Poetry
Poetry special: Reports from the front line of language
Published 23 October 2006
New and unpublished poetry in the NS
Words Without Borders is an online magazine for international literature. Its new anthology, Literature from the "Axis of Evil", brings together writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea and other "enemy nations", and includes these poems by the Iranian and North Korean poets Ahmad Shamlou and Byungu Chon.
See www.wordswithoutborders.org for further details.
Existence
Ahmad Shamlou
translated by Zara Houshmand
If this is life - how low!
and I, how shamed, if I don't hang my lifetime's lamp
high on the dusty pine of this dead-end lane.
If this is life - how pure!
and I, how stained, if I don't plant my faith like a mountain,
eternal memorial, to grace this ephemeral earth.
Falling Persimmons
Byungu Chon
translated by Won-Chung Kim and Christopher Merrill
Persimmons fall
thump, thump,
where the demarcation line cuts
across the weedy hill, above the Kwansan ferry.
The owner's gone;
only the house remains.
For many years, the persimmons have ripened
in solitude and fallen mercilessly on the earth.
If I stretched out my arm, I could pick
the ripe red persimmons.
But the barbed wire fence along the demarcation line
cuts my heart, keeps me from taking even a step.
O, persimmon tree!
you also suffer from division.
I wonder when the day will come
for the owner to return, climb your green boughs,
and harvest you in happiness.
The girls in this village used to marry
before the feasting table
on which were heaped delicious persimmons
then cross the Imjin River, bound for Paju.
Now wrinkles have furrowed
faces once as red as persimmons.
Where have they gone - the girls of yesterday?
I search for them across the river - in vain.
The persimmons I touch in dream
thump in my heart.
Calling for the owner, for unification,
the persimmons
cut into this land
thump, thump.
Each day during Poetry International, one of Lemn Sissay's poems - including this one - will be projected on to the Royal Festival Hall.
Let There Be Peace
Lemn Sissay
Let there be peace
So frowns fly from foreheads
Like seagulls from cliff edges
So war correspondents become travel show presenters
And magpies bring back lost property
Children, engagement rings, broken things
Let there be peace
So storms can go out to sea to be
Angry, and return to me, calm
So the broken can rise up and dance in the hospitals
Let the aged Ethiopian man, in the block of grey London flats
Peer through his window and see Addis before him
So his thrilled outstretched arms become frames
For his dreams
Let there be peace
And tears evaporate to form the clouds, cleanse themselves
And fall into reservoirs of drinking water
Let harsh memories burst into fireworks that melt,
Melt in the dark pupils of a child's eyes
And disappear like shoals of darting silver fish.
And let the waves reach the shore with a
Shhhhhhhhhh shhhhhhhhh shhhhhhhhhhh.
Hadi Khorsandi is an Iranian poet whose work is translated by his daughter, the comedian Shappi Khorsandi.
Untitled
Hadi Khorsandi
translated by Shappi Khorsandi
The clock on the mantel,
tick, tick, tick, tick,
The baby bird in the tree,
chick chick chick chick,
I am a poet and cannot be silenced, bring me my pen!
Bic! Bic! Bic! Bic!
The notebooks of Elizabeth Bishop (1911-79), now published as Edgar Allan Poe and the Juke-Box (Carcanet, 367pp, £16.95), contain drafts, fragments and early poems such as "Untitled".
Untitled
Elizabeth Bishop
Don't go so fast, dear little bee
Said Mary with a laugh & a chuckle
of glee.
I know you're making honey
to carry to your hive
To let them know you are still
alive.
The New Faber Book of Love Poems, edited by James Fenton, features lovers and lyricists such as Richard Herrick and Ben Jonson.
The Frozen Heart
Richard Herrick
I Freeze, I freeze, and nothing dwels
In me but Snow, and icicles.
For pitties sake give your advice,
To melt this snow, and thaw this ice;
I'll drink down Flames, but if so be
Nothing but love can supple me;
I'll rather keep this frost, and snow,
Then to be thaw'd, or heated so.
The Hour-Glass
Ben Jonson
Do but consider this small dust
Here running in the glass,
By atoms moved:
Could you believe that this
The body ever was
Of one that loved?
And in his mistress’ flame, played like a fly,
Turned to cinders by her eye?
Yes; and in death, as life, unblessed,
To have’t expressed,
Even ashes of lovers find no rest.
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