A poem for you

Photo by WV Mozer

Time for rowing 
and fishing.
A bear alone
but not quite 
in the distance.
The sense
of quiet.
Though nothing
truly is.

the silk road

Names are always beautiful. As beautiful 
as we can imagine them to be. Framing 
them with the lines of our wants, the unsaid 
and unanswered needs. We tell and we do not
tell; the yearnings are always difficult,

no words come, they balk at the touch.
If I may be direct, how will you respond?
If I tell you I wonder how it will be
to be right across you, the table meant
for two? It is possible.

All these exchanges happening while sharing
a metaphysical table. So it is this, we
have no bodies, no faces, no names; but
how the words flow. Moving and always
in a state of unsettled be-coming.

The silk road can be seen from outside
our window; a candle flickers, you unfold
a table napkin; I search for a word trying
to find an excuse to look at you.
Someone comes close, asks what we'll have
for dinner. 

light

The conversation tonight was about light. How temporal it is. Like body, like breath. Like how two people meet. Living, and then, also, leaving. Both. Always happening at the same time. This mad provision 

we call here, now, what exists, merely passing in time & space, brushing, lingering, lingered, in transit, a longing, through the vastness this presence, phenomenon, is-ness, then gone, to where? from where? extending, to nowhere, elsewhere, liminal, between, nuance, distance, distances, horizon, eternal.
The commonest road has no name. It is a road that is not a road. It is light. That stretches. A beam, a bridge, crossing, reaching us at the selvedges, where we are on the folds of happenstance, wrinkle in space, in time, breathing each other, are you there? am i there? here i am. here you are.

a dark impenetrable forest

It is raining now where I am. 
The heater hums, the gray will not leave
until the weeks of winter will finally
exhaust themselves. In the meantime

the tea, the sound of rain, the days
in the calendar filling up
like things to do that march on and on.
I sense my right eye stooping now
like an old working dog. It means
the glasses will have to be changed.

In the meantime, how to talk about
translation? When everything 
we manifest are truly incomplete.
A student, armed with practice and theory, 
argues: translation is always a gain.
In time

one will know gentleness; and why 
the horizon is what it is: something
perceivable, what we can move towards
eternally, as we would a dream, 
as we would each breath. Always beyond. 

There are many ways to live.
Even the one who ruminates drinks tea,
the bag possibly packed in a factory 
filled with underpaid men and women,
children too, in some developing country 
never far beyond.

All in an open circle.
Echos-monde.
The water from this rain.
Me. You. What the limitations I have
make of You other than the You
that you actually live. What we imagine
of ourselves, of each other. 
To one another.

In the meantime, I write a letter
to a You.
Letter without postal stamp, physical 
address, even a legible name. As though
believing the tangible is an organic case 
always subject to decay, unable to contain
what we are truly trying to reach.

by the river

A mile from where I am, there is a river.
There are ducks, some other birds. The water
fragments and glistens like glass, and runs
with a sound like bodied spirit-wind.

Sometimes the afternoon walks take me there.
Mostly to see the sun 
set behind the mountains. Beautiful sky.
There are men who sport fish, bass usually.

It is tempting to do the same; though, 
why bait and hook a fish merely for pleasure
stops me in much the same way
I stop myself from crossing what separates 

us.

Do not give up on poetry

because sometimes it is so much easier to
start the car and drive it
than walk to the station for the bus.
What are the ways we meet others?

On the street the car is parked by a tree.
There is a squirrel, a tabby can pass by.
I do not think of the deluge 

of work that knows I do not forget.
There is an opera next month
and the leaves are turning.
What moves us?

And does poetry matter when a mother looks
at her son in a real and palpable world?

"And what did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?"






lines from Robert Hayden

(the things constant) a long goodbye 8

It must be primordial knowledge of this 
Temporal state of being in body, this
Limited form, blood and flesh mere
Vessel of what we truly are--and what are we
(If what is such a definitive, limiting thing)?

Do we hunger, search for constant
Knowing we are fleeting mist?

I tell you I find comfort in the familiar.
Not one who easily warms to change, no matter
All these awareness of primordial states
And all the assurances of all being well

If not now, not yet, 
Later will.

The universe cannot be not good.
For all these wonders to exist. Tangible and
Not. Such as this bridge we cross, vague,
To meet you and I nearly formless in space
Years now, and I hope, years more.

Room

Consider a room with two doors
One facing east the other west
Both meeting at the same 

Room where one meets another
Where there is no Other
Where the floor between is

A border that is not---
A space undefined
A place familiar

from a hut overlooking part of the ocean

After all, we share a common journey.
When traveling together, it's normal to talk,
exchanging remarks, say, about the weather,
or about the stations flashing past.

We wouldn't run out of topics for so much connects us.
The same star keeps us in reach.
We cast shadows according to the same laws.
Both of us at least try to know something, each in our own way,
and in even in what we don't know there lies a resemblance.

Just ask and I will explain as best I can
what it is to see through eyes,
why my heart beats,
and how come my body is unrooted.

From Wislawa Symborzka, "The silence of plants" pp 76-77

because we'll never know the rest of the way

i wonder how it will be meeting you again
the world is not that large
it is small enough

chances are

we might come across each other again
i know i wouldn't know
what to make of it

chances are

you will appear indifferent exactly the way
versions of you did in
survival stories

something over

the many other lovers left in your wake
because i wasn't blind all along
because neither of us were blind

we knew all along, it was over
chances are

we knew all along, it would be over
chances are

we knew we wouldn't be over.

right across

some form of paradise

there are photos and memories and dreams
to keep close in pocket, in mind, in sleep
when one finally holds oneself 
grown and able, still
with fears no more
and no less than
a child's

photo by S. Kho Nervez

shall we take a quiet walk together?

Miracle Fair

Commonplace miracle:
that so many commonplace miracles happen.

An ordinary miracle:
in the dead of night
the barking of invisible dogs.

One miracle out of many:
a small, airy cloud
yet it can block a large and heavy moon.

Several miracles in one:
an alder tree reflected in the water,
and that it’s backwards left to right
and that it grows there, crown down
and never reaches the bottom,
even though the water is shallow.

An everyday miracle:
winds weak to moderate
turning gusty in storms.

First among equal miracles:
cows are cows.

Second to none:
just this orchard
from just that seed.

A miracle without a cape and top hat:
scattering white doves.

A miracle, for what else could you call it:
today the sun rose at three-fourteen
and will set at eight-o-one.

A miracle, less surprising than it should be:
even though the hand has fewer than six fingers,
it still has more than four.

A miracle, just take a look around:
the world is everywhere.

An additional miracle, as everything is additional:
the unthinkable
is thinkable.

[by Wislawa Szymborska; translated by Joanna Trzeciak]

palm on air

How long is a year? Not long, not long 
enough for a prayer and a piece of
fear to vibrate in waves ever so quiet
morning clear sunshines would appear
not to know, except it is there

in the quiet near certainty of things.
Every time now we hold hands it is with
knowledge of distance, impending, coming; 
every single waking a movement towards
the leaving. It is just over there.

And what lies beyond? What lies we
do not know except blind courage
that belief of returning to love.

shall we see each other eventually?

Easy to say since the news, anxiety has been breeding dreams fretting in my sleep. No balm to soothe. I replay, in spite myself, the exchange again and again. I could have done 

better. But why. Did it come across as entirely something else? How to. I think about the steam and the propel. And shall I get to see you again. Shall we meet in a cafe, maybe, by the end of some other year. I always do something else in the meantime. Other news arrive. Such as framed joy on other planes. A deadline. A knock. An impatience. And a distance that will have to be crossed by any means. Since when did I feel running out of time. The idea was to remain. And let time run by itself. They say, "in September." It is only becoming June. The last dream, I was somewhere in Malaysia, surrounded by bamboo beds. There is an image of you, your back towards me, on a kayak. Through the water. On your hands a paddle. And we were heading off to some other shore.                       photo by S. Kho Nervez

We must have met the same woman on the same day

An hour shy of a full day, I find the note you tacked on the wall
It has a picture of a tree where you met her, the woman sometimes
Called Fate. I reckon you noted your conversation about the same

Time I read in public, while accompanied by a painting, poem
I've written about her, and the bush, and the snake. Such happenstance
Did you ask her why she stayed where she'd go

Not for the first time I see the wall and knock at the cosmos divide: 
You, there
I, here

And our notes free on a boat bridge under moon and wind.


























          

sisyphus

do you have an hour of quiet in a day
before the maelstrom arrives expectedly
that constancy of running, we are 
almost no more like mice on a wheel

who told us to fancy we are builders
of concept on boats with a definition 
ever-changing with the ebb, we realise

there is no familiar ocean
no finish line for the living.

where is what the moon says

photo by Alvin Pang

At the time before letters, what the moon says 
to the lovers is whispered to the breeze.

When the letters came, the poets wrote.
And the lovers read what the moon says.

The phones lines stretched and what the moon 
says the lovers hear on each other's voices.

Now the moon looks at its virtual self on the Net
and what it says 

is whispered long and quiet on email.

existential anger

When you peel away the layers, you will find
at certain times, the anger
throbbing like an unhealed, hidden wound.
Alone, in an otherwise beautiful night, you
wonder why the only genuine affection
comes from dogs.  Why
no one sits outdoors to look at the full moon.
And the mind has never any breathing space
while the body is in outgrown places.
Somewhere in your marrows, you ask for sea
or cans after cans of beer with conversation
expected to end into something else.
Maybe a consuming night of uncontrollable
passion, the way you still remember.
Or falling, at last, into a deep well 
of sleep.  Dreamless.  As when you were
so much younger.  When did you realise
the world is not going to get any better?
At fifteen, a nun brushed away the answer
to your question.  At ten, you kept yourself
awake on guard.  And learned restraint.  
Also how to keep surfaces from imploding.
When you peel away the layers, you will find
at certain times, the familiar anger
throbbing, an unhealed hidden wound.
And alone, in an otherwise beautiful night, 
you wonder of genuine affection.  Why
no one is outdoors to look at the full moon.