The time is for prose

The time is for prose I tell the mountains –

And gloomy in the distance they shrug

Their haughty shoulders. Moles have dug

Them into sieves and the sand is slipping through.

The time is for prose I tell the falling night –

Falling like a heartbeat it turns away

And sinks into the light of day.

The sun is blown out like a candle.

The time is for prose I tell the changing tree –

I’m losing my leaves, says-he

Losing them like rain on an autumn day.

It’s that damned wind blowing me apart.

So I turn to the wind and say

It is time for prose –

Its whisper carries over the mountains,

Through the night into another sun.

Soon the tree beside your window

Will rustle: it is time for prose.

Start a sonnet then write a villanelle

The echoe of your voice is like the sea in this shell.

I write then stop – the pen is as heavy as a stone,

“Start a sonnet then write a villanelle”.

The wind carried my body as one single cell,

As a dry feather, as light as a hollow bone.

The echo of your voice is like the sea in this shell.

Empty, I drift into a moonlight crater where dwell

The ghosts of astronaut dreams, and voices that moan

“Start a sonnet then write a villanelle”

But like the sound of a drop in the well,

All this writing – if only I had know

The echoe of your voice is like the sea in this shell

I tried the flute and the reading of poems. They fell

From my hands and cried in their whispering tone:

“Start a sonnet then write a villanelle”.

My soul left me for a farewell

And since then I hear alone

The echo of your voice, like the sea in this shell.

Start a sonnet then write a villanelle.