My eggs are precision boiled
the whites slightly firmed
the yellow yolks richly runny
the process timed to perfection
My egg cups are from Provence
pretty porcelain with painted flowers
and in between I read Rimbaud
on the redemptive power of love
John Lyons
Let’s face it
the leaves are dead
a gust of wind
sends them up into the sky
and for a while they float
as they come drifting down
to the ground
and I see them
from the bay window
and think that there’s
a lesson to be learnt here
green gone to a golden rust
supple life turned
friable to the touch
and all of this
the way of the world
but the atoms are not dead
and I know of no way
in which they might
decompose : surely
they will enter the earth
and be drawn up
via the web of roots
to flourish once again
on a living branch
one distant spring
that I doubt you or I
will ever see
John Lyons
As night fell
the two or three colours of the courtyard grew tired.
This evening, the moon, the bright circle,
does not dominate its space.
Courtyard, funnelled sky.
The courtyard is the slope
down which the sky pours into the house.
Serene,
eternity awaits at the stars’ crossroad.
How pleasant to live in the obscure companionship
of a hallway, a water tank and a vine.
Jorge Luis Borges
Translated by John Lyons
Jorge Luis Borges (24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Hispanic Literature.
Flocks of small birds
maybe a hundred or more
flying in dark clouds
that resemble bee swarms
or the swarms of ions
and electrons in gases
while the Mars rover
sends back graphic images
of what climate change
can do to a planet
Dust
as far as the eye can see
and a barren loveless surface
and what we most long for
is life
here or anywhere else
in the universe
rich fertile recreational life
in every shape and form
warm technicolor life
and the atomic pulse of love
that never dies
John Lyons
Somehow it all makes sense
and by that I mean the matter of life
I mean that element of the universe
that does not die but goes on and on
from here to eternity
from the first three seconds of creation
to now and beyond
the energy and mass of the cosmos
and how one is relayed to the other
and life is the origin of life
just as love is the origin of love
and nature that hunkers down
for the long winter months
but as it does so is already
hatching a plan to return in spring
jealously guarding its secret blossom
until the time is right and it can show
to the world that it cannot be stopped
Resurrection is relentless because it is
the ultimate means of survival
and there is not a single form of life
that is ever ready and willing
to give up the ghost
to lay down and die
John Lyons
It’s not just anybody’s world
it is our world
shaped by our choices
and by our actions
and by the accumulation
of gestures and words
that jealously guard
their secret meaning
Think of the flowers
that have come and gone
richly-coloured roses
irises and orchids
think of the meals shared
along with stretches
of the river
and airport waiting lounges
Think of all the streets
where we have left
a little of our dust
think of the love
in all its intimacy
that nobody
but you and I
have known
John Lyons
We two how long we loved
held each others’ lives in our lives
lived among trees and rocks
and cities walled with steel and glass
travelled down to the shore
watched the infinite waves roll in
trod the sand and sheltered
from the wind
We two who braved the bitter cold
or sought shade when temperatures rose
we who despised the predatory hawks
who seek only to pick life to pieces
we who dreamt of a land of milk and honey
and woke each day to the scent of orchids
bedded all our hopes in the power of love
prayed to the resplendent sun of blue skies
we two whose paths drew the same circles
found freedom and trust and beauty and delight
in the simple day after day after day
after day side by side
John Lyons
What endures
may not be love
but memory of love
how one person’s breath
can turn you wild
the warmth of her body
against yours
the words
and the silences
shared
What endures
is the light
from distant stars
that you observe
on a cold winter night
and you shiver
with delight
and the memory
of those dreams
that hung
upon those stars
back in the day
John Lyons
It’s Saturday once again
and I feel
I’ve been here before
low-lying cloud
and drizzle at the windows
and a sense
that in my pursuit of perfection
I have failed once again
not that that will ever
stop me trying
what else is there to strive for
but beauty and perfection
and the skill to know it
when you see it
to enjoy it while you can
if you can
A rose is perfect
whoever bought
a bouquet of imperfect roses
: beauty and perfection
supported by a life
of trial and error
The rain intensifies
and I just know
it’s settling in for the day
throwing me back
on my resources
Today I’ll try
not to think of love
I’ve been drowning
in that word for so long
Let’s say that
my words are love
and leave it at that
John Lyons
Life can sometimes seem so serious
that it is difficult to distinguish
between one emergency or another
and there are no guides
you simply have to live your way
through it every man woman and child
and the suspense can be killing or not
depending on the emotional weather
We live constantly on the edge
expecting approbation and beauty
and a life all rolled into one
every dream ever wished upon a star
So she walks into my life
a glamorous insurgence
and all at once I am at war with myself
she is pale and the wind shapes her hair
so that it billows in the way Botticelli chose for Venus
and we wander through the gallery
chasing images to take home and outside
the streets somehow have emptied
and we have the city to ourselves
which is how love feels
a delicious emergency of the heart
and there is no darkness
and there are no secrets
and no pain intrudes other than
that of separation when the time comes
though I remember praying
that it would never come
and that no dust would ever settle
between us and that no spring
would ever fail
John Lyons
johnjosephlyons 