From my poetry book »Ethereal Solitude« - buy here.
As the wind bears the leaves aloft,
In the gentle evening light, the day goes soft,
The end approaches with a tender pace.
Swallows trace their final flight,
Shadows lengthen, time slips by in quiet light,
A growing longing in the human race.
Like the lilac by the garden's side,
Silent eternity bends wide,
Reaching down to the cool earth’s place.
In this stillness, spreading clear,
Summer lingers briefly here,
Before it goes away with you.
-
German Version:
Und der Herbst starb lang,
bevor die Sonne ging;
das letzte Blatt fiel leis.
Denn der Tod vergisst uns,
so lang der Sommer lebt.
Der Abend klang so weit,
und unsere Seelen flieh'n.
Für Kunst und jede Idee,
verweilt ein Geist in uns.
Gedanken blühn am Morgen,
und sehen fern den Abend.
Jeder Anfang ist nah,
doch das Ende fordert Zeit.
Shattered mirrors
on the living room floor,
a place where mirrors —
in any form —
should not be.
Lying and laying —
up and down the room
they reflect each whole thing,
its completeness,
as if the very sight
could harm us —
so perfect, so unreal
from their perspective.
I drown on the floorboards,
you waste my tears
by drying them.
All the lies,
the lies you told,
up and down the room
like mirrors, broken ones.
Truth reflects nothing
unless it’s broken.
Outside this room,
you roam the hallways,
searching for feelings within.
Dating a lie,
dangerous and monstrous
like your mind and soul.
Survival is a matter of time
and a dance on balanced sheets.
The shattered pieces still lie there —
waiting for completeness to end,
chaos ensuring perfection.
The lies fall still
in the afternoon light
that rests on the floorboards.
Breathing easily now,
vanishing glimpses —
truth fades slowly,
holding no place
between you and me
and all the lies you told.
Once we become our own ghosts,
we constantly ask how we died
and who ultimately killed us—
we never recall the moment
when everything turned against us,
how we drowned in the demands of life.
Like someone waking from a dream,
suddenly wary-eyed and cold,
we finally remember that we
haunted others and fled our own souls
by imitating their lives nearly perfectly,
yet death eventually caught up with us.
Somehow, we ask ourselves
where everyone else has gone and how
nothing ever escaped the mind we now possess.
What moves you
Makes you write,
Like the wind
Rattles the leaves
And turns the pages.
What lies buried
Is unearthed by words,
Creating space
Between the graves
We call lines.
- I always tried to hold on to the beautiful things, never realising that true beauty lies in letting go.
- To make the ordinary beautiful — that is true art.
The October rain writes cursive letters
on my window once again;
Poem after poem it has to tell,
becoming an ocean in my hands;
Words and words it asks of me to write,
while the bottle fills up with tears -
just to be emptied with sorrow
in the pale morning light.
Autumn sharpens the night air
and paints the morning gold
on the edge of winter’s silver breath,
dancing delicately between life and death,
between 4 pm and 3 am.
- Laura Chouette
At a certain point,
you no longer hope;
you just keep on existing.
One day at a time,
for the rest of your life.
And that feeling
is not shallow but runs deep—
deeper than any happiness
or love could ever run.
A vein is a mere line
poets like me used to write on
and a lifeline where sailors
swim towards at night.
If we keep on writing and giving,
we grow on that existing line
with millions of words that save hope -
and thus give existence and life.
October creeps into the room
through faint grey light
that stopped dancing on the windowsill
since July left.
Being haunted by silence
makes the air grow weary
and faintly colder.
I hear the noise of people
walking in solitude,
thinking to themselves about others—
sitting alone in between their steps.
Company of ghosts on lonely eves,
threading through the rustling of leaves.
I can write down what haunts me,
yet I cannot read the ones who do.
October.
© All poems and quotes are the property of Laura Chouette.
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