{"id":13971,"date":"2021-12-15T08:14:13","date_gmt":"2021-12-15T06:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=13971"},"modified":"2021-12-15T08:14:13","modified_gmt":"2021-12-15T06:14:13","slug":"poems-by-george-freek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=13971","title":{"rendered":"poems by George Freek"},"content":{"rendered":"

I look at my life<\/strong> (After Su Tung Po)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Through a night vaster<\/p>\n

than the sea, I walk under trees<\/p>\n

hung with sagging leaves.<\/p>\n

The day disappears,<\/p>\n

as music disappears,<\/p>\n

but still echoing in the mind.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m reaching for something,<\/p>\n

I will never find.<\/p>\n

Wind rustles the leaves<\/p>\n

as lightly as a feather,<\/p>\n

then blows off like a dream.<\/p>\n

When they pass by,<\/p>\n

clouds look at nothing,<\/p>\n

like men who can<\/p>\n

no longer ask why.<\/p>\n

The moon, once so bright,<\/p>\n

is a dim light<\/p>\n

in a razor sharp sky.<\/p>\n

I think my life has been a lie.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

After the fall<\/strong> (After Mei Yao Chen)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I stare at the dying flowers in my garden.<\/p>\n

They lie like dessicated corpses<\/p>\n

with discolored heads.<\/p>\n

If my wife were here, she\u2019d revive them,<\/p>\n

but she\u2019s also dead.<\/p>\n

Is there a heaven for dead flowers?<\/p>\n

I think not. But I don\u2019t know a lot.<\/p>\n

Night holds me in her arms.<\/p>\n

as if I were an unknown child,<\/p>\n

abandoned in a desolate spot.<\/p>\n

I feel a sense of loss in my bowels.<\/p>\n

Stars crawl across the sky like bugs,<\/p>\n

who wander blindly<\/p>\n

over that vast rug.<\/p>\n

I think life will never be how it was,<\/p>\n

but I think the way it was<\/p>\n

was only in my mind.<\/p>\n

And I that was unfair,<\/p>\n

and it was terribly unkind.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Emptiness<\/strong> (After Tu Fu)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For a year my wife\u2019s been dead.<\/p>\n

I finish my sixth glass of wine,<\/p>\n

and stare at my unmade bed.<\/p>\n

Outside, a chilling breeze<\/p>\n

rustles the dead leaves.<\/p>\n

The moon is a ball of lead.<\/p>\n

I gaze at the distant stars.<\/p>\n

Lost in an infinite sky,<\/p>\n

they too have nowhere to abide.<\/p>\n

A tattered shirt hanging from<\/p>\n

A tree, waves in the breeze.<\/p>\n

I feel the approaching cold.<\/p>\n

I watch traffic pass me by.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, I know<\/p>\n

what it means to grow old.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I look at my life (After Su Tung Po)   Through a night vaster than the sea, I walk under trees hung with sagging leaves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1516,77],"tags":[1517,1123,1538],"class_list":["post-13971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egophobia-69","category-english","tag-egophobia-69-70","tag-english","tag-george-freek"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DakB-3Dl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13971"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13972,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13971\/revisions\/13972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}