Telephone Call

"When are you coming home"
he asks.

No idea.
"Home" is wherever I am
she thinks.

Still too shy to answer.

Tiger Woods

I understand Mr. Woods has signed up for sex therapy treatment
a rather un productive and "wishful thinking" initiative
if you ask me

and I just wonder
how would he know
that the treatment is working.

PENTRU TATA , DE ZIUA LUI

"CUVINTELE POTRIVITE " A LUI ARGHEZI

Doamne, fă-i bordei în soare,
Într-un colţ de ţară veche,
Nu mai nalt decât o floare
Şi îngust cât o ureche.

Şi-n pridvor, un ochi de apă
Cu o luntre cât chibritul,
Ca-n crâmpeiul lui să–ncapă
Cerul tău şi nesfârşitul.

Dă-i un fluture blajin
Şi o broască de zmarald.
Şi-n pădurea de pelin
Fă să-i stea bordeiul cald.

Şi mai dă-i, Doamne, vopsele
Şi hârtie chinezească,
Pentru ca, mânjind cu ele,
Slava ta s-o zmângălească.

Şi când totul va fi gata
S-o muta la ea şi tata.

THE PATRIOT ACT

What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?

The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn't anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?

Because the barbarians are coming today.
What laws can the senators make now?
Once the barbarians are here, they'll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting at the city's main gate
on his throne, in state, wearing the crown?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader.
He has even prepared a scroll to give him,
replete with titles, with imposing names.

Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

Why don't our distinguished orators come forward as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?

Because the barbarians are coming today
and they're bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?
(How serious people's faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home so lost in thought?

Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
And some who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.

And now, what's going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution.

(Reading Cavafy on a Sunday morning in Boston)

TIMES SQUARE

Every time I hear a fire engine
rushing by
I feel like I am missing out

There is always life
somewhere else
that I know nothing about.

Time Zones

You are on the other side of time
Your mornings are my evenings
Your days start in my dreams

When you leave
I return

Will we ever meet ?

“PAROLES DE SAGESSE”

no longer sure , where I’ve read them..
I found the note in my backpack with a boarding pass from Tashkent

“c’est un dieu exigeant, sans debordements de tristesse”
“ une telle joie emannait de lui”

" Elle caressa un reve sur le visage de l’eau. "

" Dois-je porter les reves des autres ? "

" Elle s’yappliquait d’ailleurs avec tenacite
Et ne cachait plus sa envie de quitter la maison "

I wonder what I was reading on that Uzbekistan Air flught ?

الاسكندريه

The City

you said,
"I'll go to a different country, another sea,
another and better city than this one.
Here everything I do goes wrong
and my heart is dead and buried as a corpse.
How long should my soul suffer here ?
Wherever I turn, anywhere I look
I see the burnt cinders of my life here
where I've spent too long doing nothing."

You'll find no new sea or land
This city will always dog you .
You'll roam the same streets
go grey in the same houses.
You'll always end up here
Forget anywhere else .
You have no ship, no road
The life you've wasted here
you've wasted everywhere.

reading Cavafy in Askendrya - Egypt
december 2009.

thank you Mohamed for the Arabic title.

Massachusetts

After "many a summer" we have finally reached our winter of discontent.



For months a series of political candidates, more or less articulate,
have been stirring apathy in our state. And the Senate seat left vacant be Mr.Kennedy's departure , seemed a fait accompli - a democratic "given."
Nobody really cared or expected otherwise.


And then, about a month ago, things started to change.
It was like a sea wave. Soft and pleasant at the shore,
brought in the perfect storm from afar.

All of a sudden the entire country watches us.
Presidents Clinton and Obama joined us for breakfast,
coffee and teas are served with political banners,
the phones ring day and night with pre recorded massages...

We came to life and the election has become a referendum on the president,
and even more on his health reform initiative. Strange as it is, Massachusetts has already in place the health plan proposed to the entire nation.And we do not see any viable reason to incur further spending and regulations to get what we already have ...

This election will be a test of human nature, if nothing else.

No matter, the weather or the traffic, I am going to vote tomorrow.

It's more fun now.
I feel that I matter

ALEKSANDRYA

I've been by the sea
for two days
and now, one month later
I still have
sand in my hair
and
salt on my lips