Poem - MAG Poetry Prize 2010

Ochre Elegies VI

Bucharest, Romania

Like statues have I closed my fire in, embittered,
Entombed caresses under granite frost,
When you, aggrievèd angel, and lachrymose and blind,
Have touched my last dolorous silence,
Enframing my countours for bleak eternities to come?
Have I profaned thy benign look, thy artistry,
With my ungrateful illness and my glacial heart
That longed only for timeless hermitage?
But still you did embrace my livid body
Before the louring dawn’s edict to seal…

You then enwrapped thy eyes away from my ardóur,
As castles veiled behind the oaks’ penítence ;
For sanctuaries I raise to see you bloom upon me,
Twin dismal soul, unending amorous, cherub,
To fall adrift within thy gentle smile again.

Marmoreal sunrise, I harbour thee as saviour
When nightfalls clasp my stygian delir’,
Enshrined for sunlit yearnings and murderous despond ;
Wailing rhapsode of untaming stories to engrave
Upon my restless memory the penance for the brume.