The Eight Book

L’Age d’or

 

Haiku

2005 - 2007

 

So now, I think, only the plains and mountains,
the rivers and the forests know the kind
of life I lead, the one concealed from all.
Petrarch

 

I

Zazen

 

Spring

City-mountainside.
Windows. Beneath my sunlit
forehead: blinded eyes.

Film


What I would like and
what there is: the difference
is a state of mind.

 

Evolution

Pigeons fighting for
the food they can never share —
equillibrium.

Trees

Beech grove with hornbeams.
Patches of snow underneath,
budding twigs high up.

Miracle

Long awaited rain.
The iron tears of churchbells
falling on the ground.

L’Age d’or

dream: the boy’s closed eyes
acorns planted in the sky
– flower unicorn

Kindergarten

Daddy, Daddy – the
happy face of my daughter –
I can walk backwards!

Prayer

Rain. Ocean
roars in pelting drops.
Upper waters.

Complaint

Betrayal-anger.
Simultaneous orgasm
never to be shared?

Union

coffee milk and wine
gipsy spring upon us
blood mixes with sperm

Dew

Pesach-moisture: land
rejuvenated, the dead
resuscitated.

Desire

living mental life —
pale-faced mornings follow nights
of masturbation

Cartoon

The dangling halo
of poverty above your
head: your art’s glory.

Character

The man whose eyes were
filled with death on the river
Danube’s lap gave birth.

Blessing

Fragrance of lilacs
in a manager’s office.
Beautiful morning.

Vision

The day begins with
floods: oil-poisoned waters,
headstrong motorists.

Noon

Chirping birds above
Gul Baba’s grave, rejoicing
in the mid-day sun.

Season

City-park flower
scent, wet leaves, shivering ground.
So ephemeral.

Hope

underground below
the pipe-system waiting for
instant redemption

Hike

Wild-flowers at large.
Summer heat pouring on my
head, restless mountain.

How?

Money-sick mankind!
Flowers wither in our homes,
when we need to be.

Zazen

The Budapest tram.
Ezra Pound sitting among
faces in a row.

II

Travel Pieces

5765

City

Concrete-hard surface.
Walking machines, talking heads.
Melancholy wine.

Village

Mist in the garden.
Thoughts afloat meditation
– invisible buds

Metropolis

How I long to see
among cars and factories
God’s face in the crowd.

Journey

Getting out of town.
Railway station – runway, I
lift off from platform.

Repose

Ferryboat crossing
at Visegrád–Nagymaros.
Which side are you on?

5766


Elul 28

All of a sudden
it came upon me:
October.

Elul 29

One day before
the journey —
How long is it?

Tevet 11 (Bratislava)

Long ride for a brief stay.
Railtracks across the winter
width and length of land.

Tevet 17 (Tatry)

Snowladen pinetrees
wrapped in ice: a gift of light
by a road of glass.

Adar 6 (Vienna)

                                               for Karl

The Monarchy, an
onion, peeled itself away.
But the smell remains.

Nisan 16 (Cracow Variation)

Bach in the Wawel:
a visible mountain of
invisible gold.

Nisan 27 (Slovakia)

Through buffer country:
people looking inward and
so are the buildings.

Iyyar 16 (Szentendre)

Crowded alleyways.
Above the noise of tourists:
Mozart concerto.

Tammuz 17-21 (Balaton)

I heard an echo
reverberate upon the
surface of the lake.

5767

Tishri 3 (Szigliget)

In the sacred grove
silence, pigeon waiting on
the ledge, motionless.

5768

Tishri 2 (Lucca)

Completely walled in,
surrounded by mountains:
my terrible dreams.

Tishri 5 (Pisa)

A night of silence.
The tower looking askance.
Rain washes your face.

Tishri 6 (San Gimignano)

Towers on the top
of gentle Etruscan hills
rolling into dream.

Tishri 11 (Este)

Radars beneath blue
dream  of sky and tiny clouds.
Belltowers erect.

Tishri 29-30 (Padua)

Sun goes down on me
reading Petrarch in bookshop.
Walk out: crazy street.

Cheshvan 16 (Arqua Petrarca)

Industrial rain
keeps falling on laurel leaves.
Poet’s house locked up.

Cheshvan 23 (Venice)

San Marco’s filled with
tourists instead of pigeons
— waiting to be fed.

III

Portraits

Beethoven

from circle to square
alternative redemptions
triangle doubles

Livy

The fanatic hand
of Mucius Scaevola
Etruria burned.

Borges

How long does it take
for a gaze to travel through
poems’ time and space?

D.H. Lawrence

Aaron Sisson’s flute
the hyphen between birth, death.
If only he lived!

Jeremy Reed

Below and above,
forlorn traffic of people.
Seagulls on the shore.

Elizabeth Schwarzkopf

True woman, dog-men.
Her cat-eyes pierce the night of
Man’s unworthy howl.

Richard Edlinger

                                                           after Milan Kundera

The unbearable
light of un-being, your death,
that is illusion.

Fred Chappell

Absolute number,
ego, self-doubt vanishing.
Love is relative.

Kabbalah

Talking about the
Zohar in your kitchen, like
some late Kohanim.

Charles Baudelaire

I’m under judgement,
poems get no acquittal.
Death mechanical.

Arthur Rimbaud

My teenage years drowned,
my poems travelled unbound,
while at home I died.

R.M. Rilke

Pure being-event.
The diamond: 2 pyramids:
above, under ground.

Basho

                                                     after Lucien Stryk

Dust of the world —
what worse could wipe away
morning dew-drops?

patti smith

doped by her visions
of somebody else’s sins
you can bear the pain

Chopin

Lost revolutions’
beauty withdrawn into the
prelude without fugue.

Amrita Shergil

peripatetic
moments grinding — in the tree
immortality

Apocalypse

Soulsearching for those
who went to the War – and why
chosen, why alone?

Merz

                                                           Kurt Schwitters i. m.

Children laugh at the
city unredeemable;
treehuggers embrace.

Bohuslav Martinů

Enkidu died to
live in the sanctuary-
heart of Gilgamesh.

         Aeschylus

                                                           After Philip Vellacott

Some griefs time will send,
some grow from the root of wrong.
Redemption within.

Myth

Dream: Chtonic sign of
Persephone. Demeter
roaming over ground.

Petrarch

Souls in bodies dwell.
The exile lives in a house.
Death arrives tonight.