Poetry collection
War, as father
of all things, and king,
names few
to serve as gods,
and of the rest makes
these men slaves,
those free.
From: Heraclitus and Haxton, Brooks (transl.), Fragments: The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus, 2001, Viking: New York, p. 44.
(https://books.google.com.au/books?id=bVxk39znNwIC)
Date: 6th century BCE (original in Greek); 2001 (translation in English)
By: Heraclitus (c535 BCE-c475 BCE)
Translated by: Brooks Haxton (1950- )
Where do people go to when they die?
Somewhere down below or in the sky?
‘I can’t be sure,’ said Grandad, ‘but it seems
They simply set up home inside our dreams.’
From: Harrison, Michael (ed.), A Book of Very Short Poems, 2001, Oxford University Press: Oxford, p. 79.
(https://books.google.com.au/books?id=87nfqtL3Z0EC)
Date: 2001
By: Jeanne Willis (1959- )
Bring me the sunflower so that I can transplant it
in my soil burnt by salt air,
and show all day to the mirroring blues
of the sky the anxiety of its yellow face.
Dark things tend towards clarity,
bodies consume themselves in a flowing
of colours: these in music. Vanishing
is thus the chance of chances.
Bring me the plant that leads
where blonde transparencies rise
and life evaporates like spirit;
bring me the sunflower crazed with the light.
From: http://jackrossopinions.blogspot.com/2013/03/translating-poetry-2001.html
Date: 1923 (original in Italian); 2001 (translation in English)
By: Eugenio Montale (1896-1981)
Translated by: Jack Ross (1962- )
Always it comes when we least expect it, like a wave,
Or like the shadow of several waves,
one after the next,
Becoming singular as the face
Of someone who rose and fell apart at the edge of our lives.
Breaks up and re-forms, breaks up, re-forms.
And all the attendant retinue of loss foams out
Brilliant and sea-white, then sinks away.
Memory’s dog-teeth,
lovely detritus smoothed out and laid up.
And always the feeling comes that it was better then,
Whatever it was—
people and places, the sweet taste of things—
And this one, wave borne and wave-washed, was part of all that.
We take the conceit in hand, and rub it for good luck.
Or rub it against the evil eye.
And yet, when that wave appears, or that wave’s shadow, we like it,
Or say we do,
and hope the next time
We’ll be surprised again, and returned again, depite the fact
The time will come, they say, when the weight of nostalgia,
that ten-foot spread
Of sand in the heart, outweighs
Whatever living existence we drop on the scales.
May it never arrive, Lord, may it never arrive.
From: http://www.storysouth.com/summer2005/wright_poems.html
Date: 2001
By: Charles Wright (1935- )
I want to build a nest and spend some time here.
Becoming a water bird
I want to visit that forest of masts
across the river, moored with sails furled.
No matter how dazzlingly the lake waters
shine somewhere in the sky
today,
I want to go flying
low, low
over the blue rippling waves
feeling the wind blowing on my breast
like a bare winter tree
on some snow-covered mountain slope.
From: http://cordite.org.au/essays/kim-young-moon-and-perth/
Date: 2001 (original); 2001 (translation)
By: Kim Young-Moo (1944-2001)
Translated by: Brother Anthony of Taizé (1942- ) and Jongsook Lee (1952- )
I’ve made this rhyme completely free
of sense—it’s not of you and me,
or youth, or doings he-and-she,
or springtime thoughts.
It came to me while I was sleeping
on my horse.
What planet ruled when I was born?
I’m native here and still feel foreign.
Can’t be contented, or forlorn,
or change myself:
I was the midnight work of freaking
magic elves.
I can’t tell when I wake or sleep
unless the others keep me briefed.
It almost breaks my heart—I’m deeply
plagued by doubts,
and none of them, by Saint Martial,
is worth a mouse.
They say I’ll soon be dropping dead
Fetch that doctor, quick!—I said—
his name has just escaped my head.
No matter who:
he’s bad if I do not get well,
good if I do.
My lady friend I’ve never seen:
I don’t know if she’s cute or plain,
or if she’s kind to me or mean.
Why should I care?—
I don’t let French and Normans stay
the night in here.
My passion’s absolutely strong
but she won’t do me right, or wrong.
Avoiding her I get along
just fine. Forget her:
I’ve others nicer anyway
who please me better.
This verse I’ve made—of what or who
unknown—I’ll send to someone who
will send it on to someone who
is in Anjou,
who might decode it and convey
the key to you.
From: http://www.midi-france.info/190401_guilhem.htm
Date: 11th century (original in Occitan); 2001 (translation in English)
By: William IX, Duke of Aquitaine (1071-1127)
Translated by: Leonard Cottrell (1937-2016)
The one-way flow of time we take for granted,
but what if the valve is defective? What if the threads
on the stem wear thin, or the stuffing box or the bonnet
ring leaks, or the joints to the pipe ring fail,
and there’s a backwash?
It happens.
And then old loves,
meeting again, have no idea what to do,
resuming or not resuming from where they were
years before. Or the dead come back to chat.
Or you are reduced for a giddy moment to childhood’s
innocent incompetence. You look up
as if to see some hint in the sky’s blackboard.
But then, whatever it was, some fluff or grit
that clogged the works, works free, and again time passes,
almost as before, and you try to get on with your life.
From: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/valve
Date: 2001
By: David R. Slavitt (1935- )
Santa Maria Assunta, Torcello
Mater dolorosa, here I am hungry
And ill-disposed on worn flags at your feet.
Through high windows wintry sun seeps in
And floods the six-tiered polychrome Apocalypse,
This Sunday’s text in comic strip.
That’s my son over by the door, impatient
To be off somewhere. Other boys pose
On Attila’s Throne while their fathers snap pictures
And mothers price lace – clotheslines of lace
Strung from trucks selling pizzas.
Around the lagoon, your fields have grown wild;
Vines redden on half-fallen fences
That no longer keep the allotments apart.
On some islands the women make lace, punti in aria – stitches in air –
Materializing the spaces between things.
From: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/30510
Date: 2001
By: Beverley Bie Brahic (19??- )
Beautiful, accomplished, splendid – if he can be had – and brave
to strike where there need be;
a youth in age, wall-strong
and a man of the finest body to be had.
My father told me this – that best
for me is to love a repulsive man,
yet the heart asks for
a lad pure, lovely, and light of its own.
From: Stevenson, Jane and Davidson, Peter (eds.), Early Modern Women Poets (1520-1700): An Anthology, 2001, Oxford University Press: Oxford, p. 13.
(https://books.google.com.au/books?id=EynvtQmeW-kC)
Date: c1540 (original in Welsh); c2001 (translation in English)
By: Alis ferch Gruffydd ab Ieuan ap Lleywelyn Fychan (Alis Wen) (fl. c1540-1570)
Translated by: ??
