with your towers up there on the hill!

With your tremendous hovering walls,

with your slate roofs, mossy moats,

your drawbridge and the fiddling

of your troubadours.

                                      Two in a nasty

fight for restaurant leftovers!

My white eagle reports to me,

my dove listens and tells.

                                      Across

the valley in wind and sand

the horizon is lost.

                                      Jerusalem,

Luxembourg! Knights in

menacing armor. Godfred of

Bouillon, Halmar of Williamsburg

and their paisley flag.

                                      Tires

torn between slaty rain and dusty

heat. Matter brought

across Bosporus, drunk from

afar in the Saleph.

                                      While air-

planes watched from above

and missiles rushed through

the sky trailing exhaust.

Gliding into the next age.

Is this inevitable?

From the Medieval Series

                                      Thinking of Barbara Guest in Siena

Flat, flat

                      but sincere and luminous in gold leaf

                                IN GOLD

                                                     IN GOLD

                  Sienese madonna

                                      and almost, almost Giotto's bar-like eyes

Johannes Beilharz, born in 1956, writes in German and English, translates and paints. He currently lives in Stuttgart, southern Germany. Publication of poetry, fiction and literary translations in magazines, e-zines and anthologies. A collection of short stories was published in Germany in 2003. Johannes' website, which focuses on international literature and art, is here.


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 Johannes

 Beilharz