Live Encounters Poetry & Writing January 2026.
Human Face, poems by Aristi Trendel.
Human Face
In the midst of my walk
right after the pond
a private one
with geese and sheep
strolling along
a wire-fenced paradise
I always stop at the metal gate to delight
in the serenity of the dwindling day
still deep in the sylvan dusk
still busy with the line of sky in fire
I turn at the other side
and I’m taken by surprise
a golden moon is already floating there
slickly bright
deceptively low
falsely proximate
like a human face
And Quiet Flows the Rhine
By the Seine he’d walk
the Left Bank along
with the tourists
swarms of them and newlyweds
Love is a lofty matter
the silent thought
dawned on her
when her former lover said
how prosaic their wireless walk
more and more
lowly topics took control
love gone
but he wanted it
back in words
lovers-in-discourse
sorry, my love
geography
wedged us apart
but let’s talk
about love
Love is a lofty matter
he was highly literate
he possessed the tearful
art of loss
in eternal mourning
he thrived
let’s cry and hold
onto the dead
we can bring us back
we can make believe
you and I
are alive
couldn’t he transmute
into gold
anything he touched
for years to come?
Hermes, Ostanes
Nicolas
he was versed
in the art
of keeping the holy
fire alive
without her
he would die
Love is a lofty matter
left unsaid
she kept all
the irony to herself
and then she went
for a solitary walk
by the Rhine
the Seine gone
with the sweet-talk
I carry your heart with me
but doesn’t he see
it is dead and burnt
why not scatter
the ashes onto the Seine?
no need for a ceremony
speech acts and all that stuff
the Seine is for lovers
the Rhine for swans
flying along
nonchalant
a swarm of swans
bathing in the setting
of the sun and the moon
full rising up
steeped in
the paroxysm of the dusk
she could hear
their song
splendid landscape
with swans
now that love
was written off
Upon a Line of Familiar Verse
I find myself wondering why Seferis called du Bellay’s verse foreign
to both, the shade of Odysseus appeared steeped in nostalgia
the sea, love, memory—fused into one essence,
like the Orthodox Trinity
offering them peace,
the creed that loss isn’t loss
amid the storm of remembrance.
They are all intimate to me`
kith and kin
native minds breeding rest and unrest;
and this new verse that blends the unblendable
renders all home-like
as it looks far back
without fear and trembling
to speak
of a love with unbroken rhythm,
invincible as music and undying;
she heard it on the Aegean, this poetess
as she harked far back:
I find myself rereading”
“Μεταφορές”
breakers swell
as if Odysseus’ breath returned;
an old thought hisses low:
your memories are of two sorts
volcanic and glacier-like;
the poetess found the thread
some oil, that is,
to unwind the ball of yarn
and reach that love, primeval, that is
the yarn of our lifeline
that arises now and then
to herald that
we are not dead,
at least not yet
© Aristi Trendel
Aristi Trendel is a professor of American Studies at Le Mans University, France. She worked as an air-hostess for ten years and travelled widely. She now lives in France but continues her nomadic life through literature. She has published book chapters and articles on American writers in American and European journals, book reviews, and fiction in literary magazines. She is the author of five books of fiction and the monograph, Pedagogic Encounters: Master and Disciple in the American Novel After the 1980s (Lanham: Lexington Books/Bloomsbury, 2021). Aristi Trendel is a translingual writer; she writes in English and Greek.