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 cufflinks,
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 dispatched 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.
tr. the author
William Shakespeare
SONNET 106
When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights,
And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,
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 expressed
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 looked 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.
Tamás Prágai
AN EMPTY MONTH
This is an empty month, between February and March,
something is out of joint
again and, all the time, something leaves me, red letter
calendar pages fall
out of it and bloody tampons, between February and March, it almost
steams of haste, to be back on the stage—
I remember the taste of your skin on my tongue, but a crying
man falls out of me, his back and shoulders burning,
might be a stuntman on escape practice
out of a house on fire that would collapse and be mud;
I still cannot wish you get off with someone else,
but that time is coming. Taste of blackberry and salted almonds,
the gutter is dripping, like our cry
under the excited, ticking roofs, that little snow
melts, smoked, disappeared
and fading away between February and March,
through the emptiest month, we are due to lack
all things, temperature rising, wet springtime—
the burning eyesight keeps on falling,
the eyesight that before was pure poetry, exaggerated vision,
now crashes on the pavement and turns out, empty
it is and always has been, bursts the transparent bubble with the ivy veins…
in and out is the same. You peel the dark bulb of the heart
in an empty room, among white tiles. A kind of freedom.
tr. the author
Attila Végh
I AM THE EVENING
I live among you, but I don’t care about you,
a ghost: swinging in your rooms,
I fall, hair in your soups,
I twist your trained words,
the world twists anywhere I go,
grinning I give the start signal
on the kitchen ski-slope,
I am the guard at all accidents,
I cry from all taps,
you pour out all babies with me,
my faint shade disappears wobbling
in the room of hopelessness,
and I never leave,
but neither come back in the evening,
because I am the evening,
burn all lights,
you won’t be eaten up by the furnished dawn,
pay all the electricity bills,
I will bring the bill of the night,
I leek out of the cracks of stories,
I melt through the walls of the obtained holiday,
because I am the evening,
a furious, faithless, strange dead body,
bells toll when I air the rooms,
the soul tolls that time,
when I watch TV, the fingers of
a garden oak knock on the window quietly,
yes, things still keep on changing a bit,
but calm down, my beloved ones,
the time is coming soon
when all things will be the same.
tr. Barbara Bércesi & Tamás Prágai
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. Roubles 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 night—surely, 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 lullaby—so sweet.
A poem needs sheep and a shepherd for that sheep.
I 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.
Timothy Donnelly
TO HIS DEBT
Where would I be without you, massive shadow
dressed in numbers, when without you there
behind me, I wouldn’t be myself. What wealth
could ever offer loyalty like yours, my measurement,
my history, my backdrop against which every
coffee and kerplunk, when all the giddy whoring
around abroad and after the more money money
wants is among the first things you prevent.
My phantom, my crevasse—my emphatically
unfunny hippopotamus, you take my last red cent
and drag it down into the muck of you, my
sassafras, my Timbuktu, you who put the kibosh
on fine dining and home theater, dentistry and work
my head into a lather, throw my ever-beaten
back against a mattress of intractable topography
and chew. Make death with me: my sugar
boat set loose on caustic indigo, my circumstance
dissolving, even then—how could solvency
hope to come between us, when even when I dream
I awaken in an unmarked pocket of the earth
without you there—there you are, supernaturally
redoubling over my shoulder like the living
wage I never make, but whose image I will always
cling to in the negative, hanged up by the feet
among the mineral about me famished like a bat
whose custom it is to make much of my neck.
Thomas Campion
THE CYPRESS CURTAIN OF THE NIGHT
The Cypress curtain of the night is spread,
And over all a silent dew is cast.
The weaker cares by sleep are conquered;
But I alone, with hideous grief, aghast,
In spite of Morpheus’ charms, a watch do keep
Over mine eyes, to banish careless sleep.
Yet oft my trembling eyes through faintness close,
And then the Map of hell before me stands,
Which Ghosts do see, and I am one of those
Ordained to pine in sorrow’s endless bands,
Since from my wretched soul all hopes are reft,
And now no cause of life to me is left.
Grief, seize my soul, for that will still endure
When my crazed body is consumed and gone,
Bear it to thy black den, there keep it sure,
Where thou ten thousand souls dost tire upon.
But all do not afford such food to thee
As this poor one, the worser part of me.
THE SPARK IN US
There is a wire between the thighs and palate. A wire on which the organs are hung like laundry. Trousers with their two legs, corsets, handkerchieves of various sizes. In a gust of wind the line comes undone and they all fall down. There is a wire that conducts electricity, and at each end a small tongue. Sometimes there’s a short circuit and the electricity board sends someone out. They open the door of the meter affixed to the wall, check the seals, you pay up. If you do not wish to pay, they lay your wire underground.
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 refused
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, at a moderate pace, or
to clean itself, licking its paw with its tongue,
then stroking the back of its head with its 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 onto 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.
Oh 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
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
brightest in my teaching
Stella smiles in her
offhand style, Luna
shies from encounter
a certain metric binds
them, most people are
nothing in comparison
We went to all the places
together. ‘I’m sorry. For
everything. Was that aloud?’
My life is like that class—
you will be there to help me
Frank O’Hara, A TRUE ACCOUNT OF TALKING TO THE SUN AT FIRE ISLAND
Yuri Andrukhovych
AND EVERYONE FUCKS YOU
The girls weren’t too pretty or graceful,
but one said to the other:
‘They offered me a job in the company.
Secretary—chief of department, computer skills required.
A hundred bucks a month—and everyone fucks you.’
A hundred bucks a month, I thought to myself.
And everyone fucks you.
Is it a plus or a minus, how to understand it? I wondered.
And in what sense, I thought to myself, in the literal
or maybe in the metaphorical?
And in which sense would it be more beautiful?
The literal? The metaphorical?
It gave me something to think about, and the train
rushed on and the wheels
tapped out stupidly
the one same thing the one same thing:
A hundred bucks a month!
And everyone fucks you!
A hundred bucks a month!
And everyone fucks you!
A hundred bucks a month!
And everyone fucks you!
tr. Sarah Luczaj
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
SOMETIME DURING ETERNITY
Sometime during eternity
some guys show up
and one of them
who shows up real late
is a kind of carpenter
from some square-type place
like Galilee
and he starts wailing
and claiming he is hip
to who made heaven
and earth
and that the cat
who really laid it on us
is his Dad
And moreover
he adds
it’s all writ down
on some scroll-type parchments
which some henchmen
leave lying around the Dead Sea somewheres
a long time ago
and which you won’t even find
for a coupla thousand years or so
or at least for
nineteen hundred and fortyseven
of them
to be exact
and even then
nobody really believes them
or me
for that matter
You’re hot
they tell him
And they cool him
They stretch him on the Tree to cool
And everybody after that
is always making models
of this Tree
with Him hung up
and always crooning His name
and calling Him to come down
and sit in
on their combo
as if he is THE king cat
who’s got to blow
or they can’t quite make it
Only he don’t come down
from His Tree
Him just hang there
on His Tree
looking real Petered out
and real cool
and also
according to a roundup
of late world news
from the usual unreliable sources
real dead
Photo: Imagine by Jonathan Dunne
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