by Bengt O Björklund

there’s a lonely bird
perched on top of the old tree
old age in the wind

streaks of bright yellow
drifts in early September
this birch talks to me

***

it was the first day of September
the sea salt salesman lingered
in the grey afternoon with his pockets
full of gulls and terns screaming
at the surf rolling heralding the storm
who will be the bait today
the sacrificial worm impaled in silence

morning tolls with squid and bells
melted into the resounding ore
there is history in that old rock
where paleontologists still can hear
snails and ammonite singing
in school stairways slowly erased
by clouds of small feet

***

there are thin men brittle to the winds
silently hoisting paper flags that will burn
their broken skulls since long empty
turning in a rotten whirlpool on Sunday mass

hear the old women mumbling
their knees on long driftwood stools
rattling their dead bone dry prayer beans
to the demolition drums of war

the tide will turn and birds will pray
in silence and grave apprehension
a murky shadow blasphemy ignition
will set the whole world on fire

***

time to fetter the phantoms and the dead
to nail their faint pulse to the floor
where no wind will dance in silence
where I will creak and break and sing
to the ghosts of living much too late

I see shadows on the move
setting sail and turning dying
into an art of blasphemy

curb the mad king dead to the sea
rein the froth and all his tales of sorrow
burning like birds or lizards or dust
before his dark pompous thrust
that only empty men can hear and heed

***

there are birds in our memories
making noise as we meet the day
wings that beat against our inner straw
lining the aging and the lack of days
burning like a forest fire

at times we like sparrows chirping
in the bushes outside the church
with our small hearts of longing and loss
chirp chirp
to funerals and chimes

birds will fly and birds will claw
tears will be like beady eyes
and we will cry and we will hear
gentle doves and marble days
coincide with sand and water

by Andrew Schelling

Two from the Sanskrit of Lady Vidya
ca. 7th– 9th centuries

As yet no sexual climax
for the lady
A lover steps into
range of her eyes

he wants a quick hug
not love’s final rapture.

She huntress, advances —
more than a casual touch

aiyii! her indecorous urge

He has entered
the pasture at her inner thigh
she claims the venison

is this not animal love?

Meter: Sardula-vikridita
Tiger’s play

by Andrew Schelling

Two from the Sanskrit of Lady Vidya
ca. 7th– 9th centuries

Poem 22

Champak tree

who constrained you to this tiny plot
in a shabby
village?

The people are witless —

they try to coax leafy greens
from bad soil

angrily
they snapped off
your branches,
now you’re a stump.

Meter: Vasanta–tilakam
Spring Ornament

by Andrew Schelling

Night came fast,
you can’t believe how cold the curtained dark.
We reach camp 5:00 pm the snakeweed
already brittle —
the elements, heigh ho the elements,
the metaphysics bare when you have ten minutes
or less to get the twisted
juniper branches lit.

Night has its needs —
sleeping bag, foam pad, the Durango
cowboy blanket with cochineal band.
Yeats says the four–beat ballad
got thrust aside by pentameter
a curtain of dark,
igneous rock forced the laccolith & poetry — ?
poetry went somewhere else

lost its heigh ho
under a slag of too much thought.

Fire, stone, sun, ice, wind,
the elements.
Tell me your dream my blue–eyed love
does it double my own
torn sleep?

Through camp a coyote
heigh ho’d past the Marmot tent

paw–track
red clay imprint in the wash.
Do you my love
study the cottonwood or stars,
and wake to the raw elements?

Here greet sun at daybreak. Kindle fire for bacon.
Coffee as the block ice melts.
Your gentle limbs sustain me, out there —
the wind and the rain
a thousand
jagged mountains west.

12:xi:2022