Inside this 104 page chapbook collection by Sylvia Maclagan (sold as a two book set only), you’ll find 46 page-turning poems (with 13 equally impressive photographs of Patagonian sights) that emphasize ecological climate changes taken from the author’s personal experiences. Take a trip through the mystical land of Patagonia and witness the imagery Sylvia describes through vivid word pictures. Dan Newland, former Editor-in-Chiefof the Buenos Aires Herald, eloquently summarizes this collection as
follows: “Her poems capture the essence of the terrain: wide open yet somehow oppressive, raw yet gentle, desolate yet comforting, a land of contradiction and emotions that elicit both a rare joy and a persistent lump in one’s throat. There is, in the almost solidified blue of the sky in the Patagonian steppes, a hint of something more that lies just beyond, a glimpse of infinity, a fleeting promise of immortality.”

This chapbook features 28 pd. gloss white stock and 67 pd. parchment green cover.

Order your copy at http://www.mosaicmusings.net/FORMgallery.htm

You’ll really enjoy this powerful, poetical view of Patagonia.

20 May, 2008 by syl27

A POET’S VOICE

I cannot stop the wind from blowing

Nor still the ocean tides;

A rose will bloom without my knowing

To adorn an Autumn bride;

Yet I can stretch a loving hand

To embrace a frightened child

By greed its rights denied.

I cannot halt empires from growing

Nor make the rich provide;

A war will rage without fore-knowing

To scourge fair countryside;

Yet I can join the crescent throng

Refusing to abide

While innocents have died.

Let this be writ upon my tomb:

That I did not my eyes blindfold

Nor close my heart to doom,

But rather with a poet’s voice

All shameful deeds retold.

Copyright: Sylvia Evelyn, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2013.

10 May, 2008 by syl27

‘CERTIFIED’

Cati & Carlos

‘CERTIFIED’

Bewildered
you drifted into a Nomen nescio
sphere of the mind.
Undefined space packed
with psychedelic images,
inventive speech
or tragicomic contradictions.

Regression to an earlier time
of diapers, bibs, drool,
goodies and night terrors.
Doctors say you’re chancy,
might set the house afire,
slash me with the kitchen knife.
Me? You?
Not so.

When I whispered ‘Till tomorrow, honey’,
tears welled in my eyes:
your mortifying ‘G’night, Mother’
stabbed at my heart.
Wayward, outsize babe,
snatched from my arms…

There’s a void in our home,
a ‘What now’?
Twenty married years,
so ephemeral,
a fleeting presence by my side.
Must I reinvent myself?

Our cat dusts
book-lined corridors
with her Siamese fur,
ponders ‘Don Quixote’ yearningly,
then whiskers your pillows,
sleeps under them.

She and I need our zany,
quixotic cavalier,
even if you’ve been…
‘Certified’.

27 April, 2008 by syl27

SIDR Cyclone in Bangladesh, December 2007

SIDR

The devil’s wind blows fierce,

carving visceral death, watery death,

death of three thousand souls or more,

blazing bitter death, branded by

splintered wood and hurtling sails.

Life pulped by bamboo death-traps.

Awesome becomes awful.

A malodorous and malign monster

wraps devastation in primal silence.

Verdant land vanished long ago:

hunger on hunger on hunger,

unforgiving.

Stormed by Sidr, busy brightness

is eclipsed in Bay of Bengal.

Dacca’s airports, seaports,

ferries, awake warily.

‘Copters fling food packs.

Unclaimed corpses, victuals for vermin.

Dogs slink in shattered huts,

sniffing at clueless cadavers.

A woman picks her path over branches

and slush, lifting torn skirt, legs

battered and bleeding. She shakes

huddled children awake.

Drowsiness threatens defeated,

O seductive sleep of slaughter!

To die, to die, almost pleasing

in wake of cyclone.

Moans cut like knives

through my heart, foul waters

steep my eyes… eyes of many

mortals celebrating a new season.

But the winsome children

are gone, and a few folks

return to routine starvation.

Soldiers overload stretchers

to nowhere hospitals.

The world haphazardly heeds

wails of a distant land empty of joy,

its villagers adrift in skulking lunacy

as they pray to silent gods.

Bangladesh… Bangladesh…

where are you now?

Did man or nature create the beast?

I know no living god bearing your cross.

We feast on ignorance.

ã Sylvia Grosso, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2007.

10 June, 2006 by syl27

GIRASOLES

En esta hora vaciada de certezas
he resuelto girar hacia el pasado,
arrancar de mis entrañas esa historia
para transmutar en gloria vanidades.

Con mano de alquimista pondré fuego
a la palabra enmudecida por mis labios;
claro el sendero, eterna la sonrisa,
andaré huellas de ayeres y otros soles.

Con pisada firme soñaré amaneceres,
el perfume de rosa en tu ventana,
¡ay! el calor de nuestros cuerpos encendidos…
de piel y sangre, a tus pies, mi nuevo amor.

Hoy respondo a la voz que me convoca,
la luz de mi esencia en libre juego,
vibrante el hilo de mi vida y tan fecundo,
busco el canto, el sueño y la inocencia.

Si volver es humillarme, desnuda y mansa,
para transformar rebeldía en libertad,
morirá la sorda sentencia de mi noche
en aurora de girasoles, creadora,
…nunca igual.