who knows

the nostalgia of those pavements
the worn out nostalgia of those worn out pavements
the sweet pain of this nostalgia
the timeless melancholy of those pavements
who knows who walks those pavements now
hand in hand or heaves a sigh or
throws away a page torn from a diary
hesitantly on those pavements
a page scribbled with a hundred I love you's
who knows if the page flutters aimlessly or
someone stoops to pick it up who knows
the thought of those pavements
the harsh murmur of those pavements
the loud noise of those pavements
who knows how the breeze blows
how the sun sets on those pavements now
the littered memories on those pavements
the trodden years on those pavements
who knows who walks those pavements now
whether their shadows lengthen too in the afternoons
the solitude of those pavements after dark
do the pavements too remember the ceaseless echo
of some footsteps the thoughts of those steps
do you remember how we walked those pavements
do you remember
do you know what remembering is

The day has ended

The day has ended
and the night is spreading its shadow its moon
the moon its rictus
the rictus its shadow
the shadow its longing
the longing its bitterness
the bitterness its pain.

The day has ended
and you are leaving
leaving behind a space and a silence
the silence its noise
the noise its echo
the echo its shadow
the shadow its longing
the longing its bitterness
the bitterness its pain.

The day has ended
and the night and you are hand in hand
leaving your shadows spreading your moons
stealing my silence
the silence its place
the place its shadow
the shadow its longing
the longing its bitterness
the bitterness its pain.

Under cover of Night

To slip into your shadow under cover of night.
To follow your footsteps, your shadow at the window.
That shadow at the window is you and no one else;
it's you.
Do not open that window behind whose curtains you're moving.
Shut your eyes.
I'd like to shut them with my lips.
But the window opens and the breeze, the breeze
which strangely balances flame and flag surrounds my escape
with its cloak.
The window opens:
it's not you.
I knew it all along.

Robert Desnos

go

go
go and wear the medallion of my patience
wear the medallion of my patience on your lapel
show it or flaunt it or
else throw it into the sea
when you walk along the sea shore
with your new footprints in the new sand
under the new moon of your new life
ignoring funeral pyres along the shore

go
go and unremember the poems we read together
discard the amulets of known times
forget the melancholy we shared
the discreet nostalgia for old trains and attics
and lonely wooden barns
and the pain of a lonely owl hooting

you don't know what kneeling is
or what an altar looks like and
what remembrances are
you don't know even now that
when the moon sinks into the sea
a feverish haunting throbs
go ride the riptide to infinity
go

I will never forget

I will never forget that image
the hopelessness in your eyes
the pleading fever in my arms
the restless ache in my fingers
the unslept night in our eyes
and all this human pain so human
so created so worthless
that image when we parted when I left

then I think of travellers banished
and unmitigated separations
unplanned treason unthought of betrayals
but you and me could still have saved
so many nights and days
for our sorrows were worldly
and impious subject neither to melancholy
or doom

I will never forget the exact image
the meaningless tears as they fell unhesitant
the longed for turning back
you etched in stone in vain
hoping that I would change my mind
and learn that being left behind
adds to the face to the eyes
the colour of death of restless repeating death.

The Daily Moods of the Final Certainty

"I want to try to do a film about myself: what it would be like if I weren't successful. Ia'm trying to find out what kind what kind of person I'd have become. I would have always have tried to earn my living from culture, but let's assume I hadn't had the chance to make films or do theater, then maybe I w'd have directed radio plays. That's what the film will be about: a young man who does radio plays. He'd probably have the same health problems I do, because they go back to an earlier time, and the psychic dislocations would probably all be about the same, they'd express themselves differently. Or certain things would be real obstacles to him that aren't to me. I a'm really excited about it now......I definitely want to make the film. "The Daily Moods of the Final Certainty".....that'll be the title".

Fassbinder, Feb 1974

she lies in abandoned solitude

her body lies in abandoned solitude
on the beach,
in an uneasy solitude
motionless and limp she lies in restless unease
added to the world's limitless solitude.
though she killed herself, she
really died at his hands

he had left her, he had abandoned her to
die in an uneasy restless solitude.
she killed herself,
she who was alive yesterday, who was alive
last night,
now lies on the beach in an uneasy solitude.

she took her own life after he took her life
away, after he left her.
there she lies
betrayed and used,
her dead bare back sullies the fierce solitude
of the beach, as she lies uneasy in death.

soon the tides will wash her sad body to
a cold sea, consign her forever
to a limitless solitude.
a back without scars, eyes without lids
in a cold sea,
she will burn forever

he crushed her heart, he ate it
he left her abandoned her.
she killed herself though she really
died at his hands.
her black tresses will anchor her forever
to an unforgivable unforgettable solitude.


Note: The above lines were written after seeing this photo posted by Roxana. It is complemented by a perfectly neat poem written by Swiss and Roxana has translated it into Romanian. The above attempt only conveys an impression. The reality is known to Roxana alone.

Little Viennese Waltz

In Vienna there are ten little girls
a shoulder for death to cry on
and a forest of dried pigeons.
There is a fragment of tomorrow
in the museum of winter frost.
There is a thousand-windowed dance hall.
Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this close-mouthed waltz.

Little waltz, little waltz, little waltz,
of itself, of death, and of brandy
that dips its tail in the sea.

I love you, I love you, I love you,
with the armchair and the book of death
down the melancholy hallway,
in the iris's dark garret,
in our bed that was once the moon's bed,
and in that dance the turtle dreamed of.
Ay, ay, ay, ay!
Take this broken-waisted waltz

In Vienna there are four mirrors
in which your mouth and the echoes play.
There is a death for piano
that paints the little boys blue.
There are beggars on the roof.
There are fresh garlands of tears.
Aye, ay, ay, ay!Take this waltz that dies in my arms

Because I love you, I love you, my love,
in the attic where children play,
dreaming ancient lights of Hungary
through the noise, the balmy afternoon,
seeing sheep and irises of snow
through the dark silence of your forehead.
Ay, ay, ay ay!
Take this "I will always love you" waltz.

In Vienna I will dance with you
in a costume with a river's head.
See how the hyacinths line my banks!
I will leave my mouth between your legs,
my soul in photographs and lilies,
and in the dark wake of your footsteps,
my love, my love, I will have to leave
violin and grave, the waltzing ribbons.

Federico Garcia Lorca

Poem to the Mysterious Woman

I have dreamt of you so much that you are no longer real.
Is there still time for me to reach your breathing body, to kiss your mouth and make
your dear voice come alive again?

I have dreamt of you so much that my arms, grown used to being crossed on my
chest
as I hugged your shadow, would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body.
For faced with the real form of what has haunted me and governed me for so many
days and years, I would surely become a shadow.

O scales of feeling.

I have dreamt of you so much that surely there is no more time for me to wake up.
I sleep on my feet prey to all the forms of life and love, and you, the only one who
counts for me today, I can no more touch your face and lips than touch the lips and
face of some passerby.

I have dreamt of you so much, have walked so much, talked so much, slept so much
with your phantom,
that perhaps the only thing left for me is to become a phantom
among phantoms, a shadow a hundred times more shadow than the shadow that
moves and goes on moving, brightly, over the sundial of your life.

Robert Desnos

So must I write a poem?

So must I write a poem every time you leave me,
every time you go and leave me behind?
For this would leave me wordless,
as our partings are too numerous, too long,
and our natural destiny, it seems.

Must I write a poem every time the hour fades
into longing, with silence marching in
as your steps fade way, each fading step
in step with each silence that each step
gives?

I cannot leave our meetings to serendipity.
I do not trust chance encounters outside sad cafes,
your hair astray and my fists shackled,
you lost in reading a poem
and I lost in my loss.

There is no meaning in suffering. Try remembering
what has happened and the flowing tides of time
will stop. Then other lovers will resume their trysts,
suns will set, the time to part will come for others
too, but my loss is mine alone.

I must learn to trace my words in the shadowy
shadows of the moon or the henna that has dried
on your palms. I must try trusting fortune tellers
and hope that the sun that has set and the moon
that stung have not done so in vain.

your hair blown across your face

your hair blown across your face
I see the white of your eyes from a distance
I see the hair blown across your face
and how you blow this sunset to pieces

how your hair shades your face
and what I would give to live in that shade
under the shade of your hair
blown across your face

witness this blown sunset
witness too the falling shadows
after the shade after the visible white of your eyes
have shaded everything that lives inside me

and now the peripheral night is gathering its gloomy shade
but what can it know of a face that is shaded by hair
what does it know of shade and hair and your face
and the visible invisible white of your eyes

your lips too are covered with the blown strands
of your hair that has blown this sunset to pieces and
has shaded every shade into nothingness and how silent
everything seems now and how loud this silence is

The above hastily and unrevised lines were written after seeing the latest pictures posted by Roxana.