Wednesday 31 December 2014

Saturday 30 August 2014

THEY TRAP THE SHE-WOLF - Vasko Popa


THEY TRAP THE SHE-WOLF

- Vasko Popa (1922-1991)


They trap the she-wolf with
steel jaws stretched from
horizon to horizon

They take the golden mask from her muzzle
And tear the secret grass
From between her haunches

They bind her and set
Tracker and pointer dogs
To defile her

They hack her to pieces
And leave her
To the vultures

With the stump of her tongue the she-wolf catches
Living waters from the jaws of clouds
And puts herself together again

* * *
translated by Anthony Weir from the Serbian of Vasko Popa (1922-1991)

THE BEAUTIFUL GOD-HATER - by Vasko Popa (1922-1991)

"We've buried the gods And now it's the turn of the dummies"

THE BEAUTIFUL GOD-HATER

- by Vasko Popa (1922-1991)

A regular customer in a local bar
Waves his empty sleeve
Fulminates from his undisciplined beard
We've buried the gods
And now it's the turn of the dummies
Who are playing at gods
The regular is hidden in tobacco clouds
Illuminated by his own words
Hewn from an oak trunk
He is as beautiful as a god
Dug up recently nearby

* * *
translated by Anne Pennington from the Serbian of Vasko Popa (1922-1991)

BE SEEING YOU - by Vasko Popa (1922-1991)



BE SEEING YOU

- by Vasko Popa (1922-1991)


After the third evening
round in the yard of
the concentration camp
We disperse to our quarters

We know that
before dawn
one of us will be taken
out and shot

We smile like
conspirators and
whisper to each other
'Be seeing you'

We don't say
when or where
We've given up the old ways
We know what we mean

***

translated by Anne Pennington from the Serbian of Vasko Popa (1922-1991)

ARCHIVE FILM MATERIAL - by Ruth Fainlight

ARCHIVE FILM MATERIAL

- by Ruth Fainlight


At first it seemed
a swaying field of flowers
wind blown
beside a railway track,
but then I saw
it was the turning heads
of men
unloaded from
the cattle trucks
at Auschwitz.

* * *
Ruth Fainlight was born 1931 in New York City of Jewish parents, and has lived mostly in England since the age of 15. Her father was born in London, and her mother in a small town on the eastern borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Ukraine). She was educated at schools in America and England, and at Birmingham and Brighton colleges of art, and married the writer Alan Sillitoe in 1959. She was Poet in Residence at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, in 1985 and 1990, and received a Cholmondeley Award for Poetry in 1994. Ruth Fainlight lives in London.

WHERE DID YOUR FEAR OF THE WOLF COME FROM ? - by Besnik Mustafaj

WHERE DID YOUR FEAR OF THE WOLF COME FROM ?

- by Besnik Mustafaj


You were born in the city, my son,
so you never went into the forest,

not even for a stroll.
So how did you get your terrible fear

of the wolf ?

So I'm asking you what a wolf is,
I'm asking you what a wolf's like.

All you can say is that he is voracious
and that when he is hungry
the water lapped by the lamb

is troubled all the way up to its source -
which prevents the tender creature from drinking.

Thus it is obvious that you have never seen a wolf,
my little man.

So where in the bosom of the big city
did your fear of the wolf come from ?

* * *
- translated by Anthony Weir from the Albanian of Besnik Mustafaj, Albanian Ambassador to France 1992-1997

* Besnik Bajram Mustafaj (born 1958) is an Albanian writer and diplomat.

THE SIX DAYS OF GENESIS



SIX DAYS OF GENESIS


In the beginning God
created the heaven
and the earth.

And the earth was
without form, and void;
and darkness was
upon the face of the deep.

(I)

And the Spirit of God
moved upon
the face of the waters.

And God said, Let there be light:
and there was light.
And God saw the light,
that it was good:

and God divided the light
from the darkness.
And God called the light Day,
and the darkness he called Night.

And the evening and the morning
were the first day.

(II)

And God said, Let there be
a firmament in the midst of the waters,
and let it divide the waters from the waters.

And God made the firmament,
and divided the waters
which were under the firmament
from the waters which were
above the firmament:
and it was so.

And God called
the firmament Heaven.

And the evening and the morning
were the second day.

(III)

And God said, Let the waters
under the heaven be gathered together
unto one place,
and let the dry land appear:
and it was so.

And God called the dry land Earth;
and the gathering together of the waters
called he Seas:
and God saw that it was good.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass,
the herb yielding seed,
and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind,
whose seed is in itself, upon the earth:
and it was so.

And the earth brought forth grass,
and herb yielding seed after his kind,
and the tree yielding fruit,
whose seed was in itself, after his kind:
and God saw that it was good.

And the evening and the morning
were the third day.

(IV)

And God said, Let there be lights
in the firmament of the heaven
to divide the day from the night;
and let them be for signs,
and for seasons,
and for days,
and years:

And let them be for lights
in the firmament of the heaven
to give light upon the earth:
and it was so.

And God made two great lights;
the greater light to rule the day,
and the lesser light to rule the night:
he made the stars also.

And God set them in the firmament
of the heaven
to give light upon the earth,
And to rule over the day
and over the night, and
to divide the light from the darkness:
and God saw that it was good.

And the evening and the morning
were the fourth day.

(V)

And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly
the moving creature that hath life,
and fowl that may fly above the earth
in the open firmament of heaven.

And God created great whales,
and every living creature that moveth,
which the waters brought forth abundantly,
after their kind,
and every winged fowl
after his kind:
and God saw that it was good.

And God blessed them, saying,
and multiply,
and fill the waters in the seas,
and let fowl multiply in the earth.

And the evening and the morning
were the fifth day.

(VI)

And God said, Let the earth bring forth
the living creature after his kind, cattle,
and creeping thing,
and beast of the earth
after his kind:
and it was so.

And God made the beast of the earth
after his kind,
and cattle after their kind,
and every thing that creepeth upon the earth
after his kind:
and God saw that it was good.

And God said,
Let us make man
in our image,
after our likeness:

and let them have dominion
over the fish of the sea,
and over the fowl of the air,
and over the cattle,
and over all the earth,
and over every creeping thing
that creepeth upon the earth.

So God created man
in his own image,
in the image of God
created he him;
male and female
created he them.

And God blessed them,
and God said unto them,
Be fruitful, and multiply,
and replenish the earth,

and subdue it:
and have dominion
over the fish of the sea,
and over the fowl of the air,
and over every living thing
that moveth upon the earth.

And God said, Behold, I have
given you every herb bearing seed,
which is upon the face of all the earth,
and every tree, in the which is the fruit
of a tree yielding seed;
to you it shall be for meat.

And to every beast of the earth,
and to every fowl of the air, and
to every thing that creepeth upon the earth,
wherein there is life,
I have given every green herb for meat:
and it was so.

And God saw every thing
that he had made,
and, behold, it was very good.

And the evening and the morning
were the sixth day.

* * *
The Book of Genesis, Chapter One
- from the King James version


* I believe Six Days Genesis to be a most ancient poem, originally of an aural heritage, one that long predates the discovery of writing, for the lines of text are fruity with the breath of chant and the rhythm of bardic-trance in the regular beat of primal mnemonics, with repetitions, doublings, triplings, and layerings to build the telling creation.


THE ENGLISH COUNTRY COTTAGE

The English Country Cottage

- by Ruth Fainlight


A Jewish poet in an English village:
incongruous and inappropriate
as a Hindu in an igloo, a Dayak in
Chicago, a giraffe at the South Pole.

That shadowy yew in the churchyard, only
a few steps away from this cottage door,
was planted in the centuries between
the Lincoln pogrom (when little St Hugh,
they claimed, was murdered by the Jews, and all
Christ-killers left alive were banished)

and the year when Oliver Cromwell changed the law
to grant honourable men of Israelite persuasion,
with their prudent wives and obedient children,
the privilege to be legally present in England.

As a youth, my father was a patriot,
a Labour-voting true blue. But though
he felt entirely English, the problem was:
to certain natives of whatever class
he was a wily, greasy Levantine
and always would be. His solution was
to leave the country, go far enough away
to ‘pass for white’, somewhere he could play
at being pukka-English through and through.
(Yet still more proud to be a Jew.)

Maybe because she came from Bukovina,
my mother had no illusions. She was used to
rejection, born to it. First, the shock
of Ellis Island: another world, another
language (I knew how hard she tried). Then
further uprooting; though the nineteen thirties
were not exactly propitious, her restless husband
— handsome, dreamy, unpolitical —
felt the lure of home, dragged her to England.

I ran straight into the fire’s centre,
towards the focus of trouble, glamour, danger;
danced, like Esmeralda, on the Round Table
as desperately as if to save my life.

Such were my tactics in those distant times.
Now (though mimicking the locals dutifully),
thatch and cruck-beams cannot camouflage
the alien. The carillon rings mockery.

Sometimes I wonder if I should have known better:
to sweetly smile and eat the mess
of pottage — but never sell my birthright
for an English country cottage.

* * *
Ruth Fainlight was born 1931 in New York City of Jewish parents, and has lived mostly in England since the age of 15. Her father was born in London, and her mother in a small town on the eastern borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Ukraine). She was educated at schools in America and England, and at Birmingham and Brighton colleges of art, and married the writer Alan Sillitoe in 1959. She was Poet in Residence at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, in 1985 and 1990, and received a Cholmondeley Award for Poetry in 1994. Ruth Fainlight lives in London.

UNTIL YOU READ

Until You Read

- by Ruth Fainlight


Like music on the page
which has to be played
and heard, even if
only by one person,
this word, this phrase,
this poem, does not exist
until you read it.

* * *
Ruth Fainlight was born 1931 in New York City of Jewish parentage and has lived mostly in England since the age of 15. Her father was born in London, and her mother in a small town on the eastern borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in Ukraine). She was educated at schools in America and England, and at Birmingham and Brighton colleges of art, and married the writer Alan Sillitoe in 1959.

Monday 25 August 2014

CHRISTOPHER ROBIN - by Czeslaw Milosz


CHRISTOPHER ROBIN

- by Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004)

"I must think suddenly of matters
too difficult for a bear of little brain.

I have never asked myself what lies
beyond the place where we live,
I and Rabbit, Piglet and Eeyore,
with our friend Christopher Robin.

That is, we continued to live here,
and nothing changed, and I just
ate my little something. Only
Christopher Robin left for a moment.

Owl says that immediately beyond
our garden Time begins, and that it
is an awfully deep well. If you fall in it,
you go down and down, very quickly, and
no one knows what happens to you next.

I was a bit worried about
Christopher Robin falling in, but he came back
and then I asked him about the well.

'Old bear,' he answered. 'I was in it
and I was falling and I was changing
as I fell. My legs became long, I was
a big person, I grew old, hunched, and
I walked with a cane, and then I died.

It was probably just a dream, it was
quite unreal.

The only real thing was you,
old bear, and our shared fun.

Now I won't go anywhere, even if
I'm called in for an afternoon snack.'


* * *
- translated from the Polish of Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004)

Friday 15 August 2014

On An Apple-Ripe September Morning - by Patrick Kavanagh


A GRACED BEAUTY
-'paying bills of laughter' in 'fields that are part of no earthly estate' -

On An Apple-Ripe September Morning

- by Patrick Kavanagh


On an apple-ripe September morning
Through the mist-chill fields I went
With a pitch-fork on my shoulder
Less for use than for devilment.

The threshing mill was set-up, I knew,
In Cassidy's haggard last night,
And we owed them a day at the threshing
Since last year. O it was delight

To be paying bills of laughter
And chaffy gossip in kind
With work thrown in to ballast
The fantasy-soaring mind.

As I crossed the wooden bridge I wondered
As I looked into the drain
If ever a summer morning should find me
Shovelling up eels again.

And I thought of the wasps' nest in the bank
And how I got chased one day
Leaving the drag and the scraw-knife behind,
How I covered my face with hay.

The wet leaves of the cocksfoot
Polished my boots as I
Went round by the glistening bog-holes
Lost in unthinking joy.

I'll be carrying bags to-day, I mused,
The best job at the mill
With plenty of time to talk of our loves
As we wait for the bags to fill.

Maybe Mary might call round...
And then I came to the haggard gate,
And I knew as I entered that I had come
Through fields that were part of no earthly estate.

* * *
-Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967) farmer-poet, County Monaghan, Ireland

"RACE " - from 'GAMES" by Vasko Popa

"RACE " - from 'GAMES"

by Vasko Popa

- translated from the Serbian of Vasko Popa


A BRIEF HISTORY - by Les Murray

FOR THOSE AUSTRALIANS WHO DON'T LIVE IN MIA-MIAS, WHO NEITHER HUNT AND KILL THEIR MEAT, NOR GATHER DAILY FROM THE WILD, BUT WHO STILL HOLD TO A CONCEIT THAT THEIR LIVES & HOUSES & OCCUPATIONS OWE MORE TO AN ABORIGINAL PAST THAN TO BRITISH EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT



A BRIEF HISTORY

- by Les Murray

We are the Australians.
Our history is short
This makes pastry chefs snotty
and racehorses snort.
It makes pride a blood poppy
and work an export
and bars our trained minds
from original thought
as all that can be named
gets renamed away.

A short history gets
you imperial scorn,
maintained by hacks
after the empire is gone
which shaped and exiled us,
left men's bodies torn
with the lash, then with shrapnel,
and taught many to be
lewd in kindness,
formal in bastardry.

Some Australians would die
before they said Mate,
though hand-rolled Mate
is a high class disguise -
but to have just one culture
is well out of date:
it makes you Exotic,
i.e there to penetrate
or to ingest,
depending on size.

Our one culture paints Dreamings,
each a beautiful claim.
Far more numerous
are the unspeakable whites,
immigrant natives
without immigrant rights
Unmixed with these are Ethnics,
absolved of all blame.

All of people's Australia,
its churches and lore
are gang-raped by satire
self-righteous as war
and, from trawling fresh victims
to set on the poor,
and mandarins now,
in one more evasion
of love and themselves,
declare us Asian.

Australians are like most
who won't read this poem
or any, since literature
turned on them
and bodiless jargons
without reverie
scorn their loves as illusion
and biology,
compared with bloody History,
the opposite of home.


MIRACULOUS FIRES - by Rosemary Dobson



MIRACULOUS FIRES

- by Rosemary Dobson



Dry ash upon the altar breaks in flame.
The crow outlined in charcoal on the wall
Burns, is consumed. And yet this is Not All -
My Thoughts take Fire From The Printed Page.


or 'Miraculous Fires At Lydia, Region, And Elswhere'
- by Rosemary Dobson (1920-2012) - Australian poet


KASPAR HAUSER'S SONG - by Georg Trakl

Picture: Klaus Kinski as Kaspar Hause in the 1974 Werner Herzog film 'The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser.'




KASPAR HAUSER'S SONG

- by Georg Trakl


He truly loved the purple sun,
descending from the hills,
The ways through the woods, the singing blackbird
And the joys of green.

Sombre was his dwelling in the shadows of the tree
And his face undefiled.
God, a tender flame, spoke to his heart:
Oh son of man!

Silently his step turned to
the city in the evening;
A mysterious complaint fell from his lips:
“I shall become a horseman.”

But bush and beast did follow his ways
To the pale people’s house
and garden at dusk,
And his murderer sought after him.

Spring and summer and –
oh so beautiful – the fall
Of the righteous. His silent steps
Passed by the dark rooms of the dreamers.

At night he and his star dwelled alone.
He saw the snow fall on bare branches
And in the murky doorway the assassin’s shadow.
Silvern sank the unborne’s head.

* * *
- translated from the Austrian German of Georg Trakl (b.1887, Salzburg, Austria - d.1914, Kraków, Poland)

ON THE EASTERN FRONT - (1914) - by Georg Trakl



ON THE EASTERN FRONT - (1914)

- by Georg Trakl


The ominous anger of masses of men
Is like the wild organ of the winter storm,
The purple surge of battle,
Leafless stars.

With broken eyebrows and silver arms
The night waves to dying soldiers.
In the shade of the ash tree of autumn
The souls of the slain are sighing.

A thorny desert surrounds the city.
The moon chases the shocked women
From the bleeding stairways.
Wild wolves have broken through the door

* * *
Translated from the Austrian-German of Georg Trakl (1887-1914)

On the Sack of Constantinople - Umberto Eco

On the Sack of Constantinople

-by Umberto Eco


“O Constantinople, Constantinople!
Mother of churches, princess of religion,
guide of perfect opinions, nurse of all learning,
now you have drunk from the hand of God the cup of fury,
and burned in a fire far greater than
that which burned the Pentapolis!

What envious
and implacable demons have poured
down on you the intemperance
of their intoxication,
what mad and odious Suitors
have lighted your nuptial torch?

O mother, once clad in gold
and imperial purple, now befouled
and haggard. And robbed of your children,
like birds imprisoned in a cage,
we cannot find the way
to leave this city that was ours,
nor the strength to remain here,
but instead, sealed within many errors,
we roam like vagrant stars!”

* * *

from' Baudolino', by Umberto Eco

Thursday 14 August 2014

MEN FADE LIKE ROCKS - a lament out of the 'not-so' Great War - by W. J. TURNER

MEN FADE LIKE ROCKS - a lament out of the 'not-so' Great War

- by W. J. TURNER


Rock-like the souls of men
Fade, fade in time.
Falls on worn surfaces,
Slow chime on chime,

Sense, like a murmuring dew,
Soft sculpturing rain,
Or the wind that blows hollowing
In every lane.

Smooth as the stones that lie
Dimmed, water-worn,
Worn of the night and day,
In sense forlorn,

Rock-like the souls of men
Fade, fade in time;
Smoother than river-rain
Falls chime on chime.


- published 1921, Walter James Redfern Turner (1889 - 1946) Australian-born writer and music critic

ON HUMAN AVERSION TO INTELLECTUAL LABOUR - re Samuel Dictionary Johnson - by James Boswell

ON HUMAN AVERSION TO INTELLECTUAL LABOUR

'Johnson continued "Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labour; but even supposing knowledge to be easily obtainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it." '

-James Boswell (1740-1795) -"The Life of Samuel Johnson" (1709-1784)

WHEN YOU SEE A MILLION MOUTHLESS DEAD - by Charles Hamilton Sorley

WHEN YOU SEE A MILLION MOUTHLESS DEAD

- by Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895-1915)



When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you'll remember. For you need not so.

Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.

Say only this, "They are dead." Then add thereto,
"Yet many a better one has died before."
Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,

It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.

* * *

Charles Hamilton Sorley of Aberdeen, Scotland (19 May 1895 – 13 Oct 1915)

I SAW A MAN THIS MORNING (WHO DID NOT WISH TO DIE) - by Patrick Shaw-Stewart

- "Stand in the trench, Achilles, Flame-capped, and shout for me." -


I SAW A MAN THIS MORNING (WHO DID NOT WISH TO DIE)

- by Patrick Shaw-Stewart


I saw a man this morning
Who did not wish to die:
I ask and cannot answer,
If otherwise wish I.

Fair broke the day this morning
Against the Dardanelles;
The breeze blew soft, the morn's cheeks
Were cold as cold sea-shells.

But other shells are waiting
Across the Aegean Sea,
Shrapnel and high explosive,
Shells and hells for me.

O hell of ships and cities,
Hell of men like me,
Fatal second Helen,
Why must I follow thee?

Achilles came to Troyland
And I to Chersonese:
He turned from wrath to battle,
And I from three days' peace.

Was it so hard, Achilles,
So very hard to die?
Thou knewest, and I know not---
So much the happier I.

I will go back this morning
From Imbros over the sea;
Stand in the trench, Achilles,
Flame-capped, and shout for me.


-written at Gallipoli on 13 July 1915 by Patrick Shaw-Stewart, World War One Soldier, old Etonian,and a Classics scholar of legendary genius. He was later killed in France on 30 December 1917.

'Nauplion' write in 2010." I am 66 and a pacifist, and yet for many years, when facing something difficult, I have murmured those last lines."

Picture: Patrick Shaw-Stewart, World War One Soldier-Poet

A SANE REVOLUTION - by D. H. Lawrence



A SANE REVOLUTION

- by D. H. Lawrence


If you make a revolution, make it for fun,
don't make it in ghastly seriousness,
don't do it in deadly earnest,
do it for fun.

Don't do it because you hate people,
do it just to spit in their eye.

Don't do it for the money,
do it and be damned to the money.

Don't do it for equality,
do it because we've got too much equality
and it would be fun to upset the apple-cart
and see which way the apples would go a-rolling.

Don't do it for the working classes.
Do it so that we can all of us be little aristocracies on our own
and kick our heels like jolly escaped asses.

Don't do it, anyhow, for international Labour.
Labour is the one thing a man has had too much of.
Let's abolish labour, let's have done with labouring!
Work can be fun, and men can enjoy it; then it's not labour.
Let's have it so! Let's make a revolution for fun!


- David Herbert Lawrence (1885~ 1930)


THE TERRORIST, HE WATCHES - by Wislawa Szymborska


I delight in this most-modern, timely piece by the prophetic Szymborska

THE TERRORIST, HE WATCHES

- by Wislawa Szymborska


The bomb will go off in the bar at one twenty p.m.
Now it’s only one sixteen p.m.
Some will still have time to get in,
Some to get out.

The terrorist has already crossed to the other side of the street.
The distance protects him from any danger,
And what a sight for sore eyes:
A woman in a yellow jacket, she goes in.
A man in dark glasses, he comes out.

Guys in jeans, they are talking.
One seventeen and four seconds.
That shorter guy’s really got it made, and gets on a scooter,
And that taller one, he goes in.

One seventeen and forty seconds.
That girl there, she’s got a green ribbon in her hair.
Too bad that bus just cut her off.

One eighteen p.m.
The girl’s not there any more.
Was she dumb enough to go in, or wasn’t she?
That we’ll see when they carry them out.

One nineteen p.m.
No one seems to be going in.
Instead a fat baldy’s coming out.
Like he’s looking for something in his pockets and

at one nineteen and fifty seconds
he goes back for those lousy gloves of his.

It’s one twenty p.m.
The time, how it drags.
Should be any moment now.
Not yet.

Yes, this is it.
The bomb, it goes off.


Translated from the Polish of Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012) by Adam Czerniawski

POSTCARD 4 from Szentkiralyszabadja: 'patience flowers in death now'



-

'patience flowers in death now'

POSTCARD 4 - (from Szentkiralyszabadja)

- by Miklós Radnóti (1909-1944)


I fell next to him.His body rolled over.
It was tight as a string before it snaps.
Shot in the back of the head- "This is how
you'll end." "Just lie quietly," I said to myself.
Patience flowers into death now.
"Der springt noch auf," I heard above me.
Dark filthy blood was drying on my ear.

Szentkiralyszabadja October 31, 1944
- translated from the Hungarian of Miklós Radnóti (1909-1944)

Saturday 9 August 2014


THE GREAT DOUBTERS OF HISTORY

- by Stephen Dobyns


The woman who kicked out the back window
of the police car sits chain-smoking and
drinking at the table of the dance floor.
Watching from a barstool, you doubt she
weights over a hundred pounds.

She is gaunt, bony
and resembles a fierce pygmy
warrior. One time she ripped her clothes
in the parking lot, defied police to touch her.

Another time she pursued a patrolman
down the street, then kicked him in the balls.
Maybe she's twenty. Here in the bar she
seems jittery, can't hold her liquor, people
tell you, which is probably true, but you also
respect some who knows she
has nothing to lose.

But you also have nothing to lose but
spend much of you time telling yourself
you do.

In fact the point of society is to
make people think they have something to lose
until a man goes through life as nervously
as if he were carrying a teetery
stack of plates up a dark flight of stairs.

When the women who kicked out the window
of the cop car dances, she shrugs her shoulders
and stamps her feet very fast as if she
weren't dancing but stamping on a multitude
of grievances. Mostly she dances by herself
because few men will ask her.

You nearly ask
her, then change your mind, telling yourself
you are too shy; but really you fear that you too
are something she can easily let go,
fear she'll see through your equivocations,
realize you think you have something to lose
and simply guffaw. Why dance with her at all?

Perhaps you think she might instruct you how
to shove aside the trappings of your life,
because in her life nothing's there for keeps,
or so it seems, and you wish you had that
freedom from the things you own, but you don't
so at last you give it up and go home.

It is a clear spring night. In the parking lot,
two cops lean against their cruiser, staring
at the sky and idly waiting for trouble.

Are you the bad guts? Walking to your car
you think of the fabric of value that surrounds you
as like the night itself, as if you could
poke your finger through it, as if the spots
of light you call stars were the places where
the great doubters of history had jabbed their thumbs.

The younger cop nods hello. You wonder
if they are waiting for the fierce young woman
and if you should protect her, remove your
clothes and shout: 'Take me, take me.'

But you're not
the one they want in jail. You may have doubts,
but none to break the law for.

As you drive home
beside the ocean, the moonpath follows you
on the water like a long finger of light.
'Blame me,' you say, 'go ahead, blame me.'

Tomorrow you'll buy something you think you need,
ditto the next day, ditto the day after that.

Once home, you close and lock yourself inside,
as if you were both guard and prisoner -
prisoner with a question mark to your future
and no days off for your best behavior.

- Stephen Dobyns, American poet

Thursday 24 July 2014

CUTTING THISTLES -by Tony Lintermans


CUTTING THISTLES

-by Tony Lintermans


Decimating thistles by shovel and curse
and rock-jarred hand, I recall my father’s
friendly warning against perfection:
‘To look a thistle in the eye and not flinch
is the test of temperament. If you can nod
“G’day” and walk away smiling, you’re right.
Otherwise you’re always at it.” Wise words.

But vicious glee in the perfectly swung shovel
shooting purple heads skywards is what he missed,
where each stalk sliced off is delirium?
Too late, this white juice dribbling. Summer
will sow these paddocks with thistledown blown
from fallen seed heads, opened. Pre-emptive strikes
leave wounded stalks, a windy father slighted.

* Tony Lintermans, Victoria, Australia

Friday 4 July 2014

THE ANTEATER - by Peter Gebhardt


-beautiful poem-portrait of the Australian Echidna -

THE ANTEATER

- by Peter Gebhardt, Geelong, VIC


Suddenly the soft soil erupts
A nib pushed through
And then a thousands quills
Poised to leave their marks.

It is the nib which fills itself
With the scuttling ants;
The quills that make their points
With the inquisitive invader.

A Kite Is A Victim - by Leonard Cohen

A Kite Is A Victim

- by Leonard Cohen


A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives
like a desperate trained falcon
in the high sweet air,
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your drawer.

* * *

- Leonard Cohen, 1969

BORGES AND I - by Jorge Luis Borges

- " Some honest narcissism without the distracting mirrors ?"

BORGES AND I

- by Jorge Luis Borges

The other one, Borges, is
the one to whom things happen.

I wander through Buenos Aires, and pause,
perhaps mechanically nowadays, to gaze
at an entrance archway and its metal gate;

I hear about Borges via the mail,
and read his name on a list of professors
or in some biographical dictionary.

I enjoy hourglasses, maps,
eighteenth century typography, etymology,
the savour of coffee and Stevenson’s prose:

the other shares my preferences but in a vain way
that transforms them to an actor’s props.
It would be an exaggeration to say

that our relationship is hostile; I live,
I keep on living, so that Borges can weave
his literature, and that literature justifies me.

It’s no pain to confess that certain of his pages
are valid, but those pages can’t save me,
perhaps because good writing belongs to no one,

not even the other, but only to language and tradition.
For the rest, I am destined to vanish, definitively,
and only some aspect of me can survive in the other.

Little by little, I will yield all to him,
even though his perverse habit of falsifying
and exaggerating is clear to me.

Spinoza understood that all things want
to go on being themselves; the stone eternally
wishes to be stone, and the tiger a tiger.

I am forced to survive as Borges, not myself
(if I am a self), yet I recognise myself less
in his books than in many others, less too

than in the studious strumming of a guitar.
Years ago I tried to free myself from him,
and passed from suburban mythologies

to games of time and infinity, but now
those are Borges’ games and I will
have to think of something new.

Thus my life is a flight
and I will lose all and all will belong
to oblivion, or to that other.

I do not know which
of us is writing this page.

* * *
- translated from the Argentine Spanish of Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) Argentinian writer, poet & social critic

THINGS THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN - by Jorge Luis Borges


THINGS THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

- by Jorge Luis Borges


I think of things that weren’t,
but might have been.

The treatise on Saxon myths
Bede never wrote.

The inconceivable work Dante might
have had a glimpse of,

As soon as he’d corrected the
Comedy’s last verse.

History without the afternoons of the Cross
and the hemlock.

History without the face
of Helen.

Man without the eyes that gave
us the moon.

On Gettysburg’s three days,
victory for the South.

The love we
never shared.

The wide empire the Vikings
chose not to found.

The world without the wheel
or the rose.

The view John Donne held
of Shakespeare.

The other horn
of the Unicorn.

The fabled Irish bird that lights
on two trees at once.

The child I never had.

* * *
- translated from the Argentine Spanish of Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) Argentinian writer, poet & critic

ON THE AUSTRALIAN 'SPIRIT OF LIBERTY' 'Never Mind" by Charles Harpur

ON THE AUSTRALIAN 'SPIRIT OF LIBERTY'

'Never Mind"

- by Charles Harpur


My Country, though rude
yet, and wild, be thy nature,
This alone our proud love
should beget and command:
There's a noon in thy broad breast
for Manhood's full stature,
And honest Endeavour's
a lord in the land.

And though much of thy bounty,
by aliens in feeling
Has been made upon heads
the least worthy to fall,
Their reign is nigh past,
and the wrong is fast healing,
And they wide arms encircle
a home for us all.

And though pygmies high-placed
in our councils yet fool us,
In our woods there's a
Giant upgrowing the while -
The Spirit of Liberty -
destined to rule us,
And cheer on the world
from the great Austral Isle!

* * * Charles Harpur (1813-1868) was a native-born Australian poet, son of a transported convict who became a schoolteacher and his transportee wife.






OR -

in the original verse style

ON THE AUSTRALIAN 'SPIRIT OF LIBERTY'

'Never Mind"

- by Charles Harpur


My Country, though rude yet, and wild, be thy nature,
This alone our proud love should beget and command:
There's a noon in thy broad breast for Manhood's full stature,
And honest Endeavour's a lord in the land.

And though much of thy bounty, by aliens in feeling
Has been made upon heads the least worthy to fall,
Their reign is nigh past, and the wrong is fast healing,
And they wide arms encircle a home for us all.

And though pygmies high-placed in our councils yet fool us,
In our woods there's a Giant upgrowing the while -
The Spirit of Liberty -destined to rule us,
And cheer on the world from the great Austral Isle!

* * * Charles Harpur (1813-1868) was a native-born Australian poet, son of a transported convict who became a schoolteacher and his transportee wife.

THE LABOR PARTY - by Tony Lintermans

THE LABOR PARTY

- by Tony Lintermans

A zoo animal that no one visits,
but needs feeding. A cuddle
carried like a rancid parcel
to polling day, nowhere to put it.
A howling muddle with no middle.

Plumb out of soul to sell,
fratricidal rumblings in its tract,
factions or stones in its stomach.
Left, right, pacing like a swell
with a pauper on its back.

Bored, frantic, shaggy and bereft
this beast was once a star:
powerful, nearly moral, popular.
When the leopard has no spots left
we in cages mourn from afar.

-from the anthology 'Best Australian Poems', 2005



COULD WE AS MORTALS - by Charles Harpur


COULD WE AS MORTALS

- by Charles Harpur


Could we as mortals but our end foresee,
How little in our minds the world would be;

Could we as spirits but this life renew,
And be again incarnate as we were,

How little might be done like what we do,
How little cared for that which now is most our care

* * *

Charles Harpur (1813-1868) was a native-born Australian poet, son of a transported convict who became a schoolteacher and his transportee wife.

WELL HAST THOU FOUGHT FOR OUR AUSTRALIAN FREEDOM - TO DR LANG


WELL HAST THOU FOUGHT FOR OUR AUSTRALIAN FREEDOM

To Doctor LANG


(Reverend Doctor John Dunmore LANG (25 August 1799 – 8 August 1878) was a turbulent Scottish-born Australian Presbyterian minister, writer, politician and activist. He was the first prominent advocate of an independent Australian nation.)

To Doctor LANG

- by Charles Harpur


Little, perhaps, thou valuest verse of mine—
Little hast read of what my hand has wrought,

Yet I with thy brave memory would entwine
The muse’s amaranths. For thou well hast fought

For freedom; well her sacred lessons taught;
Well baffled wrong; and delved with far design

Into those elements where treasures shine
Excelling those wherewith our hills are fraught.

And when thy glorious grey head shall make
One spot all-hallowed for the coming days—

Tombed in the golden land for whose sole sake
With labour thou hast furrowed all thy ways,—

Well a young nation shall thy worth appraise
Even through the grief which then shall o’er thee break

* * * Charles Harpur (1813-1868) was a native-born Australian poet, son of a transported convict who became a schoolteacher and his transportee wife.

PICTURE: Rev. John Dunmore LANG (25 Aug 1799 – 8 Aug 1878)

AN EMIGRANT'S VISION

A SHILOH OF FREEDOM - BE THE HOME OF MY HOPE, AUSTRALIA

- An Emigrant's Vision -

- by Charles Harpur


As his barque dashed away on the night-shrouded deep,
And out towards the South he was gazing,
First there passed o’er his spirit a darkness like sleep,
Then the light of a vision amazing!

As rises the moon, from the white waves afar
Came a goddess, it seemed, of love, wisdom, and war,
And on her bright helmet, encircling a star,
Behold there was graven “Australia.”

Her robes were of green, like the mantle of spring
Newly spread by the streams that so mildly
Flow on through yon flock-dappled plains, or that sing
’Mid those blue ranging mountains so wildly:

Her locks were as bright as the lustre that lies
At morn on the seas of the South, and her eyes
Were as deep in their joy as the clear sunny skies—
The clear sunny skies of Australia.

“O stranger!” she said, “hast thou fled from the home
Which they forefathers bled for so vainly?
Does shame for its past thus induce thee to roam,
Or despair of its future constrain thee?

In the far sunny South there’s a refuge from wrong,
’Tis the Shiloh of freedom expected so long;
There genius and glory shall shout forth their song—
’Tis the evergreen land of Australia.

“There Truth her abode on the forest-clad hills
Shall establish, a dweller for ever,
And Plenty rejoice by the gold-pebbled rills,
Well mated to honest endeavour,

Till the future a numberless people shall see,
Eager, and noble, and equal, and free,
And the God they adore their sole monarch shall be—
Then come, build thy home in Australia!”

She said. Towards the South she passed brightly away,
And at once, as from slumber, he started;
But the cadences sweet of the welcoming lay
Yet breathed of the vision departed;

And when o’er the deep these had fadingly spread,
The swell of his heart, as he rose from his bed,
Broke loud into words on his tongue, and he said—
“Be the home of my hope, then, Australia!”

* * * Charles Harpur (1813-1868) was a native-born Australian poet, son of a transported convict who became a schoolteacher and his transportee wife.

SONNET TO THE AUSTRALIAN LIBERTY

"My Political Belief "

- by Charles Harpur


O LIBERTY, yet build thee an august
And best abode in this most virgin clime;
The Old World yet, power-trampled to the dust,
Hath never known thee in thy perfect prime!
Seeing all Rule which at a given time
Expires not, as reposed in Public Trust,
And thence renewable but by Suffrage, must
Against thee in its nature be a crime!
Seeing that all not privileged to name
Their governors—and more, to govern too,
Choosing or chosen, but live unto thy blame!
That all are slaves in act who may not do
Whate’er is virtuous and in spirit who
Believing aught dare not avow the same!

* * * Charles Harpur (1813-1868) was a native-born Australian poet, son of a transported convict who became a schoolteacher and his transportee wife.

Thursday 19 June 2014

PIONEER PHOTOGRAPH - by Jim Dooley

- they do not give themselves to the camera, they suffer it -

PIONEER PHOTOGRAPH

- by Jim Dooley



They stand under the tall trees in the rain.
Behind them, the river slides through the gums.
They are not doing anything, they are just being there.
Some wear felt hats, and the raindrops drop from the brims to the sleeves and arms and cuffs.
Their trousers grow stiff with water, and their boots thick with the rain.
But the spuds are in. This is their land.
Against the river trees lean the spades and the tines of the forks
and a mattock clotted with mud.
They do not give themselves to the camera, they suffer it, like cows to the milker.
They regard its eye unregardingly, faces set in patience.
A struggle of fence leans away into perspective.
Still they are there, standing upright under the trees in the thickening rain.

- Jim Dooley, Australian poet.


- Picture: Hunter Brothers Sawmill, Wandin Yallock

ON DEATH, WITHOUT EXAGGERATION - by Wislawa Szymborska

.



ON DEATH, WITHOUT EXAGGERATION

- by Wislawa Szymborska



It can't take a joke,
find a star, make a bridge.
It knows nothing about weaving, mining, farming,
building ships, or baking cakes.

In our planning for tomorrow,
it has the final word,
which is always beside the point.

It can't even get the things done
that are part of its trade:
dig a grave,
make a coffin,
clean up after itself.

Preoccupied with killing,
it does the job awkwardly,
without system or skill.
As though each of us were its first kill.

Oh, it has its triumphs,
but look at its countless defeats,
missed blows,
and repeat attempts!

Sometimes it isn't strong enough
to swat a fly from the air.
Many are the caterpillars
that have outcrawled it.

All those bulbs, pods,
tentacles, fins, tracheae,
nuptial plumage, and winter fur
show that it has fallen behind
with its halfhearted work.

Ill will won't help
and even our lending a hand with wars and coups d'etat
is so far not enough.

Hearts beat inside eggs.
Babies' skeletons grow.
Seeds, hard at work, sprout their first tiny pair of leaves
and sometimes even tall trees fall away.

Whoever claims that it's omnipotent
is himself living proof
that it's not.

There's no life
that couldn't be immortal
if only for a moment.

Death
always arrives by that very moment too late.

In vain it tugs at the knob
of the invisible door.
As far as you've come
can't be undone.


* * *
From "The People on the Bridge", 1986 - translated from the Polish of Wislawa Szymborska (1923 - 2012) by S. Baranczak & C. Cavanagh

THE HAND THAT SIGNED THE PAPER - by Dylan Thomas

.


THE HAND THAT SIGNED THE PAPER

- by Dylan Thomas
(1914-1953)


The hand that signed the paper felled a city;
Five sovereign fingers taxed the breath,
Doubled the globe of dead and halved a country;
These five kings did a king to death.

The mighty hand leads to a sloping shoulder,
The finger joints are cramped with chalk;
A goose's quill has put an end to murder
That put an end to talk.

The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,
And famine grew, and locusts came;
Great is the hand that holds dominion over
Man by a scribbled name.

The five kings count the dead but do not soften
The crusted wound nor pat the brow;
A hand rules pity as a hand rules heaven;
Hands have no tears to flow.


* * *

- Dylan Thomas -b.1914 Swansea, Wales - d.1953 New York, USA