Inspired by the Metropolitan Monument To Triumphant Brutalist Materialism

 

What Titanic floods came to carve

the massive canyons of New York

clasped on its ancient, sturdy hills

and what force let the sea surge so close

 

and deeper into all its abrased soil?

There, the city’s skyscrapers pile on

litanies of new towering Babylons.

or is it perhaps Babyl, Babel, Babilu,

 

or even—in its later Turkic form—

another hut of Baba Yaga’s twirling

on a chicken’s leg—cheeky and ready

 

in waiting for a hero or a lass to hop?

Otherwise, the earthly city’s spiky teeth

will gnash at the gods till nothing is left—

Tell Me, Then, of the Wonder You Keep with You, Breathing

Zhao Zhijian said that Heaven,
like everything else,
is born from breath—

If so, then everyone who meditates
and trains their emptiness and breath
is busy making all that is and lives
by giving to all her own breath—

and even holds and lifts
both Heaven and Earth,
all while being unmoved—

How could any Atlas compare?
In breath that bears all, there must be
God of Gods and life of lives.

Za jitra po svatojánské noci

V bezvětří po ránu

kmínky mladých javorů

ztuhlé jsou jak kolénka,

když ožehne je čekání –

 

stíny z korun kolem

v šeru zcela bez zvuku

stápějí se s nimi

v úžasu a kontrastu

 

všude vůči zlatistému úsvitu,

jehož záře stávají se povodní,

klesající od hlavy ke kořenům.

 

A tak světlo přes listy se deroucí

rozdmychává uvnitř vlahou tmu,

tajemnou jak smysl jejích úst.

Dawn’s Opening Page, Book I of The Arc of Perennial Equinox, now available on Amazon

Book I:Dawn’s Opening Page is the inaugural movement in The Arc of Perennial Equinox—a sustained poetic exploration of love, beauty, memory, and the conditions for awakening. These verses, luminous yet grounded, intimate yet cosmically aware, open a space where the sensual meets the spiritual and perception becomes ceremony.

Here, dawn is not simply an hour—it is a way of seeing. Each poem is an initiation: a threshold through which the reader may re-enter the sacred dimensions of experience.
Drawing on ancient myth, classical form, and the tenderest inflections of the lyric voice, this book invites the reader to recognize what the modern world often forgets: that language, when truly heeded, can still name what is eternal.

This is poetry that doesn’t perform—it listens. It doesn’t confess—it communes.
It asks not for applause, but for remembrance.
Dawn’s Opening Page began not as a project, but as a condition—something nearer to breath or presence than to plan. It emerged in moments where silence was not empty, but full—where beauty’s arrival seemed like a whisper across time, or a long-forgotten vow suddenly remembered.

The poems in this book are part of a larger arc—The Arc of Perennial Equinox—which seeks not merely to write about the sacred, but to write with it. That is, with reverence, clarity, and an attentiveness to what often goes unseen: the subtle gestures, the knowing gaze, the rhythms beneath thought.

This book honors dawn not as metaphor but as rhythm, as psychic and spiritual event. If there is a muse here, she is not ornamental. She is the one who keeps watch at the threshold, ensuring that each poem steps forward in sincerity and with care.

Vladimir Suchan, born in 1961 in Ostrov nad Ohří, is a Czech poet, philosopher, and dedicated anti-fascist political thinker. A former diplomat and professor of political philosophy with a Ph.D. from Carleton University, he has published eleven Czech poetry collections. His work blends confessional lyricism with imagistic precision, mapping the soul’s journey from love’s dawn to transcendent depths.