Colombina

Pierrot who on cricket’s
legs legs it through thickets—
one leap—
Cassander (old hoodie),
Leander the goody-
shoes creep,

and Harlequin (Domin-
o’s eyes have an omin-
ous look:
the outfit’s so natty
it’s positive that he
’s a crook)

are all thumping guitars an’
pretending they’re Tarzan,
beguiled
in a pile-drive entreaty
of Little Miss Pretty,
this child

whose eyes are a message
denying her undressage
with such
a defense of her fair butt
as says “You may stare, but
don’t touch!”

Ye planets whose motion
can scupper an ocean
of ships!!
She grants them a shocking
wee glimpse of her stocking,
and skips

away to My previous
could tell you I’m devious
as cats.
And the rosebud in hair-do
inciting her ne’er-do-
well prats.

Paul Verlaine, translation by John R.G. Turner

There are no horizons in a city,

only those within yourself.

I couldn’t tell where the city ended

and the people began,

there were only individuals

with crowd-like tendencies

and eternal hopefuls

dreaming of big fat redundancies.

I went through every street in the city

and couldn’t find one person whom I remotely liked.

The revolving doors of human happiness

were jammed shut with people

pushing in every direction

apart from the right one.

To escape the city, I took to the country

… only to find that the city had got there first,

flanked on all sides by ivory tower blocks.

I felt like driving my fist into an oncoming truck

or smashing up a train,

or injecting raw words straight into a vein.

I switch on the TV – which tells me,

apparently,

everything is

drifting towards a state of perfection

but never quite getting there.

Modern living is getting faster

and there are more twists in it than novelty pasta.

We prefer a little truth and a little lie

to a bigger, more factual picture

and life and death

take on different aspects

depending upon

which side of the street they’re viewed from.

Inscribe the child with the tribe

or welcome to evolution MTV style.

And all the while

the cure for a lack of love remains

a long time coming.

We need another inept leader,

kerb-crawler or crank caller,

like a fish needs a trawler.

We have nothing to fear but soaring prices,

global warming, mass unemployment,

economic collapse and government by the

Liberal Democrats

– and fear itself.

We are eating a starter in the

This-Wasn’t-in-the-Brochure Diner.

A Fawlty Towers style waiter

will bring the main course later.

 In 2008 Paul was poet for the London borough of Brent and he performed at the new Wembley Stadium. He has two poems in the new Penguin A-Z of children’s poetry. ‘Don’t try this at home’ is taken from his new collection Catching the Cascade. (www.paul-lyalls.com)

Briar Neck, 1912
Ernest Farrés

Barren, sun-baked and glistening
from rough weather, rocky crags with deep
gnawn-away gorges and warped landings
hanging plant growth
and rubble as the base of cliffs
descend as far as the sea.
The sea! An eagle
at odds with blackbirds and finches,
a debauchery of countenances
and murmurs fading beneath the arch of the sky,
a mass of indigo gleaming
in the filtered sunlight,
a terminus.
On the outcrop
a free wind intoxicates the senses.

From Edward Hopper by Ernest Farrés, translated from the Catalan by Lawrence Venuti (Carcanet, 2010). Reproduced by permission of Carcanet Press (www.carcanet.co.uk).

Apology: Litro’s April edition omitted full attribution of the poetry by Ernest Farrés and cover image. Both were reproduced with kind permission from the new collection of Farrés’ poetry ‘Edward Hopper’, published by Carcanet. Full publication information here

‘murrai is pondering…’
Antón R Reixa

murrai is pondering a profound study on
ignorance but does not want to devote himself to writing it
until he acquires greater general unknowledge
yes yes the paper towels for
after

(From Stories of Rock-and-Roll, 1985)

Antón R Reixa (born 1957) is one of the most radical innovators in Galician poetry. Since the 1980s he has been experimenting with multimedia poetry and artists books. He is associated with the Galician poets known as ‘Rompente’ (‘white breakers’), and was also lead singer and lyricist in Os Resentidos, the first band to sing entirely in Galician.
This poem was translated by Alan Floyd, a lecturer at the University of Coruña.
Both poems will appear later this year in Breogán’s Lighthouse: An Anthology of Galician Literature, edited by Antonio R. de Toro Santos (Francis Boutle, 2010).