Ten-line lyric
Lazy summer sun
loiters in the sky
warms the heart
adds blue to my life
the sea that sometimes
dazzled sometimes
purred on the shoreline
and ferried curls
of white surf
onto the aching sand
John Lyons
Month: Mar 2018
Sweet consolation
Sweet consolation
Beneath my feet
the fallen leaves
once green
now gold
now crimsom
burnt sienna
edges curled and dry
and crumbling into dust
as the year fades
We were lovers
bone by bone
slept through a dream
of unblemished time
scourged
by the whirling strands
of her hair
and new anatomies
that the night brought
to the body bare
Youth burned
in the mind
no birth no death
no tangled time
no sun
candescent
love alone
John Lyons
Before the fall
Before the fall
And so to soft September
warm days and cool nights
slow wintering of the soul
and time the custodian
of our fractured memories
of our kisses
Here were mountains
here was sea
a sandy beach lapped
by white-laced waves
here we loved our life away
to the chatter of parrots
high up in the palms
life feeding upon life
the frigate birds
back and forth
scouring the ocean
for food
And all that fades
as footsteps fade
across Brooklyn Bridge
one place to another
from time to time
and love a survivor
or so we hope
stubbornly
John Lyons
The giraffe house
The giraffe house
It’s Saturday
and the temperature
has dropped with winds
blowing in from Siberia
Thick flakes of snow
are falling and a giraffe
is peering out of the house
its long-lashed eyelids
are blinking furiously
Africa seems so far away
and its warm winds
never reach us
I struggle to read
the giraffe’s mind
but I would suggest
that it is thinking :
this is not what I
signed up for,
at all !
John Lyons
The Big Bang
The Big Bang
In the beginning
nothing : no colour
no light no movement
no space just
boundless darkness
though even then
there was nowhere
for the darkness to be
There was no warmth
no cold no life
no kiss no love
nothing
just an aching emptiness
infinitely empty
even of emptiness
even of heartache
And then there was light
and with it came
art and the explosion of colour
throughout the cosmos
irremediable darkness
banished forever
quite simply put to death
by the act of creation
John Lyons
The care of souls
The care of souls
In the midst of plenty
the pain of poverty
scarcity and need
a culture averse
to the care of souls
blind to the beauty
of silence
of poetry
The soul is in her eyes
the bright gleam
in her lips and the words
that tumble from them
in her hands and the magic
that they work
how they soothe
how they create
how they wave away
my cares
the soul beneath
her cotton dress
the fact not the fiction
of her womanhood
the beingness of it
as her limbs guide her
from place to place
scattering love
as she comes and goes
wherever
the soul is in her body
that welcomes me
into her embrace
that holds me and is
a place where I
take comfort away
from the woes of
the world
the soul is in her breath
that I feel warm
against my cheek
the rise and fall
of her breast
that carries her
from day to night
and back : the allness
that her soul
embodies
John Lyons
Unsoiled in love
Unsoiled in love
Think of the perfectness
of the rose unchallenged
never called into question
a rose of no virtue
knowing nothing
of the speed of life
with all its vexatious
complexities
The beauty that drives the rose
derives from the fecund
mineral soil
and from the pedigree
of its earthly stars
a tight knot of molecules
shaped from the simplicities
of sunlight
the radiance of its petals
lives on in the kiss
in man and woman sexed
in the coalescence
of their flesh
unsoiled in love
John Lyons
El mono
El mono
Es casi humano,
casi,
pero no tanto.
Cuando duerme parece un niño.
Paco lo llaman:
Paco Paco.
(A veces se llaman Paco
a veces no,
a veces otra cosa).
Dormido
seguro sueña con ser grande
como los grandes.
Pero de día
se lo pasa jugando
como niño:
da vueltas y volteretas,
se agarra de un palo
y se columpia,
o sube en el árbol
y se cuelga
bocabajo
de la cola
o de las dos piernas,
que parecen
brazos.
Mas lo que más le gusta
es saltar
de una bancada
a otra
así no más,
sin criterio
pero con una gran agilidad
que a uno le da envidia,
de veras,
envidia:
vive en circo
permanente.
Y cómo come
¡dios mío cómo come!
y no parece engordar:
es que parece mentira.
Será el
ejercicio y todo,
supongo yo,
los brincos
de un lado
a otro,
¡qué maravilla!
Y se rasca,
como un niño,
se pasa todo el día,
rascándose,
o agarrándose
del ombligo
o de otra cosa
¿qué sé yo?
sin pena,
o aparentemente sin pena
aunque es penoso
cuando uno se le acerca,
y tapa la cara
con las manos
o con la cola
o con las dos
y no te mira
para nada
sino de reojo
como si algo bien
vergonzoso
sintiera,
aunque pronto se le pasa
y en seguida está
otra vez
brincando
de una bancada a otra
como si nada.
Monterroso me dice
que en Guatemala
hay unos monos
muy sabios
¿qué sé yo?
Políticos,
por lo menos
¿verdad?
John Lyons, Managua, 1992
Note: Paco was the name that Ernesto Cardenal gave to a monkey he once bought from a poor family, thinking perhaps to give it a better life. The monkey was kept in the back garden and his antics were an endless source of entertainment.
Paradise
Paradise
Who doesn’t
remember
the first time
they ate
of the forbidden
fruit?
Delicious,
wasn’t it?
John Lyons
Two songs of silence
Two songs of silence
Listen how silence
Suddenly descends
For our love
Horizontally. . .
Believe only in love
And in nothing else
Hush; listen to the silence
That speaks to us
Most intimately; listen calmly
My dear as love
Strips the petals of silence
One by one. . .
Leave words to poetry. . .
Vinicius de Moraes, Oxford 1939
translation by John Lyons
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