Guest Poet, Konrad Tademar, Shares... "Hidden..."

Hidden...

Have you seen the thick fog swirling on the train tracks?
I can hear the music as it bounces by light--
--cast by a hidden moon… like bees asleep in wax--
--hexagons… a careful angelic shade, pale white

Not all thoughts are concrete bricks, some are twigs cast free...
...drifting in tired waters at dusk of a stream
And the train, rides on, rails vibrating like the sea
The fog rises, the air... a crater filled with dream

Up ahead, the station beckons, dim yellow glow

No sign post, only a lonely stop, with highway--
--dust hidden across beige barren hills rolling slow
The sun has risen, but the fog remains steel grey

The train has left… the sounds have all faded, a cold…
...sobering wind is blowing from the East… brisk, bold.

August 16, 2019

Konrad Tademar

One day I stopped just writing poems and I became a poet. Poet. It was a change I did not plan for. From time to time I will share my poems...

It's good to be back at Book Readers Heaven! Konrad

Konrad, I really appreciate your allowing me to share, and complement, your
beautiful poetry from time to time.


Although the train vids are long and will need to be stopped, I just wanted to
dedicate and add the following song in memory of my Mom, of the Andrews
Sisters, we always said, and her two sisters. She loved their songs~
Miss you, Mom

Guest Blogger, Konrad Tademar, Spotlights the Poetry of Arseny Alexandrovich Tarkovsky

111 years ago, Arseny Alexandrovich Tarkovsky (Арсе́ний Алекса́ндрович Тарко́вский) was born in the city of Yelisavetgrad (present day: Kropyvnytskyi, Ukraine) - he was the son of Aleksander Tarkowski, a Polish nobleman settled in Russia and a Russian dancer Maria Danilovna Rachkovskaya. His son was Andrei Tarkovsky - the famed Russian Film director of the Soviet Era who directed Andrei Rublev (1966) and Solaris (1972).

Arseny Tarkovsky was a Poet, by many accounts one of the greatest poets of the Russian language in the 20th century. His beloved son died before he did. His son used many of his father's poems in his films, in many places in the film Mirror (1975) and Nostalghia (1983) the whole narrative is written by Arseny.

In reading Andrei Tarkovsky's letters and scripts as well as his interviews, one gets the sense that his father was an enormous influence on him. He shaped his mind and soul into the spiritual force of unrepentant sentimentalism that his art would become. Rejecting that dry Western detachment and objectivity that have become the hallmark of modernity, his soul bled, and his heart beat like a war drum, and he passed on that blood and war into his son's heart and soul. In watching Andrei Tarkovsky's films, in reading his scripts, one finds oneself walking along an empty Russian path with Arseny Tarkovsky - and with the ghosts of all the Russias acrosss all the ages.

He died on May 27, 1989 - 29 months (about 2 and half years) after his son died (1932-1986) in self -imposed exile from the Soviet State they both detested with a passion only a poet and a film director can breathe. I fell in love with Andrei Tarkovsky's films in great part because I fell in love with Arseny Tarkovsky's poetry. He invaded my dreams, he entered into my soul.

And this I dreamt, and this I dream

And this I dreamt, and this I dream,

And some time this I will dream again,

And all will be repeated, all be re-embodied,

You will dream everything I have seen in dream.

To one side from ourselves, to one side from the world

Wave follows wave to break on the shore,

On each wave is a star, a person, a bird,

Dreams, reality, death - on wave after wave.

No need for a date: I was, I am, and I will be,

Life is a wonder of wonders, and to wonder

I dedicate myself, on my knees, like an orphan,

Alone - among mirrors - fenced in by reflections:

Cities and seas, iridescent, intensified.

A mother in tears takes a child on her lap.

***

I waited for you yesterday since morning

I waited for you yesterday since morning,

They guessed you wouldn't come,

Do you remember the weather? Like a holiday!

I went out without a coat.

Today came, and they fixed for us

A somehow specially dismal day,

It was very late, and it was raining,

The drops cascading down the chilly branches.

No word of comfort, tears undried…

***

Life, Life

I

I don't believe in omens or fear

Forebodings. I flee from neither slander

Nor from poison. Death does not exist.

Everyone's immortal. Everything is too.

No point in fearing death at seventeen,

Or seventy. 

There's only here and now, and light;

Neither death, nor darkness, exists.

We're all already on the seashore;

I'm one of those who'll be hauling in the nets

When a shoal of immortality swims by.

II

If you live in a house - the house will not fall.

I'll summon any of the centuries,

Then enter one and build a house in it.

That's why your children and your wives

Sit with me at one table, -

The same for ancestor and grandson:

The future is being accomplished now,

If I raise my hand a little,

All five beams of light will stay with you.

Each day I used my collar bones

For shoring up the past, as though with timber,

I measured time with geodetic chains

And marched across it, as though it were the Urals.

III


I tailored the age to fit me.

We walked to the south, raising dust above the steppe;

The tall weeds fumed; the grasshopper danced,

Touching its antenna to the horse-shoes - and it prophesied,

Threatening me with destruction, like a monk.

I strapped my fate to the saddle;

And even now, in these coming times,

I stand up in the stirrups like a child.

I'm satisfied with deathlessness,

For my blood to flow from age to age.

Yet for a corner whose warmth I could rely on

I'd willingly have given all my life,

Whenever her flying needle

Tugged me, like a thread, around the globe.

***

Arseny was 81 years old at the time of his death. During the Second World War he suffered a wound to his leg, the resulting infection and cure left him an amputee. The Soviets in the last days of their miserable existence awarded him a posthumous award, in much the same manner that they attempted to rehabilitate his son and claim him as one of their own. On his death bed, Andrei said "I was never Soviet, I was always Russian." The same can be said for Arseny - who was born in Russian Ukraine, and died in the Soviet Union, but like his son, he was never Soviet - he was Russian, a quintessentially Russian poet, borne of a Polish father and a Russian mother, in Ukraine - truly a great representative of the Slavic tribe. - KT

"Death does not exist" - Arseny Tarkovsky (1907-1989)

The Empty Chair of China - A Sonnet for Liu Xiaobo by Konrad Tademar

The Empty Chair of China - a sonnet for Liu Xiaobo by Konrad Tademar

The Empty Chair of China

• "If you want to enter hell, don't complain of the dark…”

You shall not perish if you dream the empty hand

For the ashes cannot hold you, they are but lines--

--to be found painted with a silent love in the sand…

of an empty chair screaming at the neon signs…

The throne of thoughts dissolves, a castle of parchment

In the conflagration of oppression and fear

Pen wielded as blade in a book-lined apartment

Wheels of the bicycle spin, with words left to steer

Hold on… I need both hands to embrace the world whole

Across space that defines the liberty to speak

At Tiananmen Square where the Goddess bared her soul

Across time that binds all men who conscience may seek

I place a sword on an empty chair to mark--

--the passage of freedom’s Knight beyond the dark.

~~~

July 13, 2017 -
Sonnet Used With Permission

A Winner in Spite of Beijing's Threats

On Friday, Oct. 8, 2010, the Norwegian Nobel Institute awarded the 2010 Peace
Prize to the imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, the first Chinese citizen to
receive the award. The news was received coldly by Beijing...--http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2024319,00.htm

On the death of Liú Xiǎobō (刘晓波) - born in the city of Chángchūn (镸春), in Jilin (吉林) province of China in the year of the wood Goat on December 28, 1955 - died in the city of Shenyang (沈阳), in Liaoning (辽宁) province in Shenyang's First Hospital of China Medical University in China in the year of the fire Rooster on July 13, 2017. He received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2010 while he was serving an 11 year sentence as a political prisoner for crimes against the Communist State. Neither he, nor his wife Liu Xia (刘霞) who was immediately placed under house arrest, nor any representative from China was allowed to receive the Nobel Prize in his name. The Nobel prize committee left an empty chair for him.

Konrad Tademar is an American poet living in Los Angeles. His works range from single sonnets to epic poems on themes including current events, myth, and philosophy. In addition to American subjects, his
work is strongly informed by international events and history, especially those of freedom and oppression..

 

The Galaxy Children's Choir of Beijing joins the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square on the February 28, 2010 weekly broadcast of Music and the Spoken Word.

May we all strive to follow in Liu Xiaobo's steps toward Peace...
His work will live on...