Image: Unsplash, downloaded (https://unsplash.com/photos/FROUVKVVmZI) 17.10.2021.
IN LATE NOVEMBER (After Mei Yao Chen)
I watch the moon climb the sky.
I watch it move between the clouds,
until it dies. There’s no light
in that black sky. God left it long ago,
or he has also died. Where there once
were stars, they’ve been cast aside,
like the girl, who years ago, was
my bride. Snow is falling from that sky.
The road beside her grave crawls out
of sight. It crawls somewhere, I’m sure,
but I can’t say where. I don’t care.
The snow falls in my hair, on my back,
and in my eyes. I’m alone among dead trees.
I stand like the stones beside the road.
People I’ll never know pass me by.
I don’t nod, I simply stand aside.
I lived for things that now I know were lies.
LOOKING OUT MY WINDOW IN DECEMBER (After Tu Fu)
I part my curtains and gaze
at a blood red moon.
Beyond that moon
stars are slowly dying.
The sky is a lonely grave.
Clouds huddle darkly together.
They speak of bad weather.
The blue grass at the
river’s edge is no more.
It will soon snow.
I have nowhere to go.
Soon, I will be sixty.
Who can I tell what I know?
What can be said about
a man, gazing out
his window, simply
watching for the snow?
HOME IS FAR AWAY (After Su Tung Po)
Days upon days and the clouds
caught in the branches
like words in a poem
that has no meaning.
When I look at that sky,
desires fill my mind.
Men of science, in their
different departments,
study mysteries, which vanish
like the new spring.
Riddles without answers
are ugly things.
I know the sum of one plus one,
the distance to the sun,
how daffodils grow,
but is the silence of the grave
a pleasant repose?
That I’ll never know.
As men fall to their knees,
leaves fall from the trees.
Then they are gone,
with the first gentle breeze.
About the Author: George Freek's poetry has recently appeared in "The Ottawa Arts Review"; "Acumen"; "The Lake"; "The Whimsical Poet"; "Triggerfish"; and "Torrid Literature".
