In the cool of the evening, silver-lit, when the tide of noise has receded at last, God walks along the coal-black beach to listen out for the whispering waves, to listen out for prayers and sighs, to look for golden gems in the sand, to look for purity in the hearts.
These lines were inspired by the pristinedeep-black beaches ofLanzarote,where you can find lava and, in some rare places, tiny shards of olivine.
The strange idea that God walks on earth in the evening to observe humans stems from the story of Adam and Eve, when they are still in paradise but have lost their purity of heart (Genesis 3,8).
Du bist die Hand, die mein Gebetbuch hält in aller Frühe, wenn die laute Welt noch schlummert wie ein müdgetobtes Kind und wir die Stimme ihrer Träume sind. Wir sind der Psalm, der aus der Erde steigt, wenn Nachtwind noch die Wiesenblumen neigt, das erste Wechsellied im Weizenfeld… Du bist die Hand, die mein Gebetbuch hält.
At dawn, the noisy and unruly world, just like a tired child, has not yet stirred. We are the voice of all its dreams: we stand, my hymnal lifted by your distant hand. We are the psalm arising from the earth while night wind is still bending blooming herbs. We are the chant across the ripening land… My hymnal lifted by your distant hand.
These lines describe the early-morning prayer of Christian monks and nuns: standing up and bowing, chanting and responding to each other… They also imagine an invisible connection between two of them — good friends perhaps, close relatives, or former lovers — who feel that they are praying together across the distance between them.
Is this moon new or young, a sliver or a crescent, silver or golden in the deep blue, the newly deep sky, is it striking or dazzling or mesmerising?
Is this a late spring, belated and all the more welcome, bursting with life, with green, bright green, saturated with rain and sunshine, saturated with colour and heat, heat unfamiliar and all the more welcome, or is it sudden summer?
Is this life at last, is this joy, is this joy of life, is it zest, is it just new life-force or is it happiness or elation or bliss?
Reality, as it laps up against the shores of your eyes and your ears and your nose, reality as it washes over the leas of your skin and seeps beneath, cannot be captured in words, not even in verse: reality, so dense it feels like a dream, is not a dream cloud nor a word cloud.
Although this poem would make a good one, with the message of sudden summer sounding out like birdcall, flooded with light and colour, steeped in joy, as if words were written from life and for life, as if words were part of life, of the wide earth and the deep sky and the reality beyond, of the ever-flowing life-force.
Word cloud of the poem Sudden Summer (colours edited but randomly allocated).
Happiness Beyond (Word Cloud)
Your life is a green reality, it reads in large green letters, and newly young; the sky is golden at last, it states in fine golden letters, and saturated with joy; eyes and ears are bursting with wide bright light, it adds in silvery white; and at the edge there is happiness beyond colour on deep-blue ground.
These are welcome words, sudden and possibly deep, a mesmerising message from slivers of verse in your ears, from the new dream poem, from the word cloud of Sudden summer: Your life is a green reality saturated with joy under the newly young moon.
Raindrops on window, with flowers showing in each drop. Photograph by Kumiko Shimizu on Unsplash.
One Drop of Rain
If one still drop of rain contains a rose and if my eye encompasses your face, a secret crystal must exist that holds the sparkling galaxy in one round space.
I am writing on the wall in lurid colours painting mouthless faces naming faceless fears the hydra of the mutating germ the wheel of the rotating power filling the space by the street with the sunflower yellow of hope one day it will be overwritten by times to come and poets to come
The poem speaking through a mask was inspired by photographs in the Tottenham Community Press and published by the same newspaper in TCP Issue 43, February 2021. It continues as the Haringey Community Press.
Tottenham is full of art in in very bright colours: graffiti on walls, mosaics on houses, paintings on roll-shutters of shops…
The fear expressed in these lines is of the malicious pandemic as well as of total surveillance. The masks gave us a chance to protect us from both to an extent.
I had great hopes that the pandemic would change our society to become more local, sustainable, authentic, co-operative, considerate… more healthy in every respect.
Sadly, only some positive outcomes have persisted against the pressure of ever more exploitation, exhaustion, pollution, production, consumption, and waste.
Image: Red camera eye of HAL 9000 (from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’). Julian Mendez, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Unbeirrbar rollt die Straße, über Hügel, über Flüsse schnurgerade hingebreitet wie ein Strahl vom flammendroten goldstückgroßen Himmelsboten: Mars hat Rom hierhergeleitet.
Resolutely, the road rolls over rivers, over hills, laid out strangely straight and clear, issued like a flaming ray from the gold coin in the sky: It is Mars that led Rome here.
As ever, the first poem of the year admires the roads of the Romans. At Cassel in the north of France, you can see them radiate from a hill and run entirely straight, regardless of the landscape. They served very well to transport people, goods, and ideas, but were first of all laid to occupy and exploit regions. Mars in the poem above stands for war and aggression but also for courage and strength.
So you thought life was past? It has only begun. For whatever you’ve lost there is something you’ve won. For whatever you’ve missed there is something you’ve learned. It is harvest: persist and reap all that you earned.
This is the word cloud (not of the tags but of the texts) of all English poems posted on this site in the past year. Another year of love and life and leaves… and of mass consumption, mass media, and mass murder.
The poem does what it describes: inventing words, lining them up, and sending them to others to greet them and cheer them up!
The newly coined terms had to be re-created in English – where they do of course not look as impressive. “lindwurmwörter”, for instance, really sounds and looks as long as a dragon, while “dragon’s tail words” looks like three words, even though I added the tail in to get a similar effect in meaning and length.
In England, many people hang Christmas cards up on golden strings. During the festive seasons of 2022/23 and 2023/24, I crafted many greeting cards myself, each of them unique.
