ON THE WATCH

             SHIPWRECKED IN FEBRUARY

             INJUNCTION
          
             TRANSCRIPTION
           
             BEYOND MINARETS      ACROPOLE     NECROPOLE

             CONSTANTINOPLE    SAINT SOFIA    CONSTANTINOPOLIS

 

 

 

 

   ON THE WATCH

 

The day’s embryo worms its way into the gap

of my ear drum through the shrubs of alliteration.

 

A question is fermented by bewitching waters

on the lips of an echo.

 

Boats are floating with hidden reports

down the lava golden legs.

 

From huge towers I could hear the sunset’s rattle,

the edelweiss burning on the rim of the moon.

 

Steps rustle through a horizon of visions and

impatience grows inside the magnifying glasses

 

my inner sight broken by meteorites

follow ways unwilling to be unveiled.

 

 

  

 

  

 

 

   SHIPWRECKED IN FEBRUARY

 

          the snow miscarried a dead morning

   the sky coagulated over like a wound

   the sun disappeared behind a lousy book

   behind a ridiculous idea, behind a jug

 

   in the junkyard the snowmen are wounded

   there are other gilded iron people

   planning to assault the light

   in the garden of cones, prisms and cylinders

 

   the snow looks like barely washed linen

   the soot of the world on paved windowpanes

   it is maddening within four walls,

   the same faces, lampshades, goldfinches in cages

 

   tram tracks, bridges and films

   great and unimportant people

   lesser and lesser, doormen among dwarfs,                                  

   the same bittersweet lemonade

 

   the water is parted now into chunks of sadness

   even you hid within a silent eye. I wake up

   on cold mornings feeling strangely dematerialized

   and I can’t recall what caused me pains in my dreams

 

   the vacuum is incinerating the precincts, my head

   squashed between coverlids looks like a farce,

   the snow and the soot have replaced the days,

   every Sunday is a scorched library

 

   the forest was burnt and the wind has been crippled

   souls through the fog seem nobody’s wreck

   I wake up doing gestures I didn’t mean to,

   darkness is gasping out corpse after corpse

 

 

               

 

 

               INJUNCTION

 

 With the doll of the cold in my arms

 through the gangway of the prophetic words

 I loved the light entangled in rugs and threads,

 far away at the blood’s very end

 a gong of burning wasps keeps tolling:

 

 Let no more flowers be,

 let the edge of the water ooze oily fluids,

 let the drought run in the riverbeds

 and suffocate the spring,

 let the clouds crawl in the swamps of the heart

 and move your sea painting in the attic

 

 Make a noose knot out of lizards

 and from other crawlers make a stalk of flower.

 Let cockroaches be petals of poppies

 and hollow skulls be enchanting places

 

 Draw music out of thistles

 and from blending sounds

 may grow but boils and empty wind mildew,

 stone blasts and roaring iron

 

 Poisons shall be your strings.

 Only sorrow will overflow from heavens and

 your heart shall swell until it becomes a tower clock 

 battered with stones by all mad and blind men

 

 With your fist full of beheaded worms

 marshes shall be your shrine

 across which you’ll cut a path with your look.

 There shall you see your loved one giving birth,

 there shall you be wasting away

 until your last delirious breath

 

 You will seclude your memory within the bark

 of the trees out of which will grow knots, stumps

 and a sack full of crows, ravens and hungry earth

 and clouds full of shaking bones and squeaking,

 rusty rains over a vineyard heavy with sunless grapes

 

 Licked about your joints by ropes,

 you will move your hands infested with viols,

 made out of furniture, door frames and cages.

 When opening them shall you step on rifles’ eye

 

 You’ll capture their looka new regard to search around

 in your soul, which a long time ago has ceased to think,

 becoming a speaker of mechanically activated feelings

 feeds callous engines and tongues nailed on the wall.

 To imprison you in the same word, in the tower of the same bramble

 you will see the ship overloaded with selves

 

 Let no more flowers be, let the edge of the water ooze oily fluids,

 let the drought run in the riverbeds and suffocate the spring,

 let the clouds crawl in the swamps of the heart

 

 Do hide your books in the ailing planets,

 do trim your eyelashes and bury your rings.

 May the razor cut off your nose. Let a pair of compasses

 trace an axis of icy gems through the spheres.

 

 Just like that, was he shouting from within the Indian ink,

 slamming doors in a bubbling voice and with wild intoning:

 

 No more blooms, uttering a gurgling air, blending shards of words

 No more flowers, let pestilence grow in the ivory horns of water,

 let the spring drivel dearth through the swampy sand of the slime-glands

 
 
 
 
TRANSCRIPTION

 

The ancient figures of the wall paintings

 have gathered around the table, disfigured by tears.

 Outside, autumn is rehearsing its helium raining

 a long transcription for our fermented cembalos.

 

 Locked in creative cemeteries,

 I write with a chemical burning on the skin of the air.

 Time has fled from among the glasses, birds are dripping

 from the sky into the purple brass instruments,

 iron sounds gnaw at my insidephantoms of the crushed piano.

 

 The marrow of the numbers is leaking out on the keys

 through the stained-glass full of angels turning their look away.

 On the waters, the limp water lily

 seems a cigarette case for tuberculous clouds.

 

 The ravens have grown out of the fog like black tombstones

          displacing the sky. We sing going moldy, becoming mute.

    

 

                 

 

 

                  BEYOND MINARETS      ACROPOLE     NECROPOLE

                  CONSTANTINOPLE    SAINT SOFIA    CONSTANTINOPOLIS

 

                  [ascetism and persecution, spears pulled out of the flesh,

                  Mythos mingles with reality

                  inside being there is a secret archeology, meditation on light

                  architraves of fire and visions           forgotten sin

                  miracle bites at our stone epiphysis

                  the sun leaves hot shadows in the palimpsest]

 

 

legendary stones in the eternal sky

the witness          blessed and cursed

between Acropolis and Necropolis

 

inside being there is a secret archeology

there is the blood sluggishness through

the veins on islands with Fauns

the great key of the blessed beginning

opens and closes the gates

to multiple existences

Thalia brings laurels to Eros

who opens the seeds of love over

the germinal foam carried by Zephyrus

into Aphrodite’s birth

 

the sea borders twinkle through

the opacities of stained-glass windows

with rites of springromping bacchanalia

of Nymphs and Satires are filtered

in pyramids on the thin crust of the eye

 

Mythos mingles with reality

with curls of trees over the temples

and heroes teach us the stubborn battles

between man and man

between man and gods

gods and gods, bravery and tenacity

faith and loyalty, treachery and madness

 

the flour scattered out of light

the stolen fire over the blind man’s tale

in the Olympian serenity

 

democracy is an annoying game for Gods

they play with mortals

when the fire can not be kept alive

the Atlantis plunges into the see

on the day of human sacrifice

 

the tides of anger over Trojans walls

brings the marvelous horse

from the Achilles’ heel

bleeding on the lingering planes

 

the tides of war blow the Odysseus ships

from ruins of the city to illusory seas

into the storm of gods

through the Cyclops eye and Sirens seduction

 

under the blazing sun halberds sting the horizon

the sounds of a panpipe through stillness

caress the Argonauts along their fabulous journey

the golden fleece will change the world

 

the oracle issued delirious sentences

poets and prophets pierce the truth

through the bark of thunder-struck trees

philosophers dream in the flight of wet quartz

moving ideas on the cave ceiling

and in squares of democratic passion

 

At Delphi the waves of the battles are decided

time covers the timeless sand of the beaches

 

fire spills out of trumpets

into the parchment’s ears

flying across nostalgia

into the pure tides of flames

 

old secrets burn in Alexandria

 

seaside rocks watch over the gods twilight 

 

            Time oozes

and dark ages stretch over the waves

the scorching winds from the desert come

as a hot tar lighting

 

the collapse is build from the shine in its own pits

time and time again from wastelands and tundra

ravens rivet the corpses on the black metal of battlefields

 

hordes’ tides engulf the eternal, the faith in human race

 

memories hide in metallic bushes

plants start moving towards the wandering green

running trees in the nomad sight

the exterminated birds fall down into my hearing

becoming pain and plagues of stone on the flesh of air

 

adverse eyes lock being inside the leaves

night comes down

over the sleep’s dirty smoke

over vibrations of the past

 

dream and its magma is lost in a torrent of circles

clear water gets fuzzy under the glassy sphinx

and turns into a shield for thoughts

fallen asleep over empty spaces

 

in the sunset’s  lake

ravens lay down oblivion

purity is torn into shreds of eyes over ponds of ash   

the labyrinth coils around lives where

silence engulfs the plaster Minotaur

Pandora’s box was opened

mirrors and deathsnowfalls over innocent bodies

enduring the stretching on the rack

and the burning on the stake and the swallowing of

words, spears pulled out of martyrs flesh

as the shirt is torn by births and by forgotten sin

 

 

                 through the painful vaguenessarchitraves of fire

                 and of visions

        

                 barbarians and Christians plundered faith

                 demolished the ancient abandoned temples

 

                 gondolas’ and sword’s embroidery fetched

                 from hungry nether lands pierce the frescoes

                 the armor’s poison leaks onto the mosaics and sacred wisdom

                 deadly flying arrows scent the air

                 pierce the thickness

                 stirring rough waves

                 for the mounted vanities and greed

 

you can hear the heavy crusaders plundering Constantinople

returning to their land on the golden horses

of the great hippodrome of the city of lights

where the night was lit by torches

like the blazing billboards in modern cities

 

until the all-nights-darkness dripped through the blood of the

raped women in Sancta Sofia basilica, raped and killed by

the knights who had started the just, noble and divine crusade

 

Christians destroying Christians in the name of Christians until

Yataghans dug trenches in Bosporus and the city of lights was               

burnt by napalm and Sancta Sofia turned into a mosque

 

over the city walls the song lay like a sultan in the trombone           

among spears      the pointed minarets     the muezzin’s call

turbans spun on the axle of power

                  nargileh wrapping in smoke the snaking odalisques.

 

                  Narrow streets meander like a spider web over the street commerce

                  over baklava and quarters where taxes used to be fixed

                  the golden rivers squeezed from suffering veins

                  and golden watches to measure time

                  over the deep graves of prophets and saints

 

                  for hundreds of years the church walls wept faceless

                  they wept with sacredness into empty pan of the balance

                  so we could hear the worm winds in the pregnant womb

and see the walls stripped of paintings

paintings over scraped paintings over empty looks

 

 

beyond the curtain of minarets

through the fog of shrill voices

among tall grasses 

we can still see

the Olympic contests and Byzantine mosaics

 

I touch the sadness of air

 

I feel sorrow in the sky above

 

He walks through a tear and gets purified,

transcending purification He becomes the cross

 

meditation

on light

 

                  morning prayer digs poison out of the sun

presses wind into brass instruments

grows the rumble of light from an unseen sunrise

 

in monasteries

the slopes of forgotten time

coagulate around essence

 

the panpipe sweetness fills the new flight

the rainbow’s aroma

 

dazzle is not reflection

but vibration

expansive sap

seeping into our soul

 

on the other side of the morning

                  the moon and the white trees freeze

                  in God’s insomnia

 

                 come angels with wounds of carnation

                 and virgins with oil and sanctified wine

                 with pure thought

 

                 the painful transparency burns our look

                 and we can see the dark pole of light         

                 earth made green by water and chrism

 

our visions are stretched up on the windlass

by the hearing purified in origins

lying in ambush for perfection

 

                  trees disappear in the sky

the trembling of soul

green as light’s spear

 

                  fires are kindled on the crests

                  far away one can hear the bells

                  tolled by the hesitant hand of the rainbow

 

                  stars rise as javelins

                  silence is kneeling on the cross

night enters a Byzantine icon

 

our sight is overwhelmed by His breath

by the crowning fire wrapping itself up in emblems

 

flight mingles with ascetic dissonance

secluded in our lives, in floating reed islets,

nimble thoughts rise and everything gets clearer

 

a silk mouse crunches the grain of sleep

and disperses darkness in  fans of worm snow

You pass by

illuminated by the arbors grown into nostalgia

 

Sagittarius drawn in an egg shell

 

death upon death

 

happiness is flowing down the retina into the depth

pierced by worm stars

by spears fallen from pure thought

we dig light out of brass instruments

we push light’s rumble into the sunrise of quartz

dazzle is not reflection

but green vibration in light’s spear

digging into our soul

 

snow burns under the numbers

one can feel ecstasy

one can hear ascetic cataracts

levitating

into the hidden colors

into the brilliant remoteness of our souls

planets of a great change

 

inside the smoke miracle bites at drops of  sun

 

hot shadows

 

icons    

embracing us

 

 

 

                           Poems by Liviu Georgescu

 

 

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