Sergey Dobrenkov

The free press is free
Unless it says something wrong
Then it is not free
...

When, rapt, the soul contemplates secret things,
A silent beam doth pierce her to the core;
Yet what she feels no other eye e'er brings
To light, though speech should labour evermore.
...

Foreword

This synopsis gathers one hundred and twenty senryu about music and the people who made it, explained it and heard it, from the first bone flute to the machine that writes songs. In keeping with the canon of the senryu, each poem has seventeen syllables, in lines of five, seven and five, and holds a single episode, idea or figure. The poems follow one another in chronological order and fall into nine parts (marked with Roman numerals) , which lead from number and breath, through chant, voices, order, form, feeling and 'breaking, ' to sound as process and, at the end, to the listening mind.
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When first the Covid plague had laid me low,
Methought I'd been in Tartarus below;
My teeth did chatter, naught could warm me there;
I gasp'd, I choked, I fought in vain for air.
...

Upon a crag of sable, wave-worn stone
That rises sheer above the roaring deep,
A man stands bare to heav'n, and all alone,
Whilst thunder wakes what ages left to sleep.
...

I
The casement opens on the seaward hill,
Where cypress-spires stand slender, dark, and tall;
The winding paths grow dim; the air is still;
...

The sky, grown heavy, stoops too near the land;
The air is hollow; silence has its say;
A tousled carpet of fall'n leaves, wind-fann'd,
Exudes a smell of spice and tart decay.
...

Through boughs' knotted lace
the weary, cold sun seeps down
to summer's array
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To the soul that is proud, dark demons appear,
Whispering lies—that it's holy and pure,
Or they plunge it in deep despair,
Saying salvation will never be there.
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For thousands of years since their fall from Grace,
The desperate demons learned to twist the straight,
To steal the unripe in the darks embrace—
What lacks Gods root, what bears no Graces weight.
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You thought you owned the night,
But the night owns you.
A shadow dancing in a borrowed light,
A ghost in rewound time,
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Blessed love can never be despair,
For the Creator knows the heart's hidden prayer—
Even words the lips refuse to bear.
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If your voice holds no flame, just the echo of night,
A hollow refrain with no spark to ignite,
Then let the stillness rise, let the quiet remain—
For a word without fire is a breath without name...
...

The key turned in the lock—a familiar sound…
The door sighed… just as we once sighed
Over lines of old and bitter rhymes profound,
So, gift, oh gift this loneliness till dawn's light,
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On the inaccessible peak,
There must be flowers—
Soft as whispers, bright as stars,
Untouched by earthly hours.
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Embers dance, beneath my breath,
Where the heart is crowned.
Time becomes a flame…
Let old be cast down.
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Where the river stops breathing,
Where the ice keeps strange names,
I stand between 'was' and 'will be',
I am silence.
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On the verge of waking and of sleep,
Where does my dreaming fancy stray?
Into what chasms, bottomless and deep,
What starry wanderings far away?
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Breath turns to crystal
In the empty air
My fingers aren't mine anymore
Time slipping away
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Through gaping chasms and depths untold,
Thou leadest me into Thy light;
Each grief I bear, each loss I hold,
Makes stronger still my faith's pure might.
...