peter semolic

Les Casseurs

Doris Lessing writes that the beginning of the end
will start in the suburbs. Kids will no longer be enthusiastic
about motorbikes, and take to arms. Armed in groups they will
march to the city center, over barricades of barbed wire,
over the tank barriers, over policeman’s corpses,
through homes, stores, parks…
They will come armed to the teeth, with crazed drunken
eyes, with Walkmen that will outcry
the screams of victims. They will come hungry for the city center,
for flashing advertisements, lit shop-windows,
five-star finger-clean restaurants.
They will come, jobless, pushed
to damp crumbling suburbs,
returned to the concrete beehives of skyscrapers. They
will come to take what belongs to them,
and destroy that which they were deprived of.

trans Lili Potpara

alistair te ariki campbell

Gallipoli Peninsula

It was magical when flowers
appeared on the upper reaches –
not that we saw much of the upper reaches.
But when we did,
we were reminded of home
when spring clothed the hills with flowers.
The dead lying among them
seemed to be asleep.
I can never forget the early mornings,
before the killings started up,
when the sea was like a mirror
under little wisps of cloud
breathing on its surface, so dazzling
it hurt the eye.
and the ships, so many of them,
they darkened the sea.
But the evenings too were magical,
with such hues in the sky
over Macedonia,
so many colours, gold bars,
green, red, and yellow.
We noticed these things,
when the firing stopped and we had respite.
It was good to feel,
during such moments,
that we were human beings once more,
delighting in little things,
in just being human.

fernando pessoa

Written in a Book Abandoned on the Trip

I come from around Beja.
I’m going to the centre of Lisbon.
I’m not bringing anything and won’t find a thing.
I feel the exhaustion from what I won’t find.
And my yearning comes not from the past or the future.
In this book I have inscribed the image of my dead design:
I was, like the grasses, and never uprooted.

(as Alvaro de Campos)

trans by Edward Honig and Susan M. Brown

evan jones

A Line From Keats

The south-coast sun, the play of light and air,
The rain, indeed, and all that varied weather,
Mirrored all our delight and wantonness.
Breath could move your ruffled hair
As we lay there at last at peace together,
Perfect and unconcerned in nakedness.

Moments of discord swelled up and were gone:
I stalked out once into the feathery rain
And drove away, because you would not call me.
I cam back with my tarnished honours on
Within an hour; at once you made it plain
That you would spare no effort to enthral me.

It was my darling here, my darling there
As we joined in a clear festivity
Needing no celebration
Needing no more occasion than our bare
Desire to come together: you and I,
Bright in that burning week of consummation.

All stories, you once said, should have this end:
To change the burden slightly, long ago
These lovers fled away into the calm.
Easily I became your ‘dearest friend’
And now am someone that you scarcely know,
A memory that you balance in our palm.

malika o'lahsen

It Took One Hundred Years

They are cutting up into pieces
My body and my sun
They are cutting them up into pieces
You
You will be white
You
You will be black
Hunger
Laziness
Unwillingness

It took
One hundred years
To make me a savage
It took
One hundred years
Even more

They are cutting everything up into pieces
Departments
Districts
They are clipping out pictures
With border barbed wire
They are cutting up my body
To make it into History

trans by Eric Sellin

gladys campagnola

If you arrive today

If you arrive today, remember
that you have to come first to my patio.
Which flag should I wave for you to know
that truly I am waiting for you?
And how can I contain myself
so that I don't set off a serious scandal:
greeting from so far away
a brother.

Tell me which language you understand best
and I'll decide to study it.
I don't want there to be interference
although we speak in signs.

It's in this we have experience:
for centuries we began to understand.
After so much practice, perhaps with you
we'll finally see the results --.

(Oh no -- without realizing it,
without wanting to, I've made come out the bitter tone
of the person who knows all the limits
and cannot avoid them.)

Sit here. On the side, the jasmine
will scent you with white.
See how fresh the water is from this jar.
And how sweet the fruit from the guava tree.

I'm still waiting for you here, under the generous
shade of the mango tree.
It is January. It is Saturday.
Don't delay any more, my brother.

trans unknown

mario benedetti

Tactic and Strategy

My tactic is
to look at you
to learn how you are
to love you as you are
my tactic is
to talk to you
and to listen to you
to build with words
an indestructible bridge
my tactic is
to remain in your memories
I don't know how
nor
with what pretext
but to remain with you
my tactic is
to be frank
and to know that you're frank
and not to sell to ourselves
simulations
so that between us
there is no curtain
nor abyss
my strategy is
in contrast
deeper and
more simple
my strategy is
that one of these days
I don't know how
nor
with what pretext
you finally
need me.

how to wake your partner

1. arrive home to smell that she has recently been eating popcorn

2. be affected by this lovely aroma and decide to make some yourself

3. put popcorn in microwave.

4.ignore the instruction to 'keep an eye' on the contents

5. ignore the popping sound of popcorn at the ready

6. the microwave explodes

7. the popcorn is on fire

8. your partner is wakened from restful sleep

easy...

patrizia cavalli

Now that the time seems all mine

Now that the time seems all mine
and no one calls me for lunch or dinner
now that I can stay to watch
how a cloud loosens and loses its color,
how a cat walks on the roof
in the immense luxury of a prowl, now
that what waits for me every day
is the unlimited length of a night
where there is no call and no longer a reason
to undress in a hurry to rest inside
the blinding sweetness of a body that waits for me,
now that the morning no longer has a beginning
and silently leaves me to my plans,
to all the cadences of my voice, now
suddenly I would like a prison

trans by Judith Baumel

carlos drummond de andrade

Don’t Kill Yourself

Carlos, calm down, love
is what you are seeing:
a kiss today, tomorrow no kiss,
the day after tomorrow is Sunday
and nobody knows what will happen
on Monday.

It’s useless to resist
or to commit suicide.
Don’t kill yourself. Don’t kill yourself.
Save all of yourself for the wedding
though nobody knows when or if
it will ever come.

Carlos, earthy Carlos, love
spent the night with you
and your deepest self
is raising a terrible racket,
prayers,
victrolas,
saints in procession,
ads for the best soap,
a racket for which nobody knows
the why or wherefor.

Meanwhile, you walk
upright, unhappy.
You are the palm tree, you are the shout
that nobody heard in the theatre
and all the lights went out.
Love in darkness, no, in daylight
is always sad, Carlos, my boy,
don’t tell anyone
nobody knows or will know.

trans Mark Strand

yi won

I CLICK THEREFORE I AM

Rather than spread open the morning paper smelling of ink
at dawn I lightly double-click onto the odorless Internet
I click the complimentary PDF that shows me
exactly the image of a printed newspaper page
The KOSDAQ has no wings now
Total short-term foreign debt of 50,000,000,000 dollars
With each click a page of the newspaper turns
I continuously click the world
With a click one world collapses and
another one rises
The sun floats up There’s a chip installed in the sun too
I look at a 12-page article: ‘The computer picks up
a wireless signal from my body in which fiber optics carrying
microscopic electrodes have been grafted into my arms’ nerve structure.’
and click onto the website of Kevin Warwick who dreams of the first-ever
human robot I am the 28,412th visitor
I have a gene I want to insert too
With my right hand’s forefinger moving the mouse around
I click onto my e-mail A message arrived last night also
I click the attached file that k of Toronto has sent
Red roses drip dew from their petals and
Bloom inside a white picket fence
The flowers sent by k haven’t wilted
I immediately click on the dialpad of the free Internet phone
I click k’s phone number
I become connected across 6589 miles
Even I may be a program that someone’s installed
Moving the slippery mouse around with my right hand I
Click on literature I click on periodicals
I click into the April issue of the literary webzine Novel
The ‘Little Prince’ on the cover who says ‘The desert is beautiful
because somewhere it’s hiding a spring.’
constantly changes the scene around him I open the window a bit more and
click onto the Internet bookstore Aladdin I look at the list of new publications
I click to order Paul Auster’s The Music of Chance at a 20% discount
and René Girard’s Violence and the Sacred at 15% off
Outside my window mundane affairs bumping around
inside a produce truck in a four-beat rhythm koong-chak koong-chak koong-chak-ja koongchak
I take up the four-beat bongjak music time and
idly looking at the street the truck is on click its map
I follow one of the routes out of Seoul and arrive at
Hwaôm Temple The sound of a wooden bell spreads out from the camellias arrayed
in front of the inner temple Hands together in prayer
I click on one of the 60%-discount coupons for a condo in the Chiri Mountains
Onto my knees under the printer
a coupon drops down like a camellia petal I
click the I attached to the camellia petal
Zero categories and 177 sites come up
as the search result for the word I
But where am I
Searching for I I click each site in order
lunacy movie India and I…splIt
…comIng out…suIng alone…And I, Inc.…
storIes I want to Impart…the earth and I….
I can hear the click of the double-humped camel’s hooves

An oasis is nearby
Continuing on I click therefore I am


trans by Walter K. Lew

jules supervielle

Rain and the Tyrants

I stand and watch the rain
Falling in pools which make
Our grave old planet shine;
The clear rain falling, just the same
As that which fell in Homer’s time
And hat which dropped in Villon’s day
Falling on mother and on child
As on the passive backs of sheep
Rain saying all it has to say
Again and yet again, and yet
Without the power to make less hard
The wooden heads of tyrants or
To soften their stone hearts,
And powerless to make them feel
Amazement as they ought;
A drizzling rain which falls
Across all Europe’s map,
Wrapping all men alive
In the same moist envelope;
Despite the soldiers loading arms,
Despite the newspapers’ alarms,
Despite all this, all that,
A shower of drizzling rain
Making the flags hang wet.

trans by David Gascoyne

best video

there was a time when i was into surfing. while a bad shoulder and a move away from the waves have put paid to that i still can't shake the habit of watching the coast. what i never got the habit for was watching surfing videos.e ach to their own but for me these were the visual equivalent of watching paint dry. there's always an exception tho and this is it.how much time!! lol

and as if i didn't feel bad enough about my lack of bike skill i came across this. watch it right to the end - if i tried that i'd have to book an ambulance in advance!

amy gerstler

A Non-Christian on Sunday

Now we heathens have the town to ourselves.
We lie around, munching award winning pickles
and hunks of coarse seeded bread smeared
with soft, sweet cheese. The streets seem
evacuated, as if Godzilla had been sighted
on the horizon kicking down skyscrapers
and flattening cabs. Only two people
are lined up to see a popular movie
in which the good guy and the bad guy trade
faces. Churches burst into song. Trees wish
for a big wind. Burnt bacon and domestic tension
scent the air. So do whiffs of lawnmower exhaust
mixed with the colorless blood of clipped hedges.
For whatever’s about to come crashing down
on our heads, be it bliss-filled or heinous,
make us grateful, OK? Hints of the savior’s
flavour buzz on our tongues, like crumbs
of a sleeping pill shaped like a snowflake.

henrik nordbrandt

If Giacometti had been along

Everything has its limit, people say.
Each day I stand at a new one
and so come to think
about infinity, this
world’s strangest word
because only language contains it
within language itself, so then
a limit is thereby set.
It is clear, though
like its background colorless
like grief
that has consumed all colors
so their absence
stands out all the clearer.
The picture can be called
The Blue Desert and placed
on the other side of itself
in the next room
so with these words meaning
becomes sand.
Has everything come along?
Like it I bring only
the contents of my pockets.
So perhaps what is missing
could be a statue
of myself.
It would be incredibly tall
and made of iron, in the second person singular.

trans Thom Satterlee