During another bleak war
 innocent victims
 slow humanities.

 Tired of this mongrel
 thunders light the sea
 by turning us asunder.

 Rotten dualism
 empty masochism.
 Oh?, nature seams to react.

 Guillermo Silveira
 April 30th, 2006


The dam of Creekwood 

 

Bristly water caress two sources 
while an azure crane echoes 
its wings  to a shelter's roof where 
another addict sacrifices her mind.  

Deep, as an infinite mirror 
reflects skies of solar sounds, 
golden walls, blankets and white 
curtains of scented French room.  

Score of aquatic murmurs 
its brilliant waterfall of stars 
shelters toads, agile rabbits, 
funny geese or foolish deer.  

Each year a willow's about to bathe 
with tears a thousand camelots 
and hundreds thrush trim dry
or long branches dead herbs 
until they eclipse bright stars. 

Growing moons draw cosmic 
or oval hollow, upon lighting 
turkeys of white plumage, 
swaying of fish, wild ducks 
or reindeer's strong horns.   

Clouds stain of gray or orange 
their skin of delighted sheet 
in canons and sequences 
of brilliant reflections.  

Crystalline fabric of unrepeatable beauty, 
kaleidoscope of light, sonorous purity, 
you erase bad memories or war’s horrors 
with circulating peace of eternal light.

Guillermo Silveira, January 2008.

A cross, a crane, a pillar
 
After a long day of labor repairing houses of humble people,
exhausted, thinking of a mustard seed for faith, or for rebirth, 
a bearded composer knocked a sack like a rock and slumbered .
 
Dreams of building an ark on water floods 
left him in the coast of a new mystical city 
watching some Bayou Teche's alligators. 
 
Near a river house, still under sea level,
a white crane on a pillar moved its head.
The bird was glowing,  vertically pointed,
toward this brightened star shaped as a cross. 
 
The dreamer, within his dream, 
pondered on the mystical cross, 
and admired the slender crane 
on its so-solid wooden pillar. 
 
But suddenly the cross-shaped star
stretched each arm transforming
into an iron cross, and placed itself 
under the fragile house to lift it.
 
The crane became a crane machine,
its feathers turned into iron chains.
The cross doubled  itself like a number sign
going under the nicely painted house 
still at flooding risk and under sea level.
 
The alligators became handsome workers 
and adjusted each one of the many chains 
to perfectly place the big iron double cross
under the home of another innocent victim
of hurricanes, politics, greed, and oblivion.
 
As expected, celestial music underlined it,
the house started to move up, elevating
the simple wood house a mile over sea.
 
The wooden pillar the bird stood on
multiplied, enlarging like huge nails
that flew under the house,  inserting
nearly  three quarters into the ground, 
recreating very solid house pillars.
 
The musical crane moved down, 
alligators danced all around it,
adjusting the house on many pillars, 
landing it fifteen feet over sea level.
 
Awaking with a nice memory, 
of a cross, a crane and a pillar,
does not solve a big problem,
but it may generate new jobs.
 
Ah! if all houses in New Iberia could be lifted... 
they have workers, pillars and the cross, 
they need the crane.
 
Guillermo Silveira
 



Biggs Museum Room [a Museum of American History]
 
Timeless woods grew to be creatures' home,
becoming furniture to hold home's objects,
things like clocks to fragment old eternity,
silverware, dishes, ornaments, flowers,
papers and boxes to store information,
they ended up in this hyperreal place.
 
Bringing today certain calm from the past
to our speedy and "ungraspable" present tense,
this Biggs Museum treasure turns into a gift
of everlasting beauty and natural textures.
 
Who may not see that it's "awesome" to collect
some memorable art pieces, may find stupid
to preserve simple unusual collective items
that point the ephemeral of life as noble art does.
 
I find this peculiar little time trip
something "way more" poetic
than an honorable pastime.
 
Smiling at this eloquent chamber
of our labyrinth of time, I sigh,
here they go again...
 
Guillermo Silveira
 


Victims of memory
 
Cluttered by brilliant imaginary angels,
best moments in life and the worst ones,
that infinite chain of cultural rites, 
those unforgettable encounters,
great people that we’ll never see again, 
infinite sensations, music and art,
we contemplate how oblivion may do away with all of it.
 
Guilty or judgmental, our memory may slave us, 
but artificial memory helps to archive our actions, 
to let go and move on. Its detachment helps to see 
the past tense out side of us from an eternal present,
now, do we need to collect these crumbling times?
 
We are building to be forgotten.
 
Guillermo Silveira