Long Eric Poems

 Translation of Eric Mottram’s Poem 33 in Interrogation Rooms by T. Wignesan

33.  on a vu un homme courir/ de la scène de crime un homme est maintenant en train d’aider/ la police avec...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s Courbet: Elegy 8 by T. Wignesan

Blanches oeuvres ouvertes
résident dans les jours
la surface du banc de travail est noire
les géraniums-lierres
les fougères et les adragans
accumulent leurs oeuvres et jours:
La toile noire de Courbet
un...

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Eric Mottram on the American literary and cultural scene during 1965-66 while he was the recipient of the American Learned Societies’ award for a year. (begun in the last post and to be continued)

January 2,...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s Twentythird Legal by T. Wignesan

Le vingt-troisième légal

pendant la guerre le peuple devient obéissent de nouveau
plein du respect (et) de la confiance les enfants naïfs dans la foi
la gouvernance nécessaire  ...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s TIME SIGHT UNSEEN, Part One by T. Wignesan

"Instead of an item in a school of rhetoric, the poem could have variety of articulations, continuity and discontinuity, sentence and parataxis, and an...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s TIME SIGHT UNSEEN, Part Two by T. Wignesan

"Instead of an item in a school of rhetoric, the poem could have variety of articulations, continuity and discontinuity, sentence and parataxis, and an...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s A Faithful Private 7 with excerpts from “Notes on Poetics” by T. Wignesan

(Note: With this post, I bring to a close EM’s pamphlet collection: Faithful Private, GENERA editions by Colin Simms,...

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Sun and traffic - day economy.
Six a.m. drive to plywood mill. Too tired
to be angry. Each day a step
toward death. What is being accomplished? The
small satisfactions
within each day. Book consciously read.
And frustrations. Package dropped, honey...

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  ‘ In general, quantum mechanics does not predict a single definite result for an observation. Instead, it predicts a number of  different possible outcomes...

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 Translation of Eric Mottram’s TIME SIGHT UNSEEN - Part Four by T. Wignesan


"Instead of an item in a school of rhetoric, the poem could have variety of articulations, continuity and discontinuity, sentence and parataxis,...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s 1922 Section 1 by T. Wignesan

for David Attoe

Notre devise pourrait être: ‘que nous nous ne soyons pas envoûtés’
Wittgenstein in Zettel

laissez pendre   la graisse   sans cou
où la tête...

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Troop ships loading, crowded docks
Mums and sisters waving off
Go with keepsakes, golden locks
Some men hug while many doff

Eric, soldier single stands
Beryl, lonesome widow cares
Many kissing holding hands
Eric stands and Beryl dares

Bump the soldier, make excuse
Apologizing...

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 Translation of Eric Mottram’s HOMAGE TO PAUL ELUARD by T. Wignesan

(Note: Here, I retain EM’s translations into English from Paul Eluard’s poems and his source language quotations from “this vital spirits…” onwards, for, according...

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 Translation of Eric Mottram’s A Faithful Private - 1 by T. Wignesan

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The dawn unfolds beyond my fractured windowpane
and breezes tease while drapes, like serpents, slip aside
exposing worlds that race and run aground, insane,
displaying scenes obscene that savants strive to mask and hide.

Outside, the streets are stark...

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a force for good
(for john coltrane and ahmed obafemi
based on ‘trane’s treatment of ‘nature boy’)

“…I wanna be a force for good…”
		-John Coltrane
 
…there was a man…
a very brave, enchanted man…
and he spoke of many things…
peace...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s TWENTYEIGHTH LEGAL (Part One) by T. Wignesan
 
N.B. If any one is interested in reading the continuation of the extracts of letters that Eric Mottram wrote from America during 1965-66 to...

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The True Story Of Ariel

You know the story 'bout Ariel
The one that’s on the Disney cereal
Who came to the happy soppy ending
With the prince and herself winding up kissing?

Well, it’s about time you knew the...

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 for Eric Mottram (1924 - 1995)*

 a life of toil for the man in the centre
 a hub in the peripheral tireless wheel
 
   where he go then where he go this...

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Eric’s revitalised me and my home 
Over his body my fingers would roam
He’s great at fixing and gluing
Expert at banging and screwing
I’m so happy that I sparkle like chrome

All my friends are pretty jealous of...

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You say all lives matter
Bringing up all these colors 
Like red, white, orange, and blue
But when a black life is taken, where on Earth are you?
Where's your sympathy and support when the takers of our...

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My mirror breaks, I pick up a shard,

But find it bizarre that all I see is nothing but scars, 

My veins filled with black tar, shaking, beaten and starved,

I carve your name to my arm,...

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The radio plays their song
And two hearts beat as one
To the rhythm of a tune they call their own.
The gold and platinum vinyl spins
Creating the sound where love begins.
If only for the moment, they have...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s TIME SIGHT UNSEEN, Part Three by T. Wignesan

"Instead of an item in a school of rhetoric, the poem could have variety of articulations, continuity and discontinuity, sentence and parataxis, and an...

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