#letaon

                                                Sijo I

The spring ravaged the restfulness 

                                of a common abode, spilling its peace. 

Tomorrow battles the morn of calm 

                               like a poet scuffles his rhymes. 

Forgiveness is a prize for those 

                               who are guilty and for us.

                                               Sijo II

Mountains stand like ridges of 

                              proud giants, breaking dreams. 

The dimness of a morrow 

                              wakes up the hopes of a day, but 

the serpent of the road 

A child points at things and demands signs This is sky This is a rock This is a dragonfly This is a tree Wha … What? Why what? Why

the clouds are white? the rock falls down? the dragonfly flies? the tree . . .

A child sees a tree a child learns that this tree is not like others a child learns the tree’s name

this tree gives the child its first sword this tree is the child’s first castle or a first battleship or a spaceship he breaks his arm falling off this tree and tears his holiday shirt the one he wasn't supposed to wear climbing that tree knowing that  the tear is bigger than the fracture

he burns the brunches of this tree to see magic and stories of fear and valor and life and death and giants and dragons and wizards and queens and soldiers and aliens and sultans and djinns and Vikings and harlequins and archers and knights and witches and dancers and fathers and mothers and daughters and sons and Gauls and Saxons and Slavs and Goths and Khans and Indians and Aztecs and Mayas and voyagers and explorers and villains and merchants and mashujaa and gods and lions and elephants and spiders and witchers and yogs and alchemists and basilisks and mavkas and tsars and viziers and serpents and towers and crows and galaxies all are dancing shadows on his face and

Pale windows tolerate the knocking of naked branches, 

overgrown with transient waters, 

waters that have neither dreams nor deaths. 

A handful of warmth left after a lingering winter 

is what’s left to deliver to us. 

The sea of our guilt leaks through the fissures in time. 

Next to us aging memory sits close, 

holding ellipses of candle light in its palms  — 

light like gulls painted in black over dirty walls 

and ringed by lunar gleams — light left to deliver to us. 

Reanimated mouths empty glasses full of a robust sorrow 

Hope lives in the past. But not in the distant 

one, playing in Eden and forging traditions. No. 

Hope lives in the past seized by family photographs, 

where Grandpa’s alive, so is Dad; 

where they are younger that I am now. There, 

in the gloss of those white and black images 

the hope is captured like Browning’s Porphyria, 

She has nice hands. 

I like them. 

When she moves them, 

the muscles create little shadows because 

she has strong hands. 

Her arms look good too, 

but the hands look better. 

I saw hands like hers in the past. 

Those hands were older, 

those hands worked longer, 

those hands are no more 

Her hands remind me of a rye field: 

the shadows are short but colorful; 

the wrinkles are blossoming; 

and the mirror of nails looks like a dew. 

Her hands will change. 

Improper words, misshapen phrases,  the bitter scent of crispy books; indecent print, unfitting tales, ecstatic-phony cri de cœur: The subtle sartor of high fancies (who knows, perhaps of only one) has not a spot for dare forbiddance with lights of artificial suns. 

All things for sale: your house, laughter, farewells, and Marx’s Capital on shelves of life (the human factor) of one self-selling radical. This one sells things for the ghostly pledge and for refusing dusty words like Liberte, Égalité by undertaking anxious hope. The last accord: unchained and fastened, all equal are, but so detached. And brethren draw a sword on brethren in zealous force of being loved by loving foreign free-unfreedom, and foreign wealth, and own lies, and own fetters, and false reason for burning things that aim for life.

Azure space is aflame up above.        The man is so adamant           he gives up his former ways,

as his uttering is seasoned by the lack of

deeds.

A darling,

dearest, and

dead             branch of a tangerine tree reminds him of a new year.

Its leaves are the food now. The food for domestic rabbits, guinea pigs, and determined hamsters, whose circle of plastic reinforces the meaning of life.

           They smell.

They smell because they need to communicate;

and the tangerine branch’s leaves serve as a fuel for the future sounds.

For the first time he gives up contention.

he was too

like

a desolate

grove,                                          loving pleasures and living fast and unthinking.

Sing, friend, to the bloody guitar, and let your fingers blame this drunken enchantment. For his burdensome sins, for his wrong acts, for his lack of belief in the grace, lay him down naked and plain, under the white roses and sour toads to pass away.

Like the sky goes with birds,

and the ground goes with snow when the winter is around,

(I too waited for it for so long)

like words go with lips,

like water goes with dry lips,

like a line goes with linear spheres,

and like       tangerine dead branches go with mouths        of hungry leporidaes,

Ancient vision reddens eyes  by the spill of diamond strass, by the blood on paving stone where three colors softly moan. 

Unaccustomed truthful sound of Hephaestus hammers’ round; And the ominous light of blade by the silence ‘s being swayed. 

Light is now a gloaming claim like the woods in blinding flame.  Time will all in ash transform like a sculptor – marble stone, 

like an artist own fame, like a poet – lunar glare, like Orpheus – subtle link with a tersest of a blink.