by
Frank O'Hara
He waits and it is not without
a great deal of trouble that he tickles
a nightingale with his guitar.
He would like to cry Andiamo!
but alas! no one has arrived
yet although the dew is perfect
for adieux. How bitterly he beats
his hairy chest! because he is
a man sitting out an indignity.
The mean moon is like a nasty
little lemon above the ubiquitous
snivelling fir trees and if there's
a swan within a radius of
twelve square miles let's
throttle it. We too are worried.
He is a man like us erect
in the cold dark night. Silence
handles his guitar as clumsily
as a wet pair of dungarees.
The grass if full of snakespit.
He alone is hot admist the stars.
If no one is racing towards him
down intriguingly hung stairways
towards the firm lamp of his thighs
we are indeed in trouble sprawling
feet upwards to the sun our faces
growing smaller in the colossal dark.
|
by
Warsan Shire
No one leaves home unless
home is the mouth of a shark.
you only run for the border
when you see the whole city running as well.
your neighbours running faster than you, the boy you went to school with
who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory is
holding a gun bigger than his body,
you only leave home when home won't let you stay.
no one would leave home unless home
chased you, fire under feet, hot blood in your belly.
it's not something you ever thought about
doing, and so when you did - you carried the anthem under your breath,
waiting until the airport toilet
to tear up the passport and swallow, each mouthful of paper making it clear that
you would not be going back.
you have to understand,
no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land.
who would choose to spend days
and nights in the stomach of a truck
unless the miles traveled meant something more than journey.
no one would choose to crawl under fences, be beaten until your shadow leaves you, raped, then drowned, forced to the bottom of the boat because you are darker, be sold, starved, shot at the border like a sick animal, be pitied, lose your name, lose your family, make a refugee camp a home for a year or two or ten,
stripped and searched, find prison everywhere
and if you survive and you are greeted on the other side
with “go home blacks”, “refugees dirty immigrants”, “asylum seekers sucking our country dry of milk”,
dark, with their hands out smell strange, savage - look what they've done to their own countries,
what will they do to ours?
the dirty looks in the street softer than a limb torn off, the indignity of everyday life more tender than fourteen men who
look like your father, between your legs, insults easier to swallow
than rubble, than your child's body in pieces - for now, forget about pride
your survival is more important.
i want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark
home is the barrel of the gun and no one would leave home
unless home chased you to the shore
unless home tells you to leave what you could not behind,
even if it was human.
no one leaves home until home is a damp voice in your ear saying
leave, run now, i don't know what I've become.
|
by
T Wignesan
Words uttered in a subdued voice in order to constitute a dedication,
Translation of Carlos Bousono’s poem :Palabras dichas en voz baja para
formar una dedicatoria
(To Ruth, so young, from another age)
(It’s quite probable that this poem commemorates and addresses Bousono’s
wife, Ruth, and as such the interest in the poem must underlie the intimate and/or
private candidness of tone, rather than the less than pretentious art form. T.
Wignesan)
I
This isn’t exactly wine that you and I drain to the last drop
with such slowness at this hour,
the neat truth. It’s not wine,
it’s love.
In any case, it’s not a question of an awaited
celebration, a noisy fiesta,
raised on gold.
It’s not a canticle of the mountains.
It’s only a whistling sound : flower, less than this :
whisper, lacking in weight.
II
And all this began some time back. We joined hands
very hurriedly to be able to remain by ourselves, alone,
both jointly and separately in order to walk on the neverending
pathway
interminably.
And in this manner, we move forward together on the
pathway
tenaciously. The same direction, the self-same golden instant
and despite it all, you walked without being in doubt,
always very far away, far behind, lost in the distance,
in the brightness, diminshed, yet wanting me,
in another station where flowers burgeoned,
in another time and in another pure space.
And from the secluded spot in the woods, from the sandy
indignity
of mature lateness, from where I contemplated
your eagerness to be ahead of time,
I saw you slow down, once and all over again,
without raising your head in your remote garden,
though being held back, obstinate-
ly,
and so unjustly !
pluck in joy
roses for me.
© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013
|