VELDMAN, Vick



What matters

(to our daughter)

Small things remain:

the peace of rustling poplars,

the yellow buttercups and grass growing green,

the smell of wood after vernal showers,

the smile, the blush on a girl’s cheeks,

the warmth of your name,

the child’s hand at the window,

the tear making clear:

“I’ll be there.”

Parted

She is forever gone, and I shall see her face
no more! I shall not hear her speak again
and at the thought my soul is sick with pain.
She is gone! I think I beheld her in the haze,
and then she vanished. Gone, and in her place
a stranger—nay, not her—I saw! My brain
is reeling, the gloomy earth is a bleak plain,
except this grave—where I shall sit and trace
her name on that green stone? She is gone!
And not a hair's breadth further from the sun,
than I am now. I know that I will have to wait
a little while for death!—My life is done,
the mornings of my days are past and gone,
I can but weep and watch the dreary gate.


Shakespeare revisited

A story of a son’s duty for revenge to appease

A father's restless, darkened soul. Of a mind

Unsatisfied, raging with brooding thoughts,

Seeking redress and answers, solitude.

Amid life's uncertain sea, we ponder

The reasons why. In madness we disguise

To unearth truth where treachery abides.

This tale now taking a mysterious twist,

Unloosing, love’s loss endured, desire's hunger

For bloodshed all around. Our hearts entwined,

We mirror wayward souls in sunless worlds,

Behold unfolding grace! Deep wisdom calls

For journeys into heaven and strange reflection

Of man's frailty, when pursuing resurrection.

Ukrainian diatribe

How long*, malicious Putler,

will you defy humanity?

With your filthy oligarch clique

you make the whole world sick.

How long, phoney Putler,

do you send bombs and missiles?

Democracy and freedom are slain

and we just buy oil, gas and grain.

How much longer, rotten Putler,

do you keep lying, threatening,

at giant tables in palaces?

Europe will pay the price,

trembling behind Uncle Sam's back:

all those killings, millions on the run.

* Cicero: Catilinarian Speeches

I long to craft a timeless verse

Against all reason,

I would like to write

the ultimate poem,

a lasting monument*,

of beauty and light;

In short, the miracle

the world was waiting for,

a pageant of words

where my and your eyes

are drawn to.

But who reads now

in a hundred years

my poems, let alone

this poor attempt?

Not this boy.

It seems to me that

the ultimate poem,

if it is ever written at all,

will never be read,

so, we are even, reader.

* See Horace, Odes, III, 30