suddenly the rains camebringing grey-black marauding strangers
to world's end horizon
this ancient land
where Aeneas once came and left
the vines of Byzantium
seeded in this sweet red earth
entwined with skulls of massacred Christians
the scream of a Gypsy
on the dry cascading rosemary stones
the serpent in the cistern
sitting patiently on a crucible of quiet
the fiendish steps of a dancing woman
smitten by a tarantula on a scolding hill
in this location in this operatic chest
words fall down like sacred rains
four months of drought
banished in one october night
The world is full of simulation and fakers my friend - some say it doesn't matter and that intent, rather than content, is what matters - I say the counterfeit is false and the false holds no meaning.
ReplyDeletethat elusive quest for 'excellence' every artist and poets knows about....that is where beauty can be found.....
ReplyDeleteyes indeed, jan, thanks
ReplyDeletei think all art is either our grasping to keep hold of some beauty, or the need to create that is born within us, to give us a pathway forward out of the ugliness of life. Poetry does both. it also allows us to leap space and time to reach and be reached beyond our capacity to imagine. What love here Dom is your clarity, passion articulated without boodshed without bruising the brokenhearted, you have a gift for that, the passion and its containment that does not flinch from the telling of it in the least, running side by side over the road of musical clear-seeing words
ReplyDeletelovely comment marilyn thanks. glad you can hear me
ReplyDeleteIt is an admirable attempt to seek poetic justice in the ruptured vain of the martyr. You are the voice of innocence, you react seeking. When one seeks to understand the human condition it becomes intimate.
ReplyDeleteI am fascinated by the voices we adopt, shelter or kill. Voices to which we admit and confess. Would we be victims to the victims or a dominating voice, because at the end they want to break through real.
We have to dirty poetry in our human remains, blood, flesh, cum, spit, tears, screams sometimes to understand beauty.
The anger voice is still most natural, because when you are down pressed by the boot and violated even by your own blood rushing to the brain you oppose, you don’t beg mercy, you spit at faces
Very intense letter to the notorious and fascinating Barrus.
we explore the questions of questions. there are no answers
ReplyDeleteThanks - a good work.
ReplyDeleteto meditate, even where notions of brotherhood are absent... to ask the questions which cannot be answered and travel with them
ReplyDeleteor, the answers are always in flux as the questions are
ReplyDeleteUntil here to be erased
ReplyDelete------------------------------------------------
ReplyDeleteYou paint wonderfully, here, Dom..a beautiful piece rich with unique imagery..
ReplyDeleteTerrific Dom - sums up October beautifully.
ReplyDeletea crucible of silence..and quiet ~ magnificent melancholy quenched in absolution..
ReplyDeleteI liked all the "marauding strangers"...beautiful imagery indeed.
ReplyDeletethanks you all... thanks for the rains
ReplyDeletethe imagery is wonderful Dom - I tip my hat...
ReplyDeleteLes diverses rencontres de la pluie sur son chemin vers la terre assoiffée, les sons et les silences qu'elle collecte en ses molécules, vibration du sol qui la reçoit, et le chant des oliviers qui la boivent goulûment !
ReplyDeleteun festin!
ReplyDeleteLa pluie qui roule efface toutes traces... Pour en inscire de nouvelles à nouveau.
ReplyDeleteelle efface la secheresse a jamais, il semble et le monde change d'un eclair, foudroye par la nature
ReplyDeleteMagnifique poème, merci Dom. La pluie, comme un coeur battant.
ReplyDeleteFine work! I especially love:
ReplyDeletethe serpent in the cistern / sitting patiently on a crucible of quiet
I love the daring piercing of your poetry through everything with stories enfolding in every fragment of its absolute beauty. That is the new art, it has gone beyond the formality of spotting the obvious, it reveals the secrets that change us. Bowing
ReplyDeletedon't bow too low my dear!
ReplyDeleteThere is no such thing, only the great bow and respect hierarchy :)
ReplyDeleteStunning, and I love walking in the mosaic steps of Byzantium (though I have still never been to Istanbul).
ReplyDeleteSo truly said. That is the way of it.
ReplyDeleteSo beautiful! Love, Words fall down like sacred rains...Your work always reminds me of how much poetry really means to me, how much reading it and at times succeeding in my attempt to write makes me the me I am... Thank you Dom ♥
ReplyDeleteI could be way off here...but this poem brought about visions of a documentary I had seen about Southern Italy...I forget the exact region and name of this tradition~ But it is the public reenactment of Christ's suffering before crucifixion. The men flog themselves mercifully until the streets are bleeding streams of blood. In that same region, I believe- the women perform the tarantula dance~ I know that this poem is not a direct reference- especially die to the month of October being completely irrelevant, however, it still resonated those images none the less~ Care to expand? (smiles...)
ReplyDeletean intense & haunting operatic write - such fine music as well a gorgeous semantics - thanks lisa
ReplyDeletei am italian but i am sickened by italy's superstitious sado-masochistic christian ritualistic imagery. the theatre of cruelty with the promise of vicarious redemption.
ReplyDeletedom, sorry i got off on a wee bit of a rant against christianity. i see your lovely poem more as a pagan paen singing a song triumphant to nature for bringing the land its much needed rain.
ReplyDeletewell, good!!!!
ReplyDeletethe rain i mean
ReplyDeleteha ha yes very good,very needed....
ReplyDeletethe last lines inspire one to read again, it packs suddenly with more power if you put those at the beginning instead of the end, yes wonderful poem so grateful for the rain after all that waiting. how I shall feel when I have some books selling well...so close I can taste it
ReplyDeletea truly mediterranean poem which lets me feel i am in calabria and sicily again......when i breathed old genes of italanitá came to life.
ReplyDeletedancing the tarantella in my heart.
Leila A. Fortier, you are quite right. listen to this music by a group of friends of mine:
ReplyDeletebeautiful, Dom. A sense of both past and possibility evoked in these stunning images
ReplyDelete