Absence of a poet by Eduard Schmidt-Zorner

His absence unnoticed,

he liked to write poems

on white birch bark,

catch the intuition spark

between midnight

and four in the morning

or

between lilac and elderflower

when the sun is shining.

He was noticed when Charon,

the ferryman of Hades,

rows him to the other side,

across the rivers Styx and Acheron

as so many before him.

He could not pay his obulus

and wanders the shores for

one hundred years, leaving

poem sheets as marks

on the everchanging sand.

---

Eduard Schmidt-Zorner is a translator and writer of poetry, haibun, haiku, and short stories. He writes in four languages: English, French, Spanish, and German and holds workshops on Japanese and Chinese style poetry and prose and experimental poetry. Member of four writer groups in Ireland. Lives in County Kerry, Ireland, for more than 25 years and is a proud Irish citizen, born in Germany. Published in over 150 anthologies, literary journals, and broadsheets in USA, UK, Ireland, Australia, Canada, Japan, Sweden, Spain, Italy, France, Bangladesh, India, Mauritius, Nepal, Pakistan, and Nigeria. Some of his poems, and haibun have been published in French (own translation), Romanian, and Russian language. He writes also under his penname Eadbhard McGowan.