Metaphor for humanity

A man who is in a gravely ill condition refuses to go see a doctor despite the many advises he is given. Days go on and his illness grows worse until, at last, he falls out of consciousness and an ambulance is called in to rush him to the hospital. If he survives the damage he suffered will not be reversible, and he will be forced to live on in a diminished existence.

Man, the rational animal, will not do the one rational thing that ensures his future survival, the survival of humanity. Could it be that, after all, man is irrational? Rationality — if we believe his claim, that he is rational — has been a tool at work against his survival — rationality as his greatest stupidity; its progress and advancement leading to his extinction.

Man, the animal with no control over his impulses and will, ultimately wills his own end.

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Because Love Has to Be Given

What have you been doing all these years?—
Because love has to be given,
I have been writing to an imaginary lover,
Exhausting into ink the infinite longing
In my aching heart.

Why prolong and deepen your suffering?—
Because love has to be given,
And he who hasn’t felt the urge
Will not know this overpowering need,
Will not know that this urge to give
Is the primal reason of his being,
The motor of his life.

Is this not creating a schism with reality?—
That, my friend, to the sober minded
Is indeed the only possibility,
But I beg you, with whatever heart there is in you
Feel into the grandness of this vision,
Try and glance into its depth and light,
As it takes hold of you
Feel how above and beyond
All psychological and rational chatter it is;
Its reason lies in the irrationality of the heart,
And whoever does not know it will not know
How the heart grasps and lives its truth.

How can you deprive yourself of girls for the sake of love?—
Your eye immediately veered towards the denial
And this, my friend, betrays you,
Speaks your own limited but healthy state of mind,
It saddens my heart to see you so belittled,
A speck instead of the mountain and the sea
Which are open to you — if you only dare!
If your desire was not so limited
As to apprehend the desire of the flesh
But not of the soul!

No, there is deprivation here, my friend, no denial,
Here we rise only on the strength of an affirmation,
Here the dark cloud of denial will not be allowed
To tarnish the face of the beloved,
Here only the affirmation of love sways
And on the strength of this affirmation
New modes of valuation are shaped,
And a new vision of life is possible
And a higher principle of health
Is indeed acquired!

Ah, but how can I plant it in you, my friend,
The holy seed of envy
That will crack your soil and raise you
To the height of a vision
That you have barely allowed yourself to entertain?
In this age of players why not be a lover?
In this age that values most of all the pleasure of the moment,
The pleasure of the immediate,
Why not think the impossible and strive towards that
Which grows stronger even in its pain and ache?

My wish is for a thorn in your heart
And for a hammer that breaks it!
My wish is for you to rise to your own height
And learn the mastery of your impulses,
The control and sublimation of your desires,
So that, one day, and if you are lucky enough,
You may offer your whole life
On the banquet of love.

Haiku # 508

Emportant le souffle brumeux
du poète mort…
vent d’automne

~

Lune si fine…
à la regarder une artère
se coupe dans mon cœur

Tanka # 107

Autumn afternoon…
on the seeping fog
the notes of a flute
played by a shepherd
somewhere in the hills

Wandering Thought # 52

What is a poet?—a being who knows the secret name of the sun but cannot give it in its entirety to the world. As a result he suffers, and his suffering is baptized as poetry.

Free Verse # 411 (mon poème et mon cœur)

If I touched you with my heart, would you be the poem I’ve been aching to write? – the poem that exhausts my life in a sea of mystery?

~

He touched her and her heart, weeping, was a violin that finally found its soul.

~

My poem and my heart are coextensive: the woman who touches one touches the other.

~

Mon poème et mon cœur sont coextensives: la femme qui touche l’un touchera l’autre.

~

We are all in the end unfinished stories.

~

Un jour, même après ma mort, un papillon anonyme trouvera la fleur secrète qui brule dans mon corps.

~

آخر الطرقات بين
قلبي وقلبها
وردة حمراء تذوي
وورقة خريف
هائمة في الريح

~

Clothed by his poem,
every word etched
with the ink of a fire
that burned for ages
on the altar of his heart.

~

Caressant sa peau
avec mon poème
la fleur entre ses jambes
s’en est ouverte
comme une coquille qui m’offrait
l’infini de la mer

Haiku # 507

Trente-six…
la mort approche,
l’amour s’éloigne

Tanka # 106

At dawn by the window
the bowl of dry petals
emptied by the wind,
in its wooden hollow
the light of the moon.

Tanka # 105

Cette vie –
papillonner
quelques moments
au grès du vent,
et après…

Free Verse # 410 (my life)

My heart at dawn
soundlessly breaking;
in the forest
a swoosh of leaves,
and the song of a bird
that spent the night
searching for its nest.

~

In a blind world
I press my poem
to the wound of the sky

~

All the poetry I wrote
and you did not read
I’ll burn and blow,
fireflies in the night.

~

The sun has set;
of one cloth are weaved
my soul and the sky’s.

~

The sun,
blood red as it sinks;
my heart a coal
of untamed desire.

~

I live alone
at the edge of dawn
and no one
save a poem and a bird
comes to knock on my door.

~

Her and me –
the two wings of a bird gliding
in the silence of dawn.

~

I think of you the way silence spreads through the bosom of the night.

~

In the wave of his longing
she slept,
a leaf folded
in the silence of the sky.

~

My life,
little absences
converging
in the great heart
of the sea.

My life,
a great absence,
a thin ink line
of fading poetry.

~

J’ai beaucoup vie dans ton ombre. Je brille de ta lumière.

~

Trying to forget her whom I never met.

~

The aura of her light
enticing me to touch her
with the ray of poetry

~

Somewhere
in a secret place of her heart
I once loved,
I once lost.

Haiku # 506

Pour l’amour de sa peau
la lune chaque nuit
fleurit dans le ciel

~

For the love of her skin
the moon each night
flowers in the sky

Haiku # 505

Summer dawn…
all I have loved,
dead and gone

Wandering Thought # 51

There is no life after death, but there is an eternity. Being rooted in it it no longer matters if there is a life after death — or, said from the opposite bank, death achieves its purpose and opens us to eternity, not to an afterlife, but to a here-and-now eternity. Death itself becomes its white flower, its most fragrant sigh, its sigh of overflowing gratitude.

Haiku # 504

Mountain foot at dusk…
the shafts of wheat swaying
to a silent prayer

~

Two white hairs older…
my flowing years watering
garden poetry

~

Year after year,
leaves to the pond falling,
the silence of the stars.

Free Verse # 409 (the breath of a candle)

My touch in her skin…
the breath of a candle
whispering to the stars

~

Ce que la nuit étouffe, l’amour rallumera  – instinct du poète.

~

To touch her
with the heart of poetry ;
to touch her
and hear the poem
go silent,
pregnant
with the light of dawn.

~

Love is a state that wants to be secure in its vulnerability.

~

In the silence
I am painting you again,
brush dipped
in the tea breath,
pen in the ink
of a thousand kissing lovers.

~

In the fading light of dusk
as the fog trembled
like a blanket over the forest
a deer came and went swiftly
and my startled heart
found itself again
inside the poetry

~

La soie de sa peau,
le feu de mon encre –
promesse de poésie

~

The fingers of the night
strum her dark hair,
with each plucked string
the jasmine scent wafts
and goes everywhere, everywhere.

Haiku # 503

Autumn leaves falling…
thinking of all the books
I will not get to read

~

Two white hairs older…
the wine of her breasts
still melting in my mouth

Wandering Thought # 50

The invention of aviation was not a utilitarian invention. Reading through its history one realizes that its root and outgrowth came the human imagination, from an irrational fixation on the reveries where man saw himself flying, felt himself in flight, and so ached to achieve flying that from the profundity of a love that persisted through millennia he was finally able to materialize his dream.

 

In the end, much of our modern inventions with which we pride ourselves owe themselves to this — poetry and witchcraft, the ability to imagine new things, impossible things. For all his rationality, man, more than he knows, will always be close to the poet’s heart — his passions, which are inescapable, will make sure of this.

Free Verse # 408 (this music I heard)

My shadow softened
into her light,
a rose finally knowing
what it is to blossom.

~

She is not a body
but a constellation of stars
and each night, eyes closed,
with my breath I trace her,
trace her in my heart.

~

In my imagination
I work her body
the way the bee patiently builds
the intimate chambers of her honeycomb
using the fiery nectar of the flowers.

~

This music I heard
when I touched your heart
I do not want it to end

~

She is beautiful
the way dawn
caressing a rose
smiles in his white heart

~

In her touch
I want to burn and keep burning
until I am no more
than ash in the wind

~

Dans mon imagination
je travaille son corps
comme l’abeille patiemment
façonne les chambres de sa maison
avec le feu brulant des fleurs

~

In every poem I read
I search for the whiff
of her fragrance,
the secret intuition that led
the poet’s pure vision,
the hidden hand that guided
the fervent spill of his heart.

Haiku # 502

With the candle’s breath
etching her name
on the light of the moon

~

Sunday mass…
smiling as I gaze
at the pretty girls

~

Inspirations livresques…
page après page
feuilletant sa peau

~

How to touch a woman? –
learn by gazing
at the silent moon

~

Half-moon in the sky,
the other half shining
in the sea of her eyes

~

Even with no electricity
people will not look
at the passing moon