Elegy Number One

To have gone back to Damascus
to have been able to.
To have left England,
to have opened a door in winter
and found all-glorious summer behind each opening.

Now . . . here . . . always . . .
England . . . with or without Damascus.
England, a grey time,
a shuddering of limbs,
and no escape
from the entanglement of leaf and thorn.
yet . . . Despair?  Hope?
The day unbends.

To have gone back
and found Damascus . . .
something lacking,
completed,
was all mine.

Indifferent time topples thousands . . .
under weeping graves . . .
the assassinated and the assassin lie . . .

Judgement proceeds
with proud, respected gait,
the witness in his tattered clothes.
There goes the infant,
the orphaned life,
and the narrator . . . he . . . who encloses the sea
with his short story,
[writing what he sees];
often, he moved on further,
still writing what he saw.
Length and width, be probed the clamour,
then . . .
returning, he stretched and said:
I am the sleeping writer --
he seemed as dead as they were,
yet, he was fresh
as the flower in his hand.

To have found this door
To have found this hole of past eternity
and having found those simple pleasures . . . 
a stroll  . . . no more than the remnants of voices
    crushed by the crowd
engulfing the incoming rain.
The whisper of the past buttressed by the evening sky . . .
a whinnying horse moves across the frame . . . 
fresh blood gushes from my shoulder . . . 
 

Elegy Number Two

The denouement . . . but above and behind,
our retreat
saw in the last trail of summer
the spectre of a smile,
where flaked rocks whistled in danger,
pulled from under our feet with a curious sigh --
to fade . . . out of danger's reach.
The sun rose over the rocks
enflaming the shirt of the one who jumped in,
when you did,
triggering the rebound of youth
which would blossom among the thorns
parched the ponderous soul . . .
dry and heavy the land.

Scree slipping under your maladroit form,
the sun calls for you on the cliff,
taking the weight of the fall,
cushioning your knees.
Alas . . .
the breath of the thorns,
when they feebly break
weak or pale prayer.
I return to myself
as if it were yesterday.

Taken by a small stone,
as once I was moved to frequently,
holding it in my palm,
then letting it fall in the sun's sepulchre.

I dropped on my knees,
as if the air were oppressive,
the blood on my forehead odourless
 . . . what aroma filled my lungs . . . 
the pungence of the stunted tree.
The winds fell headlong
a wound stretching along the slope.

Only then,
I grasped the thing I once let go,
my smile at play with the thorns
its blurred trace torn, throbbing
in a giddy space.
 

Elegy Number Three

I desire light,
sleeplessness fills my eyes.
I am the remnant in a grave,
a wafted chrysalis --
though my form is dark and heavy.

I am not here, not there,
the rock face reverberates
silent interrogates . . .
lungs shattered . . . 
all feeling lost,
the air, a drifting of torn leaves
almost inaudible.
I am the gust of wind
playing in a bright abyss.
 

Elegy Number Six

Her arm on the bed . . .
The open window bright on her arm,
colour undulates in light,
door and chair are witness
her sleep
a month long . . .
the room is radiant,
the glass silent
brings in new images . . .
with each breeze from the passage
uncertain shadows tremble.

No foot ever walked this paving,
no sound rises,
an eye, kohl half-applied
only death was bewildered and uncertain.
Death was forbidden here,
a chair blocked its way.
It stayed apart,
awaiting the tremble of light on her arm.