Poetic Philosophy

This poetry collection holds the poems submitted for the 3rd Poetic Philosophy Gathering.

Event Details

2026 3rd POETIC PHILOSOPHY GATHERING

Date: Saturday, May 2, 2026
Time: 18:00–19:00 Greece time
Location: Online (Google Meet)

Link: Google Meet https://meet.google.com/vhp-ccub-gqy

Facebook link: https://fb.me/e/d04zM9U6J

Submission methods

Submit your poems with comment here, or via the Poetic Philosophy Contact Us page! You can also send an email to harmonia-philosophica@hotmail.com.

Submissions

Untitled

Branches shift the night.
A hug of leaves seas the day.
Someone, alone, between doors
opens the time.
His time clocks between
his footsteps. Steps
in the space between. Along he walks.
Between earths he rides.
Arisen are the arrows.
Death upon the sorrow.
Death upon the cry. What is it left?
Time in one only point.

~ Athina Styliani Michou

Midway

The object
on the stairs
had been there forever
no one moved it
it had become
part of the
furniture
part of the stairs

I picked it up
a dust ring
had gathered around
where it sat
and the carpeted stairs
looked lighter
where the object
had been

it was warm
from sunlight
holding onto heat
like old things do
silent and steady
as we walked by

we never spoke of it
this object
though we stepped past it
daily
it had presence
an invisible presence
midway on the stairs

I turned it
in my hand
something once useful
now orphaned
by context
and yet still
claiming space

it smelled faintly
of time
and old conversations

I didn’t know
what to do
now that it was gone
from its spot
I held its weight

and for a moment
the stairs felt
too open
too empty
too bare

I placed it back
exactly
where it had been
let the dust ring
resume
like nothing had changed

~ Tim Boardman

Cento For Coming Before Me

My name is Nobody.

I am indebted to my father for living, but—

I can’t imagine my heart breathing in light without you, 

Mosella. 

God has no religion, 

A world of dew, but even so

Our life is what our thoughts make it.

In Luke 23:28, Jesus says “Do not weep for me.” 

Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere, 

Fortune favors the bold.

If 

Dreams,

In and out of one another streets of life,

Howl 

On this land

My last goodbye, 

Do not stand at my grave and weep

The chaos.

When we two parted 

Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc’d by fate

To be in love,

Because I could not stop for death.

Still I rise, 

Too aware of the lives that make me whole—my inner world, 

I carry your heart with me:

Unending love, 

Song of myself,

The more loving one.

At the rainbow’s end even the caterpillar gets its wings

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes!  

~ Ernesto P. Santiago

Note: The poem credits: 1. Odysseus in Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey. 2. Alexander the Great. 3. Ernesto P. Santiago. 4. Decimus Magnus Ausonius. 5. Mahatma Gandhi. 6. Kobayashi Issa. 7. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. 8. Jesus Christ 9. Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi. 10. Publius Vergilius Maro. 11. Rudyard Kipling. 12. Langston Hughes. 13. Ernesto P. Santiago. 14. Allen Ginsberg. 15. Mahmoud Darwish. 16. Gat Jose P. Rizal. 17. Mary Elizabeth Frye. 18. Gerard Nolst Trenité.19. Lord Byron. 20. Virgil’s Aeneid. 21. Gwendolyn Brooks. 22. Emily Dickinson. 23. Maya Angelou. 24. Ernesto P. Santiago. 25. E.E. Cummings. 26. Rabindranath Tagore. 27. Walt Whitman. 28. W.H. Auden. 29. Ernesto P. Santiago. 30. William Shakespeare.

Untitled

The golden wings
Of thought
Cross
being
Like roses
Of thorns
In the morning

(Original:

Le ali dorate
Del pensiero
Attraversano
L’ essere
Come rose
Di spine
Al mattino)

~ Mauritius de Shardan

Farewell Letter

​These past few days, winter felt
like a farewell letter,
like a parting embrace,
like a final “farewell” kiss
pressed upon the newly blossomed hyacinths.

A letter written in green ink –
the green of leaves just barely opened,
beguiled by the deceptive April sun.

The sky — a blank sheet against which
wild geese
stretched their wings;

a page stained by clouds, hesitant
about which color they should wear.

​These days, winter took its leave,
a “goodbye” that felt almost like an “adieu,”
a regret such as I have rarely felt —
perhaps kin only to my own regrets,
almost resigned, almost leafing into a man.

This winter passed so heavily
that it felt like a certainty,
so familiar and so sad
that one would have said humanity was tailored to its measure.

​These past few days, winter abandoned me,
leaving behind only a letter
written with the last flakes of celestial dignity,
a letter at the end of which it told me:

“I have left; do not look for me.”

~ Gheorghiţă Bînă

Dove Tutto Rallenta

​On certain evenings, I allow myself to have been
too hurried to catch the scent of apple blossoms
newly blooming on the alleys of life.
I allow myself to have been so late to this feast called life,
from which some apparently bite great chunks,
and from whose crumbs I felt I had always fed.
I allow myself to have been too afraid,
too timid, or too doubtful,
admiring life like a beautiful woman passing before me,
before my gaze, petrified by such grace—
a presence of life such as one only sees in the eyes of newborns.
​On certain evenings, I allow myself to no longer be.
I settle into non-being for the span of a few emotions
and simply admire the piercing colors of the sunset,
so that the shadow may so discreetly cover my past,
and suddenly, that whole blood-stained battlefield is no longer red.
​On certain evenings, I allow myself to have been something or someone else,
but only because I tried to resurrect an imaginary body that was not mine,
on that same battlefield, darkened now,
where I desperately try to awaken my corpse, which was living until just recently.
The eternal return to the initial form of life,
impassive to our stubborn refusal to die.
​On certain evenings,
I allow myself not to have been.

~ Gheorghiţă Bînă

The identity of mind and soul

Identity of the soul,
written with odes of pain and joy,
cracked the mirror
that is clouded by the breath of lies.
Identity of the mind,
etched by drips of silence,
drips truths
in cracks that no one sees.
And yet, these two identities,
hidden in the luggage of life’s journey,
are not declared anywhere.
They have no number or stamps,
nor a photograph to betray them.
They are not imprinted on any paper,
on any precious document of everyday life.
They do not fit in cases,
nor in passing glances.
And yet we carry them –
all the unspeakable things of the mind and soul,
at every step of the way,
burden and redemption together,
revealing our naked truth.

~ Bania Sofia

ALWAYS ON CROSSROADS

I found myself on crossroads once again,
Slipping through the fingers of the fate…
The air I breathe is thick or thin, depends,
That’s how I know which way to go when one road ends…

One road is ending, another one begins,
On the new path I take I have no sins,
I leave them all behind and go ahead,
Going along with thoughts inside my head.

The winds of change are running through my hair,
And in my house of fun I have no chair,
No bed to rest my bones or lay in pain,
No feelings to be wasted or in vain…

My limbs are getting stronger with the dance,
My voice is singing loud, asking for change…
My heart will pump just love while I’m alive,
I am the only one creator of my life!!!

~ Marta Onila

Untitled

This is a perfect day for silence
so I scroled down all past days
in my world of 17 square metres
I saw those asymptomatic trees
as if they were in my room
If I stretched out my hand
I could feel them grow
this is how I became a modern Sisyphus
I went on reading
although I knew
it would make me lose my eyesight
Then
I wrote a book
although I knew nobody cared
Actually
I wrote just one poem
in a thousand and one variations

~ Ionuț Calotă

Forgiveness

Forgiveness, a bird
Either caught or having fled
Bears the thorn in it

~ Vasiliki Papadopoulou

Why ask?

Standing tall in the dark

Asking why there is no more light

Resolved, while blocking the sun

~ Spiros Kakos