esther jansma

Absence

As roses open without you seeing it,
a rose is a rose is, is suddenly knowing:
what was said repeats itself - missing something
is plural - keeps opening in the now

and you don't grasp how. You lie in the heart
and you wait and nothingness seeks you, nothingness
sleeps you to the light, continues to unfold
as it falls into itself.

trans James Brockway

wirndzerem g. barfee

Serious Words This Season

He insisted that the contention
Was all about rigged contracts,
Was all about recurrent ellipses and eclipses
Deliberated opacities formed each rendezvous
Around transactions of sovereignty.

These are again serious words to him
This seven-year season rekindled

He is so obsessed with them-
An agitated sorcerer to unyielding incantations,
That he addicts them to infinite oracular permutations
Until language is deconstructed to volatile gibberish:

An apocalyptic tongue that whispers loud presages
Of sinister days on the streets of genetic volcanicity
So, the taunted citizen, he feigns he’d curl a soft smoke

Goes out on these very streets into a small curbshop,
Buys a box of matches, rolls up his political cigar
And ignites a rebellion with a single match stick.

And, again, these are just possibilities...
The Cardinal maybe, had foreread kindred scriptures
In the angry smoke of his darkened eyes.

Wirndzerem G. Barfee

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

yosano akiko

From The Channel Boat

What shall I wear to sleep alone?
An under-kimono of silk crepe
dyed the hushed red of dawn.
It touches the skin
like the heavy mist falls on flowers.
Every time I wear it I’m glad
I was born a woman.

In the candle’s glowing flame
its smallest motion
has a beauty hat makes me catch my breath
even in this bedroom without you.
It’s strange but
as I slip under the quilts
in the cold February bed
my heart returns to the days
when I was a girl and first loved you.

My husband traveller
are you sleeping now in France?
If a bird of paradise comes into your dreams
it is me.

trans Janine Beichman