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                                                                          Issue 8

Page 35

EX: FUDÔ 2000

              (To Predrag Matvejević, who wrote for Yugoslavia

HEADNOTE: Fudô or Fudoh = esoteric Buddhist godhead of wrath, irate aspect of Enlightenment: blue-black face appearing amid flames, sword in one hand & rope in other hand to cut off & bind evil passions. -- Please observe the deviant stresses on the <i'>s.)

What poems, mind of mine, may you now sing
When corrupt desire rules the ex-communìsts
When massy murder, brainwash & whoring enlists --
Few are saved -- their lust for easeful things?

What hopes may now be found to grow new wings?
We in our youth, emerged from bloody mists,
Saw Fudoh's sword in hands of antìfascìsts
& the people's rule a real thing,

Wrathful & kind.
Now i let my country go,
Murderously after false gods a-whore.
When surgical verse cuts deep it is to know,
To find at understanding's furthest shore
Why poison invades the brain's every pore.
Yet every poem encodes: I loved you so!

Darko R. Suvin   30500__

COLD COMFORT (INTRUMO)

In a dream a dragon came to me, looked at me,
Splendour of shimmering copper scales
& scarlet thorns, scythe-taloned. I looked
Back, at the amber mist around his huge eyes, above

The fuming nostrils. The red-black smoke from her mouth
Hissed: “Don’t despair, short-lived Earthling. Soon
You shall die, soon will expire your kind’s cosmic contract.
This muddied globe your Mother is unforgiving as our winds.

But in the new creation the Mother shall whelp, a few shards
May be dug up & deciphered by successor populations,
Hexapodes perhaps, stabler far, winged like ourselves:

A few testimonials, like the ones you found of Gilgamesh
& Intrumo, shall show yours was a redeemable kind.
>What a pity!< the unsentimental hexapods will chirrup,

Winging on to their inscrutable business of conviviality”.

Gloss: Intrumo = e-mail address of Ursula Le Guin
All my poems have at the end an abbreviated form of the date: "i stamp them with history as calves on a ranch", said my master Brecht

Darko R. Suvin   26806__

HAIKU

Days – years -- decades, where
Have they gone? This small
Wind trembling at my doorstep

Darko R. Suvin   241106__

MORE DEPARTURES FROM HEINE

[HEADNOTE: This series of poems came about when I was reading Heine. But i cannot give all responsibility to old Henri: i redid his stimuli, in places wildly, for the year 2000. My logic was: if Henri had added to his presuppositions & inclinations also my experiences & a bit of my temperament etc., he might have written these poems in 2000. I fear he'd have written much better ones.]

3.
Red-eyed bloody business weather!
One-eyed profit-ordered town!
How i wonder when -- not whether --
Earthquakes rise to break you down.

4.
A white bird flies over the sea
Shark & stingray at her try
It flutters up, it flutters down
The Moon is small & very high.

Dear soul that flies over the sea
How i understand your sigh!
The black black waters are so close
The Moon is small & very high.

5.
For on this rock we shall erect
The Church that works from downside up
The Third Age church of Holy Bodies
Both personal & congregational:

See: hunger, killings are not needful
The pie in TV skies deceives
Give us today our daily sweets
Give us down here the sacred hearts & sense.

Return to body its merry pump
Rid of the fat that has enclogged it
The overeating brought by hunger
The ulcers caused by profit slash & burns.

Return to brain its hormonal bath
Disturbed by wolfish enmities
To people & birds & beauteous trees--
When heart & brain work well, we shall be saved.

If you, O masters, will not let us
Be saved, entirely we must
Remove you: profit is the fat
In bloodstream, profit brings the early stroke.

Your lying church will be dismantled
Our Earth at last inhabitable,
Polluted eyes may see no godheads
The cleansed may go to many-coloured stars.

When holiness meets wholeness
& the people absolute,
Washed clean of Class Division Sin
We may aspire to the cosmic Lute.

10.
When we lie together in post-coital bliss
Don't ask me about ex-Yugoslavia, how grand it
Was, how come it got pushed so bloodily amiss:
There are good reasons -- i cannot stand it.

I beg you, leave Yugoslavia in peace
Don't mention world banks – NATO – elites -- bandits
Don't call up traitors or errors, just give me a kiss:
There are good reasons -- i cannot stand it.

One i loved in those bygone, far-off, beautiful days
Now calls it "Sérbo-bolshévik", our youth's season,
& sighs for more civilized (European) ways:
I cannot stand it -- there are good reasons.

  Darko R. Suvin    6-700 __

© Donna Joy Kerness: acrylic and metallic paint on dead tree bark

A MARTIAL EPIGRAM ON MARTIANS

Why are you staring so raptly into Orcs & Elves
Why gulping down Conan, zombies & th'insufferable Lewis
What are to you rebelling robots, or what help
To your wasting lives the circenses of media clerics
Brainwashing the new imperial plebeians?
                                                             Imbibe
What life shall recognize & call out "This is mine!"
Even if Aliens or dragons, such story shall taste of us humans,
The ways we oppress & love each other, in what cave
Are we ourselves & how may we get out into the light
Of the blue Sun.
                 But no, Mr. Jones, you don't want to
See yourself, cognize your killing cruelties: so at least
Read your Tolkien! You may shut the book & think
Why he loved cleansing wars.

  Darko R. Suvin   26706__

PILLAGING THE GNOSTICS
                                    Et in hora mortis nostrae

See, i talk so that i may leave
I tell you what i heard & saw
In the leaves of grass in the drawn sweaty faces,
I teach you as i slowly learned it
I talk that i may leave this world
Where i never had enuf time
In peace.

I lived on Earth a short time, i didn't have time.
A short span of time. Pay attention
So you can hear me. If i came, who
May i be, may i have been, may
I have become? I drank the water of life
The water of pleasure. Now i advance toward
The water of forgetfulness.

Greetings to you, my sister & my brother!
Do not be so deathly afraid of sweet-gifting Venus,
Mother & lover, not yet known! I lived on Earth
A short time, i praised it, i suffered it.
I learned a little, i taught a little, a multitude
Of sisters, of companions, only
A few knew me,

I knew only a few, only little. I tell you
Disintoxicate yourself! Renounce your deadly path,
Walk on the Way which leads you to be free.
No Yahweh no kings to dominate, no masters
Except the Masters who know, so far as they know.
You are self-condemned, self-enchained. Renounce
Your chains.

You made for yourself a heavenly Lord & leader.
He turned around & enslaved you, shut
Your eyes & ears, raised up an inbred caste
Inimical to Justice & Knowledge, to Venus Of All People.
You turned to derision this house given unto you
As a heredity & a promise, it will be
Pulled down.

Only knowledge can unfold liberty, an
Undying desire. Let this tree grow, so you may grasp
The fruits of freedom. All of us possess
A chip of knowledge, a teardrop of liberty
Within ourselves. Do not let this pearl
Drop into the viscous flow of arrested
Time. Wake up

From the drugged dream of reason. Who
Are you? Whose brother & sister are you?
Where are you going? Do you judge all matters
In order to be judged? O the anxiety of not reaching,
Of reaching & not grasping! Do you see
High Venus, star moving across resplendent skies?
I tell you truly:

This is the hour of our death
This is the cosmic hour of persecution
This the hidden hour of our ignoble oblivion.
You can live toward a good death or a bad death.
Life is when two sexes are in each other as light
Liberty, as amity. Thus we become citizens of
Fair Earth, Heaven.
5-7307

  Darko R. Suvin    5-7307__