Ball-Masquerade by Lara Biyuts Copyright 2010 by Lara Biyuts
Ball-Masquerade “…through gray shadows of the night…” (Oscar Wilde)
Ball-Masquerade That was a beautiful Bal Masque. The ball attracted the youths. It intoxicated its participants. Through the red smoke of the porphyritic pillars they couldn’t see the sunset. And by night the moans broke all the prohibitions. Perhaps in this way Great Rome started falling into decline, while he who was wearing a red mask observed that? And the ivory throne of the Palace was vacant. The personages of the Violet Twilight Show, the young participants of the ball weren’t ready for diademing a head. Other follies overwhelmed them. 2006 blank verse to A. B. Being at the mercy of your imagination is beautiful. You’ll be living for ever in my novels, and I am dissolving in streams of the world and my consciousness. The madness of gaudy flowers of eloquence thrown about -- the flowers sing of your beauty, of the dreams, where you live, and the dreams living in you. 2006 autumn poem One more nameless autumn; October betrays you again now with the rain now with a glimpse of the sunlight. The autumn gives you away. You are tired bloody. Only the bared teeth of November come next. It’s an error… While going through the blackthorns tearing your heart in to pieces, you are looking for a road. The yellow leaves like a wet perishable carpet underfoot. The bitter rain, and a white bleak melancholy comes next along with the black silence and the icy flowers ringing in the wind… But you are waiting for dawn, when in the cold morning mist, in the emerald freshness,
in the splashes of the sunlight you’ll be able to breathe again. 2006 reply to the previous poem Take other train. Be like a wind. Don’t care about a ticket, for the golden leaflet is in your hand, and your past will catch you up never again. 2006 A Virtual Life Ashes and flowers; some poetry; the frigid truth of autumn bonfires; the sad magic; the magic sin; the artificial paradise; the graphic laughter. Daemons rule here. Their lips are aglow. They kiss tulips in red wine. 2006 the sublime and the mundane Astral object -- material threshold. There is me behind it, there is essence of being. I step on the pillared porch of the empty palace of ether. Nonexistence is a play of ignorance, an acknowledgment of lost souls. Pride is falsehood. And I am a proud child. I am alive while am proud. I enjoy a speck of dust of the universe. My space is calm. The shade is sleeping on the tips of your eyelashes. The warmth of your lips will prompt me an answer. And this resistance of your lithe body. It helps me to beguile, it softens my flight to oblivion. The quiet islet is the last land, last corner of the world where the white sun is shining kindly. The quiet islet is sleeping; mon bien-aimé is sleeping. Only the whisper of waves and the cool silk--a wind. 2006
decadence I felt someone’s come. It’s opaque sense of someone’s presence. I expect you are reality? Speak nothing even though you are reality! You can’t say anything what is equal to the moment when I felt your presence. Perhaps you suppose I’ve heard you approaching? But I’ve heard nothing of the kind. My ear was full of music, I was full of music, and then suddenly I felt you. If it were the eve of All Hallow’s Day, but no… and I’m not hungry and not abed. Ah… is your name Dio? Yes? No! Don’t answer. Approach! 2007 the primrose path O, white September with blue eyes, you smell of coffee that I spilled today at lunch. It was my agitation. You and I are satisfied--today. My feelings are unveiled, admixing in my blood with waves of endorphins, which nice. O hot December with your power, I’ve changed indeed. To give myself to you I’ve given up all hope. So, that’s enough. Forgive me. For I can’t-I hardly can survive without you just warming hands in someone’s arms to spill black coffee once again. Stars are so distant. Months so close: September and December. Don’t come in. For it’s not time. It’s summer at my place, so tear your calendar. Never fear. Sit down for the road. Forgive me for the rubbish, which I have said. Go now. For ever ohh for ever. Don’t forget
the sun-flecks of the parting in the springtime-part of my life. And you-- you are my king. For ever. Leave my hands, and-greetings, oh December! 2007 too intricate To live without a god? To be a touchy person being impassioned? I keep smiling. And the half empty glass is half full of bitterness. 2007 Why? The crystal panoply. Why is it broken? So difficult to live without a skin, besides, the wondrous armour lent you presence. Oh why did it become a hindrance? Was it so much important an so needful to break your soul’s panoply and ice? The truth’s worn-out cloak can turn again into a tunic of a hero, but pieces of the armour, like the rents, cannot be re-assembled, which makes you, prince, so difficult for recognition. The crystal panoply. Why is it broken? 2009 emptiness Believe in emptiness. It alone Sees a moth that dances in a ray of hope. 2007 caught in the toils of autumn Hours, days, weeks rustle after; the amber blizzard rushes after throwing dead leaves onto face.
Taste the cognac wind-a whiff of cedar scent, a lump in the throat-it tastes like heady salt of your skin. Elixirless again. Why? It smells like myrrh of your skin. 2007 A Petal of the Mist A petal of the mist fell on my tweed, a fragrant shade of flowers of the hope. My garden used to have the flowers’ scent. A kind of dope. Defoliated now. I used to pluck the flowers for the thrilling and magic fortunes-telling. I conjured for tenderness--devoting, holding breath, awaiting for a miracle. In awe. So hopelessly. Now, borders of the seasons are all crumbled and quickly disappeared in the helix between the petal of the mist and scarp of hope. 2008 Amatory Idylls I Heather of breath; velvet of eyelashes that fly up like a flush of birds. Your indigo eye is dusky and tender. Only a beloved one has the eyes like yours. Our argument in the ringing silence-crystal notes and echoes drop one by one to ease the tension. Can you see the glow? You thought it went out? Only along with me. Patina and calx of time never cover passion in the mirrors of the mind, lucid like ice in an amethyst mere. Babe, when you are away, like a blind man I wander in dark. Do you … me? “No!” The fear again. The almond of bittersweet lips--crossing glances; our merged faces--trembling eyelashes like a velvet curtain. II Pollen of desire, glittering and intoxicating, flies down off your trembling eyelashes during the long scarlet kiss that goes to my head, intoxicated by you. You are a hymn to love. I sing you without stopping, and like an avid bee I drink the bittersweet nectar of your beautiful face. You are my Flower; you are my Cup. I need you. Now our stupid hearts beat at one. Whatever I am, you are my miraculous fire. I am aglow with your glance. To set fire to the volcano within me, to burn, to singe--all is in your power. You tell me to keep silence--and your Orpheus becomes silent, and avid lips kiss on the heady silk of the painfully beloved wrist. 2007 springtime deflection
The crazy blue bottomless sky contemplating the fuss of life. My love wrote a song for you, who don’t know a love. A running lion upsets the inkpot. The lion chases the north wind; its cloud-like mane disperses the song to droplets of silence, but the song is in my every breath, in your happy eyes, in the heady dew that I drink from your skin. Listen! Feel! Let your lips recall mine. The song’s in the lips’ avidity--the crystal sky echoes to it. The lion is winged, but the wind is faster. My wicked jealousy makes black bed for insomnia. 2008 deviation The kind god of amnesia is not kind to me. Inquisitor Memory torments--slightly-so that I wouldn’t get blind or become deaf-teasing with your smell, voice, vision of your face. Pantheon of Forgotten Passions is deaf to me. It sends nemesis to the one who denies it. The nameless deities take vengeance for one’s fidelity in love. Only the demi-god of demi-slumber is merciful. For the white moments, for the sips of the insulated oblivion I act at the scarlet mysteries of impassioned strangers. I drink the oblivion with the help of the invoked Daemon of Mercy. Crucified in vacuum, tormented by the unforgettable in sonnets, I am without you, oh Oxyrhynchus of my heart. The dammed god of amnesia--he never helped to forget. 2008 links of the past The past days, the heavenly necklaces, constellations at noon of youth, they are invisible, yet they still here. The days turn into pre-dawns, pre-gloamings, with shadows interwoven in memory, in dreams, in semi-darkness of the deviation whose name is Poesy. They could be seen only at nightfall, but no hurry:
they shine for me, promising days to come. Those ignis fatuus--the links of the past days are hidden. At heart. 2008 aquamarine Aquamarine with golden sparkles, the drowsy life from the entrails of tempests, the star-spangled sky. O my blue Sylph! Heal wounds, unveil your mystery, reveal the meaning of the wavy lines of dreams. Is it a contour of an image? Or lines of verse? Now you are the aquamarine, the mystery of stones on my hand. 2006 cre8hope I. Oh my quiet harbour, native shore, my writing-table. War-wearied, disillusioned and despairing, chilled to the marrow and burnt through, your owner has a life which sounds like a song, though what I’ve left behind is not a bed of roses, sooner traces of ashes over emaciating memories sailing into oblivion. A long way has been come, many mistakes have been made, and every time, obeying my boredom, I return to this quiet harbour. The hours mint seconds. The leaves of paper are maiden-white. The quills drowse in the glass. It’s so good to take a quill and to write down a silent word. It looks like taking aim--and then again, new visions, fiery and ancient, here, in the drowsy air of the room, at the harbour of the writing-table. Oh my native shore, and outside-the pacific ocean of life, great and stormy. II. It’s absurd and odd;
it’s funny and reckless. It’s magical. No purpose, no gain, with no rhyme or reason--but utterly. The hour comes, and along with it a fever and longing and secret fire, delight and power. Both light and shade, both moan and laugh-into the same flames of the same bonfire. What a bad hour! From a mirage, from nothingness, from extravagancy of mine a face appears all of a sudden and takes its shape and is fleshed out with colour and sound. Both colour and sound. It’s absurd and odd; it’s funny and reckless. It’s magical. No purpose, no gain, with no rhyme or reason--but utterly. All rights reserved © Lara Biyuts The Prime of Life When floating in the soft nothingness of the crystal, I was listening idly to the lesson dictated by an eloquent and myopic professor of universal harmony. Supposedly I was learning the way to drink silence from the empty, bottomless cup of knowledge that was be to be learnt to taste a savour of words. We both were excited, though neither the professor nor I cared about the subject, no wonder, as neither of us ever existed 2006
To Bill Kaulitz, 1.09.2006 Don’t let the melody die away. Let the dawn of life come in. Let your daemon forever stay with you, in your heart and within. I wish you’d never feel pain of loss and sorrow in your heart, I wish you’d forever stay with me, in my life, but... now you’re looking upwards to the blue skies now your starry eyes are in darkness. And I love you, love you beyond measure, you, my Diamond Daemon of Pleasure. 2006 blank verse on ancient times The world that exists no longer, that attracts so much, the world of Hellas, the eternal, ideal world of heroes and gods, the amber orb I look at with envy. The world is extinguished, it will be never again. Let it be. Immersed into the roaring formation of Olympeion, I close my eyes and see somewhere in the ideal world, the amber orb rolls down a marble staircase. Smitten with a poisonous arrow, a priest drops the orb out of his hands and falls down on the glossy marble floor. His scarlet blood pours over the floor, his lips turn pale, his eye grows dim. One more illusion is dispersed; one more daydream is broken, and only the amber orb rolling down the marble staircase, in our, not ideal world. Who will catch it? Who will restore the lost perfection? Silence. The amber orb’s smashed to pieces glittering on the floor. 2006 blank verse on ancient times 2 The moon rose red in Palmyra. Translucent shadows covered the sands.
The king’s son went out on the balcony. The familiar world spread before him: the arcades, towers and pillars, light and dreamlike, the bridges over the river silvering afar, the still houses and peristyle, and among the buildings – the grandeur of the temple. The prince was lost in a reverie; while dreaming and leaving the familiar circle of thoughts and words, while being carried away to where the noise of life evanished forever he felt chilly, his eyes scintillated, his fists trembled with anger. For he foresaw the future centuries at the moment. A picture rose before his mind: the night sky above, a numb row of destroyed pillars, and among the ruins-a lioness like a shade of the endless desert. 2007 The Boy’s Temples The green turbid stream invitingly seething astern. The tall grayish pling of the stele alarmingly goes to the sky. How long did the young face glow with Hadrian’s eye? The young heart wanted the doubt no longer. But your nights are embittered henceforward. Strings of the lyre all torn. Water got down to business. The green turbid stream, enfolding the young vigorous body, threw the horrible veil on the beautiful eyes. 100 of temples took the place of the only tombstone. 100 of tales repeated the law of the triumph of Fates. What else could the highest benevolence promise? However -- a tear will drop in the river at sunset. Ivory, senseless, the hand let the red lotus out -it floated down, now drifting, now sailing, and then the flower lit on a grave -- tear-misty,
misty-drawn in the legend, not found, our page 4-0-4, blurry-countered, the grave of Antino -- Bithynian boy. Red lotus. The Nile. 2005 Caesar! Deep purple shades enshrouded our camp. The river meandered like a greenish snake. The two-horned moon calligraphically made hieroglyphs on the ruffled surface. As soon as noisy day is stilled, my Caesar came to our tent. I shared meal and nights with him, I kissed the leather of his sandals. Oh dreams, so light and winged! Oh those illusive subtle moments! What fables or books could summon up the beloved features? Tender is the night, but only sphinxes, the sphinxes over the Nile, only they remember what I’ve forgotten. 2005 silence Marble marble beyond expectation crescendo plucking the strings. Two thousand years silence silence hymns, novels. time-bomb he scores Antinous wins. 2007 Pancrates Oh laureled ones!
Sing the enkindling songs! It’s time of invocations. Doors open. Inhale cinnamon and rose! Citharodes begin to set the table. Behold -the Eagle spreading its wings. Swoosh! Masks mash flash and swash. Citharas pause. Brash whoosh and smash. It’s time for musing. In the flesh -you never saw him in the flesh. Do you remember? Do you remember Museion of Alexandria? Recall, Mesomedes of Crete did see our Dark Violet Curly-Haired Lord in the flesh. In flesh and stone. In stone. In stone alone. Look there -the starlight eats our second sight, our dreams and the pearls of the jeweled cups. It’s time to go home. Old Poet is sleeping in the chair. Hush… 2007 time The lizard in the amber on my table. Stuck in the resinous stuff it floats in the amber heat, and its primordial scales tell about the primordial sunrise. The moment of its agony. It’s fifty million years old. Catastrophes and tempests it left behind.
May this poem out-fight time itself breaking through centuries and appear in the sunlight like the lizard in the amber. 2007 Fortuity Don’t come to me, my friend. A metamorphose occurred. I read a scroll of runes, and one of invocations subsequently played unexpected trick… --What does it mean to be so faceless? What for the sticky magma? What for the plaintive moans of the plaintiff? --He wished to be a great magician. 2008 blank verse on beauty Beauty is fearsome, you will be told. The embroidered Spanish shawl you’ll throw lazily on shoulders-the red rose is in your hair. Beauty is simple, you will be told. With the motley shawl you’ll cover a nice child to cradle gently-the red rose is on the floor. But while listening, while heeding to the words that heard around, you will fall to thinking sadly and speak calmly to yourself: “Neither fearsome nor simple. I’m not so fearsome to kill simply, I’m not so simple not knowing how fearsome life is.” 2006 Imagery To draw black glass, to play the hubris and sublime, to paint with chalk of words the expanse over. The moon over the cloud,
like a japonerie, will strike upon night verse, and through the broken glass ache overtakes. The gambler’s time has come. The dark imagery. Still pillars. Towards Zero. Amen. 2007 to Jocelyn The young boy--cheerful treasurer, maybe Willie Hughes, winged messenger, guest of Florence-where do you fly, having forgotten of our union? Why don’t you invoke the winds of the ancient fatherlands? You--sexless, You--fertile, sower of peace, father of the creations who Shakespeare’s sonnets languished for. 2007 Three Pageboys My aide-de-camp on duty, the young Clarence Gale, like a mauve lightning, burst into my sunlit study and reported laughing: “Concerning Marcus Aurelius. House in total panic. Boycott is expected to be. Being indignant, Count Jocelyn himself is coming to Your Serenity. And I’ve not time to taste a wine or to throw my lilac eye to the azure. I now hurry off to make Glace a la Violette for the feast in honour of Ambassador of Marmaland.”
His bilberry-coloured figure whirled away to the garden. The door opened wide again, and the young Ondrik Flyte looked ready for report: “Concerning Marcus Aurelius. House in total panic. Boycott is expected to be. Being indignant, Count Jocelyn himself is coming to Your Serenity. And I have not time to mount on your lap. The apple of discord is amidst pageboys. I'm off now to taste Creme de Orchidee, made for our numerous guests.” Swaying with the lavender-scented sides of his frock-coat, like a swallow, he flew out through the French window. In the garden, to the drone of bumble-bees, over the red and white flowers, infused essences of herbs sang. And to these sounds the door opened wide again, and Jocelyn, Comte du Rosier, amazing gourmet, connoisseur of exquisite essences, the boy in purple entered the room, riding a black horse. “We, who studied Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations at your behest, have fallen out with each other, but I, Jocelyn will understand all, and judge between everyone. I’ll appease the nerves and noise, and unite all the pageboys, if only you, my beamish friend, love me tender, more tender than all of them.” March, 2007 To My Boy The starlight grows pale -- the haze of dawn -the sky overturns the slumber of humans’ nests, with shades steaming upwards. You’ve awaked -- birdsongs in the dewy trees -give me your hand, oh child of shady groves! Your voice is clear, the sun is smiling, the day is fine, while the Great City in the scorching glow.
I conjure the cardinal winds and all parts of the world: velvet of shades, silks of sunshine at dawn, starlit nights and meads of wild flowers -- for your eyes! At them, your innocent twins of laughter, beamish and wise, calling like sadness of echo, frisky as fawn -from under the dark veil, the blue Dreamland smiles, while the raging Hell laughs and the Paradise cries 2005 The Boy Maybe he was born by the sun that goes under the purple sea? Maybe he was born by the purple waters that merges with the purple sky? Maybe he was born by the sky that says good-bye to the sun caressing the lonely cloud? Maybe he was born by the cloud that keeps the scarlet reflection and sadly looks at the sun that dies in the ocean being reborn again and again? 2007 Vive la bagatelle! Burst into tears the cloud-distraction. Burst out laughing the pain-action. Vampire bit his red lip and gathered the shade-abstraction. 2006 flight Night fell. Thoughts wander. Fretted heads of lamps sway shades dissembling outside the window. Footsteps of passer-by, dissected by the moon, have died away. O dark, my bliss‌ Immovable in this dark-born phantasm, I feel the argent shades approach. Awaked, like crazy Aladdin, I take the lamp of midnight dreams from ancient pictures, and I steal away into the windy night to fly above the sleepy city.
But Morning threatens always on the sly. The cry of the new light will overtake, and silver bullets of the dawn will strike my flight. The night will leave for crystal of the mirrors at the eternal dwelling of Parisian Vampire. 2008 on a clear night Nicotianas slowly weaving the moon-diluted texture of the sounds. A veil-like moonlit baby, over flowers, Aeolus throwing pebbles to dark water. His coral lips say either “Sink!” or “Cinq!” He’s rather neutral, neither girl nor boy. A boat is trembling on the lake, and everyone is listening to Poet. The masked and skillful phantasm-maker in the framework and shade of wild grape vines-not wreaths but old pergola, for the present-makes everyone stay in the moonlit drowse and free. And now, as phantom and reminder of boring misery--the alarm bell! In the reflections of the burning Castle, distracted, Poet paused like silly acrobat. Dame Real Life looked like a mere lout. 2008 violet chartreuse Loving lemony and violet. Lilacs amidst goldilocks; a lemon and sweet viollettes. Pellucid violet words sing on of the moon and my dream. A lemony slice of the moon. The dream like a violet stream. Lilacs amidst goldilocks. Rejoicing in flowers abloom, rejoicing at being in love-in the morning, by day and by night, in the semi-light, semi-shade-in love with the life and the dream, loving lemony and violet! 2008
seasons The sky is broken-the melting splinters in branches of trees. People crumble into the snow, and the silence like a way home over a chasm. The sun has melted-it’s like honey on your lips. The birds sing drinking the air, and you kiss the sky--it’s springtime! Sunshine to emerald; then rubies on blue, diamonds on black. And golden straws within your hair-summer is with you! 2006 that summer Is it the nicotianas aroma? Is it a whiff of incenses from Rome? Was it the sunrise when you learnt that Fates guarded you? The angel-like English middy sang in the sunlit, oddly decorated room. Do you remember? Do you remember the crystal sonatas, the jonquil chair, Salome’s last dance? In vain, night rosins fiddlesticks. Like a moth my soul flies backwards to the lime-scented evening to see the hotel in Thame, the last sunrays and the middle parting of twenties undergraduate in a maze of mirrors. 2007 to A. B. Like a white silk rustling or a fragrance whiffing, like a greenish sparkle or iridescent gloriole,
like quaver of heartstrings or Your shade’s pace, like a sift veiled voice or a blue ice cube along a backbone, like your eyes, it shines, the flaming orchid petal, rushing about, whispering and prophesying, like something elusive, inescapable and blind, the tripping and triune Demon of Inspiration. I sleep, eat, walk. I kiss. Neither time, nor day, nor hour is known. My snow-white quill can pause--fastidious, obscure, curative, as always. All the sublime can rob of wit. Your image, heavy as every winged sphinx can tie up to the earth. While mirrored spheres going round, the glory shines in golden eyes. My eyes. Your glory. Your enjoyment. My joy. And the zodiacal flame of marginal notes. In tempestuous ether overhead, all lines draw letters of Your name. April, 2007 leaning over backward It’s time for fun. The crazy, prodding billiard. You pocket two white balls. The tune in the baroque. One’s merit is a wish to sell one’s snowy horror in twisted mind on high, bereft of last repose. No music, no repose, no god, no inspiration. A strange somebody’s imp falls through the Internet. The snowstorm-fallen trees show us the three-dimensional undying Masquerade, life-born imagery. In mirrored circle time stands still as dark and splendid and dreamlike Bal Masque. Bright masks of moments dance throughout times and lands. Reflecting in the mirrors. And disappear all. The Ball is endless though. New personages act the endless play of pleasure, dependent on a warmth, dependent on a love-if we have neither, we depend on other, darker, more dangerous, alas, and more destructive things. Red lips conceal the fangs. We all depend on others, and on the quirky twist of our own dreams. The slavery of dreams. O brother, darling, where… where on earth are you? Perchance in mirrors. No.
2008 O Truant Muse‌ The bird of prey, the short-toed eagle, he is my Muse. The shadow of a smile will cross his lips, and probably some day he will abate the points of his barbed arrows, in face of timid foreign rhymer. Gold in the blue. Bijou-like poems. A sunless coral palace from a book. The journey downwards the fading sun. A Doric temple by the water's edge. The rest is trumpery. 2008 novelese What twists the plot is doing‌ Fatal lines are cunning by the dots. And eye will poison. And a sense will answer. To delve in words, to bead them, to admire the manner of the man whose heart was stripped. The mystery and the imagery, brighter than brilliants, merge in nuance, curling, stirring, winding. Darting to refinement, ciphered whimsy phrases create a nugget. Suspense cries. Its voice and smile dupe the dupable ones. Touch it--and the buffoonery will burst. And all is shaky here. A suspension-bridge is ground--but the fire is blazing brighter in the dusk. All the barbed arrows have been aimed--at whom? Laughter is heard--yet nothing arrogant. To search a scanty honour at the bottom. To find it being desolate. How meandering the road that leads us up to sources. The audience is all electrisized. For everyone is waiting for the final. 2008 Palace Awaking The fancy-dress ball finished, but the masked
keep walking round the dark enormous hall, still walking, only their dresses get thinner, smoke-like, dusty. At dawn, when the sky grow lighter, all the masked men vanish. Rising, the autumn sun can see a little boy still sleeping in the chair.
TRANSLATIONS The Butterfly by Afanasy Fet (1820-1892) You’re right. An outline of Air I am so sweet. My velvet with its living blinking-only two wings. Don’t ask me whence, what brought me, where I speed. I light the flower down, here, and now I breathe. How long, so aimless, so effortless, I want to breathe? That’s it now, flashing, raising wings I fly away. Gods by Henri de Regnier (1864-1936) I dreamt gods talked with me: one god--streams- and seaweeds-clad; one more--with vines and ears of wheat; one more--winged, inaccessible and beautiful in his nude; and one more--with covered face; and one more--he who plucks omegas and pansies, singing, and two snakes enwind his gold thyrsus; and others… And then I said: here are flutes and baskets--taste my fruits, listen to humming of bees and the humble rustle of willows and reeds. And also I said: Listen, listen-there is someone who speaks by echo’s mouth, who is lonely amidst the world’s life, who holds the double bow and torch, he who is so inconceivably we… O sacred face! I coined you as medallions of silver, soft as autumn dawn, of gold, hot as the sun, of copper, gloomy as night, of all the metals that sound clear as joy, that sound fatal as glory, love or doom; but the best medallions I’ve made of clay. Smiling you will count them one by one, and say, They are skillfully made; and smiling you’ll pass by. So, no one of you saw my hands tremble from tenderness, and the world’s great dream lives in me to come to life in them.
No one of you realizes that I’ve coined my gods of good metals, that they are a face of all sacred, what we feel in the forests, grass, sea, winds and roses, in all phenomena, and in our body, and that they are divinely we. Mystical Evening Twilight by Paul Verlaine Memory and Evening Twilight redden and tremble at the glowing skyline of expectations in flames that retire and thus enlarge, of which partition mysterious or repeated bloom --dahlia, lily, tulip, banewort-climb around the trellis, and circle amidst the morbific exhalations of warm and disturbing perfumes, which is poison --dahlia, lily, tulip, banewort-flooding my senses, my soul and my reason, they mix, into immense languor, Memory and Evening Twilight. Artist by Ivan Bunin Pebbles rustling underfoot. Through the slopping garden, he walks, glances round the basins and subsides on a bench… Behind the new white house the Yayla mountain range so close and heavy. Heat-wearied, looking crayon-drawn, the crane is standing in the bush, tail down, a cane-like leg… He says, “What, Bird? It’s nice at Volga now! At Yaroslavl!” Smiling, he begins thinking of his own funeral, how they will carry his coffin outdoors, how gray the vests will be in the hot sunrays, how yellow light, how white the house against the blue. “From the porch, a fat old priest goes downstairs. The choir follows him… Frightened and clicking, the crane takes wing off the old fence and dances, and with its beak it knocks on the coffin.” A tickling in his breast. Dust rushes from the highway, hot and especially dry. He takes off his pince-nez and thinks while coughing, “Yes, vaudeville… and all the rest is guille.” La Lune Blanche
by Paul Verlaine The white moon shines in the woods; from each bough comes a voice under the branch… Oh, beloved. The pond reflects, deep mirror, the silhouette of the black willow where the wind cries… Let’s dream, now is the hour. A vast and tender appeasing seems to descend from the firmament as an iridescent orb... It’s the exquisite hour. To Myself by Leopardi And so, you’ll quiet down for ever, o my poor, tired heart. The deception’s perished--final, ultimate, which I reckoned immortal within me. I feel that not only the hope of the dear deceptions has died, but the desire for them has gone out. Calm down, for ever. You thrilled enough. There is nothing worthy of your pulsing, and the earth is not worthy of the sighs. Our life is melancholy and bitterness, no more; the world is dirtiness. Quiet down and stop. Despair for the final time. Fate doesn’t give us other gift than dying. From now on, despise itself, the nature, the insulting strength that covertly bosses the show of the universal vice, despise the futility of it all. from the epigrams
by Marcus Valerius Martialis “King of the birds, tell me whom you are carrying?” “The Thunderer.” “Why he has not thunderbolts in his right hand?” “He’s in love.” “Whose fire did smite him?” “A child’s one.” “Why are you looking at god, your beak is half-open?” “I’m whispering of Ganymede.”
Twitter: http://twitter.com/deajuly Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bijucie.lara Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/lasept Blog: http://revueblanche.blogspot.com/ A short bio: Lara Biyuts (aka Lara Biuts, Larisa Biyuts) is a Smashwords author of 14 books of fiction, writer of the RevueBlanche.blogspot, collage maker for her book covers, translator, who signs her translations as Larisa Biyuts. Her novella A Handful of Blossoms is shortlisted as the Best Gay Historical-2012. Her works are accepted for anthologies: Cat’s Cradle Time Yarns (Time Yarns Anthologies), Authors off the Shelf (Lazy Beagle Entertainment), Of Words and Water 2014 (Words and Water group supporting WaterAid), Hope Springs a Turtle, The Black Rose of Winter, and Greek Fire (Lost Tower Publications). Her old tale and poems are featured on TheHolidayCafe.com (2013). Her poetry is on the monthly eJournal The Criterion (April, 2014). Her essays are published at FlexWriterBlogsOnline.net. She is a Goodreads librarian. Her novel La Lune Blanche is the first of the series. “The novel is the world where pleasures of life and pleasures of art are just norms.” (Turner Maxwell Books) “The author produces a setting which is detailed and believable, and also characters which the reader gets to know well. Also the plot moves along nicely through-out the story.” (April O., facebook.com) “Lara Biyuts’ writing is deep and multi layered.” (Maggie Mack Books, maggiemackbooks.com) “Lara Biyuts comes to us from the great tradition of Nabokov and Conrad, enriching our literature in English with the rich cosmopolitain perspecitve of the East European tradition leading back to Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Like those great masters she takes us also into the shadow world of sexuality with its hidden psychology, possession and sensual revelations.” (Robert Sheppard, Author of the novel Spiritus Mundi, linkedin.com) “The secret of Lara Biyuts is her tales. The secret of her tales is their charm. The secret of the charm is Lara Biyuts.” (Les Hudson, goodreads.com)