Category: Poetry

Fine collections of dust
form an archaeological site,
a bereavement, of words left buried,
where we usually call rainy days days of solace.
Dust accumulates with neglect.
We dig deep Pinter, papers of his verses a home
to endless questions. When I ask, sometimes,
out of the sheer distance that separates us,
about ends, your reply, about impermanence,
does not fail to travel miles for days,
reaching me through whispers
of the cold summer, telling me death
is a practice of forgetting love.
Where is love when it is written only
on yellowed paper. What is love
when it is lost among pages of unreasonable
thoughts. Spines of books shiver when touched.
Shelves of languages produce soft bones,
preys to the hungry. But I can only imagine
about voids, now that I am far, and nothing more.
You think impermanence is constant,
and indeed it is. What misses constancy
is a blank page, waiting for ink, formed from dust,
the end of death. If it becomes so that we move
out of sheer love, it is bad luck
that I see you in the dark and still I keep moving.
Darkness is a vision of neglect, a letter
without response, left to crumple.
Death is a decay of all that lives outside you.
Poetry, language, love. Death is a buoyant mirror,
without darkness I see through you.

Ian Salvaña writes from Cateel.

and you, a morning mist,
fog blinding me of direction.
If I announce my cry,
you bleed in liquid, and yet,
not in full bloom,
spring resurrects you
from your everyday death.
I, a thunderstorm,
and you, the clouds bearing
my tears. My sense of time
withers with light
piercing through you,
becoming empty of me,
once inside you, now gone.
Slowly, I, a thunderstorm,
beg to hear words
from you, a silent city,
sleeping as if my grief,
a lullaby, hums your body
to your soft bed. You
remain a still world,
and I, your passing time.
You pause to breathe,
and I, a madness,
you wait to be ruined
in seconds. Who listens
now?

Ian Salvaña writes from Cateel.

Creased spine, yellowed pages, it lives
its rugged life on a coffeeshop table.
For years, thoughts becoming
of women and men and those beyond
draw life page by page. Everyday
ink curves and scratches
mold a heart. Made of clay, shaped
differently per second. Today
the notebook decides
to be a sister of a child with autism.
Yesterday it was a soldier meeting
for the first time a date.
Tomorrow it will be a retired teacher,
hands of veins caressing every
leaf, and finally a world
partially written in the next empty ones.
Here, a recourse from continuity.
The notebook grows with time
and time grows old only to be reminded
that today it was good to live. Mirrors
stop to look at many a self
sometimes, begs to crack in absence
of knowing change. Yet pages
continue to free up still.

Ian Salvaña writes from Cateel.