Antilliaanse Cahiers. Jaargang 3

[p. 35]

Alette Beaujon
Poems while in Delos

And this I am...

And this I am
I am the sky, another I
the writhing western waves
and like the stars
the headless strangers stare at me
the heady dangers of a macrocosmic
memory
the way I look at things
the way I walk and spread my wings
I find in blueness tombs
in redness embryonic rooms
and weigh each thought
before I think

I wear the rings of age
and carry keys of golden graves
I do not fit the womb - alive -
in myself reborn,
I do not fit this life
I fear these visions and these dreams
I feel the poetry of seas
and sail the sleeping isles
like Eros on a dolphin.

[p. 36]

Delos and I

God forsaken Delos
barren solitude
the rock of rocks and granite grains
stones so dry they crumble in the sun
and yet I stayed
to measure these her riches
to drink the dryness gladly
to burn with her in the merciless suns
and to be swallowed like her
in waves of heat at noon

At night to die and drown
- finally immortal made -
at dawn we awake each morning
Delos and I.

[p. 37]

In Greece I died

Moments of madness
of the maker
ignorant of time
inhabitant of all encompassing
spaceless life infection

There my dream will reach
the soundless courtesy of sleep
the unconditioned parallel embrace
of the dispassioned all
dismembered to its first ingredient
naughtness

In Greece I died
ten thousand years ago.

[p. 38]

Delos - dawn

The sea is perfectly still
at sunrise near Delos
the heavy morning mist
has washed the dryness damp
of the yellow wilted plaats
and now my heart has opened
to her fallen ruins

Scattered shrines and torn
the far tossed temples of her gods
Her many mornings' wet aromas
made me dizzy
and her dawns delighted me

Mangled Apollo gazing
how I long to soothe him
to embrace the great sad whiteness
of his soul
his torso torn apart
I long to make him whole again
to make him live again
and walk with him on the Greek seas
from horizon to horizon
his heart white forzen never beats
at midday he is silent
among the murmuring ruins of Delos
the doves at dawn can't move his spirit
they fly back above the fallen broken pillars
at sundown
who knows where they alight

[p. 39]

 

when the sun each noon kills living men

 

revives the walking spirit of the stones

 

Apollo never stirs

 

 

 

the cool mean madness of this desert

 

my gods

 

why do you nourish this madness

 

why do we long to live with ruins

 

the dead must rest

 

in peaceful oblivion

 

that is what we want

 

no foreign living instincts move us now

 

so let us be

 

if we have fallen

 

if we should fall

 

do not straighten our tired forms

 

never again to be reborn

 

let us linger only in your memory

 

Cover us again

 

and do not open our graves

 

Immortal horror of the never dying

 

 

 

this the morning song

 

of slowly rising ruins

 

my gods, I sing

 

I see at dawn the suffering of the dead

 

at dawn I die to live again

 

in other forms

 

to walk again the roads of man

 

unmoved - undying

 

yet dead with Apollo for ever

 

at Delos

[p. 40]

Delos - the gods

In the sun where I sat
they sit and watch me silently
the columns and the naked gods
they feel with me the solitude
of stones
the perfect form
in sad completed joy

the careful balance ends
the trance of dreams

I sit and feel their presence
touching me
the air they breathe is hot
the air I breath is gladness
and my nightmare ends at Delos

the invisible
finally the flying fantoms of the tombs
at Delos
the womb unmeasured
meets my memory
and carries thoughts and colours

my vision clears
I am the freedom found at Delos
I am complete
freeborn I fly
and gather the gladness
of my madness realized.

[p. 41]

Mood

I had a glad thought just now
but then it disappeared
I had a fond dream a moment ago
but I can't find it any more

Beauty slipped into my mind
and coloured every corner of my life
and happiness was mine
I had a feeling all was fine
I had a feeling all was free
I had a gladness
all agreeing
accepting all

A joyful sound rang through my head
I glanced the truth
the goodness of all being

All this is dead
All this is gone
and only this the memory I have
the beauty of a flower
seen so very long ago
the scent of seas
so very far
the undiscovered dream
when morning has her way

Having been
and vanished
now this feeling slowly dies.

[p. 42]

Dreams

Everyday the same mad silence of my dreams
everyday the harboured colours kept
unmeasured
everyday the pale procession of the gods
everyday at Delos dies
the sentimental sees
the fast fleshed frenzied disagreement
soiled the grounds at Delos
I dare not pray in these surroundings
the hound dog race
of certain foreign gods
have glazed the playful pillars
demarcation made the stars retreat
unsmiling in the night
Ruins on the beaches beckon ships
at sunset nightmare hours
sailing hastily
the grace of Greeks - and garden gifts
the gladness of today
the happy hours stranded on the seas
the staring blossom
and the stillness of the little waves
now weave the symbols of
my dreams at noon.

[p. 43]

Thoughts

We dare not see the magic
of the mad minds
the clear red reason
of Grecian gods -
the blue green sands of island seas
surround the ruins of the earth this world
this womb
where sanity is sacrificed
as prejudice
we play with marble blocks
in infant ways
collecting riddled answers
the pieces never heal when put together
never whole
my learned friends
the spirit, broken, shines yet forth
and doesn't need completion
So let the ancient devastated cities be
and never rearrange the sleeping pillars
in the yellow grecian grasses.

Today the sea is clearer
than far island mountained Tenos
today the sea to me is dearer
than all the precious Delian stones
I welcome her, the sun
and never looking back

[p. 44]

 

I beckon to the coloured waves

 

today I let the ruined city be

 

and swim the whole day long

 

My tears will mingle with the waves

 

for sad I am today

 

sad with fear for

 

archaeologic relics

 

I have come down to kiss the sea

 

and not to visit Delian labyrinths

 

and mazes made by buried brothers.

[p. 45]

Today this dread

Today this dread
the world with music mad
now greets the sun with darkness fed
now shines with shallow seas
now sings with nightborn tides
now every life - bourned creature hides
and crazed, this earth now turns
full speed - and ultimately dies
I know that all I see will end
at sad enslaved sunrise in the morrow
My voice has fled and flares no more
My eyes so full of stinging sand
now blindly stare
alone, my god, how long.
I am the undiscovered treasure
of my travels
a blind and bleeding passenger
when sacred ships are sinking
unheard, unseen
remaining in the farce
of freedom feeding folly
My God, now born to life
why breed this death end strife
in me
like new born kittens
craving sight

[p. 46]

 

I drank your light

 

why did you poison me

 

prophetic vision burns in me

 

and kills all memory of cosmic right

 

the boundless negative

 

of which I am.

[p. 47]

Madness

When I'm sick I'll sleep on marble
when I'm mad I'll frighten people
with my magic
when I'm dead I'll haunt you with
my shadow

And when my ghost appears
the wetsplashed rocks turn into fish
all this is when I fall
all this when I'm mad

I'll greet the clouds white clad
I'll slepe with waves now dead

My hair grown black and long
shall flow
I'll swim in green dim underwater worlds
an undiscovered blue of distances
when men are fish and breathe no more
the water womb of mother essence

Frank incense maddens me
and when I'm in your churches
ever shall I cry
and hoarsely hoard my proud collected
psalms and pictures paradise
the laughing priest of the dead villagers
left eating sheep
to chant his message

[p. 48]

 

with three hours' fasting

 

hallowed bread at last

 

and when I'm mad I'll go to church

 

and seek frank incense

 

this the smoke of death

 

and when I'm sad I'll seek the seas

 

to show each wave its destination

 

suicide against the rocks

 

and storms are staged

 

for reckless crazy laughter wrecked

 

at last fatigue of madness lived

 

expressed

 

shall swallow me

 

I'll float a Caribbean corpse

 

and visit all the friendly ports

 

 

 

And when my ghost appears

 

the wetsplashed rocks turn into fish

 

All this is when I fall

 

All this is when I'm mad.

[p. 49]

Sunset

Why did Delos suddenly become
so orange pink
why is every thought I think
so mad
and why is every song I sing
so sad
at sunset
my twilight fears I would forget
and see the moon again
the white smooth source of silver springs
flowing floating
on the silent seas
My questions
are never answered
in this lazy language of the brain
but in the living idiom of each day.

[p. 50]

God abandoned

I fight the memory of things unsaid
I fight the lonely measure of my solitude
the mercury of thoughts not given
flows - a restless heavy stream
I hold my hollow heart
now torn apart
with all this lazy longing
the mighty menace and the madness
of belonging to another race
I bid the welcome strangers stay
for death dreams held me in their sway
and all that I could not say
and all that to the world I could not tell
for ever fearing other dangers
daring death
and death oriented life
my sin, this sadness do I carry
unexpressed
The biting current of my maddened mother's

heritage

is being fed by undiscovered rivers
in the jungle of my other self
the reckless waves now break
white bleeding drops
of warring stubbornness

[p. 51]

 

I hold my well

 

in the courage to be

 

myself - I am the well of all that I see

 

I am the measure of my mind

 

But a storm is raging in this hill of hills

 

and I am now - god abandoned.

[p. 52]

Delos

Today my heart is fasting
and the timed texture of the mind
is gravely measured in the ways
of ancient temple stones
The incense stored since early years
is flowing now
intoxicating
hallowed atmosphere
In many symbols
do my thoughts escape
my memory unconscious inspiration
like the moon
in rhythmic seasons growing
full of liquid light
my writing now is poured
full flaring on the waves
floating
a path so constant seeming
sadly trembles with each cosmic swaying
In the never ending night
I need no congregation
In the green enchantment of the milky ways
I wait to see
the white blossoming of the world
the dreadful dawn
yet like the flowers of the night
blooming only at midnight
like my dreams
perfume and heavy heaven honey

[p. 53]

 

on the festered flesh

 

the bright glad suffering of unseen seas

 

My God the night is round

 

and red

 

the gods are round

 

each one a moon

 

so round

 

the light is slow

 

and limps from stone to scone

 

this dawn

 

the walking days

 

each ruined Delos

 

bones - unburied bones

 

are lying

 

bleached now in the summer sun

 

and sadness swells my brain

 

the skeletons - the carcasses

 

now rocks and stoney growths

 

are blind

 

let me never see them live again

 

I lie unburied - singing

 

I wish some day to drown these pains

 

to play with gods

 

forgetting all the ghostly sins of man

 

the moon will shine

 

and I will find her womb - the wine

 

the dizzy answer of my dreams

 

the moon will die at last

 

and I will crave no more

 

and write no more

 

 

 

I will hide no more.

[p. 54]

Delos - night

Now sleep tonight came fast
now thoughts tonight slow down at last
now lying down I read the dreams
of sad grown men
New moon shines splintered
silver rays too small
and all the tired waves
still beat against my head
the stones of Delos disappeared
and gradually
my mind arranged these thoughts
The poems living
in my colored dreams
now soothed
the pattern of my praying.