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About Alan Reynolds

Poet born and raised in North Carolina and now after a sojourn in England a long-time resident of the Netherlands. More than 4,000 poems, many published in US and UK literary magazines and on CD and in books.

Un hombre con una sombra dorada

Érase una vez un hombre con una sombra dorada. No tenía yo ninguna idea de dónde vino esa oración. Afuera estaba oscuro y oía la llegada de la tormenta llamada ‘Dorus’ – el viento fuerte, la lluvia intensa. Otra vez oía la frase en mi mente: ‘Érase una vez un hombre con una sombra dorada.’

¿Era la frase inicial de una historia? ¿Debería leerlo? ¿Escribirlo yo mismo? ¿Cómo es posible una cosa así – una sombra dorada?

No lo sabía. Pero sabía dónde estaba yo. Estaba en mi cama al amanecer del día en una de mis seis favoritas temporadas. Me sentí rico teniendo tantas estaciones favoritas, seis de las ocho. Las cuatro tradicionales – primavera, verano, otoño e invierno – y también sus cuatro sombras para las cuales no hay nombres en todas las lenguas humanas. Incluida ésta estación, mi favorita.

Él empezó a llamarme, ese hombre con la sombra dorada. Quería contarme su historia, para que yo la escribiera para que todos la leyeron. Pero luego me desperté.

Park Bench Perplexion

musing on a park bench in Valencia’s Placa Dels Pinazo

12:35
Oh the edge of death not sure which side is safer
I partake of wine and juju, chew a wafer.
The titles of a million books to read,
the half not written yet, pass in review.
The half of those, their authors being dead,
won’t ever be. I try to buy a few.
The cold that passes understanding calls.
I hope my bold not answering to it stalls
the inexorableness of history so far.
I am wishing on a nonexistent star.

12:47
In pointy shoes, the smiling dancing mother
and her husband and her mother praise her baby.
They are happy as they should be. Life is blooming.
The baby’s laughter lights the universe.

12:58
Where are we? I don’t know. I have no map.
I buy a map. I learn that I am lost.
An urgent call to action makes me nap.
I dream about the chances I have tossed
aside so often they have scars embossed
on every surface. Centuries elapse.
I warn heroic actors, ‘Mind the gaps’
but no one listens. All of them ignore
advice from ancients letting loose their clasp
on everything. The way I did. Before.

Madness Lies

Much madness lies behind what lurks ahead:
the truth looms worse than madness ever was.
Most times truth lies obscured by nature’s grace,
but now I am accursed and forced to gaze
into the final private place of soul.

There’s nothing there, repeated into screams
that resonate like nothing I have heard.
Words flail me, and blanched neurones bait my ghost.
I’d sacrifice my years to come for signs
that this has any purpose.

A line too short to grasp escapes my head.
I say, to stay my fear, it was an answer.
Someday I will find meaning that I seek.
I pray for that: to capture truth, and read
the reason for the chaos we call facts.

The clouds of grace draw veils across the sun,
and the rain comes down like prayers while I sleep.

Le Grand Gourmand Gargantua

Gargantua ate all of the first course
except for the feathers and beaks.
When the brasserie brought out a mouse mousse
he got it all down but the squeaks.
The thrushes were rushed so he skipped them,
Gargantua wolfing instead
a spitted Dalmatian he’d spotted
on the buffet. He asked for its head.
‘If I can’t,’ said Gargantua belching,
‘look at what I eat square in the eye,
I’ll give up my Ogre A rating
and subsist on alfalfa curd pie.’

Immortals

We arrive at the edge of All, where Nothing stops,
or, if we look back, where Everything begins.
We need directions. Glitzy tax-free shops
showcase pristine worlds and a Catalogue of Sins
with the Tree of Knowledge’s photo on its cover.
Mysterious ailments nibble our attention.
We have no money. We are frightened. We discover
that eternal travel is the cruelest detention.