Love of Chichén-Itzá

(Translation by Robert Bolick of Alberto Blanco’s Spanish poem Amor de Chichén-Itzá)

Seedcorn mosaic,
gold with light, the steps rise.

Footfall on stone
starts the Forest Flames awake:

fierce hearts of fire,
petals touched by the wheeling sun...
 
Root-deep from the heel,
blood blooms through a blossom of hair.

(This poem is in the current issue of the Chimaera, with Albert Blanco’s Spanish original.)

What Happened To Them?

(Ghazal by Nasir Kazmi; translated from the Urdu by Debjani Chatterjee)

Those who sang by the riverbanks — what happened to them?
Those who sailed their boats — what happened to them?

The sunrise that almost dawned, where is it stranded?
The caravans that were to come — what happened to them?

All night long I await their arrival.
The ones who lit the path — what happened to them?

Who are these people who surround me?
Those who preserved friendship — what happened to them?

Those eyes that pierced the heart — what happened to them?
Those lips that smiled — what happened to them?

The buildings have burnt to cinders.
Those who would rebuild them — what happened to them?

Misery questions the lonely house:
“Those who lit your lamps — what happened to them?”

You and I are but burdens on this earth.
Those who shouldered the earth’s burden — what happened to them?

(This poem is in the current issue of the Chimaera, with Nasir Kazmi’s Urdu original.)

Sonnet XVII

(Translation by Adam Elgar of the italian Sonnet XVII by Gaspara Stampa)

Heavenly angels, I don’t envy you
your glories, your great joys, and that desire
which satisfaction makes a hotter fire
since you are always in the High King’s view:

but so huge and so rich are my delights,
no heart can comprehend them here on earth.
I sing and write for all that I am worth
my loved one’s eyes, those soft and gentle lights.

Infinite beauty gives to me below
the life you gain in heaven from His face
which endlessly refreshes you. I know

there’s only one respect in which your grace
outdoes my joy: it knows no overthrow
while mine will disappear without a trace.

(This poem is in the current issue of the Chimaera, with Gaspara Stampa’s Italian original.)

Sea Breeze

(Translation by Anna Evans of Mallarmé’s “Brise marine”)

Flesh is so wretched, and I’ve read all the books.
To run! To run away! The birds, I feel, all look
drunk coasting the unknown waves and skies.
Nothing, not stately parks mirrored in my eyes,
will hold this heart which throws itself — O nights! —
far out to sea, not the stark glare of light
upon the empty page guarded so palely,
not even the young girl nursing her baby.
I’m leaving! Steamer with your masts asway,
raise anchor for exotic lands today!

This boredom, tortured by cruel hopes, believes
still in the parting magic of handkerchiefs.
What if these masts, should storms come, are the kind
which will be tossed to shipwrecks by the wind? —
lost, without masts. No masts, no blue lagoons…
but O my heart, hear that? The sailors’ tunes.

(This poem is in the current issue of the Chimaera.)

(Untitled) from Liber (1988)

(Translation by Andrew Frisardi from Franco Loi’s Milanese poem)

Inside of me there’s a loggia from Sarzana
made of green wood and in the setting sun,
a hunchback hurrying away and a necklace
winking behind two flavors of ice cream,
and in shadow of a square’s nice colonnades
the postcard’s colors faded with heartache...
A cat with black claws atop a crate
is eyeing me as if to read my thoughts,
and the town that seems to pass before my eyes
in a turning back of nights ends up a fake...
Oh, those evenings of youth, this life of ours,
no sooner do we dream them back, we wake!

(This poem is in the current issue of the Chimaera, with Franco Loi’s Milanese original.)

Willow

(Translation by Jennifer Reeser of Anna Akhmatova’s Russian poem)

...and a decrepit handful of trees.
— Pushkin

And I matured in peace bornof command,
in the nursery of the infant century,
and the voice of man was never dear to me,
but the breeze’s voice — that I could understand.
The burdock and the nettle I preferred,
but best of all the silver willow tree.
Its weeping limbs fanned my unrest with dreams;
it lived here all my life, obligingly.
I have outlived it now, and with surprise.
There stands the stump; with foreign voices other
willows converse, beneath our, beneath those skies,
and I am hushed, as if I’d lost a brother.

         Originally published in POETRY, December, 2005)

(This poem is in the current issue of the Chimaera.)

The Right Word

by Mary Alexandra Agner

Homer, ascribed a human heart
and certain male-only parts,
couldn’t tell us the color of Helen’s hair.
Hardwired from optic nerve to there
and all the romance from his lips
was siege and swords and ships.

The Beowulf poet, the scholars claim
was also male, but his hero’s fame
required a mother from the deep:
bereaved, description incomplete.
All the consonants he choked out
were terror and chaos and unholy rout.

Such beauty defied adjectives?
Such horror defied adjectives?
Two sides of a face they could not name.
Poetic device blurred their shame.
What kept them mute? It wasn’t tears.

(This poem is in the current issue of the Chimaera.)

Message

by Neil Carpathios

Sometimes you stop in the middle of a moment:
put the book down or just stand in the room
forgetting where you were headed.

Marble-still, you feel like a chandelier
waiting to be lit;

or like a dog whose hearing hears
what you can’t, you lean toward eternity,
straining for the evidence.

(This poem is in the current issue of the Chimaera.)

The Exchange

by George Good

A child is searching for its mother.
An old woman in black gets off a westbound bus.
The palm of the blind newsdealer knows
how to unriddle your bill’s denomination.
A vain youth’s eyes turn a window into a mirror.
The traffic light changes its mind every minute.
A quiet hearse prepares to violate its will.
The bank’s clock on the corner looks both ways.
At high noon its two hands meet as the hearse drives by.
The traffic light by chance is thinking green.
Reflection of Narcissus combing his hair.
Your palm accepts the correct change
from the blind newsdealer who knows.
An eastbound bus picks up a young woman in white.
The mother is searching for her child.

(This poem is in the current issue of the Chimaera.)

Aria

by Simon Hunt

We drank a quart of smuggled wine the day
we ditched the opera. Fuck that noise! we cried,
a toast to sucker-classmates trapped inside
some fieldtrip (“gifted” only) matinee.
Another time you plucked me from my bike
a tick before the schoolbus crushed its frame.
You’ve paid death back this time, I guess. “His name —
I’m sure it was, but Michael... not just Mike,”
my mother said. “They thought at first he’d live.
A truck...” I had to put my kids to bed.
Now, linked to news, I pour some hometown red.
Your death’s online. I wonder what you’d give —
my glass raised to the diva of way-back-when —
to hear her now, or to have heard her then.

(This poem is in the current issue of the Chimaera.)

Homecoming, Newark Airport

by James Keane

I don’t know what you went through
(or went screaming through you)

over there. But since I’ve never been,
all appears forgotten in the walkway

from the plane. Your family beaming, still
as you stride up a steady hill to the

WELCOME HOME someone (all of them?)
committed to cloth just knowing

you were coming back. And here you stand.
Back. Smiles and silence

all around. A hug, patiently,
for your mother. A shove, playfully,

for your sister. Then all there is
is your father. His tight grip. His tightening

grin. Branded with a savage
kiss on both sides of your neck.

(This poem is in the current issue of the Chimaera.)

Shadow Bears

by Ralph La Rosa

They crowd into my yard some nights,
cavort beneath the moon. But play
soon shifts to snarling, bloody fights.
When reconciled, they claw a way
inside the house and find my room.
It’s locked. Enraged, they bellow, score
the threshold of my lair — and loom
as pounding paws collapse the door.
Fighting to keep the beasts at bay,
I shrink from growling jaws that reek
of feral feasts, and softly pray,
fearing what these monsters seek.
At dawn, I struggle to all fours,
my burning eyes too weak to see—
but know there are no lockable doors
between the shadow bears and me.

(This poem is in the current issue of the Chimaera.)

The Hoofman

by Margaret Menamin

They said he was the devil. Where he walked
the earth sprang scars, knife-deep and subtly splayed.
The women whispered in their gloves and talked
of how he sometimes came to them but made

them mostly want to follow him. He stayed
alone, could not be tracked, gave no address.
He seemed to have a preference for shade
or darkened places. Though the men were less

aware of him and not inclined to guess
his hidden haunts and habits, women fought
to learn his secrets, begging to possess
his arrogance. And, bit by bit, he taught

delicious wicked thoughts, set them afire
with fantasy and candor and desire.

(This poem is in the current issue of the Chimaera.)

The Cook Fire

by Timothy Murphy

There is this demon in my lower brain.
Call him the Devil. Call him Charlie Russell.
He guzzles alcohol to dull his pain
and rustles calves beside the Little Mussel.

Why is he pained? Perhaps because the sky
is scared to call the badland its horizon.
Perhaps because a pony on the fly
shies from the shorthorns of a painted bison.

One of the Russells hanging in my head
captures the struggles of a grizzly bear,
twice-roped, spread-eagled, kicking apart a bed
of coals and ashes in his huge despair.

What overcomes insensate fear of fire?
Abandon, or invincible desire?

(This poem is in the current issue of the Chimaera.)

After She Died

by Gail White

Her clothes took on a strange significance
without her standing in the door to choose
among the ranks of dresses, skirts, and pants,
the shelf of hats, the tidy row of shoes.

Her body wasn’t there, although he tried
to see it in the dark. He never found
the hangers parted by her hand, the slide
of some unwanted garment to the ground.

The clothes began to haunt him like a ghost.
They huddled in the closet, gathering
infernal strength, till from their innermost
recess the vampire clothes were whispering,
“Her flesh was mortal. We are here to stay.”

He couldn’t wait to give them all away.

(This poem is in the current issue of the Chimaera.)