Pilgrim Moses, Odysseus & The Wise Men

Pilgrim Moses, Odysseus & The Wise Men

"Journey Of The Magi"

- by Frank Turner

Moses was old, a chill in his bones.
Falling apart, he knew in his heart that his time had come.
As he lay in his tent in the hot desert sands,
he smiled at how he would never see his promised land.

He sang "I could have lived and died an Egyptian prince,
I could have played safe,
but in the end the journey's brought joys that outweigh the pain."

Odysseus sat tired and alone.
He'd always held out against all the doubts that he would come home.
But now he was here, his soul felt estranged.
His wife and his dog, his son and his Gods, everything changed.

He sang "I could have stayed and ruled as an Ithican prince,
I could've played safe.
But in the end the journey's brought joys that outweigh the pain."

Balthazar rode for seven long years, eastwards and far,
he followed his star, and it brought him here.
To a stable in ruins in some backwater town,
to a virgin defiled, no king but a child, too small for a crown.

He sang "I could have lived with my Gods as a Persian prince,
I could've played safe,
but in the end the journey's brought joys that outweigh the pain."

Paupers and kings, princes and thieves,
singers of songs, righters of wrongs, be what you believe.
So saddle your horse and shoulder your load,
burst at the seams, be what you dream, and take to the road.

PALISADE

-lyrics by Parker Millsap

Sometimes I don't fit in my own skin'
'I am uncomfortable, for after all'
I'm just a carbon ball housing a soul

'And every time I try to pray
A memory gets in the way
And I forget what it was I was supposed to say
Hidin' in my palisade

* * *

'PALISADE' -lyrics by Parker Millsap

Personal

PERSONAL

by Anfisa Osinnik

My hemispherical world,
feminine,
left-handed,
between complexes of filth
and queen.
And your right-handed world,
and your global
oedipal mind ...

***

With Eve's putrefaction,
with Eve's depravity
Eve's apple becomes
the sapphire-colored
hermaphrodite flower,
the impossible
flower ...

* * *
translated from the Russian of Anfisa Osinnik (b.1957) by Johannes Beilharz

Dualism

DUALISM

- by Anfisa Osinnik

I say bird
You say song
I say sea
You say anchor
I say road
you interrupt me: road home.
Your body is surface,
surface without secrets, without tides
my body is secret,
shipwreck to all your ships
you say bird
I say bullet
You say sea
I tear down the word with the wave.
You say road.
The sea has no roads.

* * *

translated from the Russian of Anfisa Osinnik (b.1957) by Johannes Beilharz

Anfisa Osinnik was born in Siberia, Russia, and studied at the Maxim Gorki Institute for Literature in Moscow. She has been living in Rancho Viejo, Veracruz (Mexico) for fourteen years. Her first poetry collection in Spanish, Dialectos del Fuego, was published in Mexico in 2003.

High-Altitude Flight Via Olympus

'Up in the sky we are inescapably tied to the earth.'

High-Altitude Flight Via Olympus

- by Hellmut Seiler

Immersed in
shredded ray bundles
of an evening in May

- the Olympus, bald,
godless. At least when
viewed from above.

The seat of the immortals below. Above
the heads Mickey Mouse, flickering.
The sea glistens from far away, the surf

is in one's ear. "Would anybody care to
make a purchase?" Up in the sky we are
inescapably tied to the earth.

Web of clouds, words scurry
along, the only fixed point
between heaven & earth.

Deeds follow
close behind
in thought.

* * *

- English translation from the German of Hellmut Seiler by Johannes Beilharz

When The Rooms -by Johannes Bobrowski

WHEN THE ROOMS

-by Johannes Bobrowski

when
the rooms are deserted
in which answers are given,

when
the walls,
and narrow passes fall,

shadows
fly out of
the trees,

when
the grass
beneath the feet
is abandoned,

white soles
tread
the wind

the bush of thorn flames,
I hear its voice
where no question was,

the waters
move
but I do not
thirst.


-translated from the German of Johannes Bobrowski (1917-1965) by Ruth and Matthew Mead

Can You Imagine - by Artur Międzyrzecki

CAN YOU IMAGINE

- by Artur Międzyrzecki (1922- 1996)

Absence
Can you imagine
Absence

Not as the the opposite
Of something that is
and breathes

Or a gap
in the universal
presence of things

Or a catchword
that calls for symbol's mediation
Or for dialectic quibbles

But as infinite
transparence
When no images

take root
A colourless
invisible monochromy

Absence
Something that's
not there

That's
not there
anymore.

* * *

- translated from the Polish of Artur Międzyrzecki by Stanislaw Baranczak & and Clare Cavanagh