Weathering

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 95th birthday.

I am old enough now for a tree
once planted, knee high, to have grown to be
twenty times me,
and to have seen babies marry, and heroes grow deaf –
but that’s enough meaning-of-life.
It’s living through time we ought to be connoisseurs of.
From wearing a face all this time, I am made aware
of the maps faces are, of the inside wear and tear.
I take to faces that have come far.
In my father’s carved face, the bright eye
he sometimes would look out of, seeing a long way
through all the tree-rings of his history.
I am awed by how things weather: an oak mantel
in the house in Spain, fingered to a sheen,
the marks of hands leaned into the lintel,
the tokens in the drawer I sometimes touch –
a crystal lived-in on a trip, the watch
my father’s wrist wore to a thin gold sandwich.
It is an equilibrium
which breasts the cresting seasons but still stays calm
and keeps warm. It deserves a good name.
Weathering. Patina, gloss, and whorl.
The trunk of the almond tree, gnarled but still fruitful.
Weathering is what I would like to do well.

And Yet…

We present this work in honor of the South African holiday, Human Rights Day.

I have known silences
long and deep as death
when the mind questioned the logic
of my frailty
in the imminence of my destruction
by men ruled and ravaged by powerlust

I have known deep silences
when thoughts like angry waves
beat against the shores of my mind
revealing the scars of brutal memories
and the murder of my manhood

and yet
I cannot hate
try as I want to
I cannot hate… why?

A Mountain Cherry

We present this work in honor of the Japanese holiday, Vernal Equinox.

A mountain cherry
Through the drifting mists
Faintly
Seen thus there is a lady
I long for all the more.

Water

Let’s not soil the water:
Perhaps a pigeon is drinking down there
Or a thrush dipping its wing by a far thicket
Or a pitcher being filled in a village.

Let’s not soil the water.
This stream is perhaps running to a white aspen
To sooth a lonely heart.
A dervish may have dipped his dry bread there.

A lovely lady has come to the stream.
Let’s not soil the water.
Beauty is doubled.

Sweet water!
Clear stream!
People are so affable there!
May their streams bubble!
And their cows produce abundant milk!
Never have I visited their village.
Their hedges must bear God’s footprints.
There, moonshine illuminates the expanse of speech.
No doubt, the fences are low in yonder village.
And its inhabitants know what peonies are.
No doubt, blue is blue there.

A bud blossoms! People know it.
What a glorious village it must be!
May its alleyways overflow with music!
The people living by the stream understand water.
They did not soil it
Nor should we.

Translation by Ismail Salami

Marina of the Rocks

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

You have a taste of tempest on your lips—But where did you wander
All day long in the hard reverie of stone and sea?
An eagle-bearing wind stripped the hills
Stripped your longing to the bone
And the pupils of your eyes received the message of chimera
Spotting memory with foam!
Where is the familiar slope of short September
On the red earth where you played, looking down
At the broad rows of the other girls
The corners where your friends left armfuls of rosemary.

But where did you wander
All night long in the hard reverie of stone and sea?
I told you to count in the naked water its luminous days
On your back to rejoice in the dawn of things
Or again to wander on yellow plains
With a clover of light on you breast, iambic heroine.

You have a taste of tempest on your lips
And a dress red as blood
Deep in the gold of summer
And the perfume of hyacinths—But where did you wander
Descending toward the shores, the pebbled bays?

There was cold salty seaweed there
But deeper a human feeling that bled
And you opened your arms in astonishment naming it
Climbing lightly to the clearness of the depths
Where your own starfish shone.

Listen. Speech is the prudence of the aged
And time is a passionate sculptor of men
And the sun stands over it, a beast of hope
And you, closer to it, embrace a love
With a bitter taste of tempest on your lips.

It is not for you, blue to the bone, to think of another summer,
For the rivers to change their bed
And take you back to their mother
For you to kiss other cherry trees
Or ride on the northwest wind.

Propped on the rocks, without yesterday or tomorrow,
Facing the dangers of the rocks with a hurricane hairstyle
You will say farewell to the riddle that is yours.

Translation by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

Bogland

We present this work in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.

We have no prairies
To slice a big sun at evening—
Everywhere the eye concedes to
Encrouching horizon,

Is wooed into the cyclops’ eye
Of a tarn. Our unfenced country
Is bog that keeps crusting
Between the sights of the sun.

They’ve taken the skeleton
Of the Great Irish Elk
Out of the peat, set it up
An astounding crate full of air.

Butter sunk under
More than a hundred years
Was recovered salty and white.
The ground itself is kind, black butter

Melting and opening underfoot,
Missing its last definition
By millions of years.
They’ll never dig coal here,

Only the waterlogged trunks
Of great firs, soft as pulp.
Our pioneers keep striking
Inwards and downwards,

Every layer they strip
Seems camped on before.
The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.

The wet centre is bottomless.

Ireland is Changing Mother

Don’t throw out the loaves
with the dishes mother,
its not the double-takes so much
its that they take you by the double.
And where have all the Nelly’s gone
and all the missus Kelly’s gone
you might have had the cleanest step on your street
but so what mother,
nowadays it not the step but the mile that matters.

Meanwhile the Bally Bane Taliban
are battling it out over that football
that will bring the local yokels
to a deeper meaning of over the barring it,
and then some scarring will occur
as in cracked skull for your troubles.
They don’t just integrate, they limp-pa-grate,
your sons are shrinking mother.

Before this they were gods of that powerful thing
gods of the apron string.
They could eat a horse and they often did,
with your help mother.
Even Tim who has a black belt in sleep walking
and border lining couldn’t torch a cigarette
much less the wet-hay-stack of desire ,
even he can see, Ireland is changing mother.
Listen to black belt Tim mother.

When they breeze onto the pitch like some Namibian Gods
the local girls wet themselves.
They say in a hurry, o-ma-god, o-ma-god!
Not good for your sons mother
who claim to have invented everything
from the earwig to the slíothar.
They were used to seizing Cynthia’s hips
looking into her eyes and saying
I’m Johnny come lately, love me.
Now the Namibian gods and the Bally Bane Taliban
are bringing the local yokels
to their menacing senses
and scoring more goals than Cú Chúllainn.
Ireland is changing mother
tell yourself, tell your sons.

A Knock at the Door

A distinctive knock
on my door.
I pay no attention.
I’m surrounded
by permanent visitors.
They lie on the table,
the floor,
jostling each other
for room,
sprawling shamelessly
resting their bent spines
and broken backs.

The knock gets louder.

I expect no one.
The tiny harbor
circles its bay
like a slack, half-opened mouth
where the only sounds
are the cicada’s drone
and the endless rehearsals
of the sea.
Even the mailman
is under house arrest.

Peevishly, I open the door.

No one’s there.
Only down the street
two white-sheeted nereids

skirt the precipice
of my childhood.

Translation by Robert Zaller

Of the Word

I won’t tell you about truth,
because the word’s going to die
and others
will need it.

You came bearing the word
and I was sensitive to it.
I said:
give me a little of it…
I was weak
and I took the word from your shoulder.
You see:
it’s so heavy
that I, too, double over.

I want to say the word
over your grave,
but a flower already blooms there.
Between the final truth
and immortality
stands the poet
whose word was murdered by gunfire.

They killed your word
and covered you with earth,
but it doesn’t matter,
you’ll sing in the seeds.

from The Path of Truth

The usurers will see their bellies swell bigger than gourds
In size and exposed to Ahmada.
They will rise on the Last Day as if possessed of the Devil
The Qur’an told their fate, Ahmada.
The stink of the adulterer is worse than the stench of carrion:
He will be driven away, so that he is far from Ahmada.
The slanderer, the hypocrite
And he who gives false witness will not see Ahmada.
With their tongues hanging down to their chests, they will be exposed
For they will not get salvation from Ahmada.

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