A Little Serenade
          by Ewald E. Eisbruc

The catchy Little Serenade by Wolfgang Mozart starts
with an ascending Mannheim rocket theme, as it imparts
joy with each little serendipitous phrase it accrues,
and falls into the mind so snappily in happy grooves.
A composition of a chamber orchestra in place,
two violins, viola, cello, and a double bass.
Called Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, it captures in sweet tune
the beauty of the Viennese milieu beneath the moon.
It dances in the scintillating city, jittering,
like dreams upon the waters of the Danube—glittering.

 

Ewald E. Eisbruc is a poet and a music critic fascinated by German, Italian, and Slavic music traditions. His favourite lied is Franz Schubert’s rendition of Goethe’s “Erlkönig.”

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Sixth Anniversary of the Syrian Civil War
          by Walid Céu Esber

Dissolving cities: Raqqa, Idlib, Homs, Aleppo, and
Damascus, Syria. They shake the dice, you understand.
Near Hamidiyah market, at the Justice Palace site,
security guards tried to stop the man from suicide;
but he broke in and blew himself apart, with many more;
the murderer forced through the door and struck a double score.
Perhaps there’ll come a time when you’ll accept to live this death,
the streets, the steps, the dust, the depths, the last chance for a breath;
and then you’ll come to see these corpses, women, men and kids,
like as the cities falling down between your eyelid skids.

 

Walid Céu Esber, a poet of the Middle East, believes survival requires the ability to tolerate complexity.

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Hitoshi Igarashi
          by “Clear Dew” Ibuse
          “We are all born in the same way but we all die in different ways.”
          —James Joyce, Ulysses

Who will remember him—Hitoshi Igarashi—who
translated Salman Rushdie’s book “Satanic Verses”—you?
He was professor at Tsukuba University,
and wrote books, like his “Medicine and Wisdom of the East.”
In 1991 the Ayatollah of Iran
issued a fatwa and a multi-million bounty on
the death of anyone associated with the book,
its publication, or had even dared to take a look.
That year his body could be found dead, in his office space,
repeated knife-stab lacerations on his arm and face.

 

“Clear Dew” Ibuse is a poet interested in Japanese literature and poetry of the Meiji era, the first generation to have a western-style education, but also the last to have a classical one, trained in Chinese texts. He has been influenced by writers, such as Mori Ogai, Masaoka Shiki, and Natsume Soseki.

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Mass-Hack Attack
          for Deniz Yücel
          by Esca Webuilder
          “Nazi Dogs,”
          pro-Erdoğen, anti-Dutch newspaper headline

Duke University, Amnesty International,
BBC, PBS Food, UNICEF, Forbes and U-Haul,
along with others were attacked by hackers sending tweets
with hashtags shouting: Nazi Holland, Nazi Germany.
The Netherlands-based Twitter Counter seemed the origin.
Perhaps…they were the work of Turks supporting Erdoğen.
It’s true Aslan Neferler Tim, the Lion Soldiers Team,
the hacking Turkish unit, claimed responsibility,
with swastikas, the Erdoğen-supporting, click-clique clones
distributed denial of the services to phones.

 

Esca Webuilder is a terse-verse, Internet webster and intimate of “Wired Clues” Abe.