Robin Marchesi, born in 1951, began writing in his teens, much to the consternation of his mother,
the sister of Eric Hobsbawm, the historian.
In 1992 Cosmic Books published his first book entitled “A B C Quest”.
In 1996 March Hare Press published “Kyoto Garden” and in 1999 “My Heart is As…”
ClockTowerBooks published his Poetic Novella, “A Small Journal of Heroin Addiction”, digitally, in 2000.
Charta Books published his latest work entitled “Poet of the Building Site”, about his time working with Barry Flanagan the Sculptor of Hares, in association with the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
Yo tenía un hijo que se llamaba Juan. Yo tenía un hijo. Se perdió por los arcos un viernes de todos los muertos. Lo vi jugar en las últimas escaleras de la misa y echaba un cubito de hojalata en el corazón del sacerdote. He golpeado los ataúdes. ¡Mi hijo! ¡Mi hijo! ¡Mi hijo! Saqué una pata de gallina por detrás de la luna y luego comprendí que mi niña era un pez por donde se alejan las carretas. Yo tenía una niña. Yo tenía un pez muerto bajo la ceniza de los incensarios. Yo tenía un mar. ¿De qué? ¡Dios mío! ¡Un mar! Subí a tocar las campanas, pero las frutas tenían gusanos y las cerillas apagadas se comían los trigos de la primavera. Yo vi la transparente cigüeña de alcohol mondar las negras cabezas de los soldados agonizantes y vi las cabañas de goma donde giraban las copas llenas de lágrimas. En las anémonas del ofertorio to encontraré, ¡corazón mío!, cuando el sacerdote levante la mula y el buey con sus fuertes brazos para espantar los sapos nocturnos que rondan los helados paisajes del cáliz. Yo tenía un hijo que era un gigante, pero los muertos son más fuertes y saben devorar pedazos de cielo. Si mi niño hubiera sido un oso, yo no temería el siglo de los caimanes, ni hubiese visto el mar amarrado a los árboles para ser fornicado y herido por el tropel de los regimientos. ¡Si mi niño hubiera sido un oso! Me envolveré sobre esta lona dura para no sentir el frío de los musgos. Sé muy bien que me darán una manga o la corbata; pero en el centro de la misa yo rompere el timón y entonces vendrá a la piedra la locura de pingüinos y gaviotas que harán decir a los que duermen y a los que cantan por las esquinas: él tenía un hijo. ¡Un hijo! ¡Un hijo! ¡Un hijo que no era más que suyo. porque era su hijo! ¡Su hijo! ¡Su hijo! ¡Su híjo!
***
The Abandoned Church (A Ballad of The Great War)
Translated and further interpreted by Torre DeVito from “IGLESIA ABANDONADA” by Federico García Lorca
I had a son who was named John. I lost a son whom I look for in the ruins of the church one All-Hallows eve. I see him playing on the steps during a mass long since ended, Dipping his little tin pail into the well of the priest’s heart. I beat the coffins for my son (My son!) and cast chicken bones during a full moon to try and understand
I had a vision that my little child was a fish left where they move the vendor’s carts away. I had a little child, a fish that died in the ashes of incense burners. And in my vision I was the sea. What? My God! A vast sea!
During his funeral I rang the bells, but the bells have decayed like wormy fruit. and I lit the candles, now devoured: eaten like the spring wheat.
And in the wine, I saw the invisible reaper which plucks the black heads of anguished soldiers: in those trays with rubber housings in which they pass around cups filled with tears.
Amongst the holy flowers of the offertory you will find my heart when the priest raises the host like one who lifts a mule or an ox with his strong arms. He does this to scare away the toads that come out at night to haunt the frozen landscape of the chalice.
I had a son who was a giant, but the dead are stronger than the living and they know how to devour pieces of heaven.
If my child was a bear, I would not be afraid of the alligator’s stealth, nor would I have seen the sea tied to the trees to be ravished and trampled by regiments. If my child was a bear!
I wrap my child in stiff fabric to dispel the cold of the mosses. I know very well that I will get a sleeve or an armband; but in the middle of the funeral I will break the rudder we will drift to a rock in the sea – full of the madness of penguins and seagulls, and it will cause those who sleep and those who sing from the street-corners to cry: He had a son. A son! A son!
I had a son! Not that he was more than my son, but because he belongs to us all now, they cry: Our son, our son, our son…
Le Sonnet 53 de Richard Vallance a été publié dans le vol. 7, numéro 3, été 2007, page 18 de Sonnetto Poesia ISSN1705-4524= was previously published in Sonnetto Poesia ISSN 1705-4524.Vol. 7 No. 3 summer 2007, page 18
Dit-il : Cette nouvelle version du sonnet que j’ai composé en français ne constitue
pas du tout une simple traduction. C’est en effet ma création originale du sonnet 53
de William Shakespeare (1564-1616). My version of William Shakespeare's Sonnet
53 is simply not to be construed as a running translation of the original. It is in fact
my own original creation.Sonnet LIII What is your substance, whereof are you made,That millions of strange shadows on you tend?Since every one hath, every one, one shade,And you, but one, can every shadow lend.Describe Adonis, and the counterfeitIs poorly imitated after you;On Helen’s cheek all art of beauty set,And you in Grecian tires are painted new:Speak of the spring and foison of the year;The one doth shadow of your beauty show,The other as your bounty doth appear;And you in every blessed shape we know.In all external grace you have some part,But you like none, none you, for constant heart.William Shakespeare (1564-1616)Commentaires sur la recréation du sonnet 53 de William Shakespeare par Richard Vallance =
Comments on Richard Vallance’s recreation of William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 53 into French:Ta recréation du sonnet de Shakespeare, fort réussie, me touche d’autant plus que...
passim... [j]e viens de comparer d’un peu plus près ton sonnet 53 avec l’original...
passim... et les traductions d’Henri Thomas et Armel Guerne. Si tu t’éloignes parfois
délibérément de la lettre, tu saisis l’esprit des Sonnets de Shakespeare, en particulier
la musicalité et les antithèses, dont celle de la chute. (Thierry Guinhut, France.)
http://www.thierry-guinhut-litteratures.com/)Translated: Your recreation of Shakespeare’s sonnet, a success in itself, affects me all
the more whenI compare it with the translations of Henri Thomas and Armel Guerne.
If you occasionally stray from the letter, you never stray from the spirit of Shakespeare’s
sonnets. Your French faithfully reflects the musicality, the play on antithesis and the
surprising twist of his rhyming couplet.Had Richard Vallance only carried the images of Sonnet 53 safely across the pond to lay
them down in new Alexandrine accommodations, his achievement would have been notable;
but he has done something rarer... by reminding us of the Sonnet’s intentions. He has given
us a love poem: one that no Dark Lady would easily resist. (Becca Menon, Becca Books, NYC)I read your translation/adaptation of sonnet 53 and enjoyed it ― a strange effect of translations
is sometimes one understands an aspect of the original better in the translation; Shakespeare’s
already moderately remote from us, that is our use of the English. So your translation brings
several aspects of the original to light which are perhaps a bit opaque in the original.
(Howard Giskin, Department of Modern and Classical Languages, University of Connecticut, Storrs)
Vraiment la traduction du sonnet 53 de W.S. est excellent. Je peux te dire qu’en français ça coule avec une douceur infinie. C’est de toute beauté. Gilles Le Chasseur (Rimouski, Québec, Canada)
Translated: Your translation of W.S.'s Sonnet 53 is excellent. I can honestly say
that it flows with infinite grace in French. It is a thing of beauty.
Eyes filled with doors; hospital doors, cemetery doors
Passing the night standing outside the
Quiet door of a small town, hiding a Spanish
Horn knife in his left hand, horror story in the right
Bottle of wine in his pocket and a photo of a beloved woman
I caught a glimpse of this man who asked
Me to open the door; in no hurry, door
Pushed open from reality I woke into
Dreamland confined when again a door pulled
Me from dreamland to a corner of reality.
***
Ma Li is a contemporary poet, painter and essayist. She is also the chief editor of the writing column of South Weekend, the most famous and widely issued weekly newspaper in China. She was born in the seaside town Zhanjiang in 1960. She began to write poems in the 1980’s, and essays in 1990’s. She is a member in the Chinese Writers Association. She has published several poetry collections, like “Ma Li Poetry Collection,” and “Ma Li’s Golden Sonnet,” the latter which won first prize in the “Chinese New Classic Poem Award” competition in 2007. In addition, she has published several essay collections and held her own art exhibition.
Tang Yao comes from Xuzhou, China. At present she lives in Nanjing. Her area of specialization is foreign and applied linguistics. She focuses on translation both from Chinese to English and from English to Chinese, and has co-translated two books from English to Chinese. She has also done research on the translation of ancient Chinese poems.
Howard Giskin has taught in the Department of English at Appalachian State University since 1989. He works mainly in the area of World Literature, with particular interest in Asian culture, literature and philosophy, as well as Latin American literature. He has co-edited An Introduction to Chinese Culture through the Family (SUNY Press, 2001), and has edited a volume of Chinese folktales (NTC / Contemporary, 1997), as well as written articles on Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges, and published poetry. His interests also include the intersection of the sciences and humanities. He has taught in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America, and lives with his wife Vicki in Millers Creek, North Carolina.
Ma li’s Sonnet Doors in its original Chinese text together with its translation by Tang Yao and Howard Giskin appear in The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes: Anthology of sonnets of the early third millennium= Le Phénix renaissant de ses cendres : Anthologie de sonnets au début du troisième millénaire –at Friesen Press. ISBN: Hardcover: 978-1-4602-1700-9 Paperback: 978-1-4602-1701-6 eBook: 978-1-4602-1702-3. http://vallance22.hpage.com
Some 300 sonnets and ghazals in English, French, Spanish, German and Farsi ―published at
Friesen Press, and now available.
Friesen Press will do all the marketing and distribution.
To be available in major bookstores & through all major online order channels
such as Amazon.com, Alibris.com,Smithsbook's, Ebay and Barnes & Noble:
For more information on the anthology, please visit our site.
The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes = Le Phénix renaissant de ses cendres
“The death camps were not built in the Gobi Desert. And when barbarism challenged, the humanities, the arts, philosophic thought proved not only largely impotent but often collaborative with despotism and massacre,”
–George Steiner, from ‘A New Literacy’, The Kenyon Review, 24:1, Winter 2007, 10-24
Teratogen 1: Sex on the Brain
“Thy nakedness shall be uncovered,
yea, thy shame shall be seen…”—Isaiah 47:3
This mission is a sin. What kind of spaz-
tic draws vigor from pornographic veins
or penis-headed parodies of ass?
But you’re no baby, Baby. Holy weans
alive, I could not diaper your fine mess.
You soil all metaphor. I’ll author blame:
My labs, my country tis of thee. My shame
is writ uncovered on your face. No less
you’d scare Sears’ portrait guy.
And yet I’m drawn
to parse the prick that promenades your head.
They told us, Horus, Set, the Golden Dawn:
a Third Eye—neither naked, neither dead
of shameless form would, near the end, arrive
commending those whose fear brought it alive.
Teratogen 2: Cabbage Patch Moll
“Hence world picture, when understood
essentially, does not mean a picture of the
world but the world conceived and grasped
as picture.” –Martin Heidegger
You vandalize distress at no small cost
through nylon skein and cabbage patch
disguise. This manhunt though is long since lost.
All have been found. First paparazzi snatched
unguarded moments. Then we watched gray puffs
televise precision. Your face
is pixelated aftermath that stuffs
everything in the close-up. Common place
covers all bases. Where’s the intimate
to hide? The convict is a partial judge
on all subjects of visual merit. Split
my screen and your forehead suggests a smudge-
print. We share the mounting headcount’s ripe bruise.
For I no longer feel eyewitness news.
Teratogen 3: Thumbelina, Dance
“…advanced forms of biological warfare that can ‘target’ specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.” –from Project for a New American Century (PNAC) Manifesto, 2000
We vet foot bills. Are pissed-on borders worth
a mongrel birth? doG gone us Pentagon.
Hotdog Girl rolls so we might rule the earth?
Our barking men of outrage are all gone.
Lassie’s come home to her unleashing hour.
Stream? I cannot stream out into the streets.
Fluoride neutered all my upright power.
I’ll litter no more dog-days in these sheets.
Poor pup, you play dead well. No, we’ll not lift
you up. One burp and you could well explode
across complicit shoulders. To the swift
life opens up. As for an honest road
with cars to chase, let’s first define your legs.
Right now you are a thumb. How motion begs.
Teratogen 4: Waterboy
“No, you people are drinkin’ the wrong water.”
–from The Water Boy, the movie (1998)
Suffer this baby floating on the earth
amphibious. Grace alone can mend
fluidic pustules. Please make haste. No berth
so wide of God, nor time-belabored End-
time should deflate ascent. Prospects look grim
for god-speed. Though we tire of boils and sore
feet.
Oh procrastinating seraphim,
whitewash no more. These mutants wash ashore.
Our amniotic seas now euthanize.
Please hear, oh Lord, water-boy’s gurgled cries.
His isotopic lungs cannot advance
beyond collapse. How does he stand a chance
of reaching Heaven, waterlogged on Earth?
The New Disorder liquefies at birth.
Teratogen 5: Burpee Girl
“Satan said: ‘I am not the one to prostrate
myself to a human being, whom You created
from sounding clay of altered black smooth
mud.” –Quran 15:30-35
Christian soldier, you battle your mortgage
with Abd al-Chuckee puppet-strings away,
sculpted like a Mujaheedin porridge
from amber waves of O, so gamma ray.
Our acronym-cadavers cyphered this.
The Pentagon got wind of ill-wind skies.
Re-baseline victory. All vectors miss
these eyesores too contained to leak out cries.
Children, don’t play! The cradle robs the grave
before the grave has time to rob your wild
unripened stares. Uranium defiled
His altered mud. God’s breath we, breathless, waive.
your fresh pink meat. While no one looked, life filed
your backstroke down to blisters. They will hide
your books in study hall. Who will arrest
this mutant form now terrorizing cells?
Without a clear and sewn-up threat the West
cannot hold the line. Deformity spells
doom. No tight-knit group of key advisors
props up your bloated puppet-string regime.
Sit up. Exude malevolence. Your sores
must find themselves else war will lose its steam
pressed irony. Don’t make us make Big Macs.
Cater our events. Weather our attacks.
Teratogen 7: Baby Skeletor (Brought to You by ‘Masters of the Universe’)
“Skeletor’s face accidentally got splashed with acid and he sacrificed his face to
survive.” –from ‘Masters of the Universe’, a Mattel media franchise
Before ill-winds impinged on faultless weather,
I had a barrow glazed with rain for you.
I’d wheel you to the bus-stop, but why lever
a father’s guilt atop your unhinged glue?
I’m loath to hold you up for God to see,
nor shower you with blue comforts. Why not flee
my too-short arms, your wails so out of key?
You scream small monster none the least at me.
I’ll prop you up at school if you insist.
But stand-up kids are cruel. They will resist
the womb’s last weapon, shrunken in their midst.
The universe won’t stoop. You are the grist
for chemistry swept under bazaar rug,
a Hazmat spill, the morning-after drug.
This series first appeared in The New Formalist, then Cinemension. Teratogen sonnets 5 and 7 will appear in ‘The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes: Anthology of sonnets of the early third millennium Friesen Press, Victoria, B.C., Canada, 2013.
NORMAN BALL (BA Political Science/Econ, Washington & Lee University; MBA, George Washington University) is a well-travelled Scots-American businessman, author and poet whose essays have appeared in Counterpunch, The Western Muslim and elsewhere. His new book “Between River and Rock: How I Resolved Television in Six Easy Payments” is available here. Two essay collections, “How Can We Make Your Power More Comfortable?” and “The Frantic Force” are spoken of here and here. His recent collection of poetry “Serpentrope” is published from White Violet Press. He can be reached at returntoone@hotmail.com.
Poems by Ian Irvine (Hobson), copyright all rights reserved.
Please Note: many of these poems meditate upon or, in some cases rework/recombine, random phrases appearing in the 2nd edition of Charles Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle. The first edition of the work appeared in 1839. I hope I have done some justice to the natural lyricism evident in Darwin’s relaxed prose style.
Their Massive God
Whether I killed their God,
one and massive.
book-tombed, with chiselled words
on granite—his puny reign,
mere millennia—
was not the issue.
Mine was the gambler’s fear, for
the mist-wrapped hull of the new
drifts only slowly into view
contrasts with the rotting hulk of God
(as slowly sinking).
How will they endure
this unbearable in-between?
The Noble Love of Freedom
In the forest,
with huge butterflies
that float
among horses and men
such brilliant colours!
– they flit
from shade
to sunshine
I find it dreamy
to think of her
and ignore the granite hills
steep and bare
They tell a story
steep and bare
of runaway slaves
and the moon was dim
(a few fireflies)
and we came upon a desert
followed by a wasteland
of marshes and lagoons
heard the sea’s sullen roar
off in the distance.
We tethered the horses
but they refused to settle.
We tethered the horses
on a sandy plain
next morning, more salt lagoons
and a few stunted trees.
The nights grew hot, and
a dim moon on white sand.
Became aware
(the exact moment is not recorded)
of a problem with the horses.
We bathed in lakes and lagoons
traversed pastures ruined by ants’ nests
passed forests with lofty trees.
Every morning more horses
bitten and infected
until one evening
I saw it in the gloom
suctioned to a horse’s back
a large vampire bat.
I found it dream-like
blatant in the gloom
(How could I ignore the granite hills?)
But then I saw it
suctioned to a horse’s back
a large vampire bat.
To Inhabit the Fields of Time
The more I observe
‘mother nature’, the less
God I see,
the more in need of a God
(or gods)
I become. Even as I
refuse to believe their
broadcast baloney.
The idea gnaws.
I came upon a parasite
in some distant jungle—
it gives me wild ideas, and though
the doctors work their alchemy
I still feel ‘inhabited’. Besides
my son in a coffin.
So many blind millennia—
and still they refuse to see.
But is my vision true—
unencumbered by faith
(my daughter, my daughter)?
The clear and terrible beauty
of aeons of methodical suffering.
He never did intervene. If
he exists, he’s a patient sadist
or useless as the carnivores
of all ages, thrive and
evolve.
***
Ian Irvine is an Australian-based poet/lyricist, fiction writer and non-fiction writer. His work has featured in many Australian and international publications, including Fire (UK) ‘Anthology of 20th Century and Contemporary Poets,’ (2008) which contained the work of poets from over 60 nations.His work has also appeared in a number of Australian national poetry anthologies, and he is the author of three books and co-editor of many more (including Scintillae 2012, an anthology of work by over 50 Victorian and international writers and poets). He currently teaches writing and literature at Bendigo TAFE and Victoria University (Melbourne) and lives with fellow writer Sue King-Smith and their children on a 5 acre block near Bendigo, Australia.
Grasping her hands closely, I halt my heart at the edge of her lips and stare deeper inside the lava of passion ejecting shimmering volcanoes of love. I let myself slide through her hand, easing myself deeper into her core. With each cuddle, the air shakes with joy; the clouds of passion grow thicker – waves of mountain air rumble past my soul. A whisper from beneath her core – a rumbling moan – fills my ear and rolls across my soul and beyond. And in the tender air of love – destiny, direction, and time seems to waft away. There is only love, – two tectonic lips colliding as one. The earth shakes, She pulls a flower from my heart and lifts it to the sky.
Bhuwan Thapaliya works as an economist, and is the author of four poetry collections. Thapaliya’s books include the recently released Safa Tempo: Poems New and Selected (Nirala Publication, New Delhi), and Our Nepal, Our Pride (Cyberwit.net). Poetry by Thapaliya has been included in The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry and Tonight: An Anthology of World Love Poetry, as well as in literary journals such as Urhalpool, MahMag, Kritya, FOLLY, The Vallance Review, Nuvein Magazine, Foundling Review, Poetry Life and Times, Poets Against the War, Voices in Wartime, Taj Mahal Review, and more.
