7 nocturnal poems & 1 love song

night is

night is. when there’s no roaming. when there is life not lived. and gone the beloved. and the soul is shimmering darker. when you cannot find your eyes. that should see differently. that should see something other than your disappearance behind the time elapsed.

night is. when there’s no holding on. for nothing is expected. nothing waiting. when the light-refracting glass congeals into the dead eye of grey walls. and all hopes are interrupted. when we hide. although we have nothing to hide. when we have to unveil ourselves. although we freeze without the shelter in secrets.

night is. when you cannot feel for anything that should surround you. when you cannot touch anything. and nothing can touch you. and your feet won’t find a safe ground. and your hands no rail. when you cannot mind the gap between two pages of a book half full half empty. and a fear arises that God might snap it shut. before it’s finished. because he too is overcome by weariness at the sight of His tired creation.

voices

voices. departing. word. seeking its tongue. final birth. before break of day. a restless God. dwelling in the house of His silence, holy a thousand times. call. if you want to stay. in the deep. the high time. the urgent abode. to end life. with love.

inexhaustible. all that is passing. the pain of letting go. those who created something. those who had to stay behind. lonely. exhausted. breath. of soul’s joy and lament. sound of its wailing woe. between the inhabited and the uninhabited. a rift. like a footbridge. across the moors. the seas.

their hands. detached from their tired faces. their eyes. in the bowl filled. with the beats of their hearts. after the first crying. the beast inside. when they carried it. to the banks. to the abyss.

the way you were

the way you were. the last autumn. the leaves that fell into the dark. the tacit heart. road. through empty tunnels. among nocturnal plants. hours of silence. a first tempest. at time’s beginning. we spoke to one another. in our dreams. we sang to one another. breathing into white sails. longing for distant calls. stretched among bare rock. planted in the beds. rigid in hope. shadows. no longer vanished. soundless tie. between eve and eve.

all ending

all ending. tedious. when one is used to being on the road. hardly reacting to things passing by. yet a few words. or those said by someone else. a final moon in the isolated alley. and its helpless gleam like an infusion of thinned milk. crescent of its eye. of a mouth. when one looks up to the limestone ceiling. feeling the traction of the boggy soil of Sehnsucht under its staring. yet the time of gifts is over. and there are no tulips left on the bedside cabinet. and the heaviness of limbs has at the same time something unstrained in its stream upwards, in its drive away from the shores. the remnant tastes like a diluted medicine. one doesn’t know how long it will have to last. like an agonizing spasm: the final hope. the dire shame. that dying hasn’t worked out better than living. or because there are those rare days when the air is fresher and the light softer. or when the water suddenly smells of mountain spring and grass mown. and one pours it into one’s body like a rain in late summer on a thirsty, barren field.

meanwhile

[meanwhile | πάτρα]

one who returned. one who couldn’t stay. jumped into the gap of a moment. between childhood and peregrination. in the fields they dug up the years. again and again time grew. the more they had eaten of their own. runlets. seeping into the sand of the dunes. words. fading without response. the shame of sound. the eyesome beads. on the grass of patience.

[interjection | Noemata]

now. gone again. path of arrival. incidence. light. poking through crumbling joints. stuffed inside all thoughts. the dreams. spread on loafs. spoke nothing. the air. a wire mesh. where breathing scratches itself gory. against the eczemae. on the skin of conception.

[interim notice | Πένθος]

in narrow places. among the angels. they find room everywhere. waiting for you to move on. and ascend. once again to higher planes. far away from the lost shores. where the remains of the wall are no longer visible under the grass. remembrance. weary clouds. that will no longer discharge. the footsteps of the escaped. through the sleep of the earth. wasteland. devoid of desire. sacred crystalline toneless infinite field of lilies. the moderation of transience. not to squander eternity. the slender dream. the dew of memory. the deaf tongue of the pilgrim. the blind gardener’s glued eyes. because he is prohibited from speaking about what he has nourished. for a life too long.

mizpah

mizpah. where the words have not yet come home. where the voice is searching for all to say. all not yet confirmed. mizpah. where the light shall not yet be exhausted. and so the memory.

already the evening has risen over the river. behind the bank got caught the worry. into the depths the windows slipped. towards the clouds the walls grew. ragged gardens line the last houses that have not yet been abandoned. weathered graves surround the stares of old men. behind grey curtains. no. they didn’t arrive in their hopes.

the words are there. where there is no time. to seek a voice for them. the countable. when it has expired. room of void. indescribable. although the words lie there like silent landscapes. although in them the names are dwelling that had been left behind. lonely. placeless their breathing on final grounds. like all ground. far away from their home.

but. does one only know hope, after someone has told about it? alas! the memory. when someone said: forget it. the first step back to childhood. love. at second sight. and because one has realized that the sea won’t disappear just because one turned away from it.

yet another sleep

yet another sleep. before the parting of the ways. yet another dream. wrapped around the wounds. for where the uprooted stand on the banks, the silent distress of hope drips from the willow branches.

lay your childhood to the stones on the hillside. stay by your sides. that shadow may lean against shadow. ere the hour of the lonely stroke of wings.

we could love

we could love. time. we could endow it to each other. we could pour it into each other’s cups. like the finest grass-scented tea. like something that remains. because it passed away with us. we could love it. more than anything else. we could love each other. and be the only ones. we gave each other a moment that had been waiting for us. longer than a lonely life. we wouldn’t go on. before we hadn’t got out. just once. sitting on the river’s bank together. for just one hour. saying nothing. thinking everything. we could love. what we saw. we could share. the solitary desire. to have sat here once before. to sit here even longer than time permits. and although we had to leave in time. we could love. the place. that we would never leave. for it had been the place where we no longer left each other.