Tools of the Trade / Definitions Devilish and Divine

Poem in English, written at Poesiaeuropa 2023

It’s what remains behind
that truly lingers in the mind —
a sense of the ages, distilled and refined
into just 69 pages, a few dozen slides
that go by so fast, you don’t even have time to find

errors. Failures.
Because there aren’t any worth mentioning —
there really aren’t any that you can try
to hold onto,
to let your life have — finally — some meaning
that actually might let you be renewed
and changed for the ages.

Across the lake is where they drowned the sages
and left them at the bottom of the fake
world, stuck in thought and presumed and omnipresent danger.

No one ever closer
than a stranger-
quing, and the perils of his dauntless
creole nature.
It isn’t false. It isn’t invented.
It’s just culture.

Don’t delay.
The times are changing. Perhaps later
you’ll open your own excel sheet, your own word processor
and refrain from it all. From even putting such traitorous words
to paper.