Shades of Yous. Poems 2009
2009 was for me a time of a prolonged inner crisis and of signs of a deeper transformation. I experienced a high sensitivity towards people and words. Between June-October I wrote a series of 90 poems; 2 came a bit later, written in memory of a friend who passed over. Then the doors closed again and no more poems came through. In April 1980 I had experienced a similar influx of words leading to my first book of poems, “The Song of Silence” (German). 33 years passed until the German publication of the new volume appeared in 2013.
I called it “Shades of Yous” (Schattierungen von Dus), because “The poems speak of the reverberation of encounters, of wounds and their healing, of dangers of the way and surprises of everyday life.” (from the preface)
People whom I showed the poems often asked me, “What is Yous?” I reply, “The plural of “you”. – “But there is no such plural, you is always singular.”
I know, but each time I met a person and later a poem arose, it was an intimate echo of this encounter with a “you”, and each encounter had a different quality, gave rise to another shade of yous.
When reading the poems you might feel other such irritations. They reflect the inner reactions you might experience in encountering friends or also just passers-by. Often, however, these sensations drown in the currents of everyday life. I tried to save them in these poems. For if you listen to what the irritations want to tell you, you will discover a message, and this message might guide you to a deeper understanding and even show you a way out of a crisis.
Last year I published the German version – in digital form and one as a paper copy – each poem illustrated with photos visualising an aspect of the respective message. I edited the images in a way that they do not superimpose the poems.
It was an adventure to translate the poems, and often it was not easy to render the content and musicality of one language in another. Vijay Ganugula from New Jersey, USA, helped me a lot through his proofreading and our discussions. He wrote: “Some of the poems touched me deeply – as I noted in my comments on those slides. It is especially very inspiring to see in the 4th part how the tide turns and veils get lifted when you have confidence in the inner/Yous/Master. … Like your paintings, these poems are a true gift from you to people like me. Thank you for sharing this gift.”
You can view the “Shades of Yous” online on my website, download it as a powerpoint or as a PDF. And here you find some words about their creation.
