January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
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Fragile Context
By Kristin Hannaford
Post Pressed
ISBN 9781921214189.
324/50 Macquarie St,
Teneriffe, Qld, 4005
order from postpressed@gmail.com
Reviewed by ANGELA MEYER
Poetry can exist between boundaries of communication. It can have an awareness of itself in the uniqueness of its form, unlike a blanket of prose which acts to unfold a narrative. Kristin Hannaford’s poems also thematically blur or dissolve lines, those related ones that exist between culture and nature. She invokes the binary to acknowledge one’s reliance on the other, to promote the reader’s recognition of one because of the other, and just subtly, the danger of one overwhelming the other. In such a way, the form of the poem and its awareness of itself creates a beautiful irony, that the poem is a product of culture, of humankind, but would not exist without nature’s influence. In a way then, much of the poems in ‘Fragile Context’ border on romanticism, although with the modern interruption of ‘progress’ and moments of post-modern inevitability or acceptance.
The poem ‘Mountain’ is a dedication to the poet’s father: a joyful poem of slowly reduced stanzas. There is an empathetic association with the father’s experience, taking a long trip to work and back each day. The narrator imagines him on the train with a utopian home-vision, a life-affirming comfort that awaits him. ‘The distance between the lookout and the car is short./Your chest is tight with breathlessness//and this view.’ The last part of this stanza is both italicised and indented to the end of the passage. It enables the reader to hold their breath on the mountain, which is metonymic for the spirituous joy in nature’s whole, as are the eucalypt leaves he inhales. Overall, the poem explores a quiet acceptance of the balance of work and home life, a gratefulness for the coexistence of environments.
The poet’s children and lover are an extension of the self, nature’s existence in bodily form. ‘Birthday’ presents a contemplation of aging, uncomfortably related to rough wood and the smoothing over of oil, coating as opposed to fixing. But the poet’s child’s smile brings her back to the concentration of a moment and negative reflection is transformed into ‘possibilities’. In ‘Losing the Boy’ the child is breaking his link with the mother and becoming one with new formations. Hannaford innovatively describes a skate-park and its occupants. Appropriate terminology is made poetic as the reader sees, hears and senses the environment, anxious with her to find her son. He is crossing between her and this new culture ‘Almost unrecognizable,/ my son, the man -/ if it weren’t for the blue laughter of his eyes.’ Here, the poet reclaims the son, as forever inseparable from his biology, as nature’s persistence, even when the body is immersed in cultural activity. The lover is invoked in ‘Dismembered (two voices)’. A degree of mystery is maintained in the intimacy of the poem. It literally dismembers its actors, body parts explained, explored and satisfied, or are they? The line ‘this is enough’ brings comfort. The lover also exists in ‘The Night Storms’, a poem about consistency. Where change is inevitable, a memory can reinvigorate what has gone. Around these human endings and reimaginings, nature pervades. The majestic is tied by Hannaford to the everyday – ‘Lightning appears at first as a distant flicker -/ the way a television screen lights up a hallway.’
The poetic observer also experiences moments alone. ‘In the Spirit of Impermanence’ is a manic poem, a rebellion. It is an ode to joyful poetry refusing to be constricted by fashions or movements. It seems inspired by frustration and a ‘throwing off’ of burdensome expectation. She encourages one to ‘abandon pronouns & spirited rehearsals’. In ‘She Leaves From an Australian Forest’ there is a less celebratory aloneness. There is a sense of loss pervading the sparse syntax. One of the few poems with no punctuation or capitals, it flows from one end to the other, space and words interpolated as the woman is with the forest she is departing from. It connotes the coexistence of woman with nature. She recalls someone who is addressed, thinking of returning to them after day-to-day frustrations, contemplating amongst ‘leaves which refuse to homogenise’. Her mood is far-reaching, it is not just the ‘you’ addressed in such statements as ‘stands of trees humanise our frailty’ but a collective. The natural elements and formations remind her of bodily features, again making human and nature synonymous. The last line is potent as we imagine her leaving this memory, this spirit to join the sun ‘ascending’, spirituality and transience are invoked, and the last line resonates with its evocative ‘sounds of sclerophyll breaking’.
Body/nature/art are combined again in ‘Graphica Botanica’, and in ‘Music for Insects’ with focus on the eye and vision. The poet in this one is segregated by a window, but the eye explores nature with a disembodied power. Humans are as fragile as birds in ‘Whistling’ and ‘Displacement’.
Narrative transition is implemented in ‘Pumpkin Island Notes’, a series of four poems. They act as a snapshot of a holiday – known and unknown, nature intertwined with history and characters melded to place – ‘a memory of place, sharp as first incision’. It is extraordinarily vivid, and thickly encapsulating. There are pieces metonymic and metaphoric – coral, bones, for an ocean, a human, a whole. They are then fleshed out with mini-narratives of characters in place – past and present. Another destination is traversed in ‘Tracing Air – South Island’. It begins almost with the rhythm of a nursery rhyme. There is a passionate embrace of nature, a moment in time. It is a poem to smile at. The voice is overwhelmed at the beginning, all is ‘too magnificent’, but then the woman and land become one, she recognises herself in it – ‘a green wild dress// riding thighs and abdomens’. The play of lines with steps and pauses, the assonance and slight-rhymes create an anticipatory envelopment. The development of tone by the end is celebratory and of a woman recognised.
The poet’s delight at language, the discovery of words, their usage, their bodily motion (the tongue deciphering them) is evident in much of the work. In ‘Fishing (a meditation)’ the poet applies words for the value of their sound. Scientific names ‘Saccostrea glomerata’, textural like the fingers on the fishing line. Words italicised for consideration, tied in with sensory recollection, conscious associations – ‘Estuary, the word coats tongue/ and memory, sediment. Silt/ mixtures of detritus and the fecund.’ The construction of the fisherman is not as important as the quiet, the beauty of solitude and the engagement in an enjoyed activity, much the same as reading a poem.
In all, there is much to discover within the pages of ‘Fragile Context’. The curiosity of language carries on to a creative curiosity of narrative. The final poem ‘Jesus in the Swimming Pool’ playfully questions a character’s existence. It is a philosophical finish to the chapbook, inviting the reader to question the environment around them, and further, themselves within the environment. In essence, it is their ‘context’ that is brought forward. Are we to float also? What does this Jesus-figure see that the other swimmers with their heads down do not? Outside the pool are the forests and mountains and many-layered humanities where each reader carves a tract. The poetic voice is not only an observer of these trajectories, but a questioner of the divisions that exist between them. Hannaford traverses nature and culture and ultimately displays awareness, preciousness, and most certainly the encouragement of joy in such fragility.
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
Heather Taylor Johnson moved from America to Adelaide in 1999. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Adelaide, is a poetry editor for Wet Ink magazine, and the author of the poetry collection Exit Wounds. She reviews poetry and other artforms for various publications. She has a husband, three children under six and a feisty pup, and finds the bathtub a welcome office space.
Shovelling Snow
There is subtlety in a morning snow
silent from the picture window and I’m curled cat-like
on my favourite couch, hot chocolate in my favourite mug,
warming my two morning hands, contemplating objects hidden
covered and coated with winter;
that lump that grew beneath her not yet forty skin.
Last night the phone call.
I spend the day in sweater and sweats and knitted socks
typing away at what I don’t know (death buried beneath the snow?)
because I want insight and closure
and most of the time I sit, staring at the foreign snow,
waiting to grow numb.
At three o’clock my computer rests,
a second cup of chocolate waits
while the hanging sun, timid, waits
to drop below the layered roofs
and the stewing of moose sausage waits,
the uncorking of the South Australian cab sav too
-because we wish to toast her in her own native flavour
and Canadian red wine lacks the complexity we are after.
If only I could find my couch and sit in the silence
of the late afternoon snow
but the driveway’s impatient now, covered and coated
with piles and hours of fresh white subtlety.
Christ but there is no subtlety in shovelling snow
and it does not dare to wait.
Tomorrow they will bury her in the dry, cracked
summer-drought soil, her not-yet forty years,
and as they comfort one another in their daylight despair
this house will be quiet with sleep,
not conscious of how we long for the sun.
The midnight will bring more snow and it will cover
my driveway once more, it will cover the tracks of our daily lives,
it will cover the warmth of the deep underground.
Spaces
I suggest something different from longing,
entirely separate from belonging.
I propose spaces.
Not holes or gaps
implying absence or worse
emptiness
but spaces as places
between what we know.
The big sky
my mother’s face
pizza sauce served thickly.
‘Awesome’ ‘cookie’ ‘garbage can’
my brother’s crooked eye.
SUVs and mountain streams
a bluebird’s song a hummingbird’s wing, tall glasses of 2% milk
my father’s towering body.
Vineyards
combustion heaters
saying ‘partner’ rather than ‘husband’
and sometimes stopping
to remember
he has an accent.
Port dolphins
gumtree sky
the footy the ocean
ubiquitous meat pies.
The space I am suggesting
between here and there
is not so big—
it’s enormous.
before noon
brick backyard
water bottle and phone:
or ‘my birthday poem’
The international dateline confuses calendars and friends
so yes, they all have an excuse.
Here’s to calling card expirations
and the baby’s almost due
and I didn’t get home until late last night,
and here’s to my forever forgiving simply just forgot
but you must know this:
that on this particularly sentimental day,
that here so far from the reaching Blue Ridge
I am waiting telephone on table
brick backyard.
This day is hot
like the summer tried to sneak away,
got caught red sweaty-handed
and spilled all over my body,
and on this day I wish the scent
of the ocean three kilometres away,
for my son to sleep a full two hours,
to tan myself bare
thinly layered sunscreened skin
wisteria my thick fortress.
Sweet family and those pictures of party hats
children with vague names
brown and green corduroy clothes
of the mid 70s we all seemed to wear,
remember this day
colour me into your latest photo
and stick it on the fridge.
Undomesticated university girls,
the river dudes with holey jeans,
my three-year tangle mistake
who shared my tiny bed,
our drinks were always raised to the camera’s lens,
so raise your drinks now, beyond your horizon;
it’s midnight your time
and I’m before noon water bottle ready.
I wish for the dj playing soul
to keep on spinning til the day is done
as I wish for accents like my own
because nothing speaks more of home
than an emphasized r at the end of my name,
the telephone and a strong memory
of an endlessly wooded grass backyard
and the reaching Blue Ridge in the distance.
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
Les Wicks has toured widely and seen publication across 11 countries in 7 languages. His 8th book of poetry is the Ambrosiacs (Island,2009).
http://leswicks.tripod.com/lw.htm
Boy Soldier
He talks about childhood
and prays for old age. There is no middle.
Ishmael Beah shot their feet and after a day of screams
shot their heads for the birdless quiet of evening.
Soldiers in the grasslands
reciting Shakespeare while they
snort brown-brown.
He was twelve.
We are all programmed to believe, a flaw
in the biology.
Our flaky hearts
on all those disappointing flags.
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
Lorraine Marwood is a Five Islands press poet and has two children’s books of poetry published as well as a verse novel with Walker ‘Ratwhiskers and Me’. Her latest verse novel ‘Star Jumps’ will be released in June 2009. This novel really encompasses the influences of her poetry, the rural landscape and the surprising detail, all a way to celebrate life in words. Lorraine also writes poetry strategies and is available for workshops across all age levels. www.lorrainemarwood.com
Releasing
Her pelargoniums, her little clucks of treasure
strong square ooze like catspray
fans of flowers like dragon wings
a wintering of wooden shelves
step laddering the back door alcove.
I came into her shuttered world,
I could call her grandmother.
She prodded, poked, admonished, preached
every word a lesson to decipher
a frost crunch world where shyness
was fashioned into stalactites that sharded
straight for heart.
She locked love up like Easter chocolate
turned pale with mothballs-
but here I offer
the sizzle of sausages
the sharing of her soft feathery
double bed, twin trunks up on the wardrobe top
smocked cushions
a cold electric fire
and Grimm’s fairy tales
signed with love from Nanny
bought at EJ Brown’s bookshop.
I have blown to dandelion seed her love of words
not restrained them with dire consequences-
wood smoke and finches
arch over my back door
and a tiny skink lizard
races over the melted frost
mid morning.
I come into her sunlit world.
Salt Desert Donkey
We visited once on these salt desert plains
her wooden sixty year old house
only tree shade around,
desolation of farming inheritance.
She kept a donkey when all the other
farming wives kept chooks or ducks
or snails in their gardens.
She fed grey ears and braying,
softness in the salt-grit landscape.
The donkey moved around the periphery paddock,
looking down on a barbed wire garden,
stunted irises and under the tankstand
a scraggle of marguerites.
And in the autumn when paspallum reared like tiger snakes,
she mowed the measured square of her backyard lawn,
tossing the grey sleet of grass
into the donkey’s paddock.
Neighbours whispered about the
useless animal, its awkward shape
how salt eats more than pasture and trees,
laps at the very foundation of wooden houses
shearing sheds, windmills,
but this farmer’s
wife knows the seawater drink
of their gossip and reasons
that a donkey is future insurance
for salt desert trekking.
Celestial
Between tractor lights
and the first tenting pegs of sky
he looks out to the night
liquid,
deep blue
with a scarf of cloud.
Stars trace the outline
of huge celestial tent,
incubator to his solitary thoughts.
It’s the one intense time of the year
when his temporal strand of humanity
feels the huge canopy of the unknown.
It’s not that he’s extraordinary,
he’s one of many; a time -worn
quantity of farmers out sowing the world’s
granary. It seems to him puny, slow,
awkward. The power of the tractor
sidles away to a cough. There above him
a star shoots, light cutting down through
the ridges of sky. He feels he could
put out his hand, squeeze the light’s shower
compress it like clay, tattoo his fingerprints,
but his reach is minuscule.
The fireworks spit and finish,
he turns the tractor and ploughs
another circumference of the paddock
he gulps in the night air,
believes he tastes stardust on his tongue.
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
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Anuradha Vijayakrishnan was born in Cochin, India. She completed a B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from Calicut University, Kerala and a post graduation in Management from XLRI, Jamshedpur. She writes fiction and poetry while pursuing a full time corporate career. In 2007, the unpublished manuscript of her first novel, Seeing the girl, was long listed for the 2007 Man Asian Literary Prize. Her work has appeared or is due to appear in Eclectica, Bare Root Review, Nth Position, Orbis, Desilit, Aesthetica, The Pedestal Magazine, The King’s English, Every Day Poets, Stony Thursday Anthology, Poetry Chain, Indian Literature, Muse India , Asia Literary Review and Magma.
Beads
In her hands they are like dust. Or sun-dried
blood, fine-polished. Glittering, unlike
her eyes that slept through the day and through
the caveman nights that came snaking
out of their den and shed their skin
on hers; on hers, for god’s sake.
With her hands, she unravels them on her
skin; that skin scrubbed twice and raw. The beads
drizzle over, touching off cold sparks, tiny
nerve spots that meet and combust. So there is
life yet, and there is something that lives. Rubies
beneath the damaged soil, secret black emeralds
that laugh at the night, laugh at the scarred day.
On her hands she makes red markings. One cross
for every spent force, one knot for each thing
that was taken. She moves those hands in clenched
circles – willing them to cleanse
and be cleaned.
The beads find their way to her feet. Sunspots fall
into her eyes and she turns them into tears.
Who dances?
When I dance, I am like a rustic. Oily-haired
and round armed. I flap my head and grin
at invisible birds. I rise and fall in the garden
sand, laugh out loud when the rhythm
beats my feet.
So this music suits; this wooden bench
on which I can dance suits too. I can clank
my rings, my beaded chains here. Can imagine
wood drums, swing my bountiful hips, go one-two
with my heels, my shoulders, my chin.
Snake-dance, peacock-dance; dance even
like a happy calf with new milk sloshing
in my mouth. Kick my donkey heels
as if they can’t break.
And then, the neighbours fall off, their pet dogs
and their studio kitchens fall
off. My cellphone shatters against the wall, and the internet
dissolves into unreality. Beetles and moths
gather in the corners to watch.
Green plants in window boxes shiver
at the feet, of this goddess
who dances, like a rustic.
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
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Margaret Bradstock has published four books of poetry. The most recent are The Pomelo Tree (which won the Wesley Michel Wright prize) and Coast (2005). In 2003 she was Asialink writer-in-residence at Peking University. Margaret is co-editor of Five Bells for Poets Union, and Honorary Visiting Fellow at the University of NSW.
Recherche Bay
“In wildness is the preservation of the world.” – Thoreau
When Aborigines watched
Abel Tasman beating up the coast
(overhangs of cliffs
their camping spots), the great eucalypts,
sclerophyll forests, were already old.
Green is the colour of renewal,
of wild woodland and cultivated garden,
amber the fossilised resin
like tears, or blood on a scimitar’s curve,
the nets and traps of war.
If no-one is there can you still
hear the forests screaming?
Bulldozed out of history,
the gestures of reconciliation
become sites of mourning,
incendiaries dropped from a helicopter
our defeat, the blackened
fern-covered boles.
Pond Life
‘Memory is the only thing that binds you to earlier selves; for the rest, you become
an entirely different being every decade or so, sloughing off the old person,
renewing and moving on. You are not who you were…nor who you will be.’
– Sebastien Faulkes, Charlotte Grey.
Your gardens reminding me
of a different space, penny-frogs
pulsating in darkness,
tea-lights on water.
There is
always water, recurring,
water I dive into, under,
breathing, floating, drifting
in tadpole existence,
my memories fabrications.
Sometimes the tide rises
to the head of the cliff
(sighing among grasses),
green weed tangles like hair.
Dead fish, two-dimensional,
clutter the shoreline,
eyes whittled out
like holes in memory,
moonlight’s abandoned haul.
Frogmen surface,
leviathan-like
on the white tide.
You are insubstantial,
stitched into the seascape
and the clacking sound of boats.
There are dwelling places,
mansions within mansions,
rooms within rooms,
a labyrinth of mirrors.
Waking, I am not here,
my amphibian selves
spiralling down
to the sea’s wrack.
Shadow-puppets rap sound-tracks
in crazed patois
on the garden wall.
The Baptist
Light like gauze,
an oasis somewhere before me
or a Messiah descending.
Living on locusts and wild honey
(dreaming of wine, of bread)
I find my chapel in the wilderness.
Caravaggio will paint me
identifiable by my bowl, reed cross
and leather girdle.
Herod Antipas will proffer my head
upon a platter
to please a lissom dancer.
And I will ask
if what I saw as baptism
was merely death.
– after St John in the desert, by Sidney Nolan
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
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Stuart Cooke is a Sydney-based writer but at present he is in Chile undertaking research for a PhD on Australian and Chilean ecopoetics. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in various magazines in Australia, the USA and the UK, including upcoming editions of Overland and Meanjin. In 2007 his translation of Juan Garrido Salgado’s Once Poemas, Septiembre 1973 was published by Picaro Press.
Birthday Shift
The entire memory of waking, a
quarter of an hour ago, might also
be handed back to forgetfulness, incurring
no loss. It’s amazing
how quickly it goes – money, I mean,
and love. I had love, once.
I had it I knew
it was there. But
you can’t write about that swift
and sudden fall from grace It’s
that mild evening, ruled
by still air. “Mordecai,” she asked, “what
became of the old books?”
“Books?”
He could have been contemptuous or filled
with hope: you can write this way, you
assembled in wash, blubber, observation,
folding
silica,
can. Write. And I
turned on the television:
Germany’s done with words:
too much to be said; nothing
left
to say Our
daydreams carry us back to it. Love.
Love,
in the faint, white light. You can’t write
about that. At dawn
I see a fox
on the lawn the queerer
the dearer in pink the moment leaves
us,
and passes on.
I was filled with a desire to say, ‘Those
were the days’. Return. Victory shifts, you know, now
one man, now another. Shift. Light
shift. What silly
physics! (now as I look) You
can write lonely poetry. This armageddon of the brain
is lonely poetry and the Jew,
who was seen to be quite elderly,
made his own way to the door.
I came back filled. I hate
birthdays, this enforced
loneliness we step into
locations and change them history
channel blues.
I’m sorry, for whereas the real beginnings
of images
will give concrete evidence I
wouldn’t have fallen in love of the non-I
that protects the I if I wasn’t a lonely poet to teach
the world to laugh at virtue to drink
gin like love
on leaves. Parks filled
with the dream departed,
leaving him there, his heart racing with hope
shifts, birthdays shift
new work in old
light.
Cited texts:
‘Breakfast’, by Martin Harrison
‘Stranger in Moscow’, by Michael Jackson
Riders in the Chariot, by Patrick White
‘Lighthouse Series’, by Kate Fagan
The Poetics of Space, by Gaston Bachelard
‘hare encounter’, ‘art nouveau’ and ‘nella casa di balla tutto balla’, by Michael Farrell
The Iliad, by Homer (trans. Robert Fagles)
Those Without Limbs
from Sihanoukville, Cambodia
Those without limbs, those
with round stumps or shards of bone
covered up
are absent from clubs.
Clubs
are the realms of the beautiful,
the whole,
the bodies untouched by history.
Those without limbs are left
to drag themselves along the beachfront,
their half-thighs drawing thick lines
in sand
which we, the varnished, the well-
composed,
step over with wet feet, with
lovers
smiling, and damp wads of riel for the white
blood of bulbous, dissected coconuts.
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
Daria Florea was born in Romania in 1964. She is an enthusiastic single parent and short story writer currently undertaking her post graduate studies at the University of Newcastle, Australia. After fleeing the communist dictatorship in her home country and residing in Australia for almost 20 years, she has rekindled a professional interest in the literary and political themes in Ana Blandiana’s poetry.
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Hibernare
Nu-i asculta pe fraþii mei, ei dorm,
Ei nu-nþeleg cuvintele care le strigã,
În timp ce urlã ca niºte fiare aprobatoare
Sufletul lor viseazã stupi de albine
ªi înot în seminþe.
Nu îi urî pe fraþii mei, ei dorm,
S-au învelit în somn ca într-o blanã de urs,
Care-i pãstreazã cruntã ºi apãsãtoare în viaþã,
În mijlocul frigului fãrã-nþeles
ªi fãrã sfârºit.
Nu-i judeca pe fraþii mei, ei dorm,
Rar câte unul este trimis în trezire
ªi, dacã nu se întoarce, e semn c-a pierit,
Cã încã e noapte ºi frig
ªi somnul continuã.
Nu îi uita pe fraþii mei, ei dorm
ªi-n somn se înmulþesc ºi cresc copii
Care-ºi închipuie cã viaþa e somn ºi, nerãbdãtori,
Abia aºteaptã sã se trezeascã
În moarte.
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Hibernation
Don’t listen to my brothers, they sleep.
Not understanding their own shouted words,
While they scream like approving wild beasts
Their soul dreams beehives
And they swim in seeds.
Don’t hate my brothers, they sleep.
Wrapped in sleep like in a bear rug,
Preserving them savage and oppressed in life,
In the middle of the senseless,
Endless cold.
Don’t judge my brothers, they sleep.
Seldom one is sent off into the awakening
And if he does not return, it’s a vanishing sign,
For it is still night and cold,
And the sleep continuous.
Don’t forget my brothers, they sleep
In their sleep multiplying and caring for children.
They believe that life is sleep and, impatiently,
Can hardly wait for their awakening
In death.
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Pastel
Þara mea pãrãsitã de fructe,
Pãrãsitã de frunze.
Pãrãsitã de strugurii
Emigraþi prevãzãtori în vin,
Þara mea trãdatã de pãsãrile
Rostogolite în grabã
Pe cerul mirat ºi încã senin,
Veºnic împãcatã,
Mirosind a ierburi
Care-ºi dau sfârºitu-n soarele domol,
Credincioºi pãianjeni
Þes pânzeturi albe
Ca sã bandajeze
Locul frunzei, gol.
Noaptea stele coapte-þi
Fermenteazã cerul,
Vântul curge ziua
Tare ºi-amãrui,
Orele-þi mãsoarã
Nucile cãzând
ªi te lumineazã
Cuviincios gutui.
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Pastel
My country deprived of fruit,
Abandoned by leaves.
Abandoned by the grapes
Migrated prudently in wine,
My country betrayed by the birds
Somersaulted in haste
In the wondering yet still clear sky,
Forever content,
Smelling of grasses
Which pass away in the melting sun,
Faithful spiders
Weaving white webs
To bind up
The place of leaf, empty.
At night baked stars
Ferment your sky,
The wind flows the day
Strong and bitter,
The hours measure your
Walnuts falling
And light you
Quinces decently.
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Eu cred
Eu cred cã suntem un popor vegetal,
De unde altfel liniºtea
În care aºteptãm desfrunzirea?
De unde curajul
De-a ne da drumul pe toboganul somnului
Pânã aproape de moarte,
Cu siguranþa
Cã vom mai fi în stare sã ne naºtem
Din nou?
Eu cred cã suntem un popor vegetal-
Cine-a vãzut vreodatã
Un copac revoltându-se?
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I Believe
I believe that we are a botanic nation
Otherwise, where do we get this calmness
In which we await the shedding of our leaves?
Where from the courage
To start sliding ourselves on the sleep-toboggan
Close to death,
With the certainty
That we will be able
To be resurrected?
I believe that we are a botanic nation-
Who ever saw
A rebelling tree?
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Scaieþi ºi zei
Scaieþi ºi zei uscaþi de soare
Schelete lungi, subþiri de temple
Rãmase albe in picioare:
Iremediabile exemple
Ale nemorþii ca povara.
Precum o nesfârºitã varã
Timpul intreg e doar o zi
Rãmasã vãduvã de seara,
În care frunzele nu cad
ªi nu pierd pagini trandafirii.
Nu e trecut, nu-i viitor,
Un azi etern, nãucitor,
Cu soarele deasupra nemiºcat
Nemaiânstare
Sã mãsoare
Fãrãderostul nemuririi.
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Thistles and Gods
Thistles and gods scorched by the sun,
Long, thin skeletons of temples,
Standing pale survivors:
Irreparable examples,
Undeath is like a burden.
As an unending summer
All time is only a day
Widowed since night,
In which leaves do not fall
And the roses do not lose their pages.
There is no past, no future,
An eternal today, stunning,
With the sun above unmoving
Unable
To measure
Immortality’s failure.
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Cetina
Spectre de brazi mai vânturã stindarde
De ceaþã, proorocind sfârºituri noi,
Dar cine are forþa în casandre
De cetini, chiar, sã creadã, dintre noi?
Pe-acelaºi loc, dar mãturând cu pãrul
Mult cãlãtoare zãri de cãpãtâi,
Topindu-ºi în rãºinã adevãrul,
Cel necrezut în scrâºnet, mai întâi,
Nu pot sã plece, nici mãcar nãluci.
În jurul lor ºi cerul ºi apa emigreazã
Vântul întreabã-ntruna „Nu te duci?“
Cetina plânge-n hohot „Sunt acasã.“
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Fir Tree
Spectres of fir trees still flutter pennants
Of fog, foretelling new endings,
Yet who has the courage, in Cassandra Branches,
if only to believe, between us?
On the same spot, yet brushing with their hair
The all-journeying skies of endings,
Melting the truth in their resin,
That unbelieved in screech, firstly,
They cannot leave, not even as ghosts.
Around them water and sky migrate.
The wind asks constantly: “Don’t you go?”
The fir tree sobs: “I’m home.”
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Torquato Tasso
Veni din întuneric spre mine el, poetul,
Poetul de spaimã ratat.
Era foarte frumos. Ca la razele röntgen
I se vedea în trup poezia.
Poezia nescrisã de fricã.
"Sunt nebun" – a rostit. De altfel ºtiam
Lucrul acesta din prefeþele cãrþilor,
Dar el îºi purta nebunia ca pe-o parolã
De intrare în noi, ca ºi cum ar fi spus:
"Mã rãscumpãr astfel
De lipsa-adevãrului din poemele mele.
E preþul imens. Vin spre tine.
Primeºte-mã!"
Dar eu am rãspuns: Pleacã de-aici!
"Scriam la lumina de autodafeuri – îmi spuse –
Simþindu-mi pe trup
Cãmaºa pãroasã care se-aprinde uºor.
Odaia mea avea ochi de cãlugãri ferestre
ªi-n loc de uºi, lipite una de alta, urechile lor
ªi ºoarecii ieºind din borte erau cãlugãri,
ªi noaptea pãsãri uriaºe-n sutane-mi cântau.
Tu trebuie sã înþelegi…" ªi cu degetu-ntins
Îmi aratã în trupul meu poezia,
Poezia nescrisã…
Dar eu am þipat: Pleacã de-aici!
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Torquato Tasso
From darkness he came towards me, he,
The poet failed by fear.
He was very handsome. Like an X-ray
The poetry could be seen in his body.
The poetry unwritten out of fear.
“I’m mad,” he uttered. Besides, I knew
This fact from book prefaces,
But he wore his madness like a password
For entering us, like he would have said:
“This is a way to redeem myself
For the lack of truth in my poems.
The price is enormous price. I come
towards you. Receive me!”
But I declined: Leave me!
“I was writing in the auto dafé’s light
– he told me – Feeling my body,
The hairy shirt that easily lights up.
My room had monks’ eyes for windows
And instead of doors, stuck one to another, their ears.
And the rats coming out of holes were monks,
And at night gigantic birds in large habits sang for me.
You must understand…” And with a pointing finger
He reveals the poetry in my body,
The unwritten poetry…
But I screamed: Leave me!
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Fiecare miºcare
Fiecare miºcare a mea
Se vede
În mai multe oglinzi deodatã,
Fiecare privire a mea
Se întâlneºte cu sine
De mai multe ori,
Pânã
Uit care
Este cea adevãratã
ªi cine
Mã-ngânã.
Stãpânã,
Mi-e fricã de somn
ªi ruºine
A fi.
Pentru mine
Orice rãsãrit are
Un numãr necunoscut de sori
ªi-o singurã
Adormitoare
Zi.
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Each Move
Each of my moves
Is seen
Simultaneously in many mirrors,
Each look I take
Meets with itself
Several times,
Until
I forget which is
The true one,
And who
Mocks me.
Mistress,
I am afraid to sleep
And ashamed
To be.
For me
Each and every sunrise has
An unknown number of suns
And a single
Soporific
Day.
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Descântec de ploaie
Iubesc ploile, iubesc cu patimã ploile,
Înnebunitele ploi ºi ploile calme,
Ploile feciorelnice ºi ploile-dezlãnþuite femei,
Ploile proaspete ºi plictisitoarele ploi fãrã sfârºit,
Iubesc ploile, iubesc cu patimã ploile,
Îmi place sã mã tãvãlesc prin iarba lor albã, înaltã,
Îmi place sã le rup firele ºi sã umblu cu ele în dinþi,
Sã ameþeascã, privindu-mã astfel, bãrbaþii.
ªtiu cã-i urât sã spui "Sunt cea mai frumoasã femeie",
E urât ºi poate nici nu e adevãrat,
Dar lasã-mã atunci când plouã,
Numai atunci când plouã,
Sã rostesc magica formulã "Sunt cea mai frumoasã femeie".
Sunt cea mai frumoasã femeie pentru cã plouã
ªi-mi stã bine cu franjurii ploii în pãr,
Sunt cea mai frumoasã femeie pentru cã-i vânt
ªi rochia se zbate disperatã sã-mi ascundã genunchii,
Sunt cea mai frumoasã femeie pentru cã tu
Eºti departe plecat ºi eu te aºtept,
ªi tu ºtii cã te-aºtept,
Sunt cea mai frumoasã femeie ºi ºtiu sã aºtept
ªi totuºi aºtept.
E-n aer miros de dragoste vie,
ªi toþi trecãtorii adulmecã ploaia sã-i simtã mirosul,
Pe-o asemenea ploaie poþi sã te-ndrãgosteºti fulgerãtor,
Toþi trecãtorii sunt îndrãgostiþi,
ªi eu te aºtept.
Doar tu ºtii –
Iubesc ploile,
Iubesc cu patimã ploile, înnebunitele ploi ºi ploile calme,
Ploile feciorelnice ºi ploile-dezlãnþuite femei…
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Rain Chant
I love rains, I passionately love rains,
Maddened rains and calm rains,
Young-girl rains and loose female rains,
Fresh rains and boring, never-ending rains,
I love rains, I passionately love rains.
I like rolling through their tall white grass,
I like to rip off their blades and wear them in my teeth,
For men to become giddy seeing me like that.
I know it’s rude to say, “I am the most beautiful woman,”
It’s rude and perhaps not even true,
But allow me when it rains,
Only when it rains,
To utter the magic formula “I am the most beautiful woman.”
I am the most beautiful woman because it’s raining
And I look good with rain’s locks in my hair.
I am the most beautiful woman because it’s windy,
And the dress desperately struggles to cover my knees,
I am the most beautiful woman because you
Are away and I am waiting for you,
And you know of my waiting.
I am the most beautiful woman and I know to wait
Yet still I wait.
The scent of live love is in the air,
And all passers-by sniff the rain to feel this scent,
During this particular rain you can quickly fall in love,
All passers-by are in love,
And I wait for you.
Only you know –
I love rains,
I passionately love rains: maddened rains and calm rains,
Young-girl rains and loose female rains.
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Pietà
Durere limpede, moartea m-a-ntors
În braþele tale supus, aproape copil.
Tu nu ºtii dacã trebuie sã mulþumeºti
Sau sã plângi
Pentru fericirea aceasta,
Mamã.
Trupul meu, dezghiocat din tainã,
Este numai al tãu.
Dulci lacrimile tale îmi picurã pe umãr
ªi mi se strâng cuminþi lângã claviculã.
Ce bine e!
Neînþelesele peregrinãri ºi cuvintele,
Ucenicii de care eºti mândrã ºi care te sperie,
Tatãl, bãnuitul, nerostitul, veghind,
Toate-s în urmã.
Liniºtitã de suferinþã-nþeleasã
Mã þii în braþe
ªi pe furiº :
Mã legeni uºor.
Leagãnã-mã, mamã.
Trei zile numai sunt lãsat sã m-odihnesc
În moarte ºi în poala ta.
Va veni apoi învierea
ªi din nou nu-þi va mai fi dat sã-nþelegi.
Trei zile numai,
Dar pânã atunci
Mi-e atât de bine
În poala ta coborât de pe cruce,
Încât, de nu mi-ar fi teamã cã te-nspãimânt,
Lin mi-aº întoarce gura
Spre sânul tãu, sugând.
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Piety
Clear pain, death returned me,
To your breast subdued, almost a child.
You do not know if you should thank
Or cry
For this happiness,
Mother.
My body, peeled out of the egg of mystery,
Is yours only.
Sweet, your tears drop onto my shoulder
And collect obedient near my collarbone.
How good it is!
Uncomprehended wanderings and the words,
Disciples of whom you are proud and who scare you,
The Father, the suspected, the unnamed, watching,
All are left behind.
Free of known suffering
You hold me
And secretly
Rock me gently.
Rock me, mother.
Three days only do I have to rest
In death and in your lap.
Rebirth will come after
And again you won’t be given to understand.
Only three days,
But until then
It is so good for me
In your lap, lowered from the cross,
That, if I would not fear to scare you,
I would turn my mouth gently
Towards your breast, to suck.
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Ar trebui
Ar trebui sã ne naºtem bãtrâni,
Sã venim înþelepþi,
Sã fim în stare de-a hotãrî soarta noastrã în lume,
Sã ºtim din rãscrucea primarã ce drumuri pornesc
ªi iresponsabil sã fie doar dorul de-a merge.
Apoi sã ne facem mai tineri, mai tineri,
mergând,
Maturi ºi puternici s-ajungem
la poarta creaþiei,
Sã trecem de ea ºi-n iubire intrând adolescenþi,
Sã fim copii la naºterea fiilor noºtri.
Oricum ei ar fi atunci mai bãtrâni decât noi,
Ne-ar învãþa sã vorbim, ne-ar legãna sã dormim,
Noi am dispãrea tot mai mult, devenind tot mai mici,
Cât bobul de strugure, cât bobul de mazãre, cât bobul de grâu…
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We Should
We should be born old,
And arrive wise,
To be capable of deciding our worldly fate,
To comprehend from the prime crux what ways begin
And only the wish to walk to feel reckless.
Then should we become younger, and younger, walking,
Mature and strong to arrive
At creation’s gate,
To pass through it and in love entering adolescents,
To be children at our sons’ birth.
Either way, they would then be older than us,
They would teach us to speak, rock us to sleep.
We would disappear even more, becoming even smaller,
Like a grape, like a pea, like a grain of wheat…
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Totul
Frunze, cuvinte, lacrimi,
cutii de chibrituri, pisici,
tramvaie câteodatã, cozi la fãinã,
gãrgãriþe, sticle goale, discursuri,
imagini lungite de televizor,
gândaci de Colorado, benzinã,
steguleþe, portrete cunoscute,
Cupa Campionilor Europeni,
maºini cu butelii, mere refuzate la export,
ziare, franzele, ulei în amestec, garoafe,
întâmpinãri la aeroport, cico, batoane,
Salam Bucureºti, iaurt dietetic,
þigãnci cu kenturi, ouã de Crevedia,
zvonuri, serialul de sâmbãtã seara,
cafea cu înlocuitori,
lupta popoarelor pentru pace, coruri,
producþia la hectar, Gerovital, aniversãri,
compot bulgãresc, adunarea oamenilor muncii,
vin de regiune superior, adidaºi,
bancuri, bãieþii de pe Calea Victoriei,
peºte oceanic, Cântarea României,
totul.
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Everything
Leaves, words, tears,
Matchboxes, cats,
Trams sometimes, queues for flour,
Ladybeetles, empty bottles, speeches,
Elongated images on TV,
Colorado beetles, petrol,
Flags, known portraits,
The Euro Cup,
Trucks of gas cylinders, export rejected apples,
Newspapers, Vienna loaves, blended oil, carnations,
Airport receptions, Cico, sweet bread rolls,
Bucharest salami, diet-yoghurt,
Gypsies selling Kent, Crevedia eggs,
Rumours, the Saturday night serial,
Coffee substitutes,
The world struggle for peace, choirs,
Production per hectare, Gerovital, anniversaries
Bulgarian tinned fruit, national meetings,
Superior regional wine, Adidas shoes,
Jokes, (security police) boys on Victoria Avenue,
Oceanic fish, Ode to Romania,
Everything.
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January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
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Justin Lowe was born in Sydney but spent large portions of his early childhood on the Spanish island of Minorca with his younger sister and artist mother. Completing his schooling back in Sydney, Justin gained a BA in the Central West of NSW and then spent several years in Europe working odd jobs and honing his skills as a writer. On returning again to Sydney, Justin settled down with his partner in what was then a fairly crusty Newtown teeming with disparate souls where through the course of the 1990’s he published more and more of his poetry and collaborated with some of Sydney’s finest songwriters such as Tim Freedman of The Whitlams and Bow Campbell of Front End Loader and The Impossibles, as well as editing seminal poetry mag Homebrew and releasing two collections, From Church to Alice (1996) and Try Laughter (2000). In 2001 Justin moved to the Blue Mountains west of Sydney and has since published one more poetry collection (Glass Poems, 2006) and two verse novels (The Great Big Show, 2007 and Magellenica, 2008).
Will Oldham
her nape
smells of the earth
where I will hum my one, long note
in the powdery dawn
when the crocuses are budding
and the quicksilver in their irises
speak of poor choices
a fatal misreading of the times
though if there are limits
to the limitless
they are drowned
in the banquet trill of the magpie
and she turns
so slowly, anyhow
she barely troubles the creases
where I have let my hand travel
like God’s cold eye
along the ragged exodus
feeling out the green, ticklish spots
the gentle frost that never lifts
the hmmmm of the little girl stuck in her throat
and the question always asked
when the end is slowly dawning on us
crisp and golden in the lattices
baby, what time is it?
Janis
hers is the beauty
old prophets once exhorted
too long in the desert
pining for that cold touch
what some call purity
others a blade
the idiot wind
how many times how many times
but I am already
turning this poem on its head
for she is not one of those
ice maidens of sepia
the fog light tavernas
of the mud-caked generations, the ashen-faced:
the gods have not been kind to her
but nor have they played their usual games
she had a good man
a good, sweet, honest man
and he stuck by her
the Lord alone knows why
for she sang of him
but never to him
sang so long and loud of him
that all the nameless suddenly had a name
all the faceless had a face
all the silent stirred like crumpled paper
while all the blameless suddenly confessed
and all the heartless wept
and this good man drowned lonely in her throat
Patti Smith
his was the first instinct
to protect his own
and so he did
and so
the pinched face stares up
and the pinched little fingers scratch at the sun
and the line crackles
and I am back there as he cooks
buttering over the thousand silences
so I assume
she cackles as at a name
she does not like
water with oil
the absence of hesitancy
is the absence of humour
a dry cackle
some ancient enmity
neither has the time to explain
or perhaps because
he clutches his pink little fingers
at the myriad whispers, the opaque face
high strings
and a lonesome baritone
and every river gurgling down to the sea
the salty death in his tiny mouth
where the gulls hover hungry
and the sun feasts on the eyes of everything
Morrissey
if by a gypsy you mean
a man skirting the hearth light
the spastic dance of the tv
then I am your gypsy
I have a home, Johnny
but it is not of this world
whisper of traffic on a rainy Sunday
I am that hunch you see
on the stone plinth in the trench coat
with the eyes of tarnished copper
the stiletto wind on Canal street
the echo of your guitar in the old farriers
like a tap dripping steel in the old farriers
I hardly know you
why do I bother trying
to cut this cloth for you?
tapping away on that fretboard
like the ghost of a factory child
humming my heart and soul over and over
time is not our currency –
is that what you’re trying to tell me?
live short and punchy, Steven
make shapes of their hours
January 1, 2011 / mascara / 0 Comments
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Emma Carmody is working toward her PhD in creative writing and French at the University of Adelaide. Prior to commencing her doctoral project, she worked as an environmental lawyer in Sydney. She has also worked in a volunteer capacity with several NGOs that provide legal advice and support to asylum seekers. Her poetry, prose and translations have appeared in Australian and foreign journals, including the Australian Book Review and New Translations. She currently lives in the South of France.
Divinité Khmère, Musée Guimet
Flank entombed,
A thew of root around her
Goddess waist,
She meditates on centuries,
Incubates the temple’s
Holocaust.
There is no modesty
In the jungle:
Insects breed
Between her virgin thighs,
Monkeys take their pleasure
On her naked breasts,
And in a flush of humid green
Bamboo shoots
Quake about her feet
Like nerve endings of the understory.
What memories she must hold
Of another world,
Where each dawn was guarded
By the season’s alms, humble
On the altar,
The droning of the sutras –
Her divine core.
Being so vital,
So sovereign to the shrine,
She offered up her wisdom
Until suddenly,
Her naked arms severed,
The empire slain:
Rebirth in the wild.
The Ento(M)-uscian
Piano player. Hands agonised into
Deftness,
By ten you’d almost
Charmed an octave
(While I was chasing insects
With a salvaged net,
Suckling the nectar out of
Wildflowers). In a
Pool of light
You press needles
Into Apollo.
You explain:
The wings are clad
In scales of dye,
I observe:
The proboscis quavering
Beneath your weight.
Another day,
We listen to Liszt’s études in the kitchen;
You palpate the tune
Across my rib cage.
You tell me:
My right hand’s too stiff
For these studies
As I disrobe grapefruits for the salad,
Divest the flesh
Of seeds and rind.
In summer, we drive South.
In valleys that antler
Seaward,
Through fists of granite
And nimble scrub,
You hunt Lepidoptera,
Circling flowers in adagio,
Conquering with ease
The woman in the tent –
Your fragile prey.
Though there was
An evening in Cassis
When the cicadas,
Corralling the earth to their staccato
Spared a moth its genus
And I bunched
Wild herbs
Up in specimen jars marked
Parnassius Apollo, Polyommatus Eros.
The Shore Line
Alone on the beach
with the lovely slaughter of evening’s
thrust: puffer fish, a slick of gull,
crushed shells. Between
open ocean and smaller things
I walk North, through fits of rain.
You stay inside.
Three urchins on my mantel now,
vestigial spines worn but keen.
We grieved our loss on the phone last
week: the garden’s thriving, your brother’s fine,
may I visit? Such responsibility for
chance words, barely meant –
such tenderness, these killing fields
at lowest tide.
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