PI 15/16 Sampler
Special Double Issue featuring over 400 pages of poems from around the world. Read portfolios by Carolyn Forché and Christian Wiman, new translations of Nazim Hikmet, Paul Celan and more, and a Swedish poetry feature, edited by Malena Mörling and Jonas Ellerström.
Francesc Parcerisas
Act of Gratitude
Thank you, angel. Thank you, demons of the night.
That you, winter where the heart burns
arid tree-trunks of desire. Thank you,
bracing cold light, nocturnal water.
Thank you, midnight bile,
laurel of morning, hoopoe of dawn.
For what’s odd, unexpected, wild,
for evil and pain, thank you.
for the sum of what we are
and are not,
for all we avoid
and all we crave.
Thanks for the lush words,
love and silver,
for yourself and myself.
Thank you for yes and for no.
For the ability to give thanks
and for rendering them unnecessary.
Thanks for fear,
for bread and oil,
for the night time.
Thank you for lovemaking
at the break of day, for the coin
discovered on the ground,
for your hand on my cheek,
the gush of the fountain.
Thank you for your eyes and lips,
for crying out my name with joy.
Many thanks, death, for your existence,
for making all these things
more vivid inside me—so very yours,
so beautiful, brimming, and complete.
Translated from the Catalan by Cyrus Cassells
Mark Irwin
A Vanilla Cake,
with vanilla frosting, he’d made himself, he took
to his mother who lived alone on the mountain, where he walked
up the snowy steps under the masked pines. “Happy birthday,” he said,
as crouched, she walked and set it on the empty table surrounded
by chairs and dozens of photographs. Where are they? she wondered,
making coffee, lighting a candle as her son made a fire, his hair the color of ice,
she thought as they both sat down, the cake between them, into which
they buried their hands, touching. “It’s still warm,” she said. “Yes,” he said,
as the wax dripped from the tall candle, and they talked. “How are things
in the valley?” she asked. “Still green,” he said. “Good, good,” she said,
as they began to feed each other with their fingers, closing their eyes,
making wishes as the stars blazed through the big window, snow blowing
from the eaves as they ate, telling of the past, then moments of the present—
the weather and the heart—continuing to eat bigger handfuls, their faces white,
smeared, till
it started to taste of something new and strange and far away.
Jean-Pierre Rosnay
[A girl is going to enter your brain.]
A girl is going to enter your brain. Pay attention all of you because you
will be given no information about her, except for this: she is eleven years old
on an autumn day in 1908. Her father does this, her mother does that. Of course
they are both alive at the time we are speaking of. The girl laughs, something
girls often do. You may note that her parents are French. Later she will come to
France. You come across this girl in Vienna, in an Austria still delightful at the
time we are speaking of. She is wearing black patent leather shoes; not for one
instant does she suspect what her fate will be. She is eleven years old, I’ve already
written that. Some thirty years from now, with her husband, she will fight in the
Resistance and be deported to Ravensbruck.
For this one instant, for all eternity, she is laughing. She is eleven years old.
After you have read or listened to this poem, you will be able, if you
close your eyes, to see her clearly, to hear her laughing. Nothing will escape
you, not the color of her eyes, of her hair, of her pretty little dress, of her white
stockings.
But I have written too much about this. I leave you and go back to the
streets of Vienna where flares of music float along as in a movie.
And the girl is smiling at me, she who does not know, innocent as she is,
that she has died, as have I.
Reader how are you doing? How do you fit into this existence?
Translated from the French by J. Kates
Ana Ristovic
Purge
While white-washing the apartment
I decided on a book purge,
but threw away only the catalog of editions from `85
and a few books of poetry.
From then on the shelves swayed and creaked
like some ancient tubercular lungs,
stuck in Dostoevsky, beautiful again,
a vespiary, like meta-punishment.
And every night, Osip M., the noose travels
from your name to my neck,
and the head, however, descends on its own:
you know all my telephone numbers.
Translated from the Serbian by Brian Henry
Ghérasim Luca
Dream in Action
the beauty of your smile your smile
in crystals the crystals of velvet
the velvet of your voice your voice and
your silence your silence absorbent
absorbent like the snow the snow
warm and slow slow is
your step your step diagonal
diagonal thirst night silk and floating
floating like the moans the plants
are in your skin your skin them
mess she messes your perfume
your perfume is in my mouth your mouth
is a thigh a thigh that flies
she flies towards my teeth my teeth
devour you I devour your absence
your absence is a thigh thigh or
shoe shoe that I kiss
I kiss this shoe I kiss it on
your mouth for your mouth is a mouth
she is not a shoe mirror that I kiss
just as your legs just as
your legs just as your legs
just as your legs your legs
legs of sigh sigh
of vertige vertige of your face
I enjamb your image like one enjambs
a window window of your being and of
your mirages your image her body and
her soul your soul your soul and your nose
surprised I am surprised nose of your
hair your hair-cut in flames your soul
in flames and in tears like the toes of
your feet your feet on my chest
my chest in your eyes your eyes
in the forest the forest liquid
liquid and in bones the bones of my cries
I write and I cry from my tearing tongue
I tear your arms your arms
delirious I desire and tear your arms and your arms
the bottom and the top of your body shuddering
shuddering and pure pure like the orange
orange of your knees of your nostrils of
your breath of your stomach I say
stomach but I think of the swim
of the swim of the cloud cloud of
secret the secret marvelous marvelous
like yourself
you on the rooftop somnambulist and cloud
cloud and diamond it is one
diamond that swims that swims with suppleness
you swim with suppleness in the water of the
matter of the matter of my spirit
in the spirit of my body in the body
of my dreams of my dreams in action.
Translated from the French by Fiona Sze-Lorrain
Jay Hopler
The Alligator
1/
The summer sky, star-scarred and hardened, is as close to you
Right now as I can ever be and it’s every bit as diffiult to set
Your course by. But…, why should that matter?
Some bearings are meant to be lost,
Hot Stuff. I thought you knew that.
2/
In the whisper-thin hiss of the wind
In the thickets, in the cries of the night birds and the trill of the crickets,
A hint of all that’s infinite is hidden—, an indication, however
Small, of eternity, its dark heartbeat.
3/
If you were here with me, I would point to the empty moonlit lot where that
little
yellow boat-
House used to be and I would say,
Love nothing—.
Nikola Madzirov
Many Things Happened
Many things happened
while the earth was spinning on
God's finger.
Wires released themselves
from pylons and now
they connect one love to another.
Ocean drops
deposited themselves eagerly
onto the caves' walls.
Flowers separated
from minerals and set off
following the scent.
From the back pocket pieces of paper
started flying all over our airy room:
irrelevant things which we'd
never do unless
they were written down.
translated from the Macedonian by Magdelena Horvat
Nurit Zarachi
She is Joseph
Rachel knots her daughter's hair
and presses it down under a silk cap
and chalks her face to roughen the skin
and calls her Joseph.
For she has no son
and her prayers are numbered
and she must lie to her husband, to her husband's sons.
She must lie even to God.
The little girl sits in the tent
in an opulent blue gown
and in public, she is Joseph,
but in private her mother brushes her abundant hair.
Now Rachel has given Israel
an heir, Joseph, the beautiful one,
and has washed away her disgrace
as though bathing her daughter's innocent thighs.
She lifts off the silk cap
and unknots the abundant hair
and lets it fall
over her daughter's delicate shoulders
and reads the future in its darkness.
“My daughter, your brothers will cast you
into a pit and then sell you into slavery.”
The young girl sits in the tent
drinking the shadows with her eyes,
caught in the spell of her mother's hands,
in the spell of her words, in the story she is weaving
out of the sheen of her hair.
Shaken, Rachel says, “But that is not all.
You will be locked in a prison
because of your dreams,
yet only your dreams can save you.
My prayers are numbered, and I can't
decipher the words in the water, and prophecy hovers
in the wind that passes over the fallen sheaves
and the dying kine.”
The little girl sits in the tent,
afraid to breathe,
and her mother holds her hair
and calls her Joseph.
translated from the Hebrew by Jeff Friedman and Nati Zohar
Ales Steger
Raisins
Whose veins, whose loves, whose traces,
Whose time evaporated into the wrinkles of raisins.
The cool grains of past summers. You eat them and you eat.
As you would eat the fingertips of god, which hold all.
Reduced to the utter humility of the aged.
Like handfuls of pensioners on a pilgrimage.
They rise from the table and plunge into your roof.
The whole bunch rises. Truly rises.
Whose arteries, whose fears, whose traces,
Whose gargling gulps down the wrinkles of raisins.
The ancient fingers grab your from within,
Choking you until you spit our their name.
translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry
Ales Steger
Bread
Every time, he leads you into temptation to become a gentleman
Who feeds on crumbs under his servant's table.
He asks you to do him harm, for you to stab him,
To shred him to pieces, consume his still warm body.
Without shame her appears to you naked as at Creation.
He is a pervert. He provokes you with abstinence.
But he is being given you and you give. And every morning
And every evening you repeat the floury game.
He made you into a crematory of guilt.
When he feeds you, you speak and instantly are more famished.
Yes, yes, he loves you, that is why he accepts your knife.
He knows that all his wounds crumble in your hands.
translated from the Slovenian by Brian Henry
Jay Hopler
On the Grass is Thrown a Latticework of Shadows
It's not that I want to die; it's that I don't want to live
Longer than the people I love-; even a misanthropic
Loner like me has people he loves: a mother, a father,
A sister or two, a few friends-.
Being alone by choice
Is one thing. Being alone because there's no one left. . . .
That's a different ache entire.
O, how adept I have become at this tongue-in-cheek
Suffering! How easily I affect misery I've not yet
Earned-. I hope God has mercy on me; although I
Don't know-exactly-what
I mean by that.
Frannie Lindsay
The Flowering Plum Tree on Beacon Street
And here you are
outside the Sovereign Bank
in the night-blown rain, old now; almost unable
to grip your million blossoms,
bride whose groom, spring after blustery spring,
doesn't show up;
what can you do
but stand there, idly fashion one more
sapwood ring of your own, and keep on
sighing.
Mark Irwin
Shoes
Matthew Shepard, in memoriam
They cover the human foot. From the Old
English sceoh, akin to German
schuh, from the Into European base s(keu):
to cover. The arch, heel, and sole.
The upper, tongue, and lacing. Some wore wingtips,
Oxfords, and loafers, while others sported
walkers or sandals as they left
their offices and homes in that quaint
mountain town. He was tied, naked to a fence,
then beaten. They stood on a ridge. Some, barefooted, lined
their shoes along the edge. Others wore them
on their hands watching the sky.