Anthology - Poets A - B-D - E-I - J-L - M - N-S

 

Tadeusz Pióro

 

SOME METHODS OF CROWD CONTROL

 

The bells are ringing, shouldn’t we kneel?

As for me, I’m all for a pint,

let the children be taken shopping.

They need trousseaus, one and all,

before the war goes bust, said the minister,

making me blush and squirm

for an hour in front of the telly.

The landlady asked about dreams

and I told my first lie involving

three dogs and a swarm of bees.

My parents are very poor, they wrapped my body

in straw, then who knows what bliss

as long as we kill the mayor

who thinks we know nothing.

I spoke of my murky life and her eyes

responded in kind, as if there were no choice

between innocence and experience.

A hundred feelings pressed upon my heart.

 

So often is the enemy politically neutral

due to natural faithlessness and boredom

en route. Twice two makes death

and you talk of some route.

Impress your fellow travellers, dress smart,

don’t get wet, all the children will wave

and frighten flies away with their hats.

I spoke of death to the children

with an ease granted by profound conviction.

They did their best to go somewhere

and we all fit into the pantry

after a suitable interval.

That’s where only sinful books are read.

For fear of police raids, poets follow politicians,

making their lives into well-managed works of art,

encoded and hidden in any old glove. Couriers come

from the city regardless, men hang their rifles

on trees, young people play a game of flowers

trendy in the Dark Ages. I could have shot you like a fairy

princess in Venice, where Liszt

had his gloves chewed up by groupies,

and his shins, and trouser-legs.

An Englishman salvaged the cuff-links,

but we are unsure what that means.

A handsome secretary with a cigarette

might know, but is sure never to tell

my father in law how attractive you are,

sleepless in suburban areas or large

plots of land known as graveyards,

where the dead are frequently buried

and village churches stand proximate.

So how is it a lover of Paris

ran for the boondocks?

Was it her mother or our last kiss?

Will it be fair, my son?

 

The road is bad and wet.

All drink together, curse and patrol.

There is silence behind closed doors.

No smoking, no soft radio moans,

no drumming of fingers on sills,

no Ronsard. Scare or wipe out.

Both our cannons are in danger.

 

The barmaid’s eyes despatched me

to a small town ignored by novelists.

We arrived by train in moonlight,

emitting moral hints from spike-tips,

ashamed of the hour and that beastly bliss.

My second-in-command, a modest man

of seven acres, burdened by contraband

family, bombarded by things and allegories,

grew impatient with Homer as I read him.

Who are we reading for? Let’s meet

the actresses and pay their expenses.

Please, not today, they are too much moved,

they’d think we’re sleepwalking

and choose a gypsy life in New York City.

Harder to know why there is so much gold

underground, if you would just dig a little,

encouraging the young ones with your fingers?

Where do the police find their brains?

Blink three times if they suit you.

Privates and NCOs are to masturbate

in such situations, but we lack

the manpower to make sure they do

unflinchingly, and the buffeted, lip-smacking squirrels

making eyes at wild strawberries

never leave their sights.

 

Very funny, as long as we don’t leave

the graveyard, for there is nothing like nature

if you stay single and don’t panic.

A saner man would simply go to Paris.

Her dad played the guitar,

delivered flowers to police stations,

which is partly true, but some vases

were needlessly annihilated

in a matter of hours.

 

 

William Shakespeare

 

SONNET 106

 

When in the chronicle of wasted time

I see descriptions of the fairest wights,

And beauty making beautiful old rime,

In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights,

Then, in the blazon of sweet beauty’s best,

Of hand, of foot, of lip, of eye, of brow,

I see their antique pen would have express’d

Even such a beauty as you master now.

So all their praises are but prophecies

Of this our time, all you prefiguring;

And, for they look’d but with divining eyes,

They had not skill enough your worth to sing:

For we, which now behold these present days,

Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

 

 

 

 

Tariel Chanturia

 

A DISAPPOINTED THOUGHT

 

A poem needs a heart. A poem needs a liver.

A poem needs a tear, and plenty of your blood.

A poem needs a leg. A poem needs a hand.

A poem needs a brain and a forehead as well.

A poem needs dollars. Rubles are also needed.

True poetry needs sex. And a poem comes next.

A poem needs fury. A poem needs a fist.

A poem needs Barbie for a granddaughter’s smile.

A poem needs wine, fruits and vitamins as well.

Plenty of sleepless nights and from time to time a nap.

A poem needs anger. A poem needs poison.

Centuries (a lot), and a couple of seconds.

Surely, at nightsurely, at noon,

Devotion of somebody’s, devotion of yours.

A poem needs poetry. A poem needs candies.

A poem needs honesty.

A poem needs cedar. A poem needs oak.

A poem needs a heart and a bullet in that heart.

A poem needs a mountain. A poem needs a valley.

A poem needs a wife (sometimes a second wife).

A poem needs a breast and a dagger through that breast.

A long and quiet sleep. A dead mom’s lullabyso sweet.

A poem needs sheep and a shepherd for that sheep.

 

I do know what a poem needs

Have no idea who needs a poem?

 

tr. Manana Dumbadze

 

 

Emily Dickinson

 

I DIED FOR BEAUTY, BUT WAS SCARCE

 

I died for beauty, but was scarce 

Adjusted in the tomb,

When one who died for truth was lain

In an adjoining room.

 

He questioned softly why I failed?

‘For beauty,’ I replied.

‘And I for truth,the two are one;

We brethren are,’ he said.

 

And so, as kinsmen met a night,

We talked between the rooms,

Until the moss had reached our lips,

And covered up our names.

 

 

 

 

Tsvetanka Elenkova

 

THE WOUNDS OF FREEDOM

 

Some buy leather leads for dogs of a definite length. Others prefer automatic leads with a reel. You let the dog run at will but you decide when to retrieve it. I set mine free. But two or three times it ran away and came back covered in wounds, so now I set it free but only in my yard. My dog howls at the squirrels, in the evening at the moon. And when we pile firewood next to the fence it climbs up and jumps over it. And again comes back with wounds. After that I decided to keep it on a chain. For my dog to be free of wounds.

 

tr. Jonathan Dunne

 

 

C. P. Cavafy

 

ITHAKA

 

As you set out for Ithaka

hope the voyage is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

 

Hope the voyage is a long one.

May there be many a summer morning when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you come into harbors seen for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind—

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

 

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you are destined for.

But do not hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you are old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you have gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

 

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you would not have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

 

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

 

tr. Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard

 

 

 

 

Tua Forsström

 

THE SNOW WHIRLS OVER TENALA CHURCHYARD

 

The snow whirls over

Tenala churchyard

 

We light candles so that

the dead will be less

 

lonely, we believe they are

subject to the same laws

 

as ourselves. The lights twinkle restlessly:

perhaps the dead are longing for

 

company, we know nothing of

their doings, the snow whirls

 

The dead are silent as cotton.

A flock of thin children who

 

inaudibly take one step nearer

They look at us closely for a

 

moment: is it because they’ve

forgotten, or remember? The snow

 

whirls over Tenala churchyard

 

As when you fly in

over a city at night at

 

low altitude: the lights become

motorways, the headlamps of

 

the traffic, you arrive

from somewhere

 

Soon you are driving along a

road, one of the twinkling

 

lights in the whirling snow

 

tr. David McDuff

 

 

Jane Hirshfield

 

IT WAS LIKE THIS: YOU WERE HAPPY

 

It was like this:

you were happy, then you were sad,

then happy again, then not.

 

It went on.

You were innocent or you were guilty.

Actions were taken, or not.

 

At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.

Mostly, it seems you were silent—what could you say?

 

Now it is almost over.

 

Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

 

It does this not in forgiveness—

between you, there is nothing to forgive—

but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment

he sees the bread is finished with transformation.

 

Eating, too, is a thing now only for others.

 

It doesn’t matter what they will make of you

or your days: they will be wrong,

they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,

all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

 

Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,

you slept, you awakened.

Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.

 

 

 

 

Uwe Kolbe

 

INGREDIENTS OF SLEEPLESSNESS

 

It was the gnat, I heard it.

And it was—didn’t the grass grow there

between two wars?

It was similar to the reason why I seriously left the city

for the first time.

And it was, that love rejected

to be as simple as a flick of the wrist,

beautiful like a word game,

funny and inexplicable, like the attacking

cat, which, after the attack, continues

to walk elegantly in moderate pace, or

to clean itself, licking the paw with the tongue,

then stroking the back of its head with the wet paw,

with this inimitable care.

It was, that the noise of my city

destroys the remains of the old plaster,

tips the last grey-brown

of the fire wall on to the monstrous lorry,

that nearly ran me over yesterday.

It was, that remnants of the former certainty

decomposed each other, the new one

remains private, the heavily pounding heart

—in our part of the world this is the result

of excessive consumption.

It was, you wake up and mumble,

will you close that window.

 

tr. Ramona Lofton

 

 

Wolfgang Hilbig

 

BERLIN: SUBLUNAR

 

Time has returned to Berlin

and impostors parade along Oranienburger Strasse

around midnight pointing at the sky: time

has returned from exile.

 

The whole city in the bonds of silver gray magic

the full moon rolls: and we the marionettes of its light—

Unrealities that brilliantly inform us.

We and the dead

                                strolling over shadow trenches

we grant each other immortality once more.

O this strong glowing dust among investment ruins

and what an April so briefly before the third millennium

we don’t want to go on counting

 

the green waters in the old buildings slowly burn away.

 

tr. Brian Currid

 

 

 

 

Valérie Rouzeau

 

*

 

    Where my father where behind the cloud above the crane that’s lifting loads up high to build a high-rise building?

    Where inside the murmur of the trees and people passing under trees who feel a drop of water sometimes falling on their hands?

    Where on the roof of the house with the turtle doves and the rag doll that’s hopelessly lost?

    Where on the swing that’s swinging all on its own just brushing the weeds?

    Where it’s all oh where too high up there my father as you were ware ware?

 

tr. Susan Wicks

 

 

Stevie Smith, NOT WAVING BUT DROWNING

 

 

 

 

Valerio Magrelli

 

*

 

And what if these turns of the key
never ended?
And what if I were locked out
left turning the key my entire life?
And what if I lost the key?
I make copies of my keys
make copies of my copies
what I spend to multiply them
helps subtract from each its value,
my Valerio. In the verses’ profile
I reproduce
the keys’ toothed silhouette.

 

tr. Anthony Molino

 

 

Antonella Anedda

 

*

 

If I’ve written it’s for thought

because my thoughts are troubled about life

it’s for those happy beings

close in the evening shadow

for the evening which at a stroke

collapsed on the napes of necks

for every creature that backs away

pressing its spine against the railings

and for the waiting on the tide—without a cry—endless.

 

Write, I say to myself

and I write to press onwards more solitary into the enigma

because eyes disturb me

and the silence of footsteps is my own, mine the desert light

—light of the moorlands—

on the earth of the avenue.

 

Write because nothing is protected and the word wood

shakes more frailly than the wood itself, without branches of birds

because only courage can excavate

patience in the heights

until it takes the weight away

from the meadow’s black weight.

 

tr. Jamie McKendrick

 

 

 

 

Vasyl Makhno


A FESTIVAL OF POETRY


10 poets
listed in the program
recite their verses
before an audience of 10 perhaps 100

a symphony of languages resounds:
Ukrainian with its erotic shrieks of violin
the sounds of Arabic fluttering like linen cloth
the marching rhythms of German drums beating in your chest
the jazz trombone of English spitting out saliva
an oboe digesting in its stomach Spanish pronunciation
the gallant saxophone of French
arousing sexual fantasies in not quite nubile girls

there is no conductor
and the orchestra is at times off beat

the translations are hideous
for they were prepared in haste
the organizers as always are pressed for time

the other 10 poets who will read tomorrow
listen to those 10 who are reading today
they’re yawning and fatigued
thinking about beer and local girls
about the exchange rate
about those few poetesses who came to this festival
and are sorry to note that the age of women’s poetry
steadily approaches retirement age
and what can a woman write after menopause?

regrettably they do not invite as yet to festivals
the young Akhmatovas—Sylvia Plaths—Ana Blandianas—
obviously waiting for them to grow older
which does have a logic of its own

in the country hosting this festival
there is an economic crisis
therefore the hotel is swarming with cockroaches
and the ageing waitresses in the restaurants
elicit no particular interest

poets donate their books to other poets
knowing that no one will ever read them all
for it’s impossible to know all the languages of the world
therefore this ritual reminds one
of the conversation between the deaf and the blind
after the destruction of the Tower of Babel

oh, finally the last one on today’s program is reading

soon we’ll have supper

and a chance to talk about the kind of poetry
that offers no bait to the locals
because all of them are busy solving economic problems
via cell phones

the hall is gradually emptying
as some walk out for a smoke
others for a beer
still others to take a respite at the hotel

the black hole of poetry

is compressing from the number of verses
so as to swallow
—and this is the funniest of all—
the poetry itself
which lately has been serving only poets
just like those ageing waitresses in the restaurant
who have long ceased to be of interest to men

the formula of poetry
expresses that 10 + 10 = 0
though according to mathematicians zero is likely the most important number
in mathematical calculations

and its black hole contains enough energy
to swallow itself

like the dragon of mythology
that devours its own tail
forming with the shape of its body a magic circle

from which there is no escape

 

tr. Orest Popovych

 

 

Frank O’Hara, TO JOHN ASHBERY

 

 

 

 

Vincent Katz

 

STAR

 

I could never rise before

it was time for me to rise

 

though I constantly shot off

in my dream of rising

 

I held everything so close

it became fragile

 

A complete lunar eclipse

on my birthday

 

washes me with great

transformative energy

 

The moon is not greater

than Stella, who rose