POEMS FOR A BREAKDOWN TIME (2000-09)
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!
30500
Darko R. Suvin__
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.
6-700
Darko R. Suvin__
____________________
© Luigi Cazzaniga:What a day
A MARTIAL EPIGRAM ON MARTIANS
Qui legis Oedipoden caligantemque Thyesten
Martial X.4
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.
26706
Darko R. Suvin__
___________________
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”.
26806
Darko R. Suvin__
__________
HAIKU
Days – years -- decades, where
Have they gone? This small
Wind trembling at my doorstep
241106
Darko R. Suvin__
__________
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__
PROBLEM
próblema (from pro-ballesthai): protrusion, salience, project, foothills, bulwark, what is held or put before one, point at issue
--For Sanja L--
I am where i am not, & i am where i
Literally do not want to be & yet
Find no better place to be. This
Protracted instant in which i am held
Protruded projected thrown before one, myself.
A galley slave smoothing his rowing bench
In memory of what was then, a salience,
A bulwark. This is here, this is now.
You are history.
I need a spy-glass to see the liberated festive
Zones, floating worlds of woodcuts & songs,
The magic ships trod by puppets quite like ourselves
Who may meet what they awaited & do not turn
Into brittle cancerous glass, for they're puppets
Our superior shadows, cast by the burning bush
In the clear desert of the boards that mean life,
Held or put before us, in the foothills,
Touched by tongues of fire. O their arrow-ships!
He has a problem, said the voice
He got the spyglass he wanted.
13307
Darko R. Suvin__
____________________
A NOTE TO MYSELF: IN THE ICE AGE
(A COUNTER-PROJECT TO XIUNG XI-LING)
All that we feel is the freezing storm
But who is there to grieve for the warmth?
As you're leaving, bequeath this wish:
Everybody should afford happiness!
19408
Darko R. Suvin__
SONNET FOR REINVENTING TOMORROW
(READING PATRAQUIM)
A slow step la derive
the way lost how does one make maps
Athirst for a face to drink in
another map of coloured stone stony
The prospect for a simple gesture of elegance
inaugurating us the seventh day
From dictionary the entries justice incarnate
& you on the tornado shore
Yet the corrupt gods shaping us woe is me
as we invented them overhead a roof
The wrong solitude so common
as gills in the sea apnoeic
The hands that drove the rivers crazy
unused useless today
2-4908
Darko R. Suvin__
TO CARRY OVER
A compliment to John Berger
We exiles are all
Specialists in packing
We know what to leave behind
We take with us
Suitcases that we can lift
We leave behind us
Connections & ways of life
We take with us
Birthdays, marriage anniversaries
The shelters of gestures & jokes
The words for bread & coffee
We know desperately well
Railway stations & airports
We anesthetize this Fate
By crosswords & mystery stories
Our luggage is
Anxiety & hope
To survive
To work
Wherever we come, languages shift
To the dismay of lexicographers
The orthography grows unreadable
We build new houses of words
We are carriers
Transported & deported
Thus metaphors
This wine our blood
The poetry of mulatto tomorrows
Will be in our languages
We carry it
Like cattle-cars cattle
The maximum diameter of the universe
Is 240 times 10 to the 24th kilometres
We had no need
For this calculation
It’s not so easy
Bridging Milky Ways
We are thirsty
Carrying goods over
London 14509
Darko R. Suvin__
