poems

Last People

Sundown
~ Alioscha ~ Leave a comment

Yesterday night I didn’t sleep a wink. I was continuously visited by poems. In the end I had to sit up and write them down… here is one of them:

They were the last people on earth
He found her in a cave, only ten days after the world ended
She was just a child.
For years he watched her grow in an empty world
In the end he took her, one night under the reddening sky
They had three children in quick succession
who perished within days of being born
She killed him in his sleep the night after the last one died
And then she sat and wept
And watched the sun eat the world

(there is a Spanish translation of this poem)

Oración (Prayer)

~ Alioscha ~ Leave a comment

Translated by my dear, dear Ania – thanks!!!

May someone forgive the soldier
who followed orders with his eyes closed.
May someone forgive the General, the Coronel,
the Admiral, the Lieutenant Captain.
May someone forgive the man
Who sat at his table each night,
after paying with his obedience for
his parcel of daily power.
– his impeccable hands, his white bread
his wife, his children. And the blood hidden
in the pocket of his uniform
or the glove compartment of a Ford Falcon.
May someone forgive the policeman, the informant,
the specialist in suffering
the doctor’s accomplice and the hooligan,
the driver of cars and trucks
that transported so many to places without names,
the pilot, the crew
that sowed graves of water in the night.
May God be the one to forgive them:
that ineffable God they claimed to believe in,
or the victims, if they so choose.
But not justice, not history.
May they not be forgiven by the memory
of people, and above all, may they never
receive the gentle blessing
of living in peace with themselves.

Victoria, BC. January 4th, 2017

Night Train

~ Alioscha ~ Leave a comment

This train rode only at night
It had no windows and it had no doors
No other load than the dreams of passengers
it never carried in it’s darkened hull
Its cargo laden with the absent bodies
of the travellers it never held.

This train bore no speed and no direction
conveyed no desire but that of indifference
This train was hitched to nothing but itself
and carried onward through night’s thick shadows
for no more reason than the rails were there
and no more conscience than the rails themselves.

This was not a train of meaning or destiny
It was a train of accident, mere chance
This train just happened and will happen again,
and every time it will not mean a thing.
On every time its nightly darkened shadow
will seem to us a message or a curse