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INJUNCTIONTRANSCRIPTIONBEYOND MINARETS ACROPOLE NECROPOLECONSTANTINOPLE SAINT SOFIA CONSTANTINOPOLIS
The day’s embryo worms its way into the gap of my ear drum through the shrubs of alliteration.
A question is fermented by bewitching waters on the lips of an echo.
Boats are floating with hidden reports down the lava golden legs.
From huge towers I could hear the sunset’s rattle, the edelweiss burning on the rim of the moon.
Steps rustle through a horizon of visions and impatience grows inside the magnifying glasses—
my inner sight broken by meteorites follow ways unwilling to be unveiled.
the snow miscarried a dead morning the sky coagulated over like a wound the sun disappeared behind a lousy book behind a ridiculous idea, behind a jug
in the junkyard the snowmen are wounded there are other gilded iron people planning to assault the light in the garden of cones, prisms and cylinders
the snow looks like barely washed linen— the soot of the world on paved windowpanes it is maddening within four walls, the same faces, lampshades, goldfinches in cages
tram tracks, bridges and films great and unimportant people lesser and lesser, doormen among dwarfs, the same bittersweet lemonade
the water is parted now into chunks of sadness even you hid within a silent eye. I wake up on cold mornings feeling strangely dematerialized and I can’t recall what caused me pains in my dreams
the vacuum is incinerating the precincts, my head squashed between coverlids looks like a farce, the snow and the soot have replaced the days, every Sunday is a scorched library
the forest was burnt and the wind has been crippled souls through the fog seem nobody’s wreck I wake up doing gestures I didn’t mean to, darkness is gasping out corpse after corpse
With the doll of the cold in my arms through the gangway of the prophetic words I loved the light entangled in rugs and threads, far away at the blood’s very end a gong of burning wasps keeps tolling:
Let no more flowers be, let the edge of the water ooze oily fluids, let the drought run in the riverbeds and suffocate the spring, let the clouds crawl in the swamps of the heart and move your sea painting in the attic
Make a noose knot out of lizards and from other crawlers make a stalk of flower. Let cockroaches be petals of poppies and hollow skulls be enchanting places
Draw music out of thistles and from blending sounds may grow but boils and empty wind mildew, stone blasts and roaring iron
Poisons shall be your strings. Only sorrow will overflow from heavens and your heart shall swell until it becomes a tower clock battered with stones by all mad and blind men
With your fist full of beheaded worms marshes shall be your shrine across which you’ll cut a path with your look. There shall you see your loved one giving birth, there shall you be wasting away until your last delirious breath
You will seclude your memory within the bark of the trees out of which will grow knots, stumps and a sack full of crows, ravens and hungry earth and clouds full of shaking bones and squeaking, rusty rains over a vineyard heavy with sunless grapes
Licked about your joints by ropes, you will move your hands infested with viols, made out of furniture, door frames and cages. When opening them shall you step on rifles’ eye
You’ll capture their look—a new regard to search around in your soul, which a long time ago has ceased to think, becoming a speaker of mechanically activated feelings— feeds callous engines and tongues nailed on the wall. To imprison you in the same word, in the tower of the same bramble you will see the ship overloaded with selves
Let no more flowers be, let the edge of the water ooze oily fluids, let the drought run in the riverbeds and suffocate the spring, let the clouds crawl in the swamps of the heart
Do hide your books in the ailing planets, do trim your eyelashes and bury your rings. May the razor cut off your nose. Let a pair of compasses trace an axis of icy gems through the spheres.
Just like that, was he shouting from within the Indian ink, slamming doors in a bubbling voice and with wild intoning:
No more blooms, uttering a gurgling air, blending shards of words— No more flowers, let pestilence grow in the ivory horns of water, let the spring drivel dearth through the swampy sand of the slime-glands TRANSCRIPTION
The ancient figures of the wall paintings have gathered around the table, disfigured by tears. Outside, autumn is rehearsing its helium raining— a long transcription for our fermented cembalos.
Locked in creative cemeteries, I write with a chemical burning on the skin of the air. Time has fled from among the glasses, birds are dripping from the sky into the purple brass instruments, iron sounds gnaw at my inside—phantoms of the crushed piano.
The marrow of the numbers is leaking out on the keys through the stained-glass full of angels turning their look away. On the waters, the limp water lily seems a cigarette case for tuberculous clouds.
The ravens have grown out of the fog like black tombstones displacing the sky. We sing going moldy, becoming mute.
BEYOND MINARETS ACROPOLE NECROPOLE CONSTANTINOPLE SAINT SOFIA CONSTANTINOPOLIS
[ascetism and persecution, spears pulled out of the flesh, Mythos mingles with reality inside being there is a secret archeology, meditation on light architraves of fire and visions forgotten sin miracle bites at our stone epiphysis the sun leaves hot shadows in the palimpsest]
legendary stones in the eternal sky the witness blessed and cursed between Acropolis and Necropolis
inside being there is a secret archeology there is the blood sluggishness through the veins on islands with Fauns the great key of the blessed beginning opens and closes the gates to multiple existences Thalia brings laurels to Eros who opens the seeds of love over the germinal foam carried by Zephyrus into Aphrodite’s birth
the sea borders twinkle through the opacities of stained-glass windows with rites of spring—romping bacchanalia of Nymphs and Satires are filtered in pyramids on the thin crust of the eye
Mythos mingles with reality with curls of trees over the temples and heroes teach us the stubborn battles between man and man between man and gods gods and gods, bravery and tenacity faith and loyalty, treachery and madness
the flour scattered out of light the stolen fire over the blind man’s tale in the Olympian serenity
democracy is an annoying game for Gods they play with mortals when the fire can not be kept alive the Atlantis plunges into the see on the day of human sacrifice
the tides of anger over Trojans walls brings the marvelous horse from the Achilles’ heel bleeding on the lingering planes
the tides of war blow the Odysseus ships from ruins of the city to illusory seas into the storm of gods through the Cyclops eye and Sirens seduction
under the blazing sun halberds sting the horizon the sounds of a panpipe through stillness caress the Argonauts along their fabulous journey the golden fleece will change the world
the oracle issued delirious sentences poets and prophets pierce the truth through the bark of thunder-struck trees philosophers dream in the flight of wet quartz moving ideas on the cave ceiling and in squares of democratic passion
At Delphi the waves of the battles are decided time covers the timeless sand of the beaches
fire spills out of trumpets into the parchment’s ears flying across nostalgia into the pure tides of flames
old secrets burn in Alexandria
seaside rocks watch over the gods twilight
Time oozes and dark ages stretch over the waves the scorching winds from the desert come as a hot tar lighting
the collapse is build from the shine in its own pits time and time again from wastelands and tundra ravens rivet the corpses on the black metal of battlefields
hordes’ tides engulf the eternal, the faith in human race
memories hide in metallic bushes plants start moving towards the wandering green running trees in the nomad sight the exterminated birds fall down into my hearing becoming pain and plagues of stone on the flesh of air
adverse eyes lock being inside the leaves night comes down over the sleep’s dirty smoke over vibrations of the past
dream and its magma is lost in a torrent of circles clear water gets fuzzy under the glassy sphinx and turns into a shield for thoughts fallen asleep over empty spaces
in the sunset’s lake ravens lay down oblivion purity is torn into shreds of eyes over ponds of ash the labyrinth coils around lives where silence engulfs the plaster Minotaur Pandora’s box was opened mirrors and death—snowfalls over innocent bodies enduring the stretching on the rack and the burning on the stake and the swallowing of words, spears pulled out of martyrs flesh as the shirt is torn by births and by forgotten sin
through the painful vagueness—architraves of fire and of visions
barbarians and Christians plundered faith demolished the ancient abandoned temples
gondolas’ and sword’s embroidery fetched from hungry nether lands pierce the frescoes the armor’s poison leaks onto the mosaics and sacred wisdom deadly flying arrows scent the air pierce the thickness stirring rough waves for the mounted vanities and greed
you can hear the heavy crusaders plundering Constantinople returning to their land on the golden horses of the great hippodrome of the city of lights where the night was lit by torches like the blazing billboards in modern cities
until the all-nights-darkness dripped through the blood of the raped women in Sancta Sofia basilica, raped and killed by the knights who had started the just, noble and divine crusade
Christians destroying Christians in the name of Christians until Yataghans dug trenches in Bosporus and the city of lights was burnt by napalm and Sancta Sofia turned into a mosque
over the city walls the song lay like a sultan in the trombone among spears the pointed minarets the muezzin’s call turbans spun on the axle of power nargileh wrapping in smoke the snaking odalisques.
Narrow streets meander like a spider web over the street commerce over baklava and quarters where taxes used to be fixed the golden rivers squeezed from suffering veins and golden watches to measure time over the deep graves of prophets and saints
for hundreds of years the church walls wept faceless they wept with sacredness into empty pan of the balance so we could hear the worm winds in the pregnant womb and see the walls stripped of paintings paintings over scraped paintings over empty looks
beyond the curtain of minarets through the fog of shrill voices among tall grasses we can still see the Olympic contests and Byzantine mosaics
I touch the sadness of air
I feel sorrow in the sky above
He walks through a tear and gets purified, transcending purification He becomes the cross
meditation on light
morning prayer digs poison out of the sun presses wind into brass instruments grows the rumble of light from an unseen sunrise
in monasteries the slopes of forgotten time coagulate around essence
the panpipe sweetness fills the new flight the rainbow’s aroma
dazzle is not reflection but vibration expansive sap seeping into our soul
on the other side of the morning the moon and the white trees freeze in God’s insomnia
come angels with wounds of carnation and virgins with oil and sanctified wine with pure thought
the painful transparency burns our look and we can see the dark pole of light earth made green by water and chrism
our visions are stretched up on the windlass by the hearing purified in origins lying in ambush for perfection
trees disappear in the sky the trembling of soul green as light’s spear
fires are kindled on the crests far away one can hear the bells tolled by the hesitant hand of the rainbow
stars rise as javelins silence is kneeling on the cross night enters a Byzantine icon
our sight is overwhelmed by His breath by the crowning fire wrapping itself up in emblems
flight mingles with ascetic dissonance secluded in our lives, in floating reed islets, nimble thoughts rise and everything gets clearer
a silk mouse crunches the grain of sleep and disperses darkness in fans of worm snow You pass by illuminated by the arbors grown into nostalgia
Sagittarius drawn in an egg shell
death upon death
happiness is flowing down the retina into the depth pierced by worm stars by spears fallen from pure thought we dig light out of brass instruments we push light’s rumble into the sunrise of quartz dazzle is not reflection but green vibration in light’s spear digging into our soul
snow burns under the numbers one can feel ecstasy one can hear ascetic cataracts levitating into the hidden colors into the brilliant remoteness of our souls— planets of a great change
inside the smoke miracle bites at drops of sun
hot shadows
icons embracing us
Poems by Liviu Georgescu |