photo: Christchurch, after the February 2011 earthquake. This scene vaguely reminded me of a photo by Lee Miller, ‘Portrait of Space, 1937’: do your best to avoid feeling pity for the most vulnerable, they can sense it and they resent it.
she did not like misery
that was laid in her gaze
she preferred the warrior hostility
of brave adventurers
when she scratched the leatherette of her dusty armchair
she remembered that once
she had defied the gods
photo: Christchurch, Avon river
shimmering like gold
at the bottom of the river
a beer bottle cap
photo: Tenby, North Beach, the bond with nature is very strong, whether ones wants it or not.
excerpt from a poem published in Moebius magazine no. 39 in 1989
The fracture of the earth that looks at me with all its eyes, that lingers in dying, heightens my sense of defeat and the evening’s distress. Keep going straight and you will reach where my icy rigor proves nothing, where your lips set in boredom are already paling, where your barbaric eye is fading.
You tremble strangely at the threshold of my disarray, which suddenly reintegrates into the course of history.
photo: Tenby. There are many ways to pass time. Some are easily explained, others, not so easily.
and we would be asked
« but what did you do?
yesterday, the day before yesterday? »
and we knew that the day had been full
since the morning
we remembered our steps in the drizzle
the light making its way
through the clouds we hadn’t
even noticed the time passing
we could swear to it
what we had done
we didn’t know how
to say it but what we were
that we knew
photo: Grand Union canal, near Milton Keynes, perfect for a meaningful walk
The trembling of meaning
in the syllables of the morning
on the coffee table the coffee
shivers and smokes
the wind has calmed
The body asserts itself:
there will be hours and seconds
then the night will come
