20th Century Poems

My Age

We present this work in honor of the 85th anniversary of the poet’s death.

Osip Mandelstam
Russian
1891 – 1938

 

My age, my beast, who will ever
Look into your eyes
And with his own blood glue together
The backbones of two centuries?
Blood the builder gushes
From the throat of earthly things,
Only the parasite trembles
On the threshold of new days.

As long as it holds life, a creature
Must carry to the end a spine,
And a wave plays
With the unseen backbone.
Like a child’s tender cartilage
Is the age of earth’s infancy—
Once more, like a sacrificial lamb,
The crown of life’s skull is offered up.

To wrest the age from captivity,
To begin a new world,
The knees of gnarled and knotted days
Must fit together like a flute.
It is the age that rocks the wave
With human yearning,
And in the grass an adder breathes
The golden measure of the age.

And again the buds will swell,
Shoots of greenery will spring up,
But your backbone is broken,
My beautiful, pathetic age.
And with a senseless smile
You look back, both cruel and weak,
Like a beast that once was lithe,
Upon the prints of your own paws.

Blood the builder gushes
From the throat of earthly things,
And the seas’ warm cartilage
splashes ashore like a burning fish.
And from the high bird netting,
From humid billows of azure
Cool indifference pours, pours down
On your mortal injury.

Translation by James McGavran

Mother Jackson Murders the Moon

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 100th birthday.

Gloria Escoffery
Jamaican
1923 – 2002

 

Mother Jackson
sees the moon coming at her
and slams the door of her shack
so hard
the tin louvres shudder with eagerness
to let the moon in.
If she should cry for help
the dog would skin its teeth at her,
the cat would hoist its tail
and pin the whole moonlit sky
to the gutter.
The neighbours would maybe
douse her in chicken blood
and hang her skin out to dry
on the packy tree.
Mother Jackson
swallows her bile and sprinkles oil
from the kitchen bitch
on her ragged mattress.
Then she lights a firestick
and waits for the moon to take her.

Winter Sun

Carmen Sobalvarro
Nicaraguan
1908 – 194?

 

Blessed is the soft and gloomy winter sun,
boyfriend of the mountain, which is united in the tender
rumor of the fresh river.
Ancient songbook owner of the plain,
who loves the green fronds, as Gioconda’s lips
love sweetness .

Mischievous winter sun,
rival of the wheat fields for your blonde beauty,
say: Do you make yourself a rainbow to kiss yourself
when singing about the rain?

Chrysanthemums

We present this work in honor of the 25th anniversary of the poet’s death.

Vivian Virtue
Jamaican
1911 – 1998

 

Like uncombed urchin suns they blaze along
The public border of this autumn garden;
Their sallow, bronze and golden faces harden
Against the coming frost, as keen gusts throng
The dusk, scattering the frail evensong
Of some late robin. Sidling the dew comes
Upon them—grave-gay last chrysanthemums—
As, at a parting, tears betray the strong.

Why does he linger so intently gazing
Upon them, this last straggler in the park—
Has he not heard the keeper’s closing bell?
I wish I had not seen his sere hand raising
In an intolerable gesture of farewell,

As our paths cross in the autumnal dark.

Life

We present this work in honor of the 65th anniversary of the poet’s death.

Abdel Rahman Shokry
Egyptian
1886 – 1958

 

Life is but a continual dying,
goodness and pleasure are but borrowed.
Would that I were like the flower whose life is but a summer;
then I would fade before the afflictions of winter.
To life with its pleasures, from me, one greeting;
but ah, a thousand to peace-giving death !
Who will convey my greeting unto the dead?
Peace be upon them… nay , upon me:
For in their graves they have no need of mercy
as I do in my life.

After the War

We present this work in honor of the 50th anniversary of the poet’s death.

Mary Wedderburn Cannan
Scots
1893 – 1973

 

After the war perhaps I’ll sit again
Out on the terrace where I sat with you,
And see the changeless sky and hills beat blue
And live an afternoon of summer through.

I shall remember then, and sad at heart
For the lost day of happiness we knew,
Wish only that some other man were you
And spoke my name as once you used to do.

Let’s go! To Paris not to live, but to die

We present this work in honor of the 75th anniversary of the poet’s death.

Na Hye-sok
Korean
1896 – 1948

 

Let’s go! To Paris not to live, but to die
Paris killed me
Paris made me a real woman
Damn it, let me die in Paris!
Nothing to find, meet, or gain. No reason to return.
Forever I will go
Past and present, I am zero
I will be in the future

My four children!
Blame me not, but society, morals, laws, and customs
Your mother as a pioneer was a martyr of destiny
Someday you may come as ambassadors to Paris
Find my grave, leave one flower for me

Translation by Tanya Ko Hong

Prairie Spring

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 150th birthday.

Willa Cather
American
1873 – 1947

 

Evening and the flat land,
Rich and sombre and always silent;
The miles of fresh-plowed soil,
Heavy and black, full of strength and harshness;
The growing wheat, the growing weeds,
The toiling horses, the tired men;
The long empty roads,
Sullen fires of sunset, fading,
The eternal, unresponsive sky.
Against all this, Youth,
Flaming like the wild roses,
Singing like the larks over the plowed fields,
Flashing like a star out of the twilight;
Youth with its insupportable sweetness,
Its fierce necessity,
Its sharp desire,
Singing and singing,
Out of the lips of silence,
Out of the earthy dusk.