If

If one day you feel the need to leave

know that you made us happy

more so than we'll ever be

If one day you feel the need to rage

know that we never meant you harm

that we'd trade our life for your calm

If you feel the need to mourn the dead

know that we're here for you

that sadness passes too

If one day you think you'd rather die

know that more people than you think

would pull you off from the brink

If one day you feel the need to leave again

know that you have a home in the soft

of the heart of those you loved

If one day you feel the need to speak up

know that your voice will boom like a storm

yet your words will help us keep warm

If one day you feel the need to love

If one day you feel the need to cry

If one day you feel the need to die

know that you are the most amazing person

we have been given to befriend, to love,

to laugh with, to walk with, to see smile

know that you have made us smile in turn

tear up and laugh, often at the same time

know that we're the lucky ones

that we'd give an arm to see you again

to hug you one last time in the chaos

and watch you go and blast the stars

or create a universe we'd see as a gift

to share with you, even from far away,

even a universe filled with ifs –

anything to stay with you one more day.

 

Last Letter to my Students on the Eve of their Final Exam

Dear all,

In a few days you will start the final race for what will essentially be your last days as "pupils". You will then become "students", and then "adults". You know me well enough to know I don't mark the distinction. We are all learners, after all, every step of the way, and you are in many regards adults already.

You all know that this race isn't a race against the others, but against yourself. You will have to find the mental strength, and for some of you the moral fortitude, to affront each exam. I have no doubt that every single one of you -- and I mean every, single, one of you -- has what it takes to get your diploma.

You realise that it will be easier for some of you than for others, but as I wrote earlier, this is a race against yourself: you will have to fight through your own insecurities, your own personal problems, your own doubts, and perhaps other people's doubts. Yet if I could make you see yourselves as I do, you'd sit every exam with pride in your hearts, with that sort of confidence which commands respect. You would walk with your head held high, uncaring of others, with your eyes fixed on the horizon where your goals are.

I have to be honest with you: all of you command my respect. I find truly admirable that you have come this far down the road. Some of you have had really hard lives. Some of you have issues which even adults wouldn't want to have because they wouldn't know how to deal with them. And yet you do. You have found the force within yourselves to keep on walking, against wind and tides; you have found the strength of character to move on against those who spat on the path you were treading and judged you, against your own family sometimes who didn't trust you, against situations in which you felt trapped. It is true that some of you have had to put one knee on the ground, but none of you has faltered, all of you got back up and went forward -- the most obvious proof being that you are here, now.

I have shown you, in class, that a momentary show of weakness is nothing, nothing in the face of who you will become. We are all Frodo setting out of the Shire, unsure of which way to go, conscious that every step of that way will be fraught with danger. Frodo knew what the object of his quest was, that no one before him had attempted what he had set out to do, and many had warned him against the vanity, the foolishness of such a quest. In the end, he had only a few of his friends at his side to confront the darkness.

He discovered that the darkness outside was nothing compared to that within him. Fighting his own demons was probably the hardest part of his mission. But he knew that he could count on Sam. And here I am, being a Sam for you, talking to you in the ruins of Osgiliath, with Mount Doom in plain sight across the ashen plateau of Gorgoroth. Here I am telling you that hope is not a foolish prospect, that the year it took Frodo to walk up there is the same year it took to arrive where you are now, that you can do it.

Many of us teachers have been Sams for you Frodos. We have carried you this far up the volcano, but the rest of the way into the Crack of Doom you will have to walk on your own, confident that we have done everything in our power to help and guide you, to assure you that your quest isn't futile, your efforts not vain, your weaknesses not really weaknesses after all.

That your quest shall be a success depends on you, and you alone. As a very wise lady said: "If you cannot find a way, no one will". Adversity is just a strong gust of wind which may disorient us, which may slap us so hard that we fall to the ground. Yet you will do what you have always done: get back up on your feet.

You know it is the last part of this journey. It was a rich, eventful year, which marks the end of an era which you will remember, years from now, with fondness perhaps, smiling as you realise how far you have come. Perhaps you will remember your old, daft teacher telling you about Frodo and Sam with a tear in his eye and you will wonder if your adventures will be put into songs. Well, let me tell you something: it isn't because you cannot hear the music that the lyrics aren't playing. You are writing one of these songs as we speak. Another one will soon begin after this one is sung. Remember: this is how Arda and Middle-earth were created, with a song.

So here we are, at the end of some things and at the beginning of others. I do hope you are as serene and confident as possible, ready to give it all and be done with this damned exam.

Thank you for this wonderful year. You have taught me many things; you have shown me the best, and sometimes the worst, in you; you have all grown up a bit, but above all you have been yourselves. I am happy and proud to have been part of the journey, yet it is time for me to wave goodbye from the threshold to my classroom and wish you the best possible future, the greatest possible happiness.

Take very good care of yourselves.

With fondness,

Your English Teacher

Fragment #16

I drank too much coffee today

I am way too alert, sniffing the air

like a hound on a wet trail

 

Averse

"We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry."

William Butler Yeats, poet, playwright, writer, Nobel laureate (1865-1939), in Per Amica Silentia Lunae: Anima Hominis (chapter V, 1918)

I've seen this quote phrased a tad differently all over the Internet: "Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry." I'm one to right wrongs by defending traceability of quotes and authorship, and preserving quotes in their original form...so yeah, you bet I'm going to go after that one. Inasmuch as I cannot but agree that the second form "reads better", I'd rather keep the first one as it is true Yeatsian style. Content matters, but form does too.

I have to apologise to some of my friends for being a quote killjoy [insert emoji of your choice].

By the roundabout way, here is the link to the text.

The earthquake

I thought the earthquake happened thirty years ago.

The town still lies there, in ruins, in tatters, in shambles.

Nobody cared enough to rebuild anything anywhere.

Green lush vegetation now covers the walls, the houses.

Whole barley fields extend as far as the eye can see.

Where roads and streets and parking lots used to be.

Only the graveyard remains untouched by the wilderness.

Someone must be coming here often to tend to the grave.

There's only one, you know, but it is in pristine condition.

The name still shines in gold, sun-mirroring letters.

That name used to be mine, before the earthquake.

I thought the earthquake happened twenty years ago.

When its memory surfaced, like a dead body in the sea.

A dead body is what we put in coffins, like in the movies.

Crapversaries is what I call the birthday of a deathday.

That day was the crappiest crapversary of my short life.

I remember it like it was yesterday because it sort of was.

I saw his silhouette against the lit backdrop of the open door.
I pretended to be asleep but my pounding heart wouldn’t let me. 

I knew he had been waiting for mom to leave for work.

Waiting all day long and pretending to be busy in the garage.

He stepped into the bedroom and didn't switch the light on.

Maybe he thought if I didn't see anything it would be all right.

Maybe he forgot I could still touch, taste, smell, feel pain.

And that's precisely when the earthquake happened.

I thought the earthquake happened ten or so years ago.

It happened in the shower after I had sex with my girlfriend.

The smell came up to me and it burst-reminded me of that day.

I had buried it so deeply within me it couldn't come back.

But it did because we all know the dead can't stay buried.

Because I smelt what my dad smelt when he was done.

That sort of smell is bound to wake up the dead.

That sort of smell is the motherbomb of all deathsmells.

It smothered me and I choked I thought I'd die in the shower.

Maybe it's not as bad as it sounds but I didn't die anyway.

But the earthquake was rattle-ravaging everything inside.

I thought the earthquake happened yesterday, of all days.

He called me on the phone while I was at work.

I hadn't heard of him in more than two decades.

When mom realised the earthquake had gone on for years.

He said he was sorry, that he had become a different person.

Though his name still resounds like a coffinful of bones.

But I got better but I said I didn't want to see him ever again.

Today I am still smiling when I watch the sky.

Today like yesterday I tend to the grave of that child.

I cut out tiny pieces of sunrays to gild the letters.

The horror happened but I acknowledged it and let it go.

I let it slide over me like a tsunami a few years ago.

So I could trade pain for happiness, rage for serenity.

And I am serene not because I survived the earthquake.

I am serene because I found out who I am despite the earthquake.

 

The cry of the erne

Out of the grey – into another –

a routine morning emerges

in leaden sleeplessness –

tessellates into a mirror

– one immense mirror –

levelled with the ground –

its surface like a mountain lake

whose unstirred waters

whorls everything grey

below and above, and above

the erne circles her own reflection

the two quickly gyre centreward

lunge and soar in synchrony

like colliding meteorites and

at the meeting point

claw savagely at each other

– shards scintillate in

the bursting sun –

to arise with a salmon

between her talons –

the fractaled vision shatters

leaves windswept greyness

for horizons around –

whilst the morning

goes greyward again

the cry of the erne

resounds in the waking air.

 

Night Swimming

It was supposed to be a dare

but when I saw his white body

against the dark of the night

I realised the cosmos never jokes.

I feared my body would glow like a firefly,

the dark beating against it like moths,

pulsating, vibrating with life.

It wasn't windy, nor cold, but

my hair stood on end;

I was already wet

so I jumped into the water

lest he would come close,

feel my breasts, my nipples, my sex.

I heard him jump off the pier

but I was too far out already,

the brisk water pitch black

sending fire in my veins,

and the stars broken by

the waves I was making

swimming in the milky way;

but which darkness it was

in which I was enveloped:

that of the cosmos, the lake, the night,

I couldn't say – but I was loved.

Behind me perhaps I heard my name

or was it an owl starting the hunt.

I couldn't but butterfly on.

Perhaps I didn't know who I was,

my parents telling me to get a grip,

my teachers saying that I was lost,

my friends whispering there was no hope,

but here and now I was myself –

a someone still to be explored –

but unmistakeably someone good.

The moon and the stars wiggled back

to where they had always been in the sky.

Motionless I lay, floating like a dead leaf;

muffled trees brushing the night

painting my fury, my pain, my joy;

luminous undisturbed dragonfly

stargazing its fleeting life away;

random waves hitting my body

and again, perhaps, my name.

I felt revealed and hidden,

naked but clothed by the waves,

the trees, the pebbles, the mountain,

its snowy cap a wedge in the darkness

opening a rift in the waters

swallowing me whole

eddying me away down

in some other, more distant gloom

the constellations spiralling

the fire inside raging, raging

against something dying

somewhere, deep down.

Perhaps it was the mountain dying,

perhaps it was me,

perhaps it was the lake and its shimmers,

the illusion that I was someone –

all I know is that I woke up

shivering in the abyss,

struggling to put my jeans back on.

I was soaking wet

and my nipples were hard

but he didn't try to feel my tits

when so many before him had;

he was dressing in silence,

perhaps eyeing me askance.

We didn't say a word on the drive home.

In fact, we never talked again.

I never went back to the lake,

I didn't go back to my house,

to my school or my home town

but on that night I became someone,

unmistakeably someone good,

somewhere I felt more at home,

somewhere I felt loved and desired,

somewhere people understood,

and recognised, the fire in my heart.

 

Revenir

On revient de la vanité du corps

comme de l'urgence de la chair

on apprend la vanité de l'esprit

amarré à l'œil du cyclone

on revient des illusions du vin

comme de l'absence des morts

on comprend la vanité du soi

dans l'abandon à l'autre

on surprend la capacité d'aimer

dans la renonciation à tout

surtout lorsqu'on renonce à tout

alors on revient de tout ce qu'on a pu être

même de la plus triste des tristesses

même blotties dans la tempête

par nos mains astrolabes de nos cœurs

on réalise que mille voies

ne sont qu'un seul chemin

qu'on est capitaines de nos corps

qu'on est navires en quête de vagues

que revenir, en fait, c'est aller.

 

Fragment #34

Though some have tried

their damnedest

though some will try again

none could hurt me

like I hurt myself

That's why everything

will be ok

now that I've learnt

to be at peace

with myself.

 

Nothing in the shadow cast in the mirror

な あ 影 鏡 世

き る に に の

に に あ 映 中

も も れ る は

あ あ や

ら ら

ず ず

源 実朝

Yo no naka wa

Kaga mi ni utsuru

Kage ni are ya

Aru ni mo arazu

Naki ni mo arazu

Our existence

is like a reflection

in a mirror

It really does not exist

but also doesn't not exist

Minamoto no Sanetomo (1192-1219) was a shōgun during very troubled times. He was a very gifted poet, writing more than 700 poems between 17 and 22 years of age, especially excelling in the art of the tanka. 

Earlier on today I was discussing with a dear friend of mine the fact that Greek plays still retained, thousands of years later, that humanity which moved us to tears, which made us (re)think life and our choices; how Greek myths would mirror some of the situations we experienced, which made us pause and ponder.

I had copied this tanka a while ago in my notebook, and it seems so fitting for the both of us right now that I cannot let such a caressing serendipity slip by unnoticed. Here it is, again, for you, dearest.