New Life, a Poem from "Jersey Blues"

Impression, Soleil Levant (Impression, Sunrise), Claude Monet,1872
Oil on canvas, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris.

New Life

Don't shuffle again, brother,
— obstinately — along the old path,
walking ancient, accustomed,
tangled trails, sunk deep
in the meanders of mind:
the ruins where upon
sheer desolation is your fate.

In the obscurity, also flickers a light:
each day a dawn, and an intellect,
so that you may prevail
the misery of existence.

Princeton, New Jersey, January 2004  

From the collection Jersey Blues, also available on iBookstore, NOOK Book, and Amazon Kindle.

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev, Audiobook in English, Full Version

Classic Literature VideoBook with synchronized text, interactive transcript, and closed captions in multiple languages. Audio courtesy of Librivox. Read by Roger Melin.

Credits: CC Prose Audiobooks www.youtube.com/user/CCProse

Of Love, Death and Oblivion, a Poem from "Jersey Blues"

 Edvard Munch - Kiss by the Window, Oil on Canvas, 1892

 

Of Love, Death and Oblivion

Hush!  Sleep!

In the end, it wasn't

other than the rustling

of the wind in empty rooms,

the moribund crackling of fires

of faded memories, the voices

that once awoke us.

You lay down, in this June night,

forgetful and wholly freed from sin.

Faces, sounds, fascinations,

obliterated they sink in the sea,

dark and profound, as the night

in which you became oblivious of

what today no longer is, of this

and many other worlds.

Princeton, New Jersey, June 2003

This is in an excerpt from the Poem "Of Love, Death and Oblivion," from the collection "Jersey Blues: Selected Poems", also available on iBookstore, NOOK Book, and Amazon Kindle.