit the marina Charles opens-up on the throttle and that’s always a thrill. We usually ski first, before the lake gets crowded, and lounge later.

Sunny, Leong and Anna like to sit in the bow, refreshed by occasional lake spray and the wind-whipped cool. Leong likes to sit in the cabin, like Charles’ copilot while the rest of us recline on lounges facing rearward to watch the skiers.

Our summer mornings have passed like this, launching around 6 am, skiing, then swimming, studying and getting off the lake before the noontime “heat advisories” and afternoon thunderstorms.

Later, I’m relaxing in the shade, having just gotten out of the lake, and I’m on my iPad.

“What are you writing?” Anna asks.

“Oh, I write poetry and stories - mostly stories these days but there is some occasional poetic recidivism.” I say.

“You write poetry?” She repeats, as if shocked, “I didn’t think there were any poets left.”

“Well,” I say, “Most poets died, in the early flames of science, trying to prove the pen was mightier than the sword, but there are still poets around - they live in cities where they’ll try and wash your windshield if you stop at a traffic light, and they’re frequently mistaken for the homeless - or they may actually be homeless.”

“Can I read some of your writing?” She asks, after waiting through my long joke.

“Absolutely NOT.” I answer.

CONSCRIPTS: CHILDREN OF WAR

Conscripts, Innocent children robbed for war
From Congo, Chad, Central Africa Republic, Mali….
From Uganda to Sudan and South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Senegal…..
They are the forefronts young fatal fighters
From Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, Lord Resistance Army…..
They are these merciless Militias mouths-youths
From Biafra-Nigeria, Bujumbura, Asmara to Abidjan Civil Wars
They are their battalions’ fertile feeding grounds
They are Kony, Riek Machar and Ruthless Rebels’ mercenaries
They are Ouattara, Nkurunziza, Salva Kiir…..youthful foot soldiers  
They are Resistance Armies and Liberation army’s guerillas  

They raided a village
They foraged the villages
For innocent, forced conscripts
At dawn-at dusk, daytime-nighttime  
At noontime-at eventide-every time

And she begged
These satans that came
At the mask of dark nights
Slithering silent as serpents
For her last left and living!

She mourned and bemoaned
Helpless and hopeless
Her, grief-stricken hapless
But under those ****** shot eyes
Those coals-hot red coloured irises
That pity or its empathy knows not
It was all in vain-to no avail!

Determined, resolute, uncaring, ruthlessly  
Him tucked on her compassionate chest
Him still tagged on her hopeless breast
Its cheeks struggling to suckle any fluid
From these sagged sacks of balloons
Him they riotously robbed

And those that can’t they ripped
To those that can’t they opened
Those that can’t they roped
To those that can’t odd happened
Those that can’t they *****
To those that can’t they dampened

Those able fingerings wrapped
On frontiers as fighters they lined
With no war experience
With no ammunitions intelligence
No boots-barefoot, no shirts-bare chests
As shields shivering, roughly ripped
By advanced military and militias

Never to know home again
Never to know its warmth again
Never to know fears again
Never to know pains again
Never to know happiness ever again
Never to know the sweet tastes again
Of what Mama’s milk-nourishing colostrums contain

Somewhere in tough terrains
Somewhere in jagged plains
Somewhere in rugged mountains
Somewhere in thicketed montanes
Somewhere in brutal bushes
Somewhere in shriveling shrubs
Shallow graves of their immature bones
Their carrions lay leaked white by scavengers or time

Lucky him that deaths avoids
Lucky him that deaths mercy observes
Lucky him that deaths shyly eludes
Fortunate him it sympathetically spares
Lives in agony of pain and guilt
Lives in fears of loyalty and liberty
Lonely eyes, hollow sorrow, mourning souls,
Empty heart, mad tampered mind, tempered looks….
Him, innocent Conscripts, Children of War!

© Kìùra Kabiri. All rights reserved.