an old writer and his words

  • NO I WILL NOT

    NOTE: TODAY’S POST FOLLOWS BELOW: Dear poetry-lovers,           Thank you from the bottom of my heart for following my blog. Some of you have been daily readers since it began 9 years ago, some are more sporadic or more recent followers.  Thank you one and all. As you can imagine, it takes a fair amount…

    Lou Faber

  • INCOGNITO

    Cities allow an anonymitythat few who have itclaim to want,and those who cannotfind it only wishto briefly have it.Cities have mastered juxtaposition,offering what is unwanted,taking that which is.But we choose to livein cities, visit them,for they are our sirensand we are simple sailorsalways looking for home.

    Lou Faber

  • MISPLACING

    The river through the city hereis badly misplaced, not so much boringas missing something a city river should have.There are no tall buildingsstaring down at the river, no peoplegazing out of office windowswatching the shadows of their prisonsdance on the moving waters.Even in smaller cities the riversbisect its life, people noticing,peering down as they cross…

    Lou Faber

  • SHEPHERDING

    Today I paused to considerhow odd it must be for thoseborn, bred and always livingin a city, say New York, andto sill be a lover of poetry.So many poets, from Keatsto Hirshfield will take youinto nature, bathe you in wordsbeneath a star lit sky, sit youin a meadow, breathing airthat has never known the exhaustof…

    Lou Faber

  • NO THANKS

    Living now in a city that is not a cityby any commonly accepted definition, onewith no downtown, only a vast suburbansameness, strip plaza after strip plaza,I realize why I could never live in a citylike New York, why I am glad I decidedhalf a century ago to forego the cachetof being part of a self-prestigious…

    Lou Faber

  • MORNING SONG (Awdl Gywydd)

    The sun creeps down city streetsdew retreats from the grassesand fills the air, with sweet scentuntil spent, the bus passes. The robin sits in the treeas worms flee into the lawn.The morning foretells the rainthat will slowly drain the dawn. The city quietly wakesand stretching, shakes off the sleepit slowly comes back to life,the sun…

    Lou Faber

  • ISLANDS

    I always loved visiting Japan,the Temples of Senso-ji, Todai-jiothers so small their names fadedas I walked away from them,for while I was gaijin, my zenmade them feel less alien.I enjoyed visits to Hawaii,the lushness of the landscape,the old whaling town, nowreduced to ash and ruin,the lava desert of the big island,the volcanoes, live and dormant.Everyone…

    Lou Faber

  • TOTTERING

    The world did not collapse today,although it tottered on the edge againas it does most days in recent memory.As a child we expected the world might endunless we hid under our deskswhen the alarms went off, so littledid we know about nuclear weaponsand what could be more uselessthan a desk at or near ground zero.We…

    Lou Faber

  • URBAN DREAMS

    The city crawls beneath youlike so many beasts awakenedin your recent nightmare, skitteringto somewhere you dare not imagine.This is not your city, it could never be,for cities are mere illusions, veneersfor prisons from which few escapeand fewer still are paroled, andyour sentence only ends in your death.Some say cities are beautiful, butyou know they are…

    Lou Faber

  • WINDOWS

    The problem, she says,is that we think that windows are thereto look out of, to see the world outside.If you believe that, she adds, whydo half the windows on your houseoffer you a view of the house next door,or if you must live in New York Citythe windows of another apartmentor building, knowing they havethe…

    Lou Faber