Margaret Saine was born in Germany and lives in Southern California. She writes poetry, haiku, and short stories in five languages, also translating other poets in those languages. Her books are “Bodyscapes,” “Words of Art,” 5 haiku chapbooks, plus the mss. “Awkward Child” (in German, to be published), “The Five Senses,” “Lo efímero queda” and “Reading Your Lips” (tbp). Her poetry has also been published in Italy, Germany, and India, as well as on the internet.
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CLIMBING ROSE
If I had a peaceful heart it would look like this.
Gary Snyder
Time
a song sung to us
as a ballad of simple
and complicated life
phrases sustained
a ferry boat of feelings
on the river of days
With pauses
for the banal
the eventless
trivial and not powerful
yet reaching at times
for the poetic
Time
song to consciousness
a climbing rose
that twists and turns
and in the end
carries the roof
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BODY LANGUAGE
Linguagem corporal
is how you say in Portuguese
but please do not confuse
linguagem with lingam
In Gulliver’s Laputa
(note the name)
the language is
each person pulling words
like objects from a backpack and
showing them to the others
exclamation mark things
Imagine a language
that consists of letters
formed by naked bodies
Each person would have to
rent two ballet dancers
in order to speak
in an airless voice
a voiceless air
Danceless would mean speech-less
just as the meaning
of the word ‘in-fans’
the dancers themselves
would have no voice
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