afternoons of melancholy

Alone. Understand it alone. Alone again. Needlessly alone. Endlessly alone. Alone with yourself. Uncovered. Open. Undeniable. Threshold. A present day. Humbled. Beside me. Lonely.

Mute words cry out without the needed grimace, without the necessary tremor of an eyelid. No cry can be found that would make the shadow at their outer gate turn around. They keep fastening wings. Touching nothing, they pass. They close quotation marks around infinity. A cry /without a face/, an embraced silhouette inside the shadow of fear and trembling.

E X H A L E (convex) It is not an impulse—the trembling thread. It is not a breath—the cool breeze. Its stamens whisper dreams from a bygone century. The flowers are silver-white. Fine, bodiless, the world. Silence—a blind bird— drifts with nowhere to go. I N H A L E (concave) A river of stone after bare footsteps— silken mists carry them. Time bears away her breath, turned into impulse, turned into air. Astringent gulps swallow her thirstily. E X H A L E THEY DO NOT RETURN…

And silence stopped talking to itself. No figures can be found for conversation. And the voices within do not argue whether they are needed or unnecessary. A soundless emptiness— the presence of noise and vanity, of haste. It fled the day, and silence stopped talking to itself. Night went on searching for the remnants of words. With whom could it share them? Doubt began to worry. And pain drew its breath. One refuge at least remained for it: to stop, if only it could stop…

Whether / or? Should it stop? Who should turn back after darkness? Return from yesterday? Warm itself for tomorrow? Morning. A winter silhouette— frozen in rime. Silence, unbraiding gazes through the fog. Beauty beneath the drops of ice, beneath cold rays of light. World. Silhouettes surface— couplets beside the footsteps, a plot in the palms, eyes occupied. A halted shadow returned after the gaze, warmed itself in memory and went on… Whether/or?

The pages, with their silence dried upon them, the rain turned over. It washed the dust from a cracked-open past. Silence buried it beneath the drops and looked into damp irises. “It”— the seeming presence of her soul.

I love you—wordless blue opened into silence. I love you—unceasing, insistent, playful, at the shore—wave against wave. I love you, sorrow made of blue, in the green-blue silt of a river, beautifully reclining, nestled against the bank. And so you are—unforeseeable, and so you are—deaf to the cry, sinking into bitter depths, setting behind a morning made of silence.

There are still migratory birds in the soul, bound for thoughts beyond. Distant, hidden, they fly off with the flocks, unable to sleep. These bodiless birds run with thoughts along the road and return roadless; tired, they nest in the solitude of damp lips. They utter no words, you find no trace— mute shadows, their wings trembling. You stand alone and wonder whether this time they will take you with them, carry you away.

The Sirens cry: —the sailors are gone, and empty nights break them. Poor things, they make their way toward infinity—a pathless blue— to whom can they say: —the sailors are gone… They will find no memory and no time to seek them; they will peer from the horizon— might they return? But the sailors are gone… The broken Sirens will leave no traces. No eyes will meet them, no waves caress them. Only fragile shadows remain for the wind to scatter, and with their voices it will sing: —the sailors are gone…

My reality is that pale shadow untouched by me. A lure kept far away for my longing, already “taken.” My reality is that silent room I have never opened. Small, hidden in the dark, I have no key or lantern. My reality is far… far within… me. I do not look inside it; I run, smiling, captivated by the charming lips of the illusion beside me.

The day fell to thinking for an hour, for two, about time: and morning lodged beneath the shadow of its dreams, began to dream… distant lands—undiscovered traces— and so it passed away. Noon began to beat to the rhythm of its heart, swayed, entranced, began to dance as it moved on, and so it passed away. And night lost its way among memories, old, weathered images, hoping to meet stars still unfallen, and so it went away… That day— quiet, uncertain and unshared…

Accustomed to loving solitude— is it not your beloved emptiness? That shadow of languor, barely seated beside you. You turn your gaze to glimpse it, but find it in no face; laid within your soul, it shivers and steals from your warm dreams. Accustomed to love, yet absent now are love’s fragile hands, to embrace the silence, to cradle the waiting hours. Accustomed to wandering in longing through unwritten couplets—reveries— and, lost in autumnal emptiness, in its melancholic colours.

after Liliyev Rivers—drowsy… mute… pale… Fragments of dried-up couplets crumble into banks, occupied by silhouettes that beckon them. Could these thoughts too be hired, borrowed from sorrows and roadside winds? Or are they only a breath, a memorial gift, consolation for fears swollen within? For the days—drowsy… mute… pale…

The pearls scattered through the crevices of time. Eyelids grew heavy, pressed into palms. From silence slipped the tempted minutes and counted out the hushed pulse of your unremarkable, frozen past. Memories glimmered in the emptiness. Cold, heavy, drowning memories. And how you had come to love them… And how you had held them close… Your soul rocked them gently and sang to them softly… through the crevices of time…