Category: Hymns to the Dawn

Of Sleep

Pierre MhannaLeave a comment

Sleep comes heavy
and my head free falls
into the pillow of your breasts,
buried all night
as your breath in waves
carries me to the shoreless sea
at the center of your chest,
there to sleep,
a quivering poem,
a dark seed
at the break of dawn
rising again,
a sun from amid your hills
parting the veils of the world
and writing its sky pure
with your breath for its skin,
your eyes for its boundless depth.

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Free Verse # 313 (singing the eternity of love and life)

Pierre MhannaLeave a comment

In the gray of dawn
my heart tolls,
its chime rolling
through veils of mist,
and tolling it calls
my vanquished tears
in the breaking light
to unfurl like flowers.

~

In the sky of dawn
the poem awakens,
its wings of light
across the earth stretching,
shaking the stardust
from the drowsy eyes.

~

Silent star-flower
my touch on her skin
glowing through the night,
its burning nectar
across her hills flowing
in liquid wingbeats
of fiery wine.

~

My poem
a tree in the forest
awaiting the return
of your fire-birds
to dwell like stars
amid my branches
and sing the eternity
of love of life

Senryu # 121

Pierre MhannaLeave a comment

Over her face
the sky of dawn
a shivering blue veil

What does it mean when I say that ‘Over her face she held dawn like a shivering blue veil’? It means that her face is too pure to be touched, reach for it and it will fade. Only by growing quiet and still, by growing inwardly receptive to the light shining from within her will her face begin revealing itself to you, caressing your heart and soul in endless white waves, rippling your shore into an ever changing poem, one that mirrors and expresses the hidden light eternally pouring through the seams of her veil. The more you contemplate the simple magnificence she reveals before you the more you relate to her internal light, and the more you relate to yours; the quiet effulgence growing into still river merging you upwards with the sky, dissipating you like clouds dissolving in the white sky. You burn, but the fire heaving you is a smokeless kind of flame, burning on nothing but purity; silence itself being a forest in flames, yet deeply at peace and in harmony with itself. Words, silences, both gain the odd quality of being one and the same, dewdrops of passion falling from the sky and lacing the green, vibrant earth. A step further and her radiance is no longer confined to sky or dawn; she is now all around you, at all times, shining from within every object and substance, every being and creature, even the faceless wind is pregnant with her, even the blackness of the night. She is the inner pulse of life, ever present, eternal. In every breath and moment you feel her, a light bursting through the seams of existence and dissolving you into light, subsuming you through the seams and back into the origins, diluting you in the substance that forged her into being, that eternal creature, that creature whose light creates the world, the earth and the sky.

A Homecoming Song

Pierre Mhanna2 Comments

The thunderous fall
of silence.
My heart
on the rock of dawn
breaks and shatters,
a wizard’s ball,
its misted fumes
breathing into the clear air
the vanishing images
of past and future.
Stillness,
the widening ring of silence
soaks all
into a single wave,
a clear, peaceful presence,
a white fabric
torn suddenly
by a shooting birdsong
as the mirthful ether sighs
a lighthearted hilarity,
every leaf and flower rustling
with a new found joy,
spring everywhere budding,
and my heart in the tumult
a blossoming red flower
reeling with ecstasy,
the whisperings of home.

Free Verse # 247 (hecatomb of desire)

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Reaping my sighs
on the altar on her absence,
sharp the moon’s sickle
in the sea of dawn.

~

Hecatomb of desire,
caught in her scent
a thousand flowers
melting to the floor.

~

The sea at dawn,
a peaceful child
lulled on the bosom
of his tender mother.

~

In the garden
where silence
is flower and fruit
for her I wait,
my heart against her lips
weeping to be the dawning sun,
the cup of sacred wine.

~

Dawn’s breathless shiver,
upon my cheeks
the dew of silence.

~

Wielding your breath
as though it were a flame
you burned all my poems
then into the ash wept
a sacred tear and lo!
my heart in dawn’s sky
a secret garden.

~

Under his fingers
her skin quivered
as the surface of the sea,
leaving him drenched
in salt and foam
and a yearning to sail
for eternity.

~

Drenched in his breath
the layers of her heart
he slowly peeled,
revealing the silence
vibrant at the core
of fluxing life.

~

The gray of dawn was an ashen cloak beneath which she hid a thousand burning suns.

~

Thirsting for your sea ~ my dewdrop heart.

Free Verse # 246 (enwombed by her dawn)

Pierre MhannaLeave a comment

Silence
touching her
becomes a fire,
along her skin
a thousand dawns
burning all at once.

~

Dawn, the silence in my heart a riot whispering her name.

~

Soft
as a cloud stroking the sky
her breath in my veins

~

Poetry, this silent breath pervading my heart.

~

The ashen face of silence,
to grow like a flower
enwombed by her dawn.

~

No more words to carry my silence to the shores of your dawn.

~

The silence
in my veins tracing
a hidden path
home

~

This silent window
between your heart and mine
has crumbled
to become the dawn sky