Category: Poetry

  • The 66th tragedy

    Copyright Delia Kelly 2025

    Poem publish in Magazine Itaca, Dublin, in Romanian, XIII Year, Nr. 5, Pg.12

    The art has one eye on fire and one that’s blind.
    Even if someone were to drown her, she will put her hands in her eyes and take all the water out
    THE LEFT EYE. It would still burn.

    THE RIGHT EYE. Worn dry as always.

    No sign of glasses.
    Only a green hat, always perched upon her head – to veil a part of her tragedy.

    At every street corner, she finds herself met by someone who, in some quiet way, offers her a compliment

    raising her to a glory of her own making

    yet no one is truly sincere.

    People are too afraid of her face, they are unsettled by how much it mirrors them.
    Poor thing.
    She ought to be cared for,
    instead she is left alone to care for herself.
    May someone gentle tending her eyes
    and her hands.

  • From heaven, many things fall

    Copyright Delia Kelly 2011

    Poem published in Bogdania Magazine in Romanian, No. 99–100, September–October 2022

    Translation in English available below

    English:

    From heaven, many things fall:
    I fall from it,
    you fall from it too,
    and time itself falls away.

    I begin to deny my own abyss
    as I reach back to reclaim the love I invested
    ’cause I no longer want to dream.

    You have withered my spirit,
    stripped the wind from my wings…
    You erase my lines,
    as you read my now-empty testament…

    Like a ghost on a train that never slows,
    lost in a day that never sees its end.

    I create you in my imagination
    just as the Lord created me in His image.

    In the light of time
    I wait for you to seek us out;
    In the garden of thoughts
    I wish that both of us will stay.

    I gathered so many tears for you
    I could turn a desert into a sea.

    In a heaven untouched by time
    I spill my inkwell of pain into the sun
    and I transform it.

    I cannot breathe.
    I gather your tender shoot of dreams
    from whispers burned and faded,
    and bind it to my life’s thin thread.

    ’cause no one’s hell is everyone’s heaven,
    I fade, slowly, slowly, within your somber scene.

    And I crash into the wall of your heart,
    and I wrap myself in your blood like a burial shroud,
    and I fall, and fall —
    cut by the gleam of your touch.

    And I die.

    And in the river of your life
    a lily will rise,
    born from darkened thoughts
    and life’s sweet torment.

    Gently, I ebb towards the abyss,
    at an infinite distance from your gaze.

    So much has fallen from heaven
    I fell
    you fell too
    and time itself fell away.

    Romanian:

    Din rai se rup multe :
    din rai mă rup eu,
    te rupi tu,
    se rupe timpul.

    Încep să îmi refuz abisul,
    ca să-mi iau înapoi dragostea, nu visul.

    Îmi omori simţurile
    lăsându-mă fără zbor…
    Îmi ştergi rândurile
    citindu-mi testamentul gol…

    Ca un simplu musafir într-un tren ce n-are gară
    într-o zi ce n-are seară.

    Te creez în imaginaţia mea
    aşa cum şi Domnul m-a creat în imaginea sa.

    În lumina timpurilor
    aştept să ne cauţi pe noi
    În grădina gândurilor
    vreau să rămânem amândoi.

    Am strâns atâtea lacrimi pentru tine
    încât aş face din deşert o mare.

    Într-un rai ce n-are timp
    vărs călimara cu durere în soare: şi-l schimb.

    Nu pot să mă respir
    Culeg al tău lăstar de vise
    din şoapte arse,stinse…
    şi-l pun pe-al vieţii mele fir.

    Căci iadul nimănui e raiul tuturor
    mă sting încet, încet în sumbrul tău decor.

    şi mă-izbesc de peretele din inima ta
    şi mă-nfăşor în sânge ca şi cu-un giulgiu
    şi cad, cad
    mă tai în al atingerii tale luciu.

    Şi mor.

    Şi-n râul vieţii tale
    Va răsări un crin
    Născut din gândurile rele
    Şi-al vieţii dulce chin.

    Încet, m-am stins uşor către abis,
    la un infinit distanţă de privirea ta.

    Din rai s-au rupt multe:
    m-am rupt eu,
    te-ai rupt tu,
    s-a rupt şi timpul.

  • The Testament (or God’s letter to the world)

    Copyright Delia Kelly 2019

    Published in “Antologia Universum”, Second Volume, in Romanian, Montreal, 2020, p.344-349

    I am sitting on floating driftwood…at the edge of the universe, seeing how Babylon is falling in the reflection of the shining moon
    And the floating driftwood is just the reflection seen by the angels in the very eye of God.

    And my hands are the scattered leaves of Eve’s coat thrown away when she was cast out of heaven.
    And I wonder, is my ability to talk actually Judas’ silence?

    But life is now just a dead man lying on the floor of the Kingdom
    And at the same time, life is just a man standing on his trembling feet supported by a pole that touches the sun…and that man believes that this pole is just a light bulb; from Mefisto’s living room.

    The man, just a humble plumber – a craftsman. Neither qualified to serve in
    Hell, nor in Heaven. And after one thousand two hundred sixty days
    God opens his eyes and dictates to me his will:

    “I sit and I look all day at all my beloved humans…now dead,
    and I keep them in a garden, surrounded by fences
    and they want to leave , they want to leave so much… but I do not want to let them…I cannot let them.
    Instead, I can only let them open the door when somebody new wants to come in.
    And they all sit…together…
    listening to the screams of the Lamb…day and night…he is crying… not because he cannot come inside, and stay with them;
    not because he cannot cover the bleeding rivers…

    but, because…

    Η νύμφη is coming.”


    Note: Η νύμφη (in Greek) = the bride

  • Science fiction

    Copyright Delia Kelly 2022

    The Earth told me
    That Jupiter had whispered in its ear
    How silly we are
    To think
    To drink
    To meet
    To cheat
    To sleep
    To weep
    To eat and to
    Live on repeat.

    We are nothing more than dust in the wind
    We are so small under the Sun and Moon’s reflection
    In that ugly rusty battlefield
    may we call it
    Pandora’s imperfection.

    Soon,
    We will become shadows of our own perception
    No more meeting and cheating and drinking
    Or thinking and sleeping and weeping.
    We will be just falling little stars-
    Blaming the Universe’s conception.

    That’s when the Earth will whisper back
    In Jupiter’s ear,
    What causes the discontinuation:
    Some souls still want to eat and live on repeat- the well-known 21st Century’s procrastination.

    May we just call it, please,
    Pandora’s imperfection.