The Vivenot Elegies E-Book

Z.J. Galos

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 46

Beschreibung

The poet arrives at a small village exhausted from many months of flat-searching, but if he'd expire here at this brook, who'll come to help? His mind is engaged in painting a portrait from his past Muse from memory. At a nearby social market, he finds nourishment for reasonable prices. He works in the confines of a kitchenette within a small bedsitter unit. Walking regularly along the Weidling brook, he discovers its surroundings. Meeting a 'golden girl', he writes poetry at his desk. During the rainy month of August, he meets Elena, a local specialty cook with a great personality. While dedicated to the freedom in his creative work, he discovers a split in his personality, as ZZ, the poet, and ZG, the artist. During this period as a multilevel artist, he has continual verbal fights with his spouse of 46 years. ZZ's virtual love with his Muse keeps him going. ZZ's daily strolls along the brook with its murmuring like Ravel's music, bring out dreams of beaches on an intimate island in the heart of the Med.

Leseprobe

View towards Vivenot Lane

Contents

Prolog

Water Lane

Late evening at Top 5

Life’s Surprises

The View

Nema.ameN

Truth-seeker

Dionysian Life

Abul - Evol

WU – Vienna and Surrounds

Amed

Spirit of an Angel

Again

Back to Front

On the ground

September’s End

Cup of illy espresso

Girl from Bangladesh

Rini – Inir

Skin and Lips

Albert

The Musical Stroll

PROLOG

Originating from the first time of the realization of a quest for a return to his homeland, the poet has been inspired by R.M. Rilke’s Duino Elegies, he read on the laptop of a friend. From a reasonable and affordable life in the South of Africa, he had also endeavoured with some art exhibitions of his creative work in Athens, Greece, besides, expressing his innerness in word and with his brush.

He had not intended returning from the natural wonders of exquisite beauty of the landscapes in the Karoo and the moonscape-appearances of Cape Agulhas, also the historically important city of Cape Town and the scenic drives along Chapman’s Peak. A land of contrasts with a natural multitude of fauna and flora, of coloured earth and seas around its perimeter, semi-deserts and deserts in the western parts. A treasured gift of nature!

The legacy of rich decorated cave-walls and the culture of the San-people stayed as inspiration for ZG-the artist’s major influence. Back to a Europe in the changing melting pot for a new civilization, due to a multitude of cultural migration, offered a new perspective. A trip back from Africa to one’s roots, due to political changes that seemed to erode one’s professional existence, is not an easy decision, very hurtful, but a necessary step for personal survival, especially at an ongoing age.

Into these contrasting events the basis of poetry and art of the poet and the artist has evolved as a healing dressing to the wounds inflicted by barbaric events and unnecessary violation; misunderstood freedom by the masses, a great mismanagement of ignorance and neglect of leadership, besides tribal leadership that had refused stubbornly to any change of its chiefdom’s dominance.

However, having worked at various projects, including clinics, hospitals and cultural centres for all residents, irrespective of believe and colour, the artist’s return to Europe has been disappointing, having worked as architect in South Africa, meeting suddenly with an unsurmountable local bureaucracy as the major hindrance for contributing - with one’s experience of 30 years - to local projects.

Into this crass contrast of ability against bureaucracy, the artist’s mind had generated an enormous boost for survival. ZJG, the poet has endeavoured to edit his poetry, short stories and novels, and offer them to a German Self-publishing agency for printing on demand. This welcome publishing company has furthered the incentive of the artist to publish his ‘oeuvre complete‘ in due time. These elegies are an outcome of his time of resettlement, together with his spouse, into the countryside atmosphere near Vienna. In the ensuing solitude the artist turns productive in a welcome change of atmosphere as to the city of Vienna, a half-an hourly trip by public transport.

While he teaches German to an Egyptian immigrant, he is not surprised of the student’s difficulties to integrate into the local society.

He meets a young woman-artist from Bangladesh at an exhibition and they become friends. He experiences the local art scene at the Academy of Fine Arts, where his friend is educated, and she shows him her work in progress that furthers his artistic experiences, while she brushes off her cultural legacy in her interesting work.

1.

Water Lane.

If I’d collapse of physical exhaustion

at this corner called Water Lane

descent to a murmuring brook

of a quaint forgotten village

who would find me

who‘d come to my aid?

The wide-hipped angel of local

Info at an aged train station?

Or the fair-faced librarian at the

contemp museum of modern art?

The neighbour’s partner taking

their dog for a walk

or the pale-faced lanky neighbour’s son

who walks with a set of earphones

just like me?

A small path from the lower part of life

to the upper main road

high grass lining both sides

like a bed of flowers on a grave

a bed of comfort on the asphalt

darkened by a short stint of showers

quiet still baroque music

violin violoncello

into an early evening

clouded grey stripes of pink

the sleepy evening’s call

at the end of the eighth month

when everybody sits for supper

TV/ laptop/ mobile phone activities

and I will cry out my pain

in another drawing

a new portrait of chance

a dot of paint from which

I grow a muse’s face

from within a fading memory.

2.

Late evening at Top 5.

A common yard

late evening at top 5

the yard of no 35 and 37

off the mad traffic flow on

main street Weidling

where a heavy access gate had

been removed for easy access:

cars for the Stakhanov-mechanic

once a barrier against whistling sound

of growing through passing traffic

racing past the yard's collective ear.

The poet sits at his desk in a rectangular

kitchen

painting a journal of day and night dreams

lights at full blast-opposite at 37

with a lack of blinds or curtains

a woman's face with a small furry dog

she kisses tentatively

the dog with pricked ears lifts a paw

to greet?