Written by
Barry Tebb |
There was a hope for poetry in the sixties
And for education and society, teachers free
To do as they wanted: I could and did teach
Poetry and art all day and little else -
That was my way.
I threw rainbows against the classroom walls,
Gold and silver dragons in the corridors and
Halls; the children’s eyes were full of stars;
I taught the alphabet in Greek and spoke of
Peace and war in Vietnam, of birth and sex and
Death and immortality - the essences of lyric poetry;
Richards and Ogden on ‘The Meaning of Meaning’,
Schopenhauer on sadness, Nietzsche and Lawrence on
Civilisation and Plato on the Theory of Forms;
I read aloud ‘The Rainbow’ and the children drew
The waterfall with Gudrun bathing, I showed
Them Gauguin and Fra Angelico in gold and a film
On painting from life, and the nude girls
Bothered no-one.
It was the Sixties -
Art was life and life was art and in the
Staff-room we talked of poetry and politics
And passionately I argued with John. a clinical
Psychologist, on Freud and Jung; Anne, at forty
One, wanted to be sterilised and amazingly asked
My advice but that was how it was then: Dianne
Went off to join weekly rep at Brighton, Dave
Clark had given up law to teach a ‘D’ stream in the
Inner city. I was more lucky and had the brightest
Children - Sheila Pritchard my genius child-poet with
Her roguish eye and high bright voice, drawing skulls
In Avernus and burning white chrysanthemums, teasing me
With her long legs and gold salmon-flecked eyes.
It was a surprise when I made it into Penguin Books;
Michael Horovitz busy then as now and madly idealistic
As me; getting ready for the Albert Hall jamboree,
The rainbow bomb of peace and poetry.
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Written by
Andrei Voznesensky |
My life, like a rocket, makes a parabola
flying in darkness, -- no rainbow for traveler.
There once lived an artist, red-haired Gauguin,
he was a bohemian, a former tradesman.
To get to the Louvre
from the lanes of Montmartre
he circled around
as far as Sumatra!
He had to abandon the madness of money,
the filth of the scholars, the snarl of his honey.
The man overcame the terrestrial gravity,
The priests, drinking beer, would laugh at his "vanity":
"A straight line is short, but it is much too simple,
He'd better depict beds of roses for people."
And yet, like a rocket, he flew off with ease
through winds penetrating his coat and his ears.
He didn't fetch up to the Louvre through the door
but, like a parabola,
pierced the floor!
Each gets to the truth with his own parameter
a worm finds a crack, man makes a parabola.
There once lived a girl in the neighboring house.
We studied together, through books we would browse.
Why did I leave,
moved by devilish powers
amidst the equivocal
Georgian stars!
I'm sorry for making that silly parabola,
The shivering shoulders in darkness, why trouble her?...
Your rings in the dark Universe were dramatic,
and like an antenna, straight and elastic.
Meanwhile I'm flying
to land here because
I hear your earthly and shivering calls.
It doesn't come easy with a parabola!..
For wiping prediction, tradition, preamble off
Art, History, Love and ?esthetics
Prefer
to take parabolical paths, as it were!
He leaves for Siberia now, on a visit.
.....................................
It isn't so long as parabola, is it?
© Copyright Alec Vagapov's translation
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Written by
Barry Tebb |
They have my own fear of the dark,
Tupapau - spirits of the dead they call it;
Returning late with oil I found fear of it
Had spread my vabine naked on the bed.
Manao-Taipapau means ‘she thinks of the spectre’
Or ‘the spectre is thinking of her’, either way
She is afraid; I marvel at a tongue so readily ambiguous,
Lying across her forked thigh.
I buy rum for her ‘many parents’, for her
One cheap dress a month suffices; in return
She gathers fish and wild-fruit from the blue
Mountain groves where no white man walks.
Once when I fished from the long canoes
A fish caught the hook in its lower jaw, laughing
I learnt this meant my vahine was unfaithful :
She answered ‘Beat me’ but I lay down by her side.
I bathe in ‘the stream of life’, naked to offend
The priestly beetles - Cezanne’s ‘red shout’ indeed.
Waiting for mail I accumulate bills, pictures and sores
Side by side, lying down alone in the dark.
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