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.