MADONNA DEI BISOGNOSI
Swallow, swiftly-veering
athlete in the twilight air,
are you indifferent to the slanting
ochre church on this high slope?
Rest from sinning could be found
in its shadows' fragrant calm,
and, on its hard benches, words
of disavowal and of peace.
The faded actions of its frescoes'
angular figures hint at secrets
of heroism and devotion
which could heal perplexity.
How poignant the wooden mother is,
ancient doll in her glass prison.
her arms stretched out in rigid pity
to peasants one time true to her,
who left, and never will return.
Swallow, winging back and forth
in the gold, expansive evening,
my soul on this dark threshold
longs to reach you, torn between
this ancient mystery and your
flight, so reckless and exultant,
before night brings its blindness to you.
[1988: author’s own translation]
from THE DIFFCULT TIME
5.
It's as if I could see him again,
the little boy struggling up the hill
in his green uniform, on his cap
a golden eagle badge, clutching
difference to him like a coin
he doesn't yet know which country
he can spend it in. His briefcase
is heavy, but he sets it gently
rocking, passing it from hand to hand.
He's already learned to pull a rigid
mask of scorn down over his face,
to throw together what pride he has
so that his words are harsh and biting
and bely the vulnerable, trembling, silent
child imprisoned by tight lips.
Even if his eyes lit up for a moment
it would be hard for anyone to catch
a glimpse of the dream of distant beauty
and freedom that lives in him: all his
behaviour and his gestures are a frontier
checkpoint keeping him in, and others out.
What would I say to him? Hold out a bit
longer? Don't give in? You'll get
away before you turn completely rigid?
Maybe I'd just take him in my arms
and squeeze him like an orange
until, all over the bitter peel, there broke
out the sweet and freeing juice of tears.
8.
Just by my cheek
a faint glimmer in the darkness -
two shapely feet
carved in wood,
a nail through them,
blood trickling from it.
I don't need to look up.
The image is still familiar to me,
repeated again and again through the church,
sad erotica of Christendom.
Time and again, a male nude,
deathly pale, with torn hands
and open side, and only a miserable
rag hiding the place of greatest shame.
In Athens I saw
room after room of men
carved in proud stone,
serene, naked, whole,
lifting their hands little by little
through the centuries until
their arms stretched out, as if exulting
in the wide, unsullied space around them.
This image would rather keep out of the light,
it looks for corners and niches,
so that our imagination
can add to its horror.
[1989-90: author’s own translation]
from TO A CERTAIN HEADMASTER
1.
If you'd had the courage
we needed to finish our cloth
we could be taking it off the loom now
and making it into fine bright clothes
that'd keep us warm in the time to come.
But you refused the work, you'd rather tuck
the old coat of your usual life around you
with room for just one, hardly even for you -
it's shrinking now as you will shrink inside it.
You kept me at bay, and I will not insist.
But what am I to do with the brilliant threads
of this beginning, left dangling in my hands?
I'll turn them to cloth on another loom than yours.
2.
I thought every memory of you
had been dissolved
but I'm like someone who's finished his food
sending now the tip of his tongue
round his palate, behind his teeth
constantly meeting with tangy pellets
that burst with the freshness of that old hunger
(something you said, or I had thought).
Or else I'm like a broad country where suddenly
news went round that war had been declared
but there was no fighting (I never had the chance
to find out if we were enemies, or friends),
and the soldiers had to lay their weapons
down, but the news didn't get through
to a town or two, and the men there are still waiting,
ready, impatient, their defiant courage
pathetic and touching, without reason or use.
[1989: author’s own translation]
AFTER THE BATTLE
The rough blanket has slipped down
and a corner rubs against the helmet
with its Athenian plumes you placed
by your sandals and breastplate on the ground.
Vigorous still in sleep, your finely moulded
shoulders are revealed, the gentle sun
of spring has burnished your skin,
hairs are a dross of gold on your chest
which, in its regular rise and fall,
sends your fragrant breath through the tent
to mix with the smell of sweat you didn't
wash from your body after the battle.
Don't be afraid! You started, fear
glanced in your eyes. It's only me,
the ghost of a young man you killed
at the height of the fighting today.
Blood from the wound in my side has drawn
an intricate river down the map of my hip:
it's hardening and changing colour now.
I've lost the supple hand I used
to smooth my curly black hair with,
and in the panic of flight an infantry soldier
stove in with his heel the serene cheek
that gleamed in front of you
just as you raised your weapon to strike.
Stop crying. Get up, go to the field,
look for my body, tidy it, and wash it,
then lift it on your shoulder and take it
to a temple hidden in the woods above the valley.
Many gods are still alive; our world
is rich in a cunning magic that won't fade.
A god bent over the bed where I was born
and breathed something of his wonder into me.
Maybe life will come back to my body
and instead of a ghost to haunt you
you'll have a lover to draw to you and kiss.
[1989: author’s own translation]
COURAGE
More than once, as it caught
my eye with a sudden surprise
that never got less, your wrist
gave me courage to stay alive,
coming out of your sleeve
sturdy, sinewed, supple,
reminding me how a tree
rises, the powerful trunk
struggles to break free
from the earth, then loses all
rigidity in the light
foliage of hand and finger.
Your hand's quick movements were
the harvest of the tree,
each shape your fingers and palm
made in the air was a fruit
falling away from it.
I love the tree's dependence.
It's active, restless, nimble,
but you can tell it has
no replica, but a partner
completing all it does,
no soliloquy this,
but a dialogue.
[1989: author’s own translation]
A PLEA THAT ANGELS SHOULD NOT BE FORGOTTEN
Don't forget the angels,
for the reins of the winds,
the government and the division of the air
have been placed in their hands.
They loose tempests like keen-edged
arrows of ice from bows of impulse and anger,
and their quivers are full of hailstones and sleet.
They steer the clouds, piling them up
in teetering battlements on the horizon;
and when the red of the western sky
is reflected on the waves, as if the skin
of the seabed had been torn, and blood seeped out
into the water above, it's nothing but
the cheeks of an angel that have grown red
with constantly blowing bad weather and storms.
"Show me an angel," somebody said,
"and I'll paint you one." But we have so many paintings
of them, descending, bending their knees, their lips
forming fruitful words of impregnation.
We couldn't bear to see them clearly -
when the sky lights up at dawn, all that
we catch is a brief glimpse as they throw their arms
open exultantly, and enormous jewels
that hang on their chests burn fiercely.
Their regiments can be seen on ancient walls
in faded colours, their ambivalent sex
serenely evident in each countenance,
with stiff spears and wings that bristle
towering over their heads, like a flock
of enormous birds that precariously check
their strength in a threatening immobility.
Elsewhere it's as if the guillotine
of Heaven had decapitated them,
their small heads cluster like a flower
wrapped in the feathery whiteness of its petals.
In the ephemeral cinema of our dreams,
the film starts burning the moment they arrive;
like silvery-black leaves, celluloid
tatters curl back from a blossom where they are not.
Our nostrils sense their passage in a fragrance
of sudden kindling lingering in a room,
and when we wake in the morning, and our skin
is taut and hurting, it's because our heavy
bodies cannot bear much contact with them
when they lie close to us in our sleep.
[1990: author’s own translation]
HARD MEN
| |
Then the harpers of Caín Bile came to them from Ess Ruaid to entertain them with music. But they thought that the harpers had come from the Ulstermen to spy on them. So they hunted them until they went before them into the pillar-stones at Lía Mór in the north, transformed into deer, for in reality they were druids possessed of great occult knowledge. |
Our music reached a level of perfection
that shattered time, and our ears closed
to the uproar coming from the heroes' banqueting
tables, their foolish chattering, the goblets'
tinkling and the whole unseemly din,
the boasting and wagering, as the gluttons
thrust clumsy hands into the common bowls
and gulped entire joints down they'd probably
vomit back up - and then they went berserk!
They threw the tables to the floor. The benches
shrieked. Each hero grabbed his spear
where it was hanging on the wall. Their mouths
opened in harsh cries, showing rotten teeth.
Slaver ran foaming from their chins,
their eyes were savage, flaming.
Polished blades gleamed brightly.
There was no sense in dallying!
All at once the viols vanished
even though the music lingered
like a torn cloth above the rabble.
The hall was at our backs, and the clean wind
of the cool slope caressed our hides
like skilful hands. The men were chasing after!
What an exultant race! My deer's nostrils
made with their keenness a rich symphony
of the night air. Its stimulus and its
incitement deafened me. My animal sex
was rigid with danger, anxiety and fun!
Confronted by the pond, we wavered,
then veered, the hunt was getting closer,
clamorous voices, baying hounds. Prickly
twigs whipped at my flank as we
climbed the final slope and reached the pillars!
It was like a naked man plunging
into the chillest stream upon the hillside.
I felt a blow in my stomach, stars exploded
beneath my eyelids, then peace. Far away,
far in the distance, far outside, the frenzied
hooligans hurled a useless spear
or two against the stones. The noise was merely
an irritant to our frozen hearing.
Deep and heavy, maddening and mocking
them, our laughter rose into the sky.
[1989: author’s own translation]
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