I am bride and veil,
the house that waits on the hill.
I am the moments waiting
between the silence
and the roar of passing trains.I am the the rain falling down on the lake,
the space between shadow and swan.
I am waiting to be called
and to be free
and to be owned again.
Writing words of milk and honey on your skin,
my fingers, feather light and anvil strong,
raising nipples and goose flesh mountains,
indelible words of love and want
all over you and into your skin:
mine to touch and to behold,
yours to offer or withdraw.
Lower and lower the feather pen goes;
milk and honeyed words and truth,
seeking for, reaching for, now [...]
The minarets turn from the winter clouds,
so full of threat and snow.
And now they almost bow,
reach down to all that walk below.
They sway in rising (falling) vowels:
this Friday chant that tells all true believers,
that God is great and God is waiting to receive
their prayers and their submission
and their love;
these mosques now filled with dreams and [...]
And I await,
like legends half asleep,
half real,
inside the flesh of dreams.
As on the ocean floor
a dark, cold, silent death rules all,
till fires from earth’s magma core
rise and life bursts through,
so I await
some moment marked by you;
your healing warmth and silent touch
now bringing life to me.
Winter’s come and done a number on this town.
Trams like syrup trail across the tundra streets.
The trees, like frozen spider webs,
now dream of forest fires.
All is lack of moment, lack of sound.
The ice-spread sky and frozen clouds are still;
no birds   (not even snow)
now flying   (falling).
All is cold and all is ice-God grave
and yet, there are [...]
I’ve seen beautiful armour,
surviving man by some seven centuries.
We don’t give up easily, do we?
We made Gods, now mostly forgotten,
and altars too scarred for our tastes
but we keep constructing these star ships Pandora,
forever blowing up in our face.
We have opinion polls
and the will of the people,
telling us all that we know.
But you can’t pray for [...]
Some things you can’t describe:
the pain that comes with breathing,
knowing every minute like a cancer grows;
thought a cold war enemy,
waiting for the perfect moment to attack.
Some things you can’t describe:
the grace of being skin,
open to all hurt but never hiding;
knowing truth can be the end of you
but simply, simply not caring.
Some things you can’t describe:
the [...]
Take a painter’s brush -
a genuine painter and a generous brush.
Pull out every hair but one.
That is what I do:
small strokes,
small strokes on paper.
Even Rembrandt would have problems
with a one-hair brush
and I’m not him.
Small strokes ripple through my brain:
confusing thoughts and music,
laughter and the sound of rain.
All sweet colours of my days
and all the smells [...]
It is an old building, held up and half-hidden by scaffolding. I’ve never been able to find it by day. It seems to rise up with the night, when Vinohrady shakes off the rest of Prague. The parks become forests; the soft slope streets turn into mountain paths. Then every detour leads to this house.
Above [...]
The darkened pane
becomes a canvas,
where the rain
now whips the night
into a shape of mourning.
The outside world
is now a rumour
and a darkness,
where no-shape sculptures
slowly walk the silent streets.
I see my face,
inside this drowning glass,
has lost its contours and its stories.
All of me dissolves
and waits for your deliverance.
Will I read these lines in some stranger’s years?
Will I read these lines in time?
Only parents know the baby,
the playing child and ugly youth,
the promise of humanity.
We do not know ourselves.
I don’t recall the baby or the playing child,
the promises in me.
Will I read these lines in some stranger’s years?
Will I read these lines in [...]
I am that once upon a footnote
and foot soldier
in every fairytale that saw you through.
I am that one footservant,
who would wait a hundred years
for your waking up - just to see you off.
I think that I was twelve years old;
I know that it was summer.
Dead wasps lay curled and dry
against the window-panes
and thick, black flies were stuck against
the slowly turning fly-killing paper.
It was hot and humid.
We stayed at my grandfather’s cottage.
I liked it up there -
and yet, I wasn’t entirely sure of that.
It was a strange and [...]
I’m afraid
and you’re afraid.
We dance;
We count our steps.
Quick, quick, slow;
we are in code.
He loves me &
she loves me
not, not, not.
Angel fur flying
In this dream I have become the fingers that pluck the last words from the dying soldiers’ lips. Above me, around me are the hills of yellow and rust-brown gas, the short white flares of explosions and the sounds that make craters in the night. Within me the fingers, the dead lips, the collection of [...]
(for Stephen King)
They tore down the house.
It only took a couple of hours of destruction.
Children stood and watched;
buses didn’t even slow down.
An old man came to a trembling halt,
took out his wallet and looked inside;
studied it like some holy writ,
like a favourite meal cooked by a long dead wife;
put it back, shook his head, walked [...]
Take it to the river:
let it ride a wicker Moses,
past the wildflowers
and the tail-ends
of the holy crocodiles.
(And take me to your temple,
through the curtain,
deep inside.)
Take it to the mountain:
let it climb like hoof and thorn,
past some stranded Saviour.
Let the sermon
fit the crime.
(And take me to your temple;
to the altar,
deep inside.)
I cast these songs like stars:
distant and small
pinpoints of fire
show me the way back home.