Visiting my dead grandmother's cottage with my father in the forests of Lithuania: 1966.

Visiting her cottage I remember ripe ears of corn,
drawers full of bent knives, mouldy crusts of pumpernickel bread,
high shelves of hoary berry jams, curtains threadbare and torn,
and an axe brighter than the cracks in the wall near a bed
bereft of her broken body for three months and one week.
Through a veranda window I recall a thistled yard,
and still hear portents issuing from a fat raven's beak.
A bucket of stagnant water mirrors the cloudy lard
she must have fried eggs and coffee grinds in every morning.
And by a potato patch I see a wild war-like pig,
with its head full of demons, palavering and snorting.
And I shout something and ineptly cast a birch's twig
while my father speaks to an old peasant in a strange tongue
about pagan deities carved on trees when he was young.

--first published in Cedar Hill Review (print; USA)

Poem in October

On this breezy October morn, I walk
in the swift shadows of cloud-cursing rooks,
watching the world wake on the horizon.

In the brush I hear the tangerine talk
of blackbirds, and, in a crumbling wall's nooks,
the tumult of thrushes halving a bun.

And I see the first cart of dawn turning
the corner, see its owner's toothless grin
amid a pile of leaves lit by the sun.

And I smell the scent of something burning,
of something smouldering deep within,
fouler than all the hills of Polish dung.

Thirty-five years have transformed my life's leaves
into an outcast's smoke upon the breeze.

--first appeared in Poetry Nottingham (print; England)

Susan

Say a prayer for Susan, the sad leper of my tongue.
She taught me the ways of love, how to down hard whisky,
how to watch the rooks above the rowans, ever young
and ready to spread her legs in amorous pity.

Say a prayer for that girl with limbs limp now in the eaves
among the mud of past autumns, among the sins of
whore-masters and cheap fates found in fortune cookies,
among the sweet breaths and buttocks of much-needed love.

Say a prayer for old whoredom and for the happiness
she gave a few lonely men in the dark for a while.
Say a prayer, say a prayer, for her and good-heartedness.

She flies above the rowans with a flock of rooks now,
flies above my whisky as I long for her living flesh,
and have one for her soul as mistaken as her smile.

--first appeared in Candelabrum (print; England)

If not for your silence

'If not for your silence, I could perceive
and not bitterly mourn loved ones, not grieve
the minutes of my life that pass away,
but bravely and eagerly yield each day,
fearless in the face of war and disease.

'That my journey here is but a short stay
I'd rejoice, and send no complaints your way;
I'd surrender body and soul at ease,
if not for your silence.

'Even with tearful eyes, I'd never pray
for intervention, nor cling to the clay
that clads my bones, but prepare to leave
this world for yours, and steadfastly believe
that you can defeat both death and decay,
if not for your silence.'

--first appeared in Weyfarers (print; England)

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Biography

My poetry has appeared in scores of magazines on both sides of the Atlantic, among humbler titles in: American Jones, ArtWord Quarterly, Blue Unicorn, Cedar Hill Review, Envoi, The MacGuffin, Poetry Notingham, Staple, Sulphur River Literary Review, The Tennessee Review, Visions International, and The Windsor Review. 38 years old, I live with my wife and three sons in Gliwice, Poland, where I work as a translator. Together with David Castleman, who lives in California, I co-edit Mandrake Poetry Review. www.angelfire.com/pe/TheMandrakePress/index2.html