La Senna

In fondo
in ognuno di noi
c’è una Senna
avvitata e contorta
snodata e sgranata
debordante e cangiante
fluente e degradante
verso le nostre assenze
diluita nelle attese
dileguata in capillari ramati
Con lampioni ai lati
e gialli e tenui
con ponti azzuccherati e nebbiosi 
con pioggia fine
C’è una Senna
tortuosa e impetuosa
ingabbiata da argini e panchine 
nubi basse e voragini radicate 
inurbamenti statici e dolori fusi

Osiris would like to thank all the writers who have contributed their work since 1972.

You share your voices, your visions, and your cultures to stand in solidarity with your fellow writers. Each of you, writing in different languages, keys and registers, exploring harmonies and dissonances, moving language in new ways or embracing traditions, is unique. Writing is an act of courage and faith that transcends boundaries and opens the world for others. 

Osiris would like to thank all our readers who, for over five decades, have joined us on this adventure. You are the essential link for writers, the hearts and vibrant minds that enter the world of their poems. Your appreciation, criticism, and devotion to poetry takes poetry off the page and into the world. 

Contraires

Le silence s’étire svelte, sauvage

à travers les buis au ras du sol, gronde

et s’élève comme une masse invisible.

L’espace se dilate en ce rien minuscule

d’où l’on apprend la lenteur

au cœur de la disparition.

Scène

Rentré, depuis
ma fenêtre surpris
happé par la scène, en pleine
nuit, derrière
sans rideau, quelques
étages plus bas, une large
porte vitrée de l’immeuble d’en face :

un couple dans la lumière verte

je finis par m’y arracher, au-dedans
blessé d’une mort, comme
lorsqu’en gare de Potsdam, avant même la chute du mur j’avais vu plusieurs quais plus loin étendu
sur le dos sur un rail dans le sens
de la longueur déjà
à moitié coupé un homme
par la roue d’un wagon engagé dans son corps

BROKEN RIVER 

Nothing could be

further from landscape,

nothing so industrial

contain the folded hills,

water’s unravelled flow.

Brutish constructions

are all incorrect angles,

polished and painted

to be still. The river

is broken, unimagined,

spirit sucked dry, life

bolted crudely together.

Sea and land

The cold air is billowing through the cabin
Christ the redeemer is draped in the national colours
we are disinfected when entering
the boats return to the harbour at the day’s end
the man at the helm a woman still stretched out across the bow

they are being delivered and
the sea flashing gold sprinkles
and this is going nowhere
days spent thinking of nothing
but emptying the mind
and sleep
the black sand still burns my soles
the church is aflame again
mountains covered in mist and rumbling
roads winding along the coast under flowers
they’re dressed in black and running at dawn
they’re dressed in white and crowding 
the roads at night
there are jumpers, card-players and day trip trains
this is just a litany of lives
and they all have stories to tell

(there is no break between lines; formatting glitch)

Returning to Ithaki 

Come lose me in echo of falling apples – where I search taverna, smell of warm olives, 

saganaki, only here; where green mountains cover like monsters from ancient myths 

I will rest my final elegy like soft murmuration above sea. sitting at a bay, 

same sea that stretched eyes – retained sleek idols in turquoise blue 

for kindness becomes cruelty for uncertain strangers who stand next to blue stones 

If you may imagine – down alleyways of graffiti in Poseidon’s forked tongue 

full Albanian dress – a man emulates Lord Byron including his pencil lined moustache 

walks a promenade at night wheels a heart shaped ruby coloured pram 

where metal crows faced east – we reimagined – from ruins once palaces 

for what paused interruption; will be torn away breath; we channelled today. 

Osiris was born Tuesday, April 11, 1972, in a small white house along New York Route 43 in the town of Averill Park, New York.

1972 was a long time ago, in terms of culture and society, outlook and expectations. We took chances, gathered people together, allowed voices to be heard… A list of early contributors reminds us that we were many different voices in the beginning…

Robert Lepper, Richard Schoenwald, Martin Robbins, Jacques Bussy, Rina Lasnier, Joseph Bonenfant, Robert Marteau, Si Perchik, B.Z. Niditch, Hélène Dorion, Michel Cosem, Hans Raimund, Peter Nim, Gyula Illyes, Thansis Hadjopoulos, Flavio Ermini, Imants Ziedonis, Judita Vaiciunaite, Eugenio de Andrade, Marin Sorescu, Irma Klainguti, Enrique Lihn, Mahmud Darwish, Jibanananda Das, Jordi Albert, Claus Carstensen, Henrik Nordbrandt, Pia Tafdrup, Stefann van den Bremt, Jan Kostwinder, Paul Snoek, Miriam Van Hee, Debashish Banergi, Fred Cogswell, Robert Dassanowsky, Owen Davis, Peter Dent, Kendall Dunkellberg, Jim Elledge, John Falk, Peter Fallon, Raymond Federman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Anne Finch, Peter Ganick, Albert Maquet, Giorgio Bellini, Madeleine Gagnon, Ingrid Swanberg, Frances Presley…

Context? Evolution? Future? Each issue is an act of faith, a Kierkegaardian leap of faith. Is there anything out there? How can we include the very young, those whose voices are so vital to the continued evolution of the community of artists and writers. Perfection is not a necessary element; the monotonous formulaic use of language that often characterizes academic writing is something we do not embrace. Rough-edged, at times, audacious (this takes many forms), so gentle the surface appears non-existent…all these are valuable…

Osiris can be read from cover to cover; there is a conscious ordering of elements. Each echoes or anticipates or concludes and intensifies the one it precedes or follows. Each issue is a whole, a gesture, a movement towards something beyond each contributor’s work.

2025. Osiris 100. We’ll see how the future evolves.