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Eduardo Espina

MOTHER TONGUE

(It is written and then is heard)

The gaze dreams its being without being right.

Nothing indispensable is inversely proportional:

usage satiates the sylvan the powdered on a par

with appearance. A while ago and in the land

still landscapes. The words wonder after the

weeds in which they wouldn’t reply, and if

they are? A blinding light is all too much

and along the hall almost a situation; the house,

that mirror for sinning later. Everything new

will have a periphery of magpies, liberated

membrane where one can awake. To its anxiety

runs a valiant vision: the sacred river instead

of the homesteads, the speed of gold in honour

of the wind. Meanwhile, the tree of taboo

dared unleash goshawks over the mountains

never unique, passed the pulse from the

papyrus to the memory on the mortality of

the hour between absence and an infinite

thickness: something still to hiccough and

to the dawn bears the habitat the felicitous

sylph. Across the landscape it scratches, that’s

no small matter, and the custom of working in

brief. Now time or the concept returns to its

contest, austere authority to add to the augurs.

Behind the austral wind they attract another

uproar distracted by drawing the drama to the

hours. Between today and now have passed

several weeks, save for Sunday the interminable,

the perfume whose form was felicity. It will be

a while whilst the dawn occurs, quickly

scratching the luck of horseshoes when flush

the fresh sowing rubs the sallow in the heavens

but without ever being so: nothing simple is

similar to the next time. Or must it be the

infinite, pure end, of what and what has been

of the silence on showing there? Silent heights,

sprite of most docile nest of voice to vary with

the will of the tala tree. Lime trees, ice, years

of ñandubay as the heart of water unique gives

them chase and bramble bushes making of the

blue result and reasons for the vixens in the

closure. For such a future goes the dock-tailed

dorado, goes the bit to the beak in its bird,

swirls wild, travels to the invincible before

knowing this. Ah! for the air alone like a point

of view. Summits, soul so as to not cease to

seem, the west wind where so much is that

already was. Course of madreporas, of looking

over the same similarity of sun near the iris.

As far as disturbing outside an infinite sphere

against the frond that in canephora would travel

to see the summer awaiting the pampas-wind,

immobile plan the peace put in peril. Oh! for

the time for after the days given to the

penultimate idea they’d be given, lingua,

Walichú, night of the flat jutes, whenever

they learn on the doorstep. It’s for that for

paying beauty hearths. But not all beautifying

will talk of the oblique in the arboretum:

the bushes bathed in strawplaits, gives the

thumbs-up; the moon’s there to be explained.

In the gem of the eye squawks what’s cracked.

Inside, that which is nothing, ceases to be.

tr. the author

Wallace Stevens, A HIGH-TONED OLD CHRISTIAN WOMAN

Eugene Ostashevsky

ENTER MORRIS IMPOSTERNAK, PURSUED BY IRONIES

6

Do not love               

It is possible that nothing is true anyway

That we live in a forest of begriffons

And that even we ourselves are begriffons, it is possible

That I am not saying what you think I am saying

And that you are not hearing what you think you are hearing,

But that we are scratching and howling on a branch in the dark

To signify our loneliness and desire for mice and other delicious vermin.

Do not love

For when you pop open a human being

All you find is forty feet of intestine

And how lovable is that?

Being a body is an indemnity and an indignity

It sags over time like a deflating balloon

If it toots your horn to embrace something that eats at one end and excretes at the other,

Why stop at people, why not direct your emotions at cows?

Do not love

For love will come to grief

And if it doesn’t come to grief, it will come to grief anyway   

Since one of you must die first

What is the point of anything when everything has an end?

The world is like

The fiddling of a deaf musician in an empty room

He finishes, bows—to whom?—and modestly leaves

And then there’s silence.

How is the silence afterwards different from the silence during?

Edward Herbert

SONNET OF BLACK BEAUTY

Black beauty, which above that common light,

    Whose Power can no colours here renew

    But those which darkness can again subdue,

Dost still remain unvary’d to the sight,

And like an object equal to the view,

    Art neither chang’d with day, nor hid with night;

    When all these colours which the world call bright,

    And which old Poetry doth so persue,

Are with the night so perished and gone,

    That of their being there remains no mark,

Thou still abidest so intirely one,

    That we may know thy blackness is a spark

Of light inaccessible, and alone

    Our darkness which can make us think it dark.

Eugenijus Ališanka

FROM UNWRITTEN CHRONICLES OF WAR

I was following a cart

achilles tendons taut like cords

were playing the march of retreat

the teeth-bitten sword

scraping over stones glistened

I wasn’t last behind me

the line stretched to the horizon

where the red setting sun blazed

the battle was one of many

I don’t even know who

we were trying unsuccessfully to invade this time

to impose a new way of life

I myself already lost

this addiction long ago

I am a good enough soldier

to follow orders tell the truth

for a long time I haven’t read any of those

whose names are written in the chronicles

more and more often I think maybe

they never existed

imagination drifted from art

into masculine occupations

sometimes I think maybe the enemy is different

maybe not ours maybe not an enemy

maybe I just stumble on a clod of clay

bump my head on the door casing

then rave through the nights

about an avatar of god on earth

avatars of a man in heaven

more often I dream of someplace warmer

somewhere in a curia or chancery

to write letters of condolence to mothers of soldiers

to make out health certificates

though I know how such a life ends

I was dragging into middle age

behind my back an inhuman fire glowed

before my eyes unconquered lands stretched

it was autumn the most beautiful season

tr. Harvey L. Hix & the author

Zbigniew Herbert

REPORT FROM THE BESIEGED CITY

Too old to carry arms and fight like the others—

they graciously gave me the inferior role of chronicler
I record—I don’t know for whom—the history of the siege

I am supposed to be exact but I don’t know when the invasion began
two hundred years ago in December in September perhaps yesterday at dawn
everyone here suffers from a loss of the sense of time

all we have left is the place the attachment to the place
we still rule over the ruins of temples spectres of gardens and houses
if we lose the ruins nothing will be left

I write as I can in the rhythm of interminable weeks
monday: empty storehouses a rat became the unit of currency
tuesday: the mayor murdered by unknown assailants
wednesday: negotiations for a cease-fire the enemy has imprisoned our messengers
we don’t know where they are held that is the place of torture
thursday: after a stormy meeting a majority of voices rejected
the motion of the spice merchants for unconditional surrender
friday: the beginning of the plague saturday: our invincible defender
N.N. committed suicide sunday: no more water we drove back
an attack at the eastern gate called the Gate of the Alliance

all of this is monotonous I know it can’t move anyone

I avoid any commentary I keep a tight hold on my emotions I write about the facts
only they it seems are appreciated in foreign markets
yet with a certain pride I would like to inform the world
that thanks to the war we have raised a new species of children
our children don’t like fairy tales they play at killing
awake and asleep they dream of soup of bread and bones
just like dogs and cats

in the evening I like to wander near the outposts of the City
along the frontier of our uncertain freedom.
I look at the swarms of soldiers below their lights
I listen to the noise of drums barbarian shrieks
truly it is inconceivable the City is still defending itself
the siege has lasted a long time the enemies must take turns
nothing unites them except the desire for our extermination
Goths the Tartars Swedes troops of the Emperor regiments of the Transfiguration
who can count them
the colours of their banners change like the forest on the horizon
from delicate bird’s yellow in spring through green through red to winter’s black

and so in the evening released from facts I can think
about distant ancient matters for example our
friends beyond the sea I know they sincerely sympathize
they send us flour lard sacks of comfort and good advice
they don’t even know their fathers betrayed us
our former allies at the time of the second Apocalypse
their sons are blameless they deserve our gratitude therefore we are grateful
they have not experienced a siege as long as eternity
those struck by misfortune are always alone
the defenders of the Dalai Lama the Kurds the Afghan mountaineers

now as I write these words the advocates of conciliation
have won the upper hand over the party of inflexibles
a normal hesitation of moods fate still hangs in the balance

cemeteries grow larger the number of defenders is smaller
yet the defence continues it will continue to the end
and if the City falls but a single man escapes
he will carry the City within himself on the roads of exile
he will be the City

we look in the face of hunger the face of fire face of death
worst of all—the face of betrayal
and only our dreams have not been humiliated

tr. Bogdana & John Carpenter

Fady Joudah

PROPOSAL

I think of god as a little bird who takes

To staying close to the earth,

The destiny of little wings

To exaggerate the wind

And peck the ground.

I see Haifa

By my father and your father’s sea,

The sea with little living in it,

Fished out like a land.

I think of a little song and

How there must be a tree.

I choose the sycamore

I saw split in two

Minaret trunks on the way

To a stone village, in a stone-thrower mountain.

Were the villagers wrong to love

Their donkeys and wheat for so long,

To sing to the good stranger

Their departure song?

I think of the tree that is a circle

In a straight line, future and past.

I wait for the wind to send

God down, I become ready for song.

I sing, in a tongue not my own:

We left our shoes behind and fled.

We left our scent in them

Then bled out our soles.

We left our mice and lizards

There in our kitchens and on the walls.

But they crossed the desert after us,

Some found our feet in the sand and slept,

Some homed in on us like pigeons,

Then built their towers in a city coffin for us…

I will probably visit you there after Haifa.

A little bird to exaggerate the wind                                                                               

And lick the salt off the sea of my wings. I think

God reels the earth in when the sky rains

Like fish on a wire.

And the sea, each time it reaches the shore,

Becomes a bird to see of the land

What it otherwise wouldn’t.

And the wind through the trees

Is the sea coming home.

Mahmoud Darwish

LIKE A MYSTERIOUS INCIDENT

            In Pablo Neruda’s home, on the Pacific

coast, I remembered Yannis Ritsos.

Athens was welcoming those who had come from the sea,

in an amphitheater illuminated with Ritsos’ scream:

             ‘O Palestine,

                        name of the soil,

                                    and name of the sky,

                                                you will be victorious…’

And he embraced me, then introduced me with a victory sign:

‘This is my brother.’

            So I felt that I had won, and that I had been broken

            like a diamond, that nothing but light remained of me /

In a cozy restaurant, we exchanged some affection

about our two old countries, and some memories about

tomorrow: Ancient Athens was more beautiful.

As for Yabous, it cannot take more. The general

has borrowed a prophet’s mask to cry and steal

the victims’ tears: ‘My dear enemy!

I killed you unintentionally, my dear enemy,

because you bothered my tank’ /

Ritsos said: But Sparta broke

in the rise of the Athenian imagination. Truth

and justice are twin brothers that win together. My brother

in poem! poetry has a bridge over

yesterday and tomorrow. The tired fishermen might get together

with those who are exiting mythology.

And together they might have some wine.

            I said: What is poetry… what is poetry in a nutshell?

He said: It is the mysterious incident, poetry,

my friend, is that inexplicable longing

that makes a thing into a specter, and

makes a specter into a thing. Yet it also might explain

our need to share public beauty… /

No sea in his house in ancient Athens,

where the goddesses were managing life’s matters

alongside the kind humans, and where Electra the youthful

summons Electra the old and asks her: Are you

really me?

And no night in his narrow ascetic home

above roofs that overlook the metal forest.

His paintings like the poems are watercolor, and on the floor

of his guest room books were paved like chosen pebbles.

            He said to me: When poetry is obstinate I sketch

a few traps on the rocks to hunt the grouse.

            I said: From where does the sea come

to your voice, when the sea is already preoccupied, my friend?

            He said: From the direction of memories, even though

‘I don’t remember that I was once young.’

I was born to two enemy brothers:

            my prison and my ailment.

And where did you find childhood then, I asked?

            In my sentimental interior. I am the child

and the elderly. My child teaches my elderly metaphor.

And my elderly teaches my child contemplation in my exterior.

            My exterior is my interior.

            Whenever my prison becomes narrow I spread into everything,

and my language widens as a pearl that lights up

each time night is on patrol /

And I said: I learned a lot from you. I learned

how to train myself to love

life and how to row in the white

Mediterranean looking for the way and for home or

for the duality of way and home /

He didn’t care for the compliment. He offered me coffee.

Then said: Your Odysseus will come back safe,

he’ll come back… /

In Pablo Neruda’s home, on the Pacific

coast, I remembered Yannis Ritsos

at his house. He was entering at that time

one of his myths, saying to one of the goddesses:

If there must be a journey, then let it be

an eternal one!

tr. Fady Joudah

Françoise Roy

THE MAKING OF THE HEART

I

            Vena cava: the red greyhound runs loose inside your thin walls, ichor of a lesser state, dressed with innocuous poisons, eager as it is to reach the cardiac kidney (the eternal water-clock, nocturlabium of the body) transmuting dark brown into scarlet.

            Both vena cava a pair of hemoducts sewn in such a delicate sewage, stems of an invisible flower—stipula cordis—unique in the guild of prey animals, carrions, gleaners and garbage collectors (carbon dioxide, what a bombastic way to say ‘waste product’). They no doubt deserve to be decorated for their cleaning labor, their luminous necrophilia. Blessed captivity for the scolopendra of the bloodstream, the brook agitating in its roller-coaster the fluttering pennants of the red blood cells.

II

            Pericardium: the fabric of a translucent petal. Two-leaf case wrapping in its invisible valves the beating pearl of the heart. Satin tegument, a mesh where God has bestowed the bright-red jewel pumping the heady sap of blood.

            What effect could you ever have on the flickering almond the clockmaker from Above has entrusted you? Should you draw a veil on it to make its flesh evermore secret? Should you protect it as if the finest coating of a shield made of organdy? Should you drape it, a milky cloth, onion skin hiding the nesting dolls of the cardiac chambers, so the passing of death, peeling it, shall only leave behind—a gem shining in the very core with the glow of a sun before it withers away—the tiny bone of love?

tr. the author

Anne Hébert

CHRISTMAS

Christmas, old rose window soiled by centuries passing, so many layers of sooty patina in the tympanums of cathedrals, masks and chimeras on the foreheads of men, honey and lime blossom in the heart of women, magic garlands in the hands of children.

Time-worn blackboard where the chalk of age-old dictations scrapes, let us erase it, ancient schoolboy, look at your sleeve turn up where the soot of the world leaves its lichen of ebony,

Woman, wipe your tears, for the promise, since daybreak, sounds the bugle of joy, may your eyes gaze frankly at the fair vessels left in the harbor, as the heart brimming with dreams rips open at sea,

Voices of angels whispering to the dozing shepherd: ‘Peace on earth goodwill toward men,’ the password sung in chorus by the great wars beating on the world’s belly, one calling the other, like the tides of the equinox breaking ashore,

The wounded rolling, twenty centuries on the move, the dead sprouting on the field of honor, crazy seeds sown at random in hasty springs; the faces of love are lost as they go along, blinking in our hands like tiny flames, loads of poppies in a huff,

Those we love, those we hate, braided together in sweet rosaries, fair onions in wind-filled granaries, memories split open, spacious rooms laid for the return of a single footstep on the staircase,

So many innocent squeezed between two gendarmes, crime engraved on their foreheads, carefully recorded by a scribe, a notary, a judge, a priest, all wisdom debased, all power usurped, all hatred legalized,

Who complains about dying alone? What child is born into the world? What grandmother, half-covered by death, whispers to his ears the soul is immortal?

Who gropes for the dark face of knowledge as the light of day rises and the heart has but the sweetness of tears as its only resort?

Heart. Sweetness. Tears. Who rinses words thoroughly in the flowing river, the ones most astray, most bandied about, most dragged around, the ones most fiercely betrayed?

Who, facing injustice, offers his dripping face, who names joy to the right and misfortune to the left, who starts the morning anew like a nativity?

Christmas. Love. Peace. What gold-digger swills in the stream a heap of sand and pebbles? For a single noun shelled as a nut, the splendor of the Word comes into being.

tr. Françoise Roy

George Szirtes

CROMER GREEN AT THE REGENCY CAFÉ

I used to wonder at the old ones sitting

in cars parked neatly opposite the sea

with Sunday papers in their laps, steadily

dozing near uneventful water, knitting

in silence, reading, waiting. What was the sense

of congregating here with weathered faces

beside these terminal railings in places

that signalled departure and indifference?

The sadness of the English, I thought. Odd

how they folded in on themselves at last,

something serious must have happened here

under the jurisdiction of this grey-green god

they weren’t exactly worshipping, but cast

respectful glances at across the pier.

Out on the pier a three-legged dog beamed

happily at its master. Water fribbled and scrabbled

below the walkway, laughing at some ribald

double-entendre. Someone must have dreamed

all this at a time of comic anxiety.

Fisherman were casting their last lines.

Great towering hotels flashed gleeful signs.

The moon rose over the building society.

Boys were trying to surf into the stones

along the beach. Someone had thrown away

a paper bag which was carried by a gust

past cartons and upended ice-cream cones.

There were cups of tea at the Regency Café

and cod and chips on tables covered in dust.

There was nothing to say about this. It was

saying itself in the language of self-delight,

beautiful and formed, talking in spite

of us through its own generated grammars

in a kind of English no one actually spoke,

leaving behind a faint linguistic trace

like a historical essence, a lost grace

that no one act of history could revoke.

Now the wind was rising. Waves were barred

with patches of pure colour, each a shimmer

in the coming dusk with echoes of dying sound,

but clearly defined, the image sharp and hard.

A brilliant half rainbow was growing dimmer,

retreating to its source beneath the ground.

I could imagine being one of the old,

staying here for ever, staring past

the lit pier and searching the overcast

sky for the moon in the growing cold.

Nature was peopled with coherent signs

that anyone could read. The waitress brought

the bill and we stood up. It was a short

journey home and we should start it… Lines

of lightbulbs were gently swaying outside

and the wind was fresh from the north. Our car

waited, parked with all the rest in the drive

by the sunken gardens. Another seagull cried