Kurt F. Svatek, D.D.

Breitenau, Austria

Born 1949 in Vienna, Kurt currently lives with his family in the southern region of the province of Lower Austria. After receiving his high school degree he worked with the city government of Vienna, and now is a teacher at a vocational school in Lower Austria. He is an author of eight books including four of poetry. Over the years his work has appeared in over 100 different publications and has earned him nine prizes and awards. Kurt F. Svatek is member of the Austrian Centre of International P.E.N., The International Society of Poets, U.S.A., and many other literary organizations in Austria, Germany and India.

Credo

My God is one without soldiers
who smash each other's heads
in His name,
without any hierarchy,
enslaving with dogmas.

My God is one
of the extra-clerical opposition
leaving His image
everywhere for people
without roundabout ways.

He is a God of devotion
and not of expulsion,
of love and not of power.
He is the wide land
and thus without human countenance.

To Depart In One's Self

To seek one's self, to go find one's self
can the wanderer, still frightened by old dreams,
only far away from the big cities.
Step by step
the enemy does not stay the enemy
and the friend a friend.
Cozy dawn surrounds the hate.
The wanderer hears the rhythms of the throbbing blood
while warmth pours into the hand,
and safety in the sight of even an unknown soul
can promise hope on an ordinary morning.
Life is no longer a vain search for warmth.
People do not possess each other, instead they go together
as a flame that passes through another flame.

In the Harbor

The clicking of the rusty lock,
a hollow creaking of the ponderous door
the breathing of the knotty-pine floor
a light fluttering of the air
the peering of shiny eyes
and the reassured sour advised:
You are at home.

The adventures beyond are forgotten,
the blood is no longer circulating wildly
and the waves are not pounding.
To each other we now belong:
a grateful look,
the warmth of a smile
and a long holding of the hand.