Omer Tarin

Up on the mountain top, looking down,  the whole valley is suffused  by shining lights;  Like the stars, but rotating and expanding, beams that reach out then split, then merge again in golden sheaves, plenitudes;  On ladders of celestial light the children ascend, climbing, climbing,  out of sight. . .   ---------  ---------------  ------------------ --------------- (c) Omer Tarin, October 2023   

 what ails you my friend, my dear heart? your thoughts are dark, cloudy, no longer fair;   something, some burden there is, that that is tearing you apart?  It feels as if your true life is only lived  in intervals,  small moments of bliss  (when all things seem clear),  when there is no longer any fear;  For the rest, there is only the  hushed silence of night,  a waste land stricken by blight;  Here we are awaiting the rain, once again.   --------  --------------- ---------------- ------------- ------------------ from 'acanthus' magazine, 2015  (c) Omer Tarin 

  This Being entails a new form, That diverges from some ancient norm;   It has existed since time began, Ever since the universe ran Like a poor clockwork With a semi-precise staccato, Beating out a tempo, tap-tap, Listlessly bound to the repetitive modes, Long lines of pilgrims, trudging on the roads;   On a rock basking in the sun, a little lizard observes the trailing dust, it dwells upon the mutability of life, longings, vanity and lust;   I, too, observe the scene, Passing by on this screen Of Presence;   No longer captive I can be lizard and man, Together, in the selfsame span.  -----  ----------  ------------- ---------------- ------------  - October 2022, unpublished poem (c) Omer Tarin 2022 

 ''I love my Maker for making me because had He not done so I would not have been''  -This, from a broken vessel beneath the window sill, Kicked around by countless feet,  until she picked it up,  the old one who lived alone,  damned as witch, whore or worse;  But the priest had thrown it out, when it had sprung  a leak and replaced it, with copper vessels  of sturdier make; Whey, then, had she taken it in,  that which had been thrown out?  Some voice from amongst the assembled  in hushed whispers said,  ''Perhaps she loved it, as something no longer useful but shaped by a Master Hand'' ...   -----------  --------------------- ------------------- -------------- ---------   from the collection The Anvil of Dreams, 1995 

 Have you perceived fair maid,  the dulcet hues of summer?  When sweetness is ripe in the sun and the enchanted trees sway supple and suppliant,  bending, bending  to the breeze?  Have you felt,  fair maid,  the wildest desire  to dance , freely and without restraint on the purple heather,  dancing, dancing by yourself?  Have you known,  fair maid,  the moods  of sensual ease,  recumbent in the shade of elm,  drowsy with the pleasure of its rustling leaves, swaying, swaying into sleep?  Have you dreamt, fair maid,  a summer's dream,  and found it at the rainbow's end,  suddenly alive  laughing, laughing with brazen joy?  ''No'', said the maiden, with scornful ease-- ''I have no time for play;  Take your pipes, your songs,  and go away.''   ----------- ------------------- ----------------------- ----------------  from Burnt Offerings, 1996 

 I have brought  my beggar-bowl to the threshold of your misery;  I have shattered  my heart against the stone of your vanity;  I have nailed  my happiness upon the coffin of your cruelty;  When I let myself love you, I accepted the inevitable,  and it's not what is happening that hurts but what should have happened, inevitably.  -------- --------------- ----------------- --------------- -----------  from Burnt Offerings 1996 

 Hiroshima child- your quiet eyes speak volumes of grief in silhouette;  Hiroshima child- you sit burning  by the river of fire infinitely patient;  Hiroshima child- they have cast you  in eternal stone for remembrance;  Hiroshima child- they still persist in straddling the world with indifferent ease. ..  ---------  --------------- ---------------- ------------------  from Burnt Offerings, 1996. Originally written for the Hiroshima Day Conference , London, UK 1995 

Come with me, my princess of the ivory tower,  Let us reach out to the stars; Come share with me my memories of Eternity,  the song the West Wind sings,  why summers end and winters come, now and forever let us be one;  From shore to ocean shore,  in rain-washed streets  and gardens under the glistening sky, amidst fragrant, flowery fantasies,  let us but feel the pulse of our future.  Look! There pulsates a new-born star, an infant love,  leading to our tryst  in mazes of light as millennia pass  in the beating of a heart the blinking of an eye the shedding of a tear so clear (crystal clear)  - and we,  Nature's children,  shall be forever enshrined  in our star that shines for us at night.   --------  ------------------ ------------------ --------------  from Canto 8 of 'The Harvest Season of Love Songs' 1997 

 The half-taught chorus of cicadas sings, Half the night is flown on pipistrelles wings, flitting their jagged selves,  black-clothed,  miniature wolverines with bats ears and bad teeth,  they look rather ruthless, almost as bad as cold little lizards crawling on colder walls of barnyard stone, lichen-covered,  and frosted with fuzzy moss,  Sunken glories tarnished with coppery colours,  the colours of night;  These lonely nights, My Lord !  Lonely, yet not alone.  I wonder where the sun shines now?  This moment is cloaked in gloom, the darker shades that loom, large,  larger than life,  nightmares of soiled impressions,  the moon's not out, not tonight,  the clouds hang low, as do convicts, with weird fingers twitching  a weird tattoo-- Regarding this,  their constricting hold, they translate into gestures, the sign language of the dead the lurid snapshots of a certain state of mind;  Apt reminder...