“Those you planted as children, ah, those trees are long since too heavy for you to bear.” . (Rainer Maria Rilke) Softly, slowly leaking time: Soft as rain – these memories are soft as rain, now falling on old statues in a long abandoned park. Here’s a general and there a king of some old [...]
“Till human voices wake us, and we drown.” . (T.S. Eliot) In love and worship the mundane becomes possessed by symbol. The fruits of wheat and vine translate into the flesh and blood of Saviours – as this small bit of cloth you left beside your plate, stained with chicken juice and traces of your [...]
“I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.” . (Pablo Neruda) Is it a kindness that I still can hear your voice; your whispers drawing maps our flesh must follow? That I, eyes closed, can see your fingers tightening, your back now sharply rising like a victory arch? That I, [...]
“God, or someone, had parted the sea, and who were we to say we weren’t going to walk through it?” . (Moniza Alvi) I have no words for this: The way we climbed this stack of stone – how sun and shadow chased each other and the old tar road that had carried us from [...]
“You go your way I’ll go your way too” . (Leonard Cohen) I watch you take the scissors to the browning ends of the leaves on the old potted plant that hangs from the ceiling. You bring a perfect sense of concentration to all the things you do: From pouring out the tea [...]
“In the long willow branches, the dark cypress, my own ghost hides, stares out at me,” . (Moniza Alvi) It’s a long fall, in the darkness, leaking from the time between each ringing of the bells, to where the eyes seek out the worlds beyond the cracked map, painted on the ceiling: A long [...]
Whether ’tis in us to arise with day And save ourselves unaided. . (Robert Frost) I turn to you – to the wallpaper side of the bed: A wall of fading roses on yellowing fake brocade; a dying dream of people now long gone, to turn a drab, Party approved apartment into something close to [...]
“The roses you tread will envy your mouth” . (Rubén Darío) As we climbed the mountain: You with your camera, me with my flask of tea; you, dressed in morning light, ribboned with cloud, me, like gravity’s supplicant; you, your limbs and your curious eyes and your dark streaming hair in total control; me, simply [...]