This is the third and final posting of the poems in The Joys and Tears of Love and Passion.
The previous two posts are:
1. Love and Passion (Blog 22, 4 January 2012)
2. Separation and Loss (Blog 40, 15 March 2012)
Reconciliation and Renewal
Nietzsche, Teacher of the Eternal Recurrence
Waiting for Myself
Laughing Lions Must Come!
Little Fingers
Fresh Songs
Pax
In Avoidance of Married Women
Ahipara
Images and Moods
That Word Love
Dreaming Again
Fingers Touch
Regeneration
Somedays
Why do I love you
______________________________________________________________
NIETZSCHE, TEACHER OF THE ETERNAL RECURRENCE
everything dies and blossoms again
everything breaks and is joined anew
everything parts and greets afresh
in every now being begins
WAITING FOR MYSELF
so for now
I am the guardian of memories
the night watchman of love
keeping faith with the past
fuelling the fire
to brave the winter’s chill
nourished on ambrosia
and the angelic grimaces of life
past memories before me
enriching not shackling
I wait on myself
and on the return of spring
fruit that is not picked
turns rotten and brown
falls away
breathing the odour of dusty eternities
but the tree will blossom again
to laugh in the summer sun
LAUGHING LIONS MUST COME!
I am but the man I am
sometime weary
sometime sad
sometime crooked and misshapen
wicked dwarfs crouching on my tongue
wanting consideration
swallowed up by solitude
but I am that man too
forged in the smithy of life
hammered right and straight
perpendicular in body and soul
broken from the cast of solitude
needing no consideration
ready for the roll of the drums
a warrior fit for the war
biting a brave lip
unshouldering past burdens
done with cries of distress
abandoning inexorable silences
facing forceful questions
I am free to give
my little finger
my whole hand
my heart too
to a welcome guest
tall
resilient
resurrected
fired by tenderness
the strong will of love
makes dim eyes bright
and spirits sportive
the laughing lions are loose
and I can be
the man I am.
LITTLE FINGERS
trying the temperature of the water
with little fingers
does not commit
to a Cook Strait swim
but it may encourage
a refreshing and joyful plunge
in a still sunlit cove
FRESH SONGS
brushing off dust and debris
and the spiders of despair
breaking through twilight shadows
and storms of negation
I stand naked before the sun
curing my soul with fresh songs
crowded and pressed by happiness
drinking strong wines of wisdom
back on the path that has heart
singing till the seas are silenced
whether you listen or not I will sing
it is such a beautiful folly
PAX
From here on in
No more apologies
For what we were
Or might have been
Let recriminations
Lie there
Recognised
But at rest.
The past is past
Irredeemable
Irreproachable.
IN AVOIDANCE OF MARRIED WOMEN
we are not islands you or I
we do not come like Last Tango*
without histories, the resonances of relationships
without obligations, responsibilities
self-images and self-respects
the internalised expectations of others
no matter how hard we may wish
how hard we try
we are our pasts and our futures too
if it were just you and I
in an island bubble
we would be free, adrift,
happy perhaps for a while
discovering ourselves alone
but our contract is limited
by time, by place, by circumstance
how can we be free when so constrained
when spontaneity is touched by dread and fear
and secrecy feeds on guilt and guilt on secrecy
I have little stomach for such ‘affairs’
and fear their consequences
“How do we live tomorrow?”
must colour how we live today
frightened by passion
fearful of the sterility of the passionless
wishing to love
yet fearing to say I love you
I will not let
the abstract desire
be particularised here in you
AHIPARA
What is it I fear
When I fear to say
I love you?
Trading devalued currency?
My love no better than pulp romance
Of the common crowd,
A grain of sand blown in the wind?
Is it that I fear –
Pulp romantic me?
Or do I deal a commodity
I do not have,
Cannot live,
As strange to me
As bird flight, fish swim;
Looked upon yet unseen
Copy-proof?
Or rebuff I fear?
Is that why I barter so
Swapping postage stamps
Like for like
A fair exchange
Waiting your opening bid
To manoevre my advantage?
Or can I live the thought
But not the action?
Do I fear
To threaten fantasy
To face the inrushing tide of consequence
Combing my beach clean?
Or is it that I do not love you?
But what I feel I feel I think
Why else so seek you out
Yet fear to speak my mind,
Tittle-tattle in embarrassed silence?
Why else my poem piece –
Or is that too to remain unseen
Unlooked upon
Locked on the ocean floor?
What is it I fear
When I fear to say
I love you?
IMAGES AND MOODS
I see you through the window window
Barriers apart
Beyond reach
So near, so far
My spirit searches out, seeks out,
Conscious of your world.
In the same house, untouching
Repressing the feeling to the page
Trading in trivia, the price of honey,
The yield of cows…
Peace
Peace
Is the knowledge not sufficient
End in itself,
Why then possess, devour?
Or is freedom only for captives?
THAT WORD LOVE
I know I feared the word
And with much cause
But there were moments
Flashes
When
Just briefly
I did love you
Touched your soul
From the heart of me
I would that I could
Have prolonged those moments
Nurtured the spark
To a full blown flame
But it was not to be
I could not
Or would not
And for that
We are both the poorer
DREAMING AGAIN
glittering crab
baited by happiness
rests on high mountains
where the views are clear
and a soul is calmer
(to be sad
yet feel so well
is curious
secretly I am amazed
at such optimism)
the honey in his veins
is bait
cast from the mountaintop
for a growling bear
(what does not destroy me
makes me stronger
poisons brew balsams
and wounds
contain powers that heal)
soft-treading lions are loose
conquering their freedom
to be masters
in their own domain
(spreading dreams again
so vulnerably
yet for now
it is enough
to believe you love me)
it is no sacrifice
better the follies of the mountaintop
than dreamless shadows
plundered
squandered
in desolate valleys
fingers touch
hands hold
eyes meet
no words speak
for a starving man
the merest crumbs of time
fashion a feast
a banquet of joy
feverishly grasped in fear of returning famine
as if the taste were transient
a springtime bloom presaging no summer sun
did not Camus
in the midst of winter
find within him
a glorious summer
(before blowing out his brains)**
does not summer follow spring
uncluttered by fancy’s fears
does not the bell-flower cherry
after naked blooms die away
put out a leafy shade
to nurture new season’s growth
should not then
the hermit crab***
scavenging scraps of womanfood
subsisting on frugal fare
inside the bubble of love
his cold night warmed
by dragons breathing fire
fearing careless claws
will burst the magic moment
the fragile friendship
cling on tight
to life’s roulette
chance a final turn
on fortune’s wheel
bask in the honey glow
of conscious care
his ice-freed soul
sustained
by a Sagittarian sun
fingers touch
hands hold
eyes meet
no words speak
REGENERATION
the caress of your hands
the sweet warmth of your lips
the joy in your eyes
your eager wetness
these are life to me
earth fire air water
elemental passions
that nurture me
feed me
and bring me back to myself
I thank you for them
with a sunny poem
on a soulspring morning
SOMEDAYS
somedays I feel a pain so deep
a drowning despair, a watery sadness
beyond the reach
of alcohol’s morbid mask
of soporific soap operas
the deadening beat of rock
the social chatter of partying friends
work’s partial concentrations
and tennis balls struck in anger
a pain that only
the most elemental sensations
can block out
within the compass of sea and sand
my floating body washed by the waves
dried by the sun
within the compass of our mutual joy
the warm embrace
the sensual touch
the present passion
the orgasmic now
the quiet nakedness as
through your love
life surges back.
Why do I love you
Why do I love you
Let me tell you why
I love you because
You accept me as I am
The mad passions
The tranquil joys
The tearful sadness
Because you give me time
To discover myself again
And make me feel
Free to be me
I hope that I
In my turn
Make you feel
Free to be you
Always.
* The reference is to the film Last Tango in Paris.
** I don't know where I got that idea from; Camus died in 1960 in a car accident.
*** My star sign is Cancer and I was born in the Chinese Year of the Dragon.
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