Poetry O – The Recusant

Poetry O

Antony Owen

Afghan hospitality

“These are people who are fleeing for their lives because of our mistakes, because of our greed, because of our love with war and the least we can do is to welcome them”

Sabir Zazai

Weeks ago,

Clouds of mint and coriander led to a house

this house shall soon be mutton falling from the bone,

this child full of chickpeas and shrapnel lays upon his uncast shadow.

Months ago,

a friend translated a phrase called “raft oh amad”.

Those Afghan eyes invited me to see western hospitality.

He gutted a guava and threw the seeds yelling “my country”

Days ago,

Americans grieved for amputated helicopters.

Wires ripped out like eye sockets so enemies couldn’t see.

A nineteen-year-old war veteran of Afghanistan fell from a plane.

Centuries ago,

Alexander wept in Bactria her ancient name.

The Nuristan frowned by two thousand horses’ tongues,

it must have kept those whispers like crickets in tree amber.

Seconds ago,

my friend Sabir became the folklores and messenger,

and Afghanistan, and human, and all the things a feast forbids.

We were never invited to the house of Afghanistan, no raft of amad.

Afghanistan

Afghanistan, show us,

how whelks attach themselves to rocks

through mortals clinging on to steel American Eagles.

Afghanistan, show us,

how those black dots on my screen are not specks

but a human blizzard black as Hiroshima rain from America.

Afghanistan, show us,

why Alexander wept in the Nuristan swirls of henna,

why he fired a kiss from the yew through his loyal horses’ chest.

Afghanistan, teach us,

why the landay women pour out their souls like honey

how in that moment all is golden and sticky as shed blood?

Afghanistan, know this,

I tried to light a candle for you as the sun set on my skin

But the wind would not allow it because I am doing it for myself.

Afghanistan, know this,

last night a fox licked out parasites from its kits

One of them succumbed but three of them shall be gekkering come dawn.

America, show us,

how stars leave stripes of light as they shoot across sky

show us that these are not just illusions but something to wish upon.

America, show us,

how drones strike so fast they do not leave a shadow

and the collateral damage is blood not brick and bitumen.

America, leave them,

like Vietnam and paper skinned babies of napalm

and ask Michael Bay to make a film where America saves us all.

Alan O’ Brien

Labour Estranged 2010

We stood in that line, a queue,
For we’re required to sign. Here, there were new folk
And used folk, all through, ’tis true.
We shuffled and rippled; nobody spoke
Except some children that shout in play with the echo
That reverberates the walls of that unemployment hall…hall…hall
Some of us lurched and rocked to and fro
Chins on chests, guttural snorts and all
The sad eyes, lost eyes, indifferent eyes,
Searching neck-napes like search lights.
An argument erupts; a little baby cries;
The hatch shut abrupt, slammed down tight.
In my mind a fertile thought occurred like a desert taking rain,
That the cost of a loss can be the currency of a change.

This poem first appeared in The Children of the Nation: Working People’s Poetry from Contemporary Ireland edited and introduced by Jenny Farrell (Culture Matters, 2019)

Liam O’Neill

The Railings of Government Buildings

We had different shadows in those days;

they cast out long and thin, but that

was under a different Sun, before the

weight of the universe shifted, and we found

ourselves, less humble, less altruistic,

and less significant – than we previously thought.

Our ideologies shifted daily in those days too;

as we marched, walked and chanted. Singing

off key and drinking pots of tea and porter

in backstreet bars and debating over poverty,

equality, and rising up in outrageous protest at the

immoral behaviours of those in authority.

These days, our silhouettes, separated by

distance and time zones, are larger and wider,

as we move slowly and sluggishly along the high

street stores or the housing schemes of suburbia.

Our individualised protests, more silent now,

more subdued, self-injurious and scolding.

Occasionally though, when I find myself in the city,

and passing the railings of government buildings,

a pang rises up inside; a longing to return to the days

of that younger Sun, and to march beside and in-step

with you my trusted friend, and bathe once again,

in the fantastic light of youth, purpose,

and the demonstrable truth.

This poem first appeared in Let Us Rise; Anthology of the Limerick Soviet 1919 (Jan 2019), and then in The Children of the Nation: Working People’s Poetry from Contemporary Ireland edited and introduced by Jenny Farrell (Culture Matters, 2019)

Miklós Radnóti

WAR & LOVE

Translated from the Hungarian

& Edited

by Thomas Ország-Land

FLAMES FLUTTERING…

Small flames are fluttering and slowly and forever dying –

along the bright meridians, the souls of the soldiers flying.

Souls all alike! no matter who each one had been or done

exposed to screaming icy winds or oppressed by the searing sun,

all serving by cannon, drunk with longing, vomiting in the grip

of crippling fear… all sailors onboard a heaving battleship!

The watch is kept by sensitive death. Below, mines grimly glide.

From time to time, their slimy harvest washed up by the tide –

a swaying catch of corpses and shattered dolphins, lifeless spawn.

There too, the sun still rises, but no-one welcomes such a dawn.

High up, an aircraft rumbles. Its advance across the sky

reflected by its silent shadow drawn upon the sly,

dark waters. Whirlpools hiss towards it. Signals flash their grief…

and blooms of human blood will deepen the red of the coral reef.

The peril howls all day. Light oil seeps from the fine machine.

The ship is tracked by echoing rage, like a hostile submarine.

At last, the sun is drowned in smoke and, like a terrified,

a writhing face, the moon appears upon the other side,

and flames are fluttering again and slowly forever dying –

Along the bright meridians, the souls of the soldiers flying.

(1939)

A HESITANT ODE

How long I have prepared, dear, to describe to you

the secret constellation of my love,

perhaps its substance only, just in a single image.

Your teeming sense within me floods like life itself

and sometimes it is timeless, certain and secure:

eternal like a fossil shell within a rock.

The silken, feline moonlit night above my head

begins the hunt for buzzing tiny dreams in flight.

And still I have not managed to describe to you

how much it means to me to sense your caring gaze

as it hesitates upon my hand when I’m at work.

No similes will do. I scrap them as they come.

I will begin this whole attempt again tomorrow

because I am worth only as much as the words

within this poem, and my search will keep me going

until I am reduced to bones and tufts of hair.

You’re tired. It’s been a long day for me also.

What can I say? The objects, look! exchange their glances

in praise of you; a broken cube of sugar sings

on the table; and a drop of honey falls and, like

a ball of gold, it glitters on the tablecloth;

and spontaneously now, an empty tumbler rings out:

it’s glad it lives with you. Perhaps I’ll have the time

to tell you what it’s like when it expects you home.

Descending darkly, flocks of dreams approach you lightly,

they flit away yet keep returning to your brow.

Your drowsy eyes still send a last farewell towards me.

Your loosened hair cascades in freedom. You’re asleep.

The lengthy shadow of your eyelids softly flutters.

Your hand, a resting birch twig, falls upon my pillow.

I share your sleep, for you are not a different world;

and even here I sense as a multitude of secret

and thin, sage lines relax in the tranquil palm of your hand.

(1943)

Miklós Radnóti (1909-1944), a victim and probably the greatest poet of the Holocaust. More of his poetry in Thomas Land’s English translation appears in Survivors: Hungarian Jewish Poets of the Holocaust (Smokestack Books, England, 2014).

Heinrich Heine:

LOVE DOWN THE MILLENNIA

Translated from the German

& Edited

by Thomas Ország-Land

MY BROTHER THE DREAMER

Trundling across this withering landscape,

I see from my stagecoach a roadside cross

and, attached to it, a fading figure.

My saviour brother, they got your number.

Dismayed… deluded… desolate… dreamer!

You could not redeem a feeble plot.

Did you have to challenge the priesthood,

provoke the state and offend the council?

I am afraid your own time preceded

the miracle of the printing presses.

Otherwise, you might have composed

a treatise about the affairs of heaven.

The prudent censor would have deleted

the riskiest lines to let you off –

evading the pain, the trouble and even

the gossip of the crucifixion.

You might have waded more tactfully into

the rich in that Sermon of the Mount…

Lonely, misguided leader! How dared you

incite the bigotry of your neighbours?

And… you had the audacious chutzpah

to drive the bankers out of the temple!

They’ve displayed your form on the cross,

as a warning, to the likes of me.

MORNING COFFEE

My beloved, my devoted

friend and woman brings my morning

treat to bed: strong brown and fragrant

coffee with white cream, for breakfast.

As she serves it flirting, joking,

with unending cooing, fooling,

you might think in all creation

there is not a sweeter laughter.

I imagine that the flutelike

intonation of her chatter

can be matched by angels only

and the songbirds’ lusty twitter.

Her white hand – a tender lily!

How her wafting, light, cascading

curls caress her rosy features!

Such a beauty – such great splendour!

Yet, this morning, it has struck me

(why? or why not?) that her waistline

might be just a shade more slender

…just a little, just a touch.

THE POWER OF POETRY

When I cried out my pain and pride and joy

you yawned: Get lost you silly boy!

When I set out my soul in poetry

you raised your heart and sang with me.

Thomas Ország-Land

Miklós Radnóti

WAR DIARY (1935-36)

Translated from the Hungarian

& Edited

by Thomas Ország-Land

Miklós Radnóti was perhaps the greatest poet of the Holocaust. His work will take centre place in a varied and energetic programme of literary and educational events in 2014 marking his country’s Holocaust Memorial Year. The project just announced by the government in Budapest will commemorate the murder of hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilian captives including Radnóti – mostly Jews but also Roma, homosexuals and political dissidents – perpetrated by the Hungarian state in collaboration with Nazi Germany. This happened during the final and most intensive phase of the Holocaust at the close of WWII when an Allied victory was already obvious. These new translations will be included in The Survivors: Holocaust Poetry for Our Time by Thomas Ország-Land to be published by Smokestack Press in 2014.

1 Monday Evening

These days the distant news dissolves the world

and often brings your heart to miss a beat – but

the trees of old still hold your childhood secrets

in their widening memory rings.

Between suspicious mornings and furious nights,

you have spent half your life corralled by war.

Upon the glinting points of the bayonets, striding

repression encircles you.

The land of your poetry may appear in your dreams

with the wings of freedom gliding above the meadows,

still sensed through the mist, and when the magic breaks

the elation may persist.

But you half-sit on your chair when you rarely dare

to work… restrained in grey and fearful mire.

Your hand still dignified by the pen moves forward,

more burdened day by day.

View the tide of clouds: the ravenous thunderhead

of the war is devouring the gentle blue of the sky.

With her loving, protective arms around you

sobs your anxious bride.　

2 Tuesday Evening

I can sleep calmly now, and methodically

I go about my business… despite the gas,

grenades and bombs and aircraft made to kill me.

I’m past the fear, the rage. I cannot cry.

So I have come to live as hard as teams

of road-builders high among the windy hills:

when their light shelters

decay with age,

they build new shelters

and soundly sleep in beds of fragrant wood-shavings

and splash and dip their faces at dawn in cool

and radiant streams.

* * *

I spy out from this hilltop where I live:

the clouds are crowding.

As the watch on the mainmast over stormy seas

will bellow when, by a lightning’s flash, at last

he thinks he sees

a distant land,

I also can discern from here the shores of peace:

I shout: Compassion!

…My voice is light.

The chilly stars respond with a brightening light,

my word is carried far by the chilly breeze

of the deepening night.

3 Weary Afternoon

A slowly dying wasp flies through the window.

My woman dreaming… muttering in her sleep.

The clouds are turning brown. Along their edges

caressed by the breeze, white ripples teem.

What can I say?… The winter comes and war comes.

I shall fall broken, abandoned without any reason

and worm-ridden earth will fill my mouth and eye-pits

and through my corpse, fresh roots will sprout.

* * *

Oh, peaceful, swaying afternoon, lend me your calm!

I too must rest for a while, I will work later.

Your sunrays hang suspended from the shrubs

as the evening saunters across the hill.

The blood of a fine fat cloud has smeared the sky.

And beneath the burning leaves, the scented yellow

berries are ripening, swelling with wine.

4 Evening Approaches

The sun is descending down a slippery sky.

The evening is approaching early, sprawling

along the road. The watchful moon has missed it.

Pools of mist are falling.

The evening’s whirling sounds among the branches

grow louder. The hedges wake to turn and tilt

at weary travellers. These lines clasp one another

as they are slowly built.

And now!.. a squirrel invades my quiet room

and runs two brown iambic lines, a race

of terror between my window and the wall

and flees without a trace.

My fleeting peace has vanished with the squirrel.

Outside in the fields, the vermin silently spread,

digesting slowly the endless, regimented,

reclining rows of the dead.

THOMAS ORSZÁG-LAND is a poet and award-winning foreign correspondent. His work appears in current issues of Ambit, The London Magazine and Stand. Deathmarch, his translation of poetry by Miklós Radnóti, was published by Snakeskin and The Penniless Press, both in 2009.

Caption: Miklós Radnóti and his wife Fifi

I enclose for your consideration something very topical: a poem and three photographs for the anniversary of The Hungarian Revolutuion of 1956. My poetry appears in current issues of Ambit, The London Magazine and Stand. I hope to hear from you.

Yours, with best regards,

Thomas

(Copy follows & attached)

Thomas Ország-Land

Instead of a Tombstone

Translated from the Hungarian

& Edited

by Watson Kirkconnell

THE AUTHOR of this poem is an award-winning foreign correspondent who gained his first experience in war reporting on the streets of his native Budapest during the anti-Soviet revolution of October/November, 1956. The poem was first published by the revolutionary newspaper The Hungarian Independent that employed him as a cab reporter. It is still performed from time to time at celebrations marking the doomed revolution, and it has been just published in an anthology – Magyar ünnepepek, Közlönty & Lapkiadó, Budapest, 2013 – intended mostly for school children. The present translation is by the late-great Watson Kirkconnell, doyen of translators of Hungarian literature into English, who was president of Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada, when Ország-Land read philosophy there in the years following the revolution.

He shyly closed the lids of darkened eyes,

a small red flower blossomed on his breast.

A smile still lingered on his mouth’s surprise

as if at home he slept and loved his rest…

The little hero in the filth is laid

(around him fall his bread-loaves in the mud)

just as but now he paced the barricade –

in vain let fall his bomb, and shed his blood…

He shyly closed the lids of darkened eyes,

a small red flower blossomed on his breast.

Beside his corpse a steaming gutter lies.

The world sings victory, but signs a jest.

THOMAS ORSZÁG-LAND’s next book will be THE SURVIVORS: Holocaust Poetry for Our Time, to be published by Smokestack Press, England, in 2014.

CAPTION: Images of the 1956 Hungarian revolution

STATELESS

Adapted from the Renaissance French of Francois Villon (b.
1431) & the Hungarian of György Faludy (1910-2006)

Villon the vagabond was one of Europe’s first modern poets.
Faludy, a Jewish-Hungarian master, spent some of his best
writing years in exile or political imprisonment. This poem about
the massive Westward flow of abused stateless migrants that
characterises the 21st century is dedicated to The Exiled Writers
Ink! organization of London.

I’ve proudly wrapped my dazzling sky around me
yet I have found one faithful friend: the fog.
In banquet halls I’ve heard my hunger howling.
By fires, I have endured the test of frost.
I am a prince of human kind: I’ve reached out
and to my thirsty lips, the mud has swelled –
My paths are marked by wilting wildflowers: even
the festive seasons wither from our breath.
I stare surprised in disbelief when genial
warm sunshine holds my frame in calm caress.
And thus across three continents I’ve travelled
and been despised and welcomed everywhere.

I’ve wrestled with the storms on shrivelled wastelands.
My dress: a leaf that graced a bygone tree.
And nothing’s clearer to me than night’s fragrance
and nothing darker than high noontide’s blaze.
My rising sobs have burst in wary taverns
but in the graveyards I have laughed my fill,
and all I own are things I’ve long discarded
and thus I’ve come to value everything.
Upon my stubborn curls, the spell of autumn
collects its silver while, a child at heart,
I cross this freezing landscape never pausing,
and live despised and welcomed everywhere.

Triumphant stars erect their vast cathedral
above me, and dew calms my feet below
as I pursue my fleeing god in sorrow
and sense my world through every pore in joy.
I’ve rested on the peaks of many mountains.
I’ve sweltered with the captive quarry-slaves.
And at my cost, I’ve learned to shun the towers
of state and curse our rulers’ power games.
My share: the worst and best in every bargain,
and thus I’ve come to find an equal ease
in squalor and beneath the whitest pillars,
a guest despised and welcomed everywhere.

I have no state, no home – nor choice but freedom.
Between my legs, the playful wind alone
performs a merry duet with my scrotum.
I wish that I could quell the foolish fears
of local folks, that they would see the person
I am, beyond my status, and receive
my gift of words I’ve brought to share with them.
The time may come when all my words will rhyme
and I will dip my pen in molten gold
…before I find a restful spot beneath
some wizened thicket, and remain forever
a voice: despised and welcomed, everywhere.

Sergio A. Ortiz

Hard Shove into the Void

The cheapest quest is a boy

Walking behind another boy

Holding father and mother’s perfect

Hands, with round beady

Eyes like those he dreamed

In the inveterate dream.

A boy watching another boy swing in air

Gets an ache

That is a hard shove into the void.

There is such an animal,

In me, I remember him in places like Paris,

With such a hunger.

London Sundays

Across the broad slabs where

Imposing gallery

And Georgian church nestle

(Or is that jostle?) close

To traffic hell and up-

Start fleapit, McDonald’s,

And Charing Cross’s two

Versions of the railway –

One all neon steel tile,

The other vaunted arches

Where litter bins cascade

And stragglers wait mute

Before the clock’s blankfaced

Omnipotence, time past

And time present waiting

Perhaps for time future –

Across the broad slabs of

Long-gone London Sundays

My narrow friends scuttle

Down the dark smoked funnel of

St Martin’s-in-the-Fields’

Cold crypt, the London map

Of dirt and grime etched on

Faces like the pigeon

Shit that’s almost mortar

In the brickwork of this

City’s darkest buildings.

I know some face by face,

The numbered hairs of soup-

Clagged beard and what the young

Ones call that geezer’s

Bobby Charlton Parting.

Not hard to number them.

I take my place amongst

The claques, the tat that’s

Standard issue for us tits,

Us doorstep milk snatchers,

Begrimed and anoraked

All round, the tables strewn

With London Sundays, trash

Magazines and empty

Polystyrene cups, crusts,

Sometimes the personal

Paraphenalia

Of ‘our gentlemen’.

We’re

Indifferent now to

Charity: it’s our right.

Once you’ve come this far, soup’s

All that’s keeping you from

Freezing off the booze and

Pegging out. Couldn’t skipper

This weather, although God

Help us, there’s those that do.

The girls, straight out of Blue

Peter, ladle out the soup

And tidy up, black plastic

Bags swallowing all

The debris. Through the dinge

And murmur, the peasouper

Of Old Horrible smoke

And an atmosphere thick

With decay, our last

Conspiracy, moves young

Fiona, a vision in

The choirstall, her red

Surplice left off for the

Crypt. The good angel sheds her

Her wings and walks. I give

A wink and make my way

To the front, a dud

Communicant whose state

Of grace down here doesn’t

Matter. I’m part of

The general confession

Of the age. I’ve crossed

Myself: there’s only me

To blame.

Later the day-

Centre down by Waterloo

Where Brian and I scrabble

Away what remains of

The day ’til closing time

Comes round and off we go

Again, me to St Mungo’s

And him, well he’s under-

Neath the Arches, dreams all

Dreamt away.

The Sunday

Crowds are growing now, round

Leicester Square and up

By Shaftesbury Avenue,

Off to see a film or

The latest musical smash,

Buses lurching round

The weird system of their

Routes as I measure out

The slabs with practised,

Steady rhythm and am

Back before pure neon

Lights the city like

A liner cruising

The cold black ocean,

Flotsam dead along her bows.

O, all those London Sundays.

The Padre’s Prayer

‘In times of darkness, doubt, and death

Your sacrifice will count.

While others dally, to your last breath

Rise up, give good account.

The service that you now perform

I bless and consecrate.

Be lightning in this desert storm –

May all you do be great.

And should you fall think only this:

Your comrades shall overcome

And you shall know eternal bliss

Until His Kingdome come’.

The padre blessed the men at arms

And sent them on their way

Far from lambent English farms

Where the skylarks play.

And He looked down, who’d made them all

And tears fell from His eyes.

‘Why do they fail to hear My call,

Why don’t they realise

That they should be as We are, One:

I made them to be friends.

For them I sent My only Son,

My Peace that never ends.’

The padre blessed the men at arms

And sent them on their way

Far from lambent English farms

Where the skylarks play.Ruary O’Siochain

South of Spain

Walking near Tarifa beach

is that the continent of Africa we see,

faintly brooding,

and just across the bay?

The Sunday strollers give no hint,

and anyhow, the kite surfers,

whose sails billow in pulling

multicolour bands, flash and grab our eyes

to the risky water games they play.

Next morning on another nearby beach

we come across great hulks of fibre glass –

motorless, rudderless flat bottom boats

dragged far up into the dunes away

from no sea game but deadly contest

played with just two chances,

a migrant wave who drown

or reach a ragged freedom.

Life being both price and prize –

one lived on the margin of Europe’s table,

but for the others only

the faintest memorial;

someone has stencilled

the sides of fibreglass

with human effigies,

one for each beach found corpse,

numbered now in hundreds.

They come from Africa,

across the bay,

it’s hard to see.

Terminal Oil Choice

We stop for heat rest

among the olive groves of Jaen.

The landscape had become heavy lidded

and the golds suffused to purples

on the haunches of the further hills.

Beneath the spikey parasol of green

we take the shade that soaks the sun

into a maze of energy and health –

these hanging drupes and good-for-alls

refresh the stulting day, while

breaking through the silence

a gurgling trickle of silver water is

running from a system of narrow pipes

-it’s feeding time for the roots below.

As I step for bread and cheese

a supprise glut of glistening mud

has me slide a near comical fall

head first.

This is lethal, I say.

The Moors first developed

Olive Oil and called it

liquid gold

in times before being told

to go home to Arab lands

and, missing that elixer fruit,

searched every scrap of soil

before striking gold

once more.

Later I work to clean

the gloop of feral clay

that limpids to my boots like clogs

and, with silvery water, stones and sticks

get part unstuck the cling of earth.

And then, yes, starting the motor

whose engine throbs on gasoline

that oozes from that other ground

and is traded like revenge –

we head out down the road.

This is lethal, I say.

Mary O’Dwyer

Clouds

Clouds are sliding by:

Long, drawn-out milky shadows;

Puddles in the sky.

Balloon

Full of expired air

A pin-prick from sudden death—

An empty stomach.

A Storm In A Tea-Pot

It’s an Earl-Grey sort of day:

A steamy, dreamy, beastly day.

From dusk to dawn,

The winds sharp as tusks—

Charged up.

A swinging pendulum

Sprouting forth an elephant

(Tail-end gripped),

Lets rip throughout the morning

Its thunderous trumpet.

The kettle rumbles:

Hiss, hum, mumble, grumble,

Upsetting the crockery

With wolf-whistle mockery.

Raindrops squat like bubbles,

Wallow in the sun

Infusing in the kitchen

With hot-cross buns.

An uproar of tea-leaves

Unsettles the dust,

Foretelling the future

Of the warm-blooded creature

So cosy in his overcoat.

Milk plops in a giant cup,

The sugar cubes crumble up.

The spoon stirs up a final whirl.

A gulp. Red-cheeked, a wholesome girl.

Misty, saggy bags, half-winked,

Twinkle in the sink.

Fear Of Birds

It’s the sudden appearance of a moving force,

Unexpected fluttering of wings;

Feathers tightly packed, yet easily removed.

It’s the powdery fluff that dust-traps my eyes

As the wings part their aerodynamic arms.

Curved beaks open when eyes see me,

As the vultures I saw at Regent’s Park Zoo—

Claws, jaws, haw-haw.

The screech of impending death.

Clumps of fresh meat strung on trees.

Dumb pigeons dropping shit-bombs on my head.

It’s the claustrophobic

Air aerobics

Closing me in wings.

Hawk eyes ogling down from above.

Where’s the peaceful dove,

Sleeping like a book?

If I had seen robins or wrens,

Heard the music of nightingales,

Surveyed the gentle soaring

Loop-the-loops,

Jet-setting in carefree swoops,

I would love birds.

Music In The Nursing Home

Without music I’m like a crumpled tissue,

smelling of sweat, wee and poo.

I’m strapped in a wheelchair

with nothing to do.

As time ticks by,

my useless cells die.

My body’s bent over

like a dying flower.

I stare at my footrests.

Everyday,

I face the same square of carpet.

I listen to mutters and primal screams.

I have nothing to say.

Then someone puts on a record:

I spin my body around

like an out-of-control windmill,

singing like a nightingale—

I have come alive

for half an hour.