Photo by Lisa Rosenberg
Gulf of Kyparissia, Ilia, Greece
1. This is the story
of cigarette butts and discarded straws.
Of beach, and sea, and all that mythology
rolled into one bright ball where my child plays
Divided Heart: painting on slate, Jess Richards 2014.
Wellington, New Zealand
Stained light shines on breath-less angels
who occupy a stone heaven-on-earth without living for touch
without having felt another human enfolding them against soil.
Only the winged can lift themselves so high
but freeze half-way to the clouds
locked in cold bodies, solo-flight paused.
Poems by HÉLÈNE DORION
Translated from the French by SUSANNA LANG
Poems appear below in both French and English.
Québec Province, Canada
Les racines
fendent le sol
comme des éclairs
avancent dans leur solitude
et tremblent
pareilles à une vaste cité de bois
les racines
s’accordent à la sève
qui les fouille
observent-elles les nuages
pour apprendre
la langue de l’horizon
Bucharest, Romania
Spring Boulevard 50, in the heart of Bucharest’s former nomenklatura, currently bourgeois neighborhood, is where the former General Secretary’s one-story villa can be found. Împușcatu is what people sometimes call him around here, “the one who was shot,” or Ceașcă, “cup.” They were executed in winter: Nicolae Ceaușescu, and his wife Elena, who was also shot, but in people’s minds this was secondary to her being an insufferable pseudo-intellectual who loved fur coats. And their children, Nicu, Zoe and Valentin, spared during the 1989 Revolution.
Ashfield, Massachusetts
She remembers a road that she walked along. Something about joy, maybe, something about light. It was her own lightness, or maybe it was the road’s. She walked it more than once, that week in September, a year past. There were rock walls fringed with pale asters. Tiny white butterflies hovered in sunlight, and the hills were green. That’s all that remained. A year ago, and it has faded.
Poems by ALEJANDRA PIZARNIK
Translated from the Spanish by ILAN STAVANS
Mexico City, Mexico
Translator’s Note
Translation is home. Whenever I travel, I seek it either by reading translations, or by translating as a grounding exercise. Lately I have been translating into English poems from Jewish Latin American poets, specifically works by conversos or those written in Yiddish and Ladino by immigrants and their offspring. And—in a room of her own—Alejandra Pizarnik, whose life makes me think of Emily Dickinson. I recreated these two poems while visiting my mother, who has been suffering from Alzheimer’s. Pizarnik distills the fibers of existence so as to reveal the madness that palpitates underneath. Her poetry is contagious. The toughest part is to convey her silences. I wish I had met her.
—Ilan Stavans
By JAMES STAIG
This piece is an audio recording. A transcript appears below.
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Celebrating 15 Years
