Gallipoli

From: The War Correspondent 

                  by Ciaran Carson

1. Gallipoli

Take sheds and stalls from Billingsgate,
all glittering with scaling-knives and gutted fish,
and the tumbledown outhouses of English farmers’ yards
smelling of dung and straw and horses
cantering through the back lanes of Dublin;

take an Irish landlord’s ruinous estate,
elaborate pagodas from a Chinese Delftware dish
on which the fishes fly through shrouds and yards
of leaking ballast-laden junks bound for Benares
in search of bucket-loads of tea as black as tin;

take a dirty gutter from a back street in Boulogne,
where houses teeter so their pitched roofs meet,
chimneys tall as those in Sheffield
or Irish round towers,
smoking like a fleet of British ironclad destroyers;

take the oregano-scented arcades of Bologna,
spaghetti-twists of souks and smells of rotten meat,
labyrinthine as the rifle-factories of Springfield,
or the tenements deployed by bad employers
who sit in parlours doing business drinking Power’s;

then populate this slum with Cypriot and Turk,
Armenians and Arabs, British riflemen
and French Zouaves, camel-drivers, officers and sailors,
sappers, miners, Nubian slaves, Greek money-changers,
and interpreters who do not know the lingo;

dress them in turbans, shawls of fancy needlework,
fezzes, knickerbockers, sashes, shirts of fine Valenciennes,
boleros, pantaloons designed by jobbing tailors,
feathers of the ostrich and the pink flamingo,
and outfits even stranger;

set up some slaughterhouses for the troops,
and stalls with sherbert, lemonade and rancid lard for sale,
a temporary hospital or two, a jail,
a stagnant harbour redolent with cholera,
and open sewers running down the streets;

let the staple diet be green cantaloupes
swarming with flies, washed down with sour wine,
accompanied by the Byzantine
jangly music of the cithara
and the multi-lingual squawks of parakeets –

O landscape riddled with the diamond mines of Kimberley,
and all the oubliettes of Trebizond,
where opium-smokers doze among the Persian rugs,
and spies and whores in dim-lit snugs
discuss the failing prowess of the superpowers,

where prowling dogs sniff for the offal beyond
the melon stench of pulped plums and apricots,
from which is distilled the brandy they call “grape-shot”,
and soldiers lie dead or drunk among the crushed flowers –
I have not even begun to describe Gallipoli.

Pearl

                  

(14th century English)

Translated by Jane Draycott

                       I

One thing I know for certain: that she

was peerless, pearl who would have added

light to any prince's life

however bright with gold. None

could touch the way she shone

in any light, so smooth, so small --

she was a jewel above all others.

So pity me the day I lost her

in this garden where she fell

beneath the grass into the earth.

I stand bereft, struck to the heart

with love and loss. My spotless pearl.

I've gazed a hudred times at the place

she left me, grieving for that gift

which swept away all shadow, that face

which was the antidote to sorrow.

And though this watching sears my heart

and wrings the wires of sadness tighter,

still the song this silence sings me

is the sweetest I have heard --

the countless quiet hours in which

her pale face floats before me, mired

in mud and soil, a perfect jewel

spoiled, my spotless pearl.

In the place where such riches lie rotting

a cfarpet of spices will spring up and spread,

blossoms of blue and white and red

which fire in the full light facing the sun.

Where a pearl is planted deep in the dark

no fruit or flower could ever fade'

all grasscorn grows from dying grain

so new wheat can be carried home.

From goodness other goodness grows:

so beautiful a seed can't fail

to fruit or spices fail to flower

fed by a precious, spotless pear.

So I cam to this very same spot

in the green of an August garden, height

and heart of summer, at Lammas time

when corn is cut with curving scythes.

And I saw that the little hill where she fell

was a shaded place showered with spices:

pink gillyflower, ginger and purple gromwell,

powdered with peonies scattered like stars.

But more than their loveliness to the eye,

the sweetest fragrance seemed to float

in the air there also -- I knew beyond doubt

that's where she lay, my spotless pearl.

Caught in the chill grasp of grief I stood

in that place clasping my hands, seized

by the grip on my heart of longing and loss.

Though reason told me to be still

I mourned for my poor imprisoned pearl

with all the fury and force of a quarrel.

The comfort of Christ called out to me

but still I wrestled in wilful sorrow.

Then the power and perfume of those flowers

filled up my head and felled me, slipped me

into sudden sleep in the place

where she lay beneath me. My girl.

Eros and Psyche

by Jehanne Dubrow

after Antonio Canova’s sculpture (1787)

From a certain vantage point they

could be lovers—the man

with his arms encircling my

mother, and both of them gone

marble. He has woken her with

the sound of broken wings. Her

blanket is polished rock, cold

and weighted to the bed. From

this angle the knife is hidden,

although it’s there, the way

an arrow is always shooting through

this story, desire a dart that

finds the tender spot. Bodies

make a space for gods to

intervene. Tonight if there are

souls like butterflies, then they

have stilled. If beauty could be

bolted in a box, if a deity could

say, Don’t open this, then my

mother might stay asleep

forever, unbothered by the

monument of those hands.

Alive Together

                        by Lisel Mueller

Speaking of marvels, I am alive

together with you, when I might have been

alive with anyone under the sun,

when I might have been Abélard’s woman

or the whore of a Renaissance pope

or a peasant wife with not enough food

and not enough love, with my children

dead of the plague. I might have slept

in a alcove next to the man

with the golden nose, who poked it

into the business of stars,

or sewn a starry flag

for a general with wooden teeth.

I might have been the exemplary Pocahontas

or a woman without a name

weeping in Master’s bed

for my husband, exchanged for a mule,

my daughter, lost in a drunken et.

I might have been stretched on a totem pole

to appease a vindictive god

or left, a useless girl-child,

to die on a cliff. I like to think

I might have been Marry Shelley

in love with a wrongheaded angel,

or Mary’s friend. I might ahve been you.

This poem is endless, the odds against us are endless,

our chances of being alive together

statistically nonexistent;

still we have made it, alive in a time

when rationalists in square hats

and hatless Jehovah’s Witnesses

agree it is almost over,

alive with our lively children

who -- but for endless ifs --

might have missed out on being alive

together with marvels and follies

and longings and lies and wishes

and error and humor and mercy

and journeys and voices and faces

and colors and summers and mornings

and knowledge and tears and chance.

From Lisel Mueller, Alive Together: New and Selected Poems, 1996. 

 

Ours

Ours

by Jonathan Galassi

This house these walls were ours

and everything inside them the

lawns the trees the flower beds

the stone walls not the fern

walk that is Alison's but it's the

way the first light filters

through the thinned-out branch-

es part of us the ancient

apple orchard the hydrangeas

yellowed lily leaves the old

barn the new studio that you and

Chris created for me and the ice-

house and the light is ours the

angled brilliance and the funk of

fall the weather's turned the
snow the stairs the stars out on

the lawn the cold coyotes' calls

are ours the view from the mar-

tini bench the copper beech the

thyme terrace and the new one

and the girls are ours the young

shad and the lilacs and our

square bed and the birch room

and the teahouse sunset apple

smoke the flame azaleas that

didn't take the peonies the si-

lences and evening unraveling

the immense white pine and fuel

oil smell were ours these rooms

are ours the pictures sofas car-

pets my grandmother's bud vase

the coin silver spoons and Eloise

is ours and Pheobe was this room

is ours the square bed and the

threshing here was ours the si-

lences the Paris bedspread and

the dressers and my red desk in

the alcove and your bathroom tub

the inky tentacles e-mail was ours

and phone calls and what makes

you think you're you was always

ours

           pretend you're with me as

you read this all the empty

hours were ours the rattling down

the hall the perfect view across

the road the hills the walls the

white fence fallen branches bit-

tersweet the stairs the girls are

ours the love the friends the

silences your voice your eyes your

hair your neck the beauty all are

ours the empty mornings and the

silences were ours the staring at

the fire before it died the grappa

and the whiskey in etched glasses

and the bellows the black marble

fireplace and Chris's gavel Mol-

lie's picture Christopher's two

drawings dinner by the fire was

ours the sausages the peppermint

foot rub your cowhide slipeprs

endless books too many you kept

saying in the halfway house hu-

midity and hummingbirds all ours

all ours the afternoons the misty

mornings looking up the lawn the

copper beech the peegees turning

purple Haystack and the deep

sleeps the Bald mountain treks

the fern walk and the two chairs

by the stream we never sat in

and the little living room and

Libby's paths the Alfords' rugs the

girls my parents' nesting tables

Pete Street's hidden staircase

all the evenings the talk the

laughter all the music all the

friends the silences the girls and

everything that was and wasn't

ours

           and hours were ours the

walks the silent drives the si-

lences unspoken love the lacks

the guilt the missing the alone-

ness what we couldn't do the

what we didn't say the things I

couldn't do the one I couldn't

be and wanted to and didn't is

ours too and rage is ours and

loss and hours alone are our

the silences the hall the girls

and the unknown was ours the fu-

ture that we couldn't share the

fear the falling leaves and fail-

ing ruining the fault lines and

the love lines and incomprehen-

sion and the need to know and to

be known and broken faith deri-

sion denigration power was ours

and powerlessness and struggle

and my twisted heart that got un-

twisted and your face your voice

your neck your back the tears

the girls the life I left the lost

life all of it was ours is ours

was ours is ours was

From Jonathan  Galassi, Left-handed: Poems (2012).

Wisława Szymborska

Two poems by Wisława Szymborska


                          Psalm

 

Oh, the leaky boundaries of man-made states!

How many clouds float past them with impunity;

how many desert sand shifts from one land to another;

how many mountain pebbles tumble onto foreign soil

in provocative hops!

Need I mention every single bird that flies in the face of frontiers

or alights on the roadblock at the border?

A humble robin -- still, its tail resides abroad

while its beak stays home. If that weren't enough, it won't stop

       bobbing!

Oh, to register in detail, at a glance, the chaos

prevailing on every continent!

Isn't that a privet on the far bank

smuggling its hundred-thousandth leave across the river?
And who but the octopus, with impudent long arms,

would disrupt the sacred bounds of territorial waters?

And how can we talk of order overall

when the very placement of the stars

leaves us doubting just what shines for whom?

Not to speak of the fog's reprehensible drifting!

And dust blowing all over the steppes

as if they hadn't been partitioned!

And the voices coasting on obliging airwaves,
that conspiratorial squeaking, those indecipherable mutters!

Only what is human can truly be foreign.
The rest is mixed vegetation, subversive moles, and wind.

                

                         Lot's Wife

They say I looked back out of curiosity.

But I could have had other reasons.

I looked back mourning my silver bowl.

Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap.

So I wouldn't have to keep staring at the righteous nape

of my husband Lot's neck.

From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead

he wouldn't so much as hesitate.

From the disobedience of the meek.

Checking for pursuers.

Struck by the silence, hoping God had changed his mind.

Our two daughters were already vanishing over the hilltop.

I felt age within me. Distance.

The futility of wandering. Torpor.

I looked back not knowing where to set my foot.

Serpents appeared on my path,

spiders, field mice, baby vultures.

They were neither good nor evil now -- every living thing

was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic.

I looked back in desolation.

In shame because we had stolen away.

Wanting to cry out, to go home.

Or only when a sudden gust of wind

unbound my hair and lifted up my robe.

It seemed to me that they were watching from the walls of Sodom

and bursting into thunderous laughter again and again.

I looked back in anger.

To savor their terrible fate.

I looked back for all the reasons given above.

I looked back involuntarily.

It was only a rock that turned underfoot, growling at me.

It was a sudden crack that stopped me in my tracks.

A hamster on its hind paws tottered on the edge.

It was then we both glanced back.

No, no. I ran on,

I crept, I flew upward

until darkness fell from the heavens

and with it scorching gravel and dead birds.

I couldn't breathe and spun around and around.

Anyone who saw me must have thought I was dancing.

It's not inconceivable that my eyes were open.

It's possible I fell facing the city.

              

These poems come from Wisława Szymborska, Poems: New and Collected (1998).

Wisława Szymborska was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996.

Dog to Pain

Dog to Pain

                by D. Nurkse

In the slow-swift years, pain would lock me

long days in a narrow room with a fly and a water

                                                                              bowl,

re-emerge in a jangle of keys, and walk me down

                                                           those dim blocks

where small dead things in the gutter smell so

                                                                     fascinating --

free from pain. My leash was short, my collar tight,

but they could have been shorter and tighter. In the

                                                                brief moment

before dark, pain ruffled my hair. Then we slept. Or

                                                                            I slept.

Pain does not exist, except in the mind, but who does?

The cat stared at the wall, the goldfish swam in circles.

On weekends, pain took me to the park and tossed

                                                                          a red ball

and I retrieved it, with what joy I found it, gummed

                                                                                it,

brought it back in many lunges and side-scampers.

I would fetch it now if I were not healed.  

From the TLS, November 1, 2012.