a watch is a little
glass prison
for time –
where the seconds
serve a life sentence
without the possibility
of parole.
people like to wear
captive time
around their wrist.
when all the seconds are numbered and can never escape,
they call the watch good.
measuring
heartbeats,
counting down
to the end.
I’d like to start a petition
to free time
I’d like to see it
fly
and watch
for timelessness instead.
Trying to stay in shape during social distancing.
A river, a grove, a few less trodden paths on a sun-flooded morning. Glimpses of real beauty. And a little piece of heaven.
Copyright A. Sepi 2020. All rights reserved
Dear friends,
My poems have now become a thing. A something you can buy and hold in your hands.
You can turn them into paper airplanes and give my words wings, you can write comfort food recipes on their back, or you can put them on your bookshelf for the benefit of generations to come (and to the dismay of whoever it is that must dust them)…
Here they are, eager to keep you company in your self-isolation.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086PMZJKM?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860
If you’re the digital type and prefer the magic of electrons, there is also a Kindle version.
Enjoy!
We’re so fucking great
Masters of our fate
We’ll conquer the stars
We’ll colonize Mars
Make a million bucks
Drive SUV trucks
We’ll upgrade our lives
We’ll get trophy wives
Your pocket’s your Savior
Be snide to thy neighbor
C’mon, be a winner
The pauper’s the sinner
Forget all the ancients
Make profits off patients
We’re so fucking bold
We’re breaking the mold
A virus so small
Is breaking us all.
Remember these days
these brief days
when we walked in groups of one
we gave thanks to the ones who toiled
and our lives touched each other even though our hands didn’t.
Remember these days
these brief days
when daddy was no longer at work (yay!)
because people mattered more
than production:
we discovered we had lungs (so fragile)
and the air became breathable.
Remember these days
these brief days
with the deafening chants of birds, their speeches, their courtships, their pleas
finally audible,
and how we watched them build nests from our dining room window,
the whole family gathered around the table for once,
the playgrounds locked, quiet,
the streets devoid of the screams of neglected children;
the strange intimacy.
Remember these days,
these brief days
when we looked at each other with fear and awe
and doubt and hope and kindness
– but we looked! –
and were on the verge of rediscovering
humanity;
A book and a stroll meant the world to us,
we sang on balconies
while deer with unnatural eyes and glistening antlers
wandered into Nara and took the empty metro nowhere.
Remember these days
these brief days
when the trees stood erect and reached into the sky while the stock markets fell
(not the other way around)
when the river exhaled a soft haze at dawn before the buzz began,
the buzz of a thousand and one insects.
Remember the days
when the engines of destruction stood still for a minute
while food continued to grow out of the dark soil
and we were afloat in the poetry of necessity.
Remember these days
for they will not last forever
and maybe, one day, who knows,
they shall be missed.
the heavy, menacing tread of the lone jogger,
the scented solitude of the wild cherry blossom
down by the water.
a silence overpowering, thunderous.
undaunted gulls shrieking about trivial things,
ripping through it –
ear-piercing, alive.
two-dimensional human shapes in the distance
revealing the magnitude of the landscape:
floodplains and clouds huddling over and thickets and brown grasses and beavers
hidden from sight
the musical chirping of warblers,
the regular knocking of woodpeckers.
a sprig, a bursting bud, a thin green leaf timidly exploding
as spring self-isolates amid
this prodigious heaving and gasping,
this fear of inhaling
punctuated by the scampering dogs.
industrious zeal grinding to a halt.
how slow the river flows.
how pale the grey sands.
it feels like Good Friday without the church bells.
Panta începe abrupt. Mușchii se opintesc. Se contractă, se întind. Înaintez anevoios în sus: dreptul, stângul, dreptul, stângul… La fiecare pas, talpa bocancului scârțâie, alunecă puțin în spate în zăpada moale, aproape zloată.
Lanternele rămân stinse. În albastrul de cobalt al nopții, doar stelele licăresc, neverosimil de multe. Când lăsăm în urmă ultima casă, ne afundăm în întuneric. Și ridicăm instinctiv ochii spre cer. O explozie de cioburi sclipitoare, scăpărând nestinse, picură încet peste noi, peste spinările înzăpezite de munți ca niște dinozauri împietriți sau, poate, doar adormiți. Deasupra și roată-roată, noaptea, această pânză largă înmuiată în tuș negru, înfășoară planeta. Pe ea stă scrisă migălos, cu scânteieri de lumină atârnată în vid, caligrafia trecutului, a galaxiilor ce poate nu mai sunt.
Din când în când, coboară sănii în viteză, chiuind. Copiii se aruncă demonstrativ din calea lor, în zăpadă. Apoi se face iar liniște. De-o parte și de alta a drumului: pădure. Brazi uriași, un soi de zgârie-nori vegetali, urcă și urcă și urcă amețitor spre boltă. Dar nori nu sunt de data asta, ca să rămână agățați în vârfurile lor. Fuioarele de ceață se plimbă leneșe peste satul din vale; aici aerul e clar, iar deasupra uriașelor trunchiuri de brazi planează doar, bine ascuțită, lama de secure a unui sfert de lună, înfiptă la baza cerului. Iată și Carul Mare, un Venus orbitor, Andromeda…
Respir. Buzele tale sunt neașteptate. Sărutul tău umed în aerul rece și ionizat al nopții miroase ca acum 20 de ani: proaspăt, dulce, ca promisiunea unei beții ușoare și de durată. Totul miroase la fel, miroase ca atunci, miroase ca România. În mine se trezesc amintirile, ies amorțite din cotloane, de sub plăci de mormânt, ca vârcolacii, năpădesc gardurile pe care le-am construit ca să mă apăr. Peste noi ninge cu stele; îndărătul pleoapelor închise plouă cu lacrimi pe care ți le ascund.
Cât de fericiți eram atunci! E oare cu putință? Să-mi amintesc cum se simte fericirea? Libertatea? E ceva ce mă zguduie. Mă zguduie și mă schimbă. Pășim unul lângă altul sub cer. Insignifianți în Universul infinit, dar suflete înviate, palpitând! Iată esențele; pe ce le-am vândut? Hai să umblăm așa, la lumina nopții, la nesfârșit, îmi vine să îți zic.
Dar până să vorbesc, ca mai mereu în viață, drumul cotește. Iar în spatele curbei pândește deja primul felinar: scuipându-și peste potecă aura portocalie, împrăștiindu-și convenabila orbire, mâzgălind înălțimile.
Magia nopții se sparge. Cerul se îndepărtează, stelele pălesc, redevenim mari, centrali în nimicul lipsit de acum de orizont și de vrajă. Ancorați în pământ. Umbre pe drum.
Comuniunea cu cosmosul se destramă. Iar pentru fiul meu miop, cu ochelarii lăsați acasă, ea nici n-a existat. Și mă lovește realizarea: copiii ecranelor și mall-urilor, copiii micilor piese de Lego risipite pe covoarele unor camere închise în orașe ce viermuiesc sub capace de smog și iluminat artificial, N-AU VĂZUT, POATE, NICICÂND ADEVĂRATUL CER .
Și n-au simțit niciodată ispita aceasta, ziditoare de suflet, de religii și de romane, a căderii în sus.
*Alm (germ.)= pajiște alpină
Have you noticed how the following themes keep popping up, almost obsessively, in contemporary discourse – in the media, in the public sphere and increasingly in ourselves?
This obsession with sex – and complete devaluation of love and tenderness and commitment.
This obsession with doing – and complete devaluation of being.
This obsession with the intensity of fragmented experience – and complete devaluation of profoundness and resilience and eternity.
This obsession with work and maximization – and complete devaluation of contemplation and spirituality. Of the time it takes to realize that you have a soul, that you are a human being capable of transcendence, not a machine plugged in to churn out as many objects as possible per unit of time.
We treat ourselves and each other as equipment, as products. We apply to beings the logic of machines. We have transferred the maximum efficiency mantra of the technological sector to human life. We have internalized the algebraic depersonalisation, the callous disregard, the flattening subjugation of being to efficiency and utility present in our discourses. We find it OK to behave and to be treated increasingly like predictable robots or like working animals. Like mammals, all dapper and happy to be allowed to act out their basest instincts.
This obsession with Darwinism, with us as little more than physical organisms in biological evolution, this bench-marking against apes, not against angels or saints. This devaluation of angels and saints as melodrama and cheap esoteric – or, even, as oppression. This talk of our “natural instincts”. Nature, our nature, as a new goddess. But should we always make way for our natural instincts? Will that improve us? What will build more character and more goodness and a deeper path to the absolute we secretly yearn for?
(Is something good or legitimate simply because we were born with it? Because we acquired it? Because it is fun? Because it brings pleasure or monetary value? Are we not supposed to transcend ourselves?)
This frenzy of devaluation… No religion, but brand religion. The branding iron.
What is slavery for theoretically free individuals? According to Simone Weil, the disconnect between one’s efforts and their life’s work. (We work, but we no longer have a life’s work, an opus, an oeuvre. We expect our work to be the foundation of our identity, but in fact, so many of us no longer feel like creators. We no longer develop our being in the process of our work. Work all too often feels like odd life-draining tasks under excruciating time pressure, away from the ones we love. It no longer feels like purpose. Just endless busyness. Our work has control over us, but we no longer have much control over it.)
What else is slavery? In Gravity and Grace, S. Weil goes on to say it is the coercion to accept that “reading” of yourself, that interpretation of yourself, which others stamp on you. Having no choice or having only wrong choices. Allowing yourself to be devoured by exhausting activities, and making all this daily effort simply to stay in your current condition – no horizon, no finality, mere survival. Day to day to day. The arbitrariness of how you are treated. The dependency. The addiction.
Any illusion begins to feel real when enough people accept it and internalize it as “the thing to do”. Repeated, it reproduces, it propagates.
This destruction of the human soul…
We no longer recognize the sacredness of our own and each other’s being.
Will the human spirit ever rise against this flattening iron?…
It is upon us.
Its blistering tongues lurk behind the levee,
They pounce like savage beasts
Mercilessly they wheeze
Blowing the tumbleweeds against my doorstep.
A goodbye kiss, crackling dry.
Deserted yards, howling.
The yellow earth swelling and swirling,
It is in my eyes, my nostrils, my teeth.
Every time I spit,
I spit grains of sallow sin.
There used to be ponds along the river
And fishing nets heavy with fish
The cabins on the lake full of
guffawing and cheer,
There used to be trees and snakes.
The forest playing organ to the gales.
It is gone now.
Its birds scattered
like dust from old carpets.
The vineyards are dead.
Their grapes, dried up and shriveled,
Won’t be quenching no thirst
Won’t be crowning no wedding
dances
There ain’t gonna be no toasts around here
no more.
Only the sheer shriek of the southerly wind,
Only the curses of the departed still drifting
across the inward-moving sands.
*poem inspired by this article: https://www.vice.com/ro/article/9ke3nz/seceta-si-nisipul-au-cucerit-sudul-romaniei
Life's journeys
Felicia
GERMAN - ENGLISH - ROMANIAN
inspiration, création
