Brazil 3-0 Chile

Paolo Lemniski (1944-1989; trans. Charles Perrone)



life is the cows
you put in the river
to attract the piranhas
while the herd passes


Raúl Zurita (1950- )



Epílogo

Cientos de cuerpos fueron arrojados sobre las
montañas, lagos y mar de Chile. Un sueño quizás
soñó que habían unas flores, que habían unas
rompientes, un océano subiéndolos salvos desde
sus tumbas en los paisajes. No.
Están muertos. Fueron ya dichas las inexistentes
flores. Fue ya dicha la inexistente mañana.

Holland 2-1 Slovakia

Nachoem M. Wijnberg (1961- ; trans. David Colmer)



Morning and Evening Song

It is silent above my head,
below my feet,
the dark’s not cold, the light’s not warm;
when morning or evening comes running up
it’s to bring me something to read.

A book I want to keep
or take with me when I travel;
on the first page
I stopped reading three times
and each time I could have stopped longer.

I suddenly dare to say
I want you;
if you suddenly don’t want to any more
I have to accept it,
like when morning or evening don’t want to any more.

What you gave me,
not starting today
with what was taken from me
or abandoned by me
and is now spread over mornings and evenings.

When I was a child
I lived in a house
I still have the key to
because I had to hold it in my hand
in the morning when we left to travel until it was evening.


Andrej Sladkovic (1820-1872)



Marína (extract)

1
.
Ja sladké túžby, túžby po kráse
spievam peknotou nadšený,
a v tomto duše mojej ohlase
svet môj je celý zavrený;
z výsosti Tatier ona mi svieti,
ona mi z ohňov nebeských letí,
ona mi svety pohýna;
ona mi kýva zo sto životov:
No centrom, živlom, nebom, jednotou
krás mojich moja Marína!
.
2
.
Ako vy, Tatry, keď oblak zlatý
na hory svoje hodíte:
tak ona duchom svojím mi šatí
tône života úsvite.
Ako vy tamhor', božie plamene,
svetiel ste žriedla, fakle, korene:
ona blesk myšlienky mojej! -
Ako vy, večné svetov zákony,
harmónij božích čarovné tóny:
tak tá mne os, zenit, kolej!
.
3
.
Jestli sa city moje rozlejú
po srdciach v Tatrách žijúcich;
jestli ohlasy moje zavejú
kradmo do časov budúcich:
rodáci mojej duše, krajiny!
objímte obraz mojej Maríny
ľúbosťou svätých predmetov;
toho, čo spieva krásy dejiny,
nejali Lady rozmaríny,
on ľúbi ľúbosť všesvetov.

Argentina 3-1 Mexico

Alvaro Yunque (1889-1982)



Poesía de la calle

Poesía de la calle,
cosa de todos, sin dueño;
yo te aprisiono un segundo,
sólo un segundo en mi verso.

Poesía de la calle,
torna a la calle de nuevo;
de todos sé y de ninguno,
¡como una ramera, verso!


Nezahualcóyotl (1402-1472)



Canto de la huida
(De Nezahualcóyotl cuando andaba huyendo del señor de Azcapotzalco)

En vano he nacido,
En vano he venido a salir
De la casa del dios a la tierra,
¡yo soy menesteroso!
Ojalá en verdad no hubiera salido,
Que de verdad no hubiera venido a la tierra.
No lo digo, pero…
¿qué es lo que haré?,
¡oh príncipes que aquí habéis venido!,
¿vivo frente al rostro de la gente?
¿qué podrá ser?,
¡reflexiona!

¿Habré de erguirme sobre la tierra?
¿Cuál es mi destino?,
yo soy menesteroso,
mi corazón padece,
tú eres apenas mi amigo
en la tierra, aquí

¿Cómo hay que vivir al lado de la gente?
¿Obra desconsideradamente,
vive, el que sostiene y eleva a los hombres?

¡Vive en paz,
pasa la vida en calma!
Me he doblegado,
Sólo vivo con la cabeza inclinada
Al lado de la gente.
Por eso me aflijo,
¡soy desdichado!,
he quedado abandonado
al lado de la gente en la tierra.

¿Cómo lo determina tu corazón,
Dador de la Vida?
¡Salga ya tu disgusto!
Extiende tu compasión,
Estoy a tu lado, tú eres dios.
¿Acaso quieres darme la muerte?

¿Es verdad que nos alegramos,
que vivimos sobre la tierra?
No es cierto que vivimos
Y hemos venido a alegrarnos en la tierra.
Todos así somos menesterosos.
La amargura predice el destino
Aquí, al lado de la gente.

Que no se angustie mi corazón.
No reflexiones ya más
Verdaderamente apenas
De mí mismo tengo compasión en la tierra.

Ha venido a crecer la amargura,
Junto a ti a tu lado, Dador de la Vida.
Solamente yo busco,
Recuerdo a nuestros amigos.
¿Acaso vendrán una vez más,
acaso volverán a vivir;
Sólo una vez perecemos,
Sólo una vez aquí en la tierra.
¡Que no sufran sus corazones!,
junto y al lado del Dador de la Vida.

Germany 4-1 England

Lutz Seiler (1963- ; trans. Andrew Shields)



In the Year One, that was

scraping on the ground, scratched up
silence &
folded by death: winter flies.

the first – a wartime fall when
things have already been
run through by a nerve, ignited by

the air. across the field, the battue
brings back the gravity
of the tracks distances

shrink & whoever
happens to be on the move vanishes
in his thoughts: you

see the fish spool men coughing in
great waves onto fragile strands. when
what merely travels scraps us, you hear

horses in the drain, clatter &
a breeze that
blows chemically up

from the sewers; you eavesdrop, bewitched, maybe
there are still magic spiders
squatting in the old radio voices, tiny, well
hidden, only
an itch in the ear
of relativity


David Harsent (1942- )



Necrophilia

No wayward promise, nothing to shake the heart,
nothing to warm to, no trace of harm or hurt,

nothing of jealousy, no risk of bliss,
the wide, white eye; the perfect parting kiss.

USA 1-2 Ghana

Mark Strand (1934- )



Where are the Waters of Childhood?

See where the windows are boarded up,
where the gray siding shines in the sun and salt air
and the asphalt shingles on the roof have peeled or fallen off,
where tiers of oxeye daisies float on a sea of grass?
That’s the place to begin.

Enter the kingdom of rot,
smell the damp plaster, step over the shattered glass,
the pockets of dust, the rags, the soiled remains of a mattress,
look at the rusted stove and sink, at the rectangular stain
on the wall where Winslow Homer’s Gulf Stream hung.

Go to the room where your father and mother
would let themselves go in the drift and pitch of love,
and hear, if you can, the creak of their bed,
then go to the place where you hid.

Go to your room, to all the rooms whose cold, damp air you breathed,
to all the unwanted places where summer, fall, winter, spring,
seem the same unwanted season, where the trees you knew have died
and other trees have risen. Visit that other place
you barely recall, that other house half hidden.

See the two dogs burst into sight. When you leave,
they will cease, snuffed out in the glare of an earlier light.
Visit the neighbors down the block; he waters his lawn,
she sits on her porch, but not for long.
When you look again they are gone.

Keep going back, back to the field, flat and sealed in mist.
On the other side, a man and a woman are waiting;
they have come back, your mother before she was gray,
your father before he was white.

Now look at the North West Arm, how it glows a deep cerulean blue.
See the light on the grass, the one leaf burning, the cloud
that flares. You’re almost there, in a moment your parents
will disappear, leaving you under the light of a vanished star,
under the dark of a star newly born. Now is the time.

Now you invent the boat of your flesh and set it upon the waters
and drift in the gradual swell, in the laboring salt.
Now you look down. The waters of childhood are there.


Agbleze Selorm (1987-)



Death Looks Different on You

Death looks different on you
Young one that steals from the aged
They say the robbed that smiles steals from the thief
Your smile this day is theft to death
It is a baffle of the mind
It is a break of tradition
In our land
The dead young are supposed to frown
But what is this excitement behind your eyelids
What is this joy your lips can’t speak
Death is ugly
Yours is beautiful
Death is cold
Yours is warm
What is this fire within your body
What is this beauty emerging from beneath your skin
The vultures have lost their flight
There is no wind of pain to lift their wings
The women’s wail is not of pain

Uruguay 2-1 South Korea

Circe Maia (1932- )



Abril

Este día tan lleno de niñez,
las cápsulas verdes de los eucaliptos
en el suelo, entre hojas.

El buen aroma frío y viejo trae
de la mano, consigo,
los paseos al sol y por un parque
en un abril de viento.

Por mirar la vereda así y oír el ruido
de las hojas, arriba;
por recoger las cápsulas y aspirar hasta el alma
su antiguo olor, se puede,

?a veces, sí, se puede?
abrir puertas cerradas hacía días remotos;
las mañanas del sol y un aire limpio, fino,
los bancos de madera por el borde del parque,
las veredas desiertas,
un viento decidido contra la cara, frío,
y en la mano, tibieza de la mano materna.


Yi Won (1968- ; trans. Walter K. Lew)

[no photo]

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

Chile 1-2 Spain

Fernando Alegría (1918-2005)



Cuando al alba sale el huaso a destapar estrellas
y, mojado de rocío, enciende el fuego en sus espuelas
cuando el caballo colorado salta la barra del mar
y se estremece el lago con una lenta bruma de patos,
cuando cae el recio alerce y en sus ramas cae el cielo:
digo con nostalgia ¡VIVA CHILE MIERDA!


Cuando el buzo ilumina su escafandra
y las ballenas se acercan a mamar en el vientre de las lanchas
cuando cae al fondo del océano la osamenta de la patria
y como vaca muerta la arrastra la ola milenaria
cuando explota el carbón y se enciende la Antártida:
digo, pensativo, ¡VIVA CHILE MIERDA!


Cuando se viene el invierno flotando en el Mapocho
como un muerto atado con alambres, con flores y con tarros
y lo lamen los perros y se aleja embalsamado de gatos
cuando se lleva un niño y otro niño dormidos en su escarcha
y se va revolviendo sus grises ataúdes de saco:
digo enfurecido ¡VIVA CHILE MIERDA!


cuando en noche de luna crece una población callampa
cuando se cae una escuela y se apaga una fábrica
cuando fallece un puerto en el Norte y con arena lo tapan
cuando Santiago se apesta y se oxidan sus blancas plazas
cuando se jubila el vino y las viudas empeñan sus casas:
digo cabeza bajo ¡VIVA CHILE MIERDA!


Me pregunto de repente y asombrado, por qué
diré Viva Chile Mierda y no Mier… mosa Patria?
quizás en mi ignorancia repito el eco de otro eco:
¡Viva! dice el roto con la pepa de oro entre los dedos
¡Chile! dice el viento al verde cielo de los ebrios valles
¡Mierda! responde el sapo a la vieja bruja de Talagante
¿Qué problema tan profundo se esconde en las líneas de mi mano?


¿Es mi país una ilusión que me sigue como la sombra al perro?
¿No hay Viva entre nosotros sin su Mierda, compañeros?
la una para el esclavo, la otra para el encomendero
la una para el que explota salitre, cobre, carbón, ganado
la otra para el que vive su muerte subterránea de minero.
Y como penamos y vivimos en pequeña faja de abismo
frente al vacío alguien gritó la maldición primero.


¿Fue un soldado, herido en la batalla de Rancagua?
¿Fue un marino en Angamos? ¿Un cabo en Cancha Rayada?
¿Fue un huelguista en La Coruña? ¿Un puño cenado en San Gregorio?
¿O un pascuense desangrándose en la noche de sus playas?
¿No cantó el payador su soledad a lo divino
y a lo humano se ahorcó con cuerdas de guitarra?
¿No siguió al Santísimo a caballo y a cuchillás mantuvo al diablo raya?


¡Ah!, qué empresa tan gigante para destino tan menguado.
Entre nieve y mar, con toda el alma, nos damos contra un rumbo ya tapiado,
por consecuencia, en la mañana cuando Dios nos desconoce,
cuando alzado a medianoche nos sacude un terremoto,
cuando el mar saquea nuestras casas y se esconde entre los bosques,
cuando Chile ya no puede estar seguro de sus mapas
y cantamos, como un gallo que ha de picar el sol en pedazos,
digo, con firmeza, ¡VIVA CHILE MIERDA!

Y lo que digo es un grito de combate
oración sin fin, voz de partida, fiero acicate
espuelazo sangriento con las riendas al aire
galopón del potro chileno a través de las edades
es crujido de capas terrestres, anillo de fuego,
vieja ola azul de claros témpanos pujantes.


País – Pájaro, raíz vegetal, rincón donde el mundo se cierra,
quien lo grite no tendrá paz, caerá para seguir adelante.
Y porque de isla en isla, del mar a la cordillera,
de una soledad a otra, como de una estrella a otra estrella,
nos irá aullando en los oídos la sentencia de la tierra:
digo, finalmente, ¡VIVA CHILE MIERDA!


Yolanda Castaño (1977 - )



Sei perfectamente que todo est· aquÌ.Como unha sorte de p·lpitos que se entrega · miÒa man antes das horas.Unha condea que mece os meus insomnios.
Nada ocurriu antes das horas. Eu non levaba barcos. Escribiamos cara adiante cando se nos caeron as t˙nicas, e ficamos asÌ, maquillados de rosa, coa boca mollada e os pÈs abertos, co magnÌfico libro das venturas agochado na vulva.

Moito deixarse a pel pero eu non quixen aprender a chegar. XardÌn exÌguo, vento pechado de mans, infinita cuadrÌcula. Renuncio Û lugar do alento. Quero aprender a saÌr.

Switzerland 0-0 Honduras

Alfonsina Storni (1892-1938; trans. unknown)



Sweet Torture

My melancholy was gold dust in your hands;
On your long hands I scattered my life;
My sweetnesses remained clutched in your hands;
Now I am a vial of perfume, emptied

How much sweet torture quietly suffered,
When, my soul wrested with shadowy sadness,
She who knows the tricks, I passed the days
kissing the two hands that stifled my life.


Claudia Torres (ALNTHA)

[No photo]

Dibujo uno

La tarde teje su silencio
en los pequeños bordes de las casas.
Esconde aristas abruptas
al son de la noche espesa.
Las vigas abrazan las soleras y sus tejas.
El amarillo de los rayos se encoge
hasta volverlas nada.
El ovillo azul intenso
se convierte en zumbido titilante,
suspira la luz de la mañana.
El ojo anhela;
apenas un reflejo en la profundidad interna
que batalla los sentidos.
El miedo salta victorioso.
Hace suyo el momento.
Tiembla, treme, tiembla.
El susurro es un largo grito sin ruido.

North Korea 0-3 Ivory Coast

Ku Sang (1919-2004; trans. Brother Anthony, of Taizé)



Myself
It is more than
the deep roots of every emotion,
big or small, of every kind,
that squirm and kick like little children
somewhere inside

and more than
the deep-sea fish
of six senses and seven sins,
that waves its tail
like a night-time shadow on a window pane

more, too, than
star-dust littering the yards
of Original Sin and Karma,
passing through the obscure darkness of the potter's kiln

and more than
the oasis spring gushing from the desert sand,
melting again into foam and flowing
after filtering through strata of origins and time
with their rustle of dry grass,
and the crack in the glacier, or even exploding particles

more, too, than
the world, itself smaller
than a millet seed
in the cosmic vastnesses

and more than
the ether -- fullness of the boundless void
reaching beyond billions of light years
of starlight

more, too, than
the substantiality such fullness gives,
and more than its opposing nihility,
more, too, than unknown death

more, greater,
a soundless cosmic shout!
An immensity embracing Eternity!

Myself.


Bottey Zadi Zoaurou (1938- )



Lexique vessiste

Braiser pour assassiner
Tailler pour étudier
Cagoulier et machettier
Deux synonymes de terroristes

Portugal 0-0 Brazil

Paolo Teixeira (1962- ; trans. Richard Zenith)



The Last Roman Poet

As waves break over the beaches
and cannons boom beyond the city walls,
he asks for one fleeting, indulgent hour
in an inviolable place,
shielded by the muse’s wings and the sibyl’s words
like an actor gone backstage.

Forgetting the dream of a laurel-crowned head
and the couches that cradle the last Epicurean souls,
he longs only for adverbial quiet – not a sound –
in which all might be preserved, in the ambit of his art,
with the lightness of a quill passing over paper.

That each word, purified, rolling on the tongue
like a host, might have the authority of a garland
or royal seal
and press the world he knew into a hedge
as everything degenerates and collapses around him.

In this work of falconry applied to time past,
writing reminds him of the notches the prisoner
cuts in the wall of his cell to count the days,
knowing what will come: the slipknot of the gallows
or a shot fired straight into his brain.

Aware that all his work will now suffer
dispersion,
he wants to save, consoling and sufficient,
a word on the face of a future stele.


Lêdo Ivo (1924- ; trans. Alexis Levitin)



The Dream of Fishes

I cannot accept that dreams
are the privilege of human beings alone.
Fish also dream.
In the swampy pond, amongst miasmas
aspiring to the thickened dignity of life,
they dream with eyes always open.

Fish dream motionless, in the bliss
of fetid water. They aren’t like men, who toss
and turn in their unhappy beds. In truth,
fish are different from us, who have not yet learned to dream,
and we struggle, as if drowning, in turbid water
among hideous images and the bones of long-dead fish.

Beside the pond I ordered to be hollowed out,
making a troublesome dream of childhood come true,
I question the dark water. The tilapias hide
from my suspicious owner’s gaze
and refuse to teach me how I ought to dream.

Denmark 1-3 Japan

Ursula Andkjær Olsen (1970- ; trans. David McDuff)



THE BOOK OF THE SERPENT / HERE IS WHAT HAPPENED: GOD CREATED THE SERPENT. THUS THE SERPENT ALSO HAD UTOPIA BEHIND THE EYES: HAPPINESS AND HARMONIOUS COHABITATION WHEREVER POSSIBLE. SOMETHING TO GROW. BUT UNLIKE MAN THE SERPENT SHOWED A GREATER INCLINATION FOR DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH THAN FOR ETERNAL LIFE, SO IN PARADISE HE TURNED TO THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE AND ITS SHINY PEARS. EVEN THOUGH MAN FLATTERED HIMSELF FOR HAVING GIVEN NAMES TO THINGS AND PUT LITTLE SIGNS ON THEM HE DID NOT MANAGE TO NAME THEM ALL, AND AFTER THE SERPENT AND MAN TOOK KNOWLEDGE DOWN FROM THE BRANCHES, NONE OF THE NAMES STUCK TO THINGS ANY MORE AND MANY FEELINGS WOULD COME AND ALSO MANY THINGS THAT WOULD LATER LACK A NAME. THEN THERE WERE THE WARS ABOUT THE THINGS AND THE WARS ABOUT THE NAMES OF THE THINGS AND MANY LAY DEAD AND WOULD LIE DEAD ON THE FIELD. WHEN PARADISE WAS BLOWN OPEN THE SERPENT TOOK WITH HIM THAT SMALL PIECE OF THE GARDEN OF GARDENS WHICH HAD BECOME A PART OF HIMSELF: HIS EYEBALL WITH THE ENCLOSURE, WITH THE SIGNS, WITH THE GRASS AND THE LION AND THE LAMB AND THEIR SIDE BY SIDE. AND THE TINY LIGHT PEAR THAT WOULD HELP THINGS TO GROW. SO AS HE TWISTED THROUGH THE FOLLOWING CENTURIES ON HIS BELLY IT WAS WITH AN INVITATION TO ALL MEN TO SURRENDER THEIR SOVEREIGNTY TO THE COMMON GOOD: “WHO ARE YOU? LET USSS TAKE CARE OF THAT, SSSWEETIE, GIVE USSS DESSSTINIES! AMENAM.” BUT ALSO ALWAYS WITH A PICTURE OF PARADISE – HAPPINESS AND COHABITATION AND BEAUTIFUL NAMES ON SIGNS – ON THE TIP OF HIS TONGUE, FOR THE GREATEST COMMON GOOD: “LET USSS FORM A CLOSED SSSIRCLE OF GIVE AND TAKE. FROM USSS YOU HAVE COME TO USSS TO USSS YOU MUST GO FROM USSS YOU MUST RISSSE AGAIN. AMENAM. AND LLLICK YOUR BIG TOE. HEEHEE. SSSWEETIE.” THE SERPENT GREW AND HAD MANY NAMES: THE MIDGARD SERPENT COMBINED WITH THE GIANT YMIR AND AT ONE TIME HE WAS DISCOVERED AND SPOTTED AND CALLED BY YET ANOTHER NAME: LEVIATHAN AS THE STATE MONSTER HE WAS. IT COULD HAVE BEEN GOD WHO SLAUGHTERED THE SERPENT TO LET THE RIGHTEOUS SUCK ON HIM FOR THE PROMOTION OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT. BUT IT WAS THE SERPENT HIMSELF WHO SLAUGHTERED THE PART OF MAN THAT WAS SERPENT. ZIGZAG: HE WAS SO DIALECTICAL THAT HE HAD TWO PERSPECTIVES IN HIS EYE, THE UNIVERSAL AND THE INDIVIDUAL. HAPPINESS AND COHABITATION WHEREVER POSSIBLE AND SOMETHING TO GROW. AND THE SLAUGHTER WAS SALTED AND DISTRIBUTED FOR ALL TO SUCK ON IT SO IT WAS A FEAST. THE SERPENT GREW SHOCKINGLY AND BECAME A COMPLEX CREATURE OF BRIDGES AND PASSAGES TO TRANSPORT BODIES AROUND IN RISING FLEETING AND FLEXIBLE PATTERNS: “WE ARE THE SSSCENE AND WHAT MOVESSS AROUND ON IT. HOLY SSSHIT! IT ISSS USSS. GIVE USSS DESSSTINIESSSS! SSSOME LIKE SSSTARSSSS TO SSSHINE IN THE SSSKY JUSSST LIKE OPIUM FOR THE PEOPLE AND SSSOME TO LAY A SSSORT OF FOUNDATION. THE PEOPLE WE FUCK WILL FORM THE BASSSISSS. YOU WILL FORM THE BASSSISSS LITTLE HEART, PURE LAMB.” HE GREW AND HE GOT MORE AND MORE NAMES: FLEXICURITAS REX FOR EXAMPLE. AND MORE GENDERS: BIG PRICK AND CARROT, BLING BLING MÖTHERFÜCKER, STATE PUSSY, FAIRY QUEEN AND THEN THE HERMAPHRODITE TYRANNOSAURUS FLEX, STATE AND MARKET IN ONE WIN-WIN, JUST THE NUMBER OF HEADS: IN ADDITION TO STATE AND INDIVIDUAL ALSO THE PRIVATE SECTOR AND THE ARMY OF THOSE WHO STRUGGLE FOR POWER AND GLORY AND THE BIG CAR WITH TV. AND THE SERPENT WENT ON EXPANDING WITH NETWORKS, INCENTIVE STRUCTURES AND PROJECT RECRUITING. HE WAS ALL THE HANDS THAT DON’T KNOW WHAT THE OTHERS DO. COLD ONES AND HOT ONES. AND ALL THE BREASTS, BOTH GOOD BREAST AND BAD BREAST, FROM WHICH WHIP AND CREAM AND LIFELONG LEARNING FLOW FREELY. THE BIG CAR AND THE LION AND THE LAW AND COHABITATION WHEREVER POSSIBLE. AT ANY RATE PARTS OF THE SERPENT SAW HOW BIG HE HAD GOT AND THAT THIS WAS NOT NECESSARILY A GOOD THING, AT ANY RATE ONE VOICE IN THE SERPENT WANTED TO MAKE THE NAMELESSNESS IN MAN REMAIN NAMELESS, GO ON BEING AN OBJECT FOR DEFINITION, BECOME A SOURCE OF EVER NEW NAMES AND NEW THINGS. FOR ALL TIME. IT WAS A STRANGE UTOPIA. IT WAS A UTOPIA OF BREATHING HOLES IN THE SERPENT. OF HOLES THAT THE SERPENT MADE OPEN IN HIS FLESH, IN HIS TOTALITY. A UTOPIA OF A FREE GARDEN FOR EVERYONE IN THE HEART, CONTAINED IN THE GREAT GARDEN, WITH SIGNS AND NAMES AND HAPPINESS AND LAMB AND SOMETHING TO GROW. SOMETHING TO SPEND ONE’S TIME ON. PARTS OF THE SERPENT SAW AND HOPED THAT IT WAS GOOD ENOUGH.


Kiyoko Nagase (1906-1995; trans. Takako Lento)



My Dear Silent One, My Indigo Mist

My dear, you’ve gone into the earth
you are silent now all day long
motionless in a damp place

I, who write poetry, always tried to be by myself
and could not think of anything else
so you must have been very lonely

Not wanting to distract me, you were watching me from a distance
That was your love in indigo color
But I never even thought about it

Since I am truly by myself now
I can freely beat my wings at any time
yet, strangely, I feel you right next to me

Please be with me here for real –
saying that makes my tears flow of their own accord
I couldn’t bring myself to say those words while you were alive

A bad wife, heartless me
Even though I wanted to do my best to be good to you
my heart somehow drifted to distant dreams

But a man in this world
doesn’t even dream of apologizing to his wife for his absence
due to his work, however gigantic and rock-like his sculpting may have been

All I did was knead some malleable and familiar mud
Why do I feel so sorry
that my heart was not singly attentive to you – ?

I am a worthless woman, a good-for-nothing woman
even if you say, “That’s OK”
to me from underground

I have half-read books piled like a junk-heap by my bed
I wake up in the middle of the night and pick one of them up
At times they flutter to the floor like butterflies trying to take off

Your desire was to let me live
Even now, keeping a little distance, you are looking over me, aren’t you?
Rather, you want to say, you are closer to me because you are dead, right?

Misfit in this world, not a member of any group
you were all by yourself like a salamander
You were looking only at me from the shadow of rocks, you, my indigo mist

Cameroon 1-2 Holland

Mbella Sonne Dipoko (1936-2009)



It was foretold long ago
That after Noah's deluge
The next destruction of the world
Would be by fire
And can't you feel the heat building up already,
The global warming up?

And so to fulfill the prophecy
Copenhagen is going to be
Just some more hot air
Presaging the sparks that would turn
Into the flames in which the world will be consumed
And then out of the ashes of ecocide capitalism
It won't be Christ on His second coming presiding
On Judgment Day
But Karl Marx returning like a revolutionary phoenix
Out of the ashes of the busting bubbles
Of the lopsided economies
Of our over-heated world


Gerrit Krol (1934- ; trans. John Irons)



Robin

A robin that taps against the window.
Not against the window but against the egg in which it sits
and breaks the egg in two.
Not the egg but the ice that breaks off downwards from Greenland.

A black sea in which white expanses drift.
Not expanses but mountains.
Not ice but granite.
Which the robin needs to sharpen its beak on.

Its beak stronger than the egg.

Stronger than Greenland.

Paraguay 0-0 New Zealand

Lía Colombino (1974- )



El elogio de mis pies
mis manos cantan la
esa una
pena / una

El sonido de mis pies
gotas de agua que van descalzas trayendo lluvia

El color de mis pies
ningún blanco es tan verde

La voz de mis pies

Ellos corren a un lugar obscuro
cerca del miedo
cada vez más lejos
donde el reptil no mira sus costados.


Stephanie de Montalk (A lady never tells her age)



They Are Shrinking
the sea
and placing the sun

at the pale edge
of dust

but they dream

of summers
on pastoral plains

and short winters

and the promise
of salt on the land
that is left—

the crude promise of salt

to be swept
into piles
and sent to the city

in search of
vacations

and one-bedroomed flats

and other
investment
possibilities.

PAGE 87
And they dream

of trouble
with crows—
but crows

they can handle—

and skin disease
anaemia
and outbreaks of plague

and the demise
of small birds
and boats stranded
on plains

and life forms
without homes
on unstable horizons—
but horizons

they can handle—

and they believe

casual injustice
and savage diagnosis
can be kept

to a minimum.

Slovakia 3-2 Italy

Miroslav Válek (1927-1991)



Láska je strašne bohatá, láska, tá všetko sľúbi,
no ten čo ľúbil, sklamal sa a ten, čo sklamal, ľúbi.
Prach dlhých smutných letných dní na staré lístie padá,
poznala príliš neskoro ako ho mala rada.

Tak každoročne v jeseni svetlá sa tratia z duše
a človek, koník túlavý od srdca k srdcu kluše.
Pre každé chce zomierať, žiť nechce pre nijaké
chcel by mať jedno pre seba, je mu jedno aké.
Možno, že iba obrázok, možno tôňu iba.

No pred cieľom sa zastaví. Komu zas srdce chýba?
Zo všetkých mojich obrázkov mámivý ošiaľ stúpa.
Bola to láska? Sklamanie?Aj láska bola hlúpa,
že chcela všetko naraz mať a všetko naraz stráca.

Koľko ráz v noci májovej hľadeli do mesiaca.
No máj im málo šťastia dal a krátke bolo leto,
len jeseň, tá vie o všetkom a jeseň nepovie to.
Šla zima dolu údolím a niesla odkaz máju.
Túžieval, čakal, dočkal sa. Odišla. Nepozná ju.

Láska je strašne bohatá, lásáska, tá všetko sľúbi,
no ten čo ľúbil, sklamal sa a ten, čo sklamal, ľúbi.
Prach dlhých smutných letných dní na staré lístie padá,
poznala príliš neskoro ako ho mala rada.


Franco Loi (1930- ; trans. Jamie McKendrick)



How I love the world, the air, its breath!
the trees, the grass, the sun, those houses, the lovely streets,
the ever-changing moon, the ivy over the houses;
I like the saltiness of the sea, mad kidding about,
cups between friends, fir-trees in the wind
and all God’s things, even the meanest,
and the trams that pass by, the window panes that shine,
backs hurriedly turned and lowered eyes,
the woman who perturbs you:
the world is there and seems to wait for you
to look it in the eye, for you to heed it
since it’s always there but easy to forget,
to be distracted from it, to nod off…
But when evening’s shadows come,
how the world calls out to you! how that sky
expands and comes upon you in its true
beauty without flaws or kinks in its reflections,
and then for your completion you change colour.

Australia 2-1 Serbia

Wadih Sa'adeh (1948- ; trans. Ann Fairburn)



Mysterious Sky

They found him.
His outstretched hand was blue and flat
like space beneath a swallow's wing.
His mouth was slightly open
as though he wished
to sing.


Zaharije Orfelin (1726-1785)



This is an odlomak from Plac Serbiji

Kako stade Serbija, slavna i ugodna,
sa množestvom naroda bivša prođe plodna,
presilnima careva i hrabri soldati.
Slavni moji carevi i voždi veliki,
s mojih hrabri vitezi i sini toliki.
Vostok, zapad, polunoć bojali se mene,
slavne, hrabre Serbije, bivše togda jedne.

Ghana 0-1 Germany

Ama Ata Aidoo (1942- )



After a Commonwealth Conference

Because

you are here
to remind me to be grateful to
- it must be The Lord –
for small mercies,

I shall not
wail
shave my hair or
do another fasting trip at the dawn of a
day that has put more bile on my tongue.

But Child,
out there where
our thousands are dying and
our millions
do not have food to
choose to eat or
not,

how does one tell the story of men
who are nothing at all, and
leaders who are only
skilled in the art of anti-people treachery?

Child,
I hear you: and since
wisdom
does not always grow with our grey hairs,

may be,
you can tell me
what to do with
my shame, and

Our Continent once more
betrayed?


Monika Rinck (1969- ; trans. Nicholas Grindell)



feelings at windows

supplementary desire takes place when
ever desire itself adds that which
even fulfilment, if it existed, would lack.
when the unknown meshes with the absolute
in the mingling light at evening windows
and distance dissolves into expanse. i shout:
i want none of what i already know!
otherwise there’s cold solitudes
like there’s cold chicken in paris restaurants.

USA 1-0 Algeria

Ange Mlinko (1969- )



Securitization

In someone’s distant algorithm
your mortgage was bundled to another’s
—hedged—
and stamped a new “security.”
While it was swapped
from investor to investor
accruing fees and interest at each turn,
your shadow
partner
defaulted
and she abandoned her home.

Someone uses your mortgage
to leverage
something
far inside the starbursts of a server.
Likewise marriage
has
no image—
What’s a mortgage
and who’s
it engage
on the other side of the firewall?

*

I witnessed a will
which—the language invested with law
godmothers the peacock’s
fanned
screech—
would take care of the baby in the event of a
[blesses herself]

It lives at the Cathedral
and seems to be some kind of
mascot for
Baptisms

*

Securities:

The future art you’ll make and its pleasure
is hedged against the
boys who died

you fancied.


Mohammed Dib (1920-2003; trans. Carol Lettieri and Paul Vangelisti)



invasion of patience

opening her own way
and always alone always
calm under a pall

always the length departing
advancing as much as ebbing
the reverent wave

kneeling water most naked water
patient before barriers
forsaken just the same

water beyond herself to gorge
a drumming of birds
and to live blind as well as black

Slovenia 0-1 England

Uros Zupan (1963- ; trans. Ana Jelnikar)



Returning Home

Dusty roads, a voice that rises from a throat
and dissolves in the desert, the smell of a polished parquet floor
on one September morning, dialogues of light
and shadows we have forgotten to transcribe, a possibility

to be in some other place, though our feet are
indisputably impressed in this asphalt, and time
rebounds like quicksilver in our veins. In all
this we seek shelter, returning home.

The sky above our heads is ruffled, and down below,
somewhere on the right, the calm ripple of the river
never stepped into twice is heard. Somewhere,
for someone, it is so, always so. At home,

things pushed aside into silence await us. And at times
it seems some forgotten bird has fluttered
out of the morning mist, setting off
for the borders of expectation, for life puts itself together

now, in the absence of a face observing its reflection in the glass,
in the absence of a hand sliding down the cheeks for
the hundredth time this evening to learn of the age
of one patiently awaiting us. Calmly the steps echo,

slithering along the moist walls of the night, calmly that
dark river runs, which will turn into silver in the morning,
and calmly the distance which memory may yet measure
grows longer and longer, like these steps, slowly winding

into the arms of an uncertain future.


John Stammers (1954- )



¿Que pasa?

There is a little of everything in everything
Anaximander

Lavish rays of the flagrant sun cascade on the esplanade
or coruscate the way H2SO4 does spilt on a lab floor.
A grey (or ash) acacia sweeps its sombrero from its head
making like a ranchero on a talcum-white caballo
that clops along in the shower of solar-wind particles
whose slavish job it is to bombard the Earth from space today –
Hombre, esta muy bueno aqui, muy, muy bueno.

The terracotta soil of the area merely expresses
the downright red of an Andalusian hemipode,
its feathers drenched in henna,
or a post-nuptial bedsheet doused in chicken blood
that threatens a reprise
of the madness aria from Lucia de Lammermoor –
you know the one she comes out
with it all spattered down her front
and gets into Eduardo! Eduardo! and all that,
Eduardo! Eduardo! and all that.
You would rend the nails from your fingers
with the beauty of it, those exquisite trills
embedded in gothic death.
It’s that even here,
here in the epicentre of a chilli enchilada,
the ice cubes in the glass hold out against it,
little visitants of the cold realms.

Nigeria 2-2 South Korea

John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo (1935- )



The Casualties

The casualties are not only those who are dead;
They are well out of it.
The casualties are not only those who are wounded,
Thought they await burial by installment
The casualties are not only those who have lost
Person or property, hard as it is
To grape for a touch that some
May not know is not there
The casualties are not those led away by night;
The cell is a cruel place, sometimes a heaven,
No where as absolute as the grave
The casualties are not those who started
A fire and now cannot put to out. Thousands
Are burning that had no say in the matter.
The casualties are not only those who escaping
The shattered shell become prisoners in
A fortress of falling walls.

The casualties are many, and a good number well
Outside the scene of ravage and wreck;
They are the emissaries of rift,
So smug in smoke-room they haunt abroad,
They are wandering minstrels who, beating on
The drum of human heart, draw the world
Into a dance with rites it does not know

The drum overwhelm the guns…
Caught in the clash of counter claims and charges
When not in the niche others have left,
We fall.
All casualties of war,
Because we cannot hear other speak,
Because eyes have ceased to see the face from the crowd,
Because whether we know or
Do not know the extent of wrong on all sides,
We are characters now other than before
The war began, the stay- at- home unsettled
By taxes and rumor, the looter for office
And wares, fearful everyday the owners may return,
We are all casualties,
All sagging as are
The case celebrated for kwashiorkor,
The unforeseen camp-follower of not just our war.


Kim Hyesoon (a lady never tells her age; trans. Choi Don Mee)



Red Scissors Woman

That woman who walks out of the gynecology clinic
Next to her is an old woman holding a newborn

That woman’s legs are like scissors
She walks swiftswift cutting the snow path

But the swollen scissor blades are like fat dark clouds
What did she cut screaming with her raised blades
bloodscented dusk flooding out between her legs

The sky keeps tearing the morning after the snowstorm
A blinding flash of light
follows the waddlewaddling woman
Heaven’s lid glimmers and opens then closes

How scared God must have been
when the woman who ate all the fruits of the tree he’d planted
was cutting out each red body from
between her legs

The sky, the wound that opens every morning
when a red head is cut out
between the fat red legs of the cloud

(Does that blood live inside me?)
(Do I live inside that blood?)

That woman who walks ahead
That woman who walks and rips
with her scorching body her cold shadow

New-born infants swim
inside that woman’s mirror inside her as white as a snowhouse
the stickysticky slow breaking waves of blood
like the morning sea filled with fish

Greece 0-2 Argentina

Odysseus Elytis (1911-1995; trans. Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard)



Drinking the Sun of Corinth

Drinking the sun of Corinth
Reading the marble ruins
Striding across vineyards and seas
Sighting along the harpoon
A votive fish that slips away
I found the leaves that the sun’s psalm memorizes
The living land that passion joys in opening.

I drink water, cut fruit,
Thrust my hand into the wind’s foliage
The lemon trees water the summer pollen
The green birds tear my dreams
I leave with a glance
A wide glance in which the world is recreated
Beautiful from the beginning to the dimensions of the heart!


Mirta Rosenberg (1951- ; trans. Julie Wark)



Ethereal Material

My children are by far my greatest revolution.

Twice I orbited complete
like a gravid planet
around the sun. I wrote new names
in the celestial script, with disquiet,
alarm, sedition.

I toasted them with other women,
with whisky and with beer,
in the planet where we women drink a toast
to things that grow, and despite them.

Happy and ill-fated, I made of my revolution
a conquest, and an open wound
of those times when I orbited complete.

I keep it fresh to let enter me
a certain unrecognisable family air
that now my children exhale
as naturally as can be.

Spain 2-0 Honduras

Antonio Gamoneda (1931- ; trans. Donald Wellman)



THE INFECTION is larger than sadness; it licks the tortured parietal bones, it penetrates the bedrooms of sweat and laudanum and later it trembles like a cold wing: it is the moisture of people who are dying.

Slowly the impure dove approaches, approaches cups full of shadow

and capillaries of ash spread over remnants of mercury and tears.

The lens reveals mendacity but its light comes from the abyss. In front of scorched corneas hang threads of silence. Later

the disappearances depress the heart.


Francesca Randazzo (1973- )



Nuestros cielos

un árbol
una roca
una nube
tu mano
contra el vértigo

Mexico 0-1 Uruguay

Briceida Cuevas Cob (1969- trans. Steve Trott)



Lady

Lady,
your breasts are two little girls jostling each other in play when you wash.
The rainbow of your glance is suspended in the lather.
To look at you one wouldn’t guess you suffer,
wouldn’t know that at the foot of your washtub you hoard part of your story.
You give a whistle,
your whistle is a thread where you will hang your tiredness.
The wind
is a mischievous lad who tugs and tugs at your laundry.
On the trees of the east
the sun is a newborn baby scattering his warm yellow tears.


Juana de Ibarbourou (1892-1979; trans. Carlos Reyes)



Running Water

This water that comes
through the dark nerves of piping,
to give its pure freshness to my house
and the gift of cleanliness every day.

This bubbling water
that the faucet bestows,
this swelling of deep mystery
from the river bed, the wind and grass.

I view with envious impatience
this traveling wave that is my sister,
that has come to the big city
from some distant unknown meadow.

And halted before this open faucet
sprinkling my apron with beads,
I feel upon me the loving look
of a thousand clear eyes of water.

France 1-2 South Africa

Linda Maria Baros (1981- ; trans. Stephen Romer)



The Turgescence of the A4 Motorway

Those who come and those who go
know nothing
of the A4 and its turgescence.
Nothing of its feral stink – an old whore
whose eyes are the colour
of surgical alcohol –
the stink wherein the truckers levitate, stiff-necked,
and, like some sainted leper,
raise the level of their life.
They think the city stretches out before them,
its severed head grinning on the windscreen.

(But they never see, on all that asphalt,
the herons take off fearfully and blindly,
like trying to extract the blocked coins
from death’s votive juke-box.)

At the service stations, the recruits of petrol
take the heads off the highest octanes.
They put a rictus on the setting sun.
They knife open the joints of the door
their neck sliding on a blade of steel.

And those who come and those who go
know nothing
of the A4 and its turgescence.
They pass through it, like a tunnel.


Lesego Rampolokeng (1965- )



Habari Gani Africa
(fragment)

bloodstains on morguesheet sweat of impotence
born to die lie dead in the street the lie of omnipotence
scarstripes on the soul sign of demention/delusion
look of drugged minds hidden behind illusion
& outside the grenade-reality-cracked window the botched moment
licemen of the west bearing gifts rearing rifts of torment
come to perform reconciliation a land’s abortion operation
nuclear wasted to the world’s acceptance/assimilation
a disembowelment your creation cursed a braindeathblow
manchildwomananimal NOWHERE left/right/middle/O...
sixfeetdownbelow
glow longknifenightsessionsplashed blooddroplets in the sewers
fleshpieces from crossed Xs/axes of man-made-wood hewers

Chile 1-0 Switzerland

Armando Uribe (1933-; trans. Julie Flanagan)



This one and That one and the Other have families
that are happy and solid, children, grandchildren
even great-grandchildren, who are blonde and study hard,
and verygoodkids, they are good and Christian people
but meanwhile your own children, God of God are
suffering from psoriasis and psychologically
unstable, so why oh God of all the gods of clay
do your children suffer and have tongues of clay?
Your children are your children and seem step-children.
But their children, their grandchildren, their generations
are not like ours this bunch of degenerate
and untouchable fathers and mothers of beggars
yet these your children, God of gods, are still
your children and they recognise you and they do
just what you told them they should do, while they
make the signs, make the sign of the cross, gulp down
hosts like they are dying of hunger (though they are full)
and your priests absolve them, assent and eat with them
oysters and whatever debilities they have,
and they give a blessing to their menstrual women
so that they will bear children and they do bear them,
yet there are hardly any of us, or they die
of natural causes or commit suicide.
Is there a reason why? There is no reason why.
You are the God it occurs to you to be.


Leo Tuor (1959- ; trans. Mike Evans)



Proust of Albertina

Giacumbert Nau would idolise Albertina.
Her scent was the dark yellow scent of
saffron, her leg was oh so long when
wrapped around his body, her tongue
in his ear was like the murmurs of the Valley.
(The metal of his earring would tingle on
her tongue.) Every inch of her body, her white skin,
had the bitter taste of the salt of the earth. The fluids
from her body had the colour of the rust as they bathed his,
and she would sprawl over the soiled sheet, her skin
all covered in sticky, itchy yellow straw.
But Albertina did not feel the straw, she
only felt what she wanted to, and drank deep breaths
of the odour of bodies dripping in sweat, jaded and
softened after many an exertion

in the sump of love,
in the racing torrent.

The wind howled around the crags. Morning broke,
and one after one the animals awoke and prepared to move on,

they were trembling,
like the aspen,
like the cobweb,

only then to dwindle, diminish, decline.

Albertina’s favourite linen was white linen.

Portugal 7-0 North Korea

Ana Paula Inácio (1966- ; trans. Richard Zenith)



i’d like you to go with me
through life
like a sail
that would discover for me the world
but i’m on the uncertain side
where the wind pounds
and i can only teach you
the names of trees
whose fruit will be plucked in another season
where the trains scatter
anguished whistles


Byungu Chon (trans. Won-Chung Kim and Christopher Merrill)

[Birthday and photograph difficult to find]

Falling Persimmons

Persimmons fall
thump, thump,
where the demarcation line cuts
across the weedy hill, above the Kwansan ferry.

The owner's gone;
only the house remains.
For many years, the persimmons have ripened
in solitude and fallen mercilessly on the earth.

If I stretched out my arm, I could pick
the ripe red persimmons.
But the barbed wire fence along the demarcation line
cuts my heart, keeps me from taking even a step.
O, persimmon tree!
you also suffer from division.
I wonder when the day will come
for the owner to return, climb your green boughs,
and harvest you in happiness.

The girls in this village used to marry
before the feasting table
on which were heaped delicious persimmons
then cross the Imjin River, bound for Paju.
Now wrinkles have furrowed
faces once as red as persimmons.

Where have they gone - the girls of yesterday?
I search for them across the river - in vain.
The persimmons I touch in dream
thump in my heart.

Calling for the owner, for unification,
the persimmons
cut into this land
thump, thump.

Brazil 3-1 Ivory Coast

Hilda Hilst (1930-2004)



Árias Pequenas. Para Bandolim

Antes que o mundo acabe, Túlio,
Deita-te e prova
Esse milagre do gosto
Que se fez na minha boca
Enquanto o mundo grita
Belicoso. E ao meu lado
Te fazes árabe, me faço israelita
E nos cobrimos de beijos
E de flores

Antes que o mundo se acabe
Antes que acabe em nós
Nosso desejo.


Bernard Dadié (1916- )



Sèche tes larmes, Afrique

Tes enfants te reviennent
Leurs sens se sont ouverts
A la splendeur de ta beauté
A la senteur de tes forêts
A l'enchantement de tes eaux
A la limpidité de ton ciel
Et au charme de ta verdure emperlée de rosée.

Sèche tes pleurs, Afrique !
Tes enfants te reviennent
Les mains pleines de jouets
Et le coeur plein d'amour
Ils reviennent te vêtir
De leurs rêves et de leurs espoirs.

Italy 1-1 New Zealand

Andrea Inglese (1967- ; trans. Gabriele Poole)



Inventory of Air

It’s snowing pollen now and shining like manna
on mountains of flaming ocher, it’s snowing
backlit woolen albumens like taciturn
cotton fields, the down, the tufts,
it’s snowing in cyclone swirls, in whirlwind of light
it’s snowing dandelion flames, flakes, bunches of
air
and people swim, they don’t go
they row, urban fish in trousers and fins,
they float on pollen froth, gowns
like umbrellas shed cotton wool atoms, rapidly
a powder of dust burrows itself away in laces that wrap
the groin, and the sparser spores in the pubis
skim, where I follow them, smelling
the incense of hot simmering flesh:
halos of sea salt between the breasts,
wakes of herbaceous locks, clouds of breath
spiced by smoldering loins,
and gather
with silken rakes droplets
of pollen from eyelashes, and hear the echo
of bulbs of cotton wool that alight
on puddles of pitch, in asphalt gravel, and follow, eye wounded,
the trout blond with shiny boobs
and tight scales, and cut the air
with the oar veering round the streetlight buoy

and busy tritons slip into grots
of subways with shells at their ears
where rumbles the mad sea
of business deals, and on it all
the cotton wool Nile flows, the fury
of pollen on outlines of bodies
on the three-sided San Sepolcro square
on the plane-tree dome with its muffled
rattle, on benches of bipeds all battered
with bafflement, splattered with spunk and pee
in fine rags of linen and velvet
because they are rich with laughs, incontinent
like old men dazed by the blaze
of pollen, oblivious to arthrosis, heel
and toe, sideways, they stroll
a lively tip-tap, and aslant slashes the gold
of the sunset spread out on sedimentary crests,
on the tridents and poles
of the houses, camped out on the balconies

and rivers of air that fondle each other
while the keel of the chest cuts through
the concentric waves of pollen
and the child absorbed in the gulf
of its mother’s arm is choking
on wool and oxygen: a happy
cyclist, holding his breath in the pollen,
twists like a screw, and pike diving
rigidly bounces off windshield
of volvo, and his bianchi perches onto
alien convoys, man at the wheel
belches up on the spot minced pasta and egg, already
a shadow of living, crowning the dashboard
and unto pollen thou shalt return, handfuls
are cast by passersby, so fleshly
is the light that one dies well
in the airy foliage, the rhythm
I too of Eliot feel, it beats
low, in the biological sack, underneath,
while discharges of pollen
torture swimmers and cab drivers,
in the coral cave of the arches
I get drunk on all this manna, I yield
every pore, nerve, vein
to this pollen that dresses the air
to this air that chews on galleries
of light, to this opaque light
through which schools of passersby pass
in flames, unclosing vermillion
gills, in which the cast iron trunks
of the street signs crumble
and the fifteen-floor whales
gulp up exhausted castaways

and for this mutation, miracle,
cataclysm, surreal weapon, for this
excess, access of pollen, meal
that no one has paid for and verified
or battered nails or planed
or typed or pushed drills
or driven tractors, no one
has signed contracts, passed
laws, injected comas, elaborated
selling strategies, yet
it’s coming, sweet apocalypse of pollen
without burying women in mud
or attacking cells or devastating
cerebral nodes, it comes unarmed
without lines of tanks
without deterrent and guerrilla warfare
without an iron hand, it comes
without profit, at a net
loss, it comes, collapses, is gone

I don’t know if its caress can heal
if it breaks the collar, don’t know
if it saves, absolves, if it’s a happy
coin for all cravings, if it’s bread
and wine of infinite hunger and thirst
it is a sheer folly of the air,
a pregnancy of the air, fertile
burial of seed: it doesn’t heal
it certainly drives you mad.


Hone Tuwhare (1922-2008)



Hotere

When you offer only three
vertical lines precisely drawn
and set into a dark pool of lacquer
it is a visual kind of starvation:
and even though my eyeballs
roll up and over to peer inside
myself, when I reach the beginning
of your eternity I say instead: hell
let’s have another feed of mussels
Like, I have to think about it, man.
When you stack horizontal lines
into vertical columns which appear
to advance, recede, shimmer and wave
like exploding packs of cards
I merely grunt and say: well, if it
is not a famine, it’s a feast
I have to roll another smoke, man
But when you score a superb orange
circle on a purple thought-base
I shake my head and say: hell, what
is this thing called aroha
Like, I’m euchred, man. I’m eclipsed?