A notice
1. Citizens are prohibited from carrying flowers,
They are strongly advised to carry weapons instead.
2. Walls are prohibited from singing.
They are strongly advised to listen.
3. Citizens are prohibited from keeping books at home,
It is highly recommended to clean the shelves regularly.
4. Mothers are prohibited from performing lullabies of any kind,
They are strongly advised to remain silent at all times.
5. Citizens are prohibited from smiling
More than 1.5 cm wide in both directions.
6. Stars are prohibited from shining
From a distance of less than 157 light years from poets in love.
7. Poets are prohibited from falling in love,
They are strongly advised to shoot themselves
After submitting the relevant application to the central committee.
8. Citizens are forbidden from writing poems,
In case of violation of this prohibition, it is strongly advised to immediately
Refer to point seven (7) of this notice.
Thank you for your attention.
I pray, do not disturb my circles…
I pray, do not disturb my circles. Or do, perhaps.
A twitch of the hand and off its course goes the Earth.
The spires grow as if tearing the hea’ens apart,
The sky lies among the leaves. The embrace of death.
The moon bleeds us out. In place of the stars, just nails
Shine through. Hearts fight underground without rhyme or reason.
My circles will be retraced by venomous snails,
Demolished and lost by one – just one – kiss of treason.
Of treason? Of love, perchance? Or oblivion? Or strife?
Of lightning? Enlightenment? The blink of an eye? A rose?
A brick under the façade of a double life?
An echo of steps long forgotten this hallway knows?
I pray, let me go. Or hold on to me. Let the King
Himself at the altar of wisdom rip us asunder,
A twitch of the hand – you snap like a worn red string,
I stay the unfaithful mistress lovestruck by thunder.
A word to those who are quick to cast sin and stone,
The liar, the fool, the cruel, the Pharisee:
With all that you throw at me I shall build a home,
A temple to what is beautiful, just and free.
Each person carries a sky of their own…
Each person carries a sky of their own.
–Uladzimir Karatkievič, ‘The Boat of Despair’, 1968
Each person carries a sky of their own:
Some threaten the fury of a summer storm,
Others flaunt the gold of a night’s constellations,
Or charm with the beautiful crispness of the first snowfall.
Clear-blue skies, strange as it may seem,
Are among the heaviest to sustain,
Rivalled only, perhaps, by ephemeral, blushing sunsets.
I do not just carry my sky,
That I promised to ferry across the waters,
And to haul up the mountain of contrition.
No, I also have a cross to bear.
Wounded thrice by the sharp ends of my own devices,
I have taken a vow of silence to honour a God
Who has long relinquished his own sanctity;
Though I cover the stillness of the air with futile fustion,
I know the cross upon my shoulders is mine alone.
Let it stand tall as my last will and swan’s song,
For my wings are worn and weary.
Thus I hammer its nails with my bare knuckles
Fixing them to the flimsy firmament
That I, through tentative temptation in the darkness,
Have freehanded time and time again upon my homeland errant,
An extravagant disciple of Sisyphus,
A blood sister to Antigone.
But the sky and the cross are all mine to engrave
Upon the walls of my inner sanctum.
And you, irreverent pilgrim, I did not intend
To beckon towards the shrine of my debacle,
You who have consecreted me
And condemned me with your blade.
But who am I to deny one who seeks sanctuary?
I shall not command you to be settled in the Temple,
Or dwell upon it,
For I know how mercilessly cathedrals burn
In the blink of an eye.
I shall only trust that you,
Beast, man and divinity,
My faithful congregation of one,
Not step upon the cross that graces my foundation stone
When traversing the threshold.
And I would ask, if I may,
That you snuff out the lights as you forsake me.
I may not be worth the Kingdom,
The tree of Yggdrasil in all its might,
An adansonia or an acacia,
But, if a humble dandelion should grow between the cracks
Of my final departure
Out to the sun and into the wide blue yonder,
I pray, relay the news and the seeds to those
Who still set candles upon their windowsills
For me.
Contents of the Box…
Contents of the Box:
-An Obsidian Board of ineffable dimensions
to contain and expand everything.
-A Dawn tile to be placed at the East, and
a Dusk tile to be placed at the West of the Board,
never to be confused with one another
(Let your hand be guided by the orientation
Of the Arrows of Light),
-A Dome, or Firmament, of crystalline stone, and
a pair of Compasses to properly place it
over the Board before the Start.
-Three Chambers of the Heavens
to be placed upon the Firmament.
-Three Pillars of the Earth,
to be fixated to the back of the Board,
underneath the other pieces.
-A Token of the Tree of the World, and
a Vial of Live Blood to fill it up in preparation
for it to pierce the Heavens in the Endgame.
-Seventy times seven Tokens of Golden Celestial Bodies,
so that one or all may guide the Players.
-A Die of Fate.
-A Die of Hope.
-A Die of Luck, and
A Silver Coin to flip in the event of Ambiguity.
-Thirteen Cards of Faith
to be wagered over the course of the Game.
-A Magic Flute
to be played in the event of Desperation.
-An Hourglass filled with Stardust, and
a Clepsydra full of water from the Seven Seas,
to measure Time at every Turn.
-One Human Token per Player.
-A Cube of Love
to be used generously for Checks and Gifts
between Players.
-An Enchanted Door, and
A Sacred Key to open it
when the time is right.
For more information on the Preparation and Gameplay, see the Rulebook. Please contact the Great Architect inside your Heart if any of the pieces are missing.
From Sunriselessness: A 13-Part Narrative Poem without Cement or Mortar. Part VII
1) And they broke the ground to prepare the foundation for building. 2) And underground they found the ruins of the First Temple. 3) The length of the Temple was 60 cubits from east to west; its width was 20 cubits from north to south, and it had 30 cubits in height. 4) And there were three rooms in the Temple: the ulam, the hekhal and the devir. 5) But this all was of no consequence, as they immediately covered the ruins with concrete and built a large parking lot, and a hypermarket above the parking lot. 6) This is how merchants began to speculate on their goods above the First Temple. 7) They recruited teenagers for the hypermarket and sacrificed their childhood dreams and hopes with a corporate knife. 8) And so they obtained a monopoly over basic necessities, and small shops and workshops died all around, like flowers wither in the heat. 9) And the temple-hypermarket became the only shopping option for the desperate, the poor and the destitute, and the only place for them to sell their soul to the Devil himself. 10) And not a single messiah dared overturn the business so as to not to condemn the whole community to death. 11) And so the community began to simply survive. 12) And the community survived only around the temple-hypermarket. 13) Black Friday came after Thanksgiving Day. 14) And on Black Friday, the temple-hypermarket put papal bulls on sale with significant discounts. 15) And on Black Friday there was a great stampede, and seventy times seven men and women died under the crowd. 16) And those who had bought a cheap papal bull rejoiced immeasurably. 17) And some were overjoyed, saying, «see, my eternal soul will live forever in paradise, whilst yours will not». 18) And they danced joyfully at the bacchanalia over the ruins of the First Temple. 19) And they returned home with justice bought on a discount, or, rather, with underpriced judgement. 20) And the King slept under the hypermarket, under the parking lot, under the foundation and the ground, and did not pass judgement on anyone.
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Ángela Espinosa Ruiz
Ángela Espinosa Ruiz is an exophonic (Belarusian-language) poet and researcher. She was born in Málaga, Spain, in 1993. She studied things like Latin, Ancient Greek, and piano before turning to Slavic and Belarusian Philology, and finally defended her Ph.D. thesis in Literary Studies in 2019. She has published several poetry collections and translations, including a Spanish rendition of poems by Maksim Bahdanovič. She is a recipient, among others, of the Michaś Stralcoŭ Literary Prize ‘For the emotional and metaphorical richness of poetic language and the courageous striving to comprehend the mystery of Belarusian existence’. She is a member of PEN Belarus and the repressed Union of Belarusian Writers.