"Reading the original Aoelic Greek texts, by patching together almost ALL the extant fragments of her Odes, some of which are merely bits and pieces, I have endeavoured to recreate what I consider to have been at
least the gist of her greatest Odes, as she might have hypothetically composed.
In order to fulfil this gargantuan task, which took me
months on end to realize, I had to imagine i.e. invent entire phrases and even stanzas, which I believe Sappho might have actually composed.  
At least 60 % of the text of some of my imagined
Odes is completely original, though painstakingly mimicking what might have been the original poems as Sappho composed them.  In order to achieve this, I had to think like Sappho, in other words, become a
woman poet, a feat which some poets, but very few, are able to pull off."

     Preludio
    
     " Qui primavera sempre ed ogni frutto."  Dante
     " Ragionando con meco ed io con lui. "  Petrarca
    
     Here is every fruit of every spring   Dante
     My reason is in his as his in mine   Petrarca
    
     Christina Rossetti
     Monna Innominata: 7


Inomminata * Venus, breasts aflame,
rises from the sea on a throne of pearls:
her gracious beauty innocent of shame
Botticelli teases from a conch's whorls.

Her graceful gestures he the Master’s traced
in primavera's fair celestial light
are noble as the sash around her waist 
as slender as her figure bathed in white.

As soon as she leaps free of Zeus' brow,
what majesties proclaim her Virgin Birth?
The miracle is as fragile as the vow
of Eve's naïvité‚ in Eden's Earth.

What painter in the present dusk of time
dare imagine Venus as divine?


Richard Vallance 2008


* unnamed, unspoken, sous-entendu



Look on Ophelia


Look on Ophelia, where she drowns in love,
the chaplet on her brow of ivy leaves
with daisies she’s has gathered none written of,
and succulence of roses on her crimson sleeves,
their thorns but lacerations on her arms,
the barest cuts betraying Hamlet's barbs:
see where his words deflowered her of charms,
wringing  from her sobs bloodying her garbs.
Oh Hamlet, woe to you, you slaughtered her.
What words of yours can raise her from the grave?
What gifts to God of frankincense and myrrh
can cleanse you of your sins none else may brave?
Could we whose fathers, sons and lovers fail
survive our grief to tell the sorry tale?



Richard Vallance 2008

 
As Kings and Queens

As poets do, I'm growing old with you:
as Kings and Queens, though Majesties, will fail
I shall and so you will as life is true:
as life is truth, so death shall never fail,
as surely as our sun embraces birth
as warmly as a husband marries wife,
and while we break our pain for all we're worth,
our fate declares us victims of our strife:
our fate's declared us married to our love,
we'll never break our covenants that bind
us soundly so; so let's declare some of
our sins to one another going blind.
   Have you imagined your vision's demise
   as I mirror yours in my dying eyes?


Richard Vallance 2006


The Dead

    after "The Dead", Songs and Sonnets (1893)
    by Mathilde Blind (1841-1896)
    "The dead abide with us!"
   

"The Dead are with us still."  Are you so sure?
Hell, Atheists snicker, "Were they ever!"
though Agnostics dither, ever unsure
if Christ will slice right through their tether.

Are you with us, tell us,  “Who’s as unsure?”
and whisper, "Why waver?",  shrouding our eyes
your memories, faces, incense and myrrh,
your years in our years, tears for our surprise.

Dead, why are you with us?  Haven’t you heard
Alceus’ complaints or Sappho's despair,
the howls of King Lear, or Richard the Third,
or Dachau's fierce ovens staining the air?

Death, are you with us?  How dare we deny
what ancestors suffered?  Don’t tell us why.



Richard Vallance 2006

Stirrings

Winter fears are moments when awakenings
are cold relics stored in attics, rustling
only at cleaning time or in forbidden forays
up dreaded stairs, creaking with temptation,
pausing the early frost with entertainments
ended only by footsteps of discovery.
Impatient snappings of the wind in frigid stutters
smirking that we may not come again
touch with stiff snow-bleached fingers,
imagined yearnings in the ice-deep silence,
covered snug from chin to toes by memories
moving only eye peeks for the sight of spring.


Eternal Yearning

Unprotected
naked beats the night.
In fluttering city
a young sparrow regains the nest.
The whore, the junkie,
where are they?
Who are they?
They are me,
helpless.

Sinuously twines the night                         
slithering serpentine,
twisting throttling coils,
choking, choking.
Long nights neon loneliness
flashing  on off, on off.

What am I?
Lost weaver,
mad king of opiate visions,
blind captain tasting the fog
slinking past Hudson midnights.
The heart pounds, stops,
pounds again.
Come home, come home,
dream ancient as the earth.


Summer Song

Summer song,
sweet stain of night,
sing not loud, nor long
and help me find
the softness of you,
touched by me, so new
that reawakens the warmth
so dear, found here.

Astral Dreams

This cunning creature in the air
in chairs of comfort decked
is man who out of ancient ooze
dragged his body until he stood
and contemplated his past path,
then said: "I shall go to the stars."



c. Gary Beck, 2008.

Hushniya, the Mosque

1975

To the memory of the murder victims of Hushniya

Hushniya, the mosque, bright
of plaster, like a white eye
in a cloud of grey basalt.
The eucalyptus trees are stunted
so, bitter so,
planted on tainted water
in a land woven
of veils.  Hushniya, the minaret,
like an eye that sees
the dust, the ropes
fluttering in the never-ending
breeze, the blood vessels
entrenching themselves deep in the
roots of the fig trees slowly
growing sweet to bursting.
Hushniya, the mosque, blackens.

Translated from the Hebrew by Cindy Eisner



Fragrance of Mignonette

"Until I smelled the aroma
of the cut grass, I did not believe
I was really home," said the young
man who had returned battle-fatigued from the Canal.
And I, who was fatigued after him, fifteen
years after him, did not believe that I arose
from my bed:  Intoxicated as of old ascending
to the top of the loamy hill, wallowing
on the expanse of lawn.  Resurrected in
the welcome warmth:  like a child seeking again
to be wrapped in the sweet fragrance of the mignonette.

Translated from the Hebrew by Cindy Eisner.


Buqata at One

In Buqata, at one in the
afternoon they are rejoined and returned
to the earth.  It is said:
This time too she
shall cover herself with her bloody fee, and those
who are no longer here, will
perhaps be here again
when the tuff shows
red, like this
freezing volcanic rock.
At one in the afternoon, in Buqata,
from under Tel Admonit,
or from under Tel Varda,
or from under all this
ash, within which an autumn crocus
emerges, quivering.

Translated from the Hebrew by Cindy Eisner



Oh, Andalusia

Oh my light-washed
Andalusia.  Oh my sweet
Andalusia.  Oh my bitter
and cherished Palestina.  Oh my
springtime Palestina.  The terrible Lorca
already strolls your plazas:
As if he had just now emerged
from between the delightful pages of
Eliaz' delicate and lovely translation.
I follow him, enter
into his eyes:  knives rest
under the roses and terror has nestled itself
among the palm branches.  And the purity
of the bridal dress becomes entangled in the rope
of the assassin, who is crouched in hiding.

Spring 2005
 
translated from the Hebrew by Cindy Eisner
"אם חקלאות כאן, ארץ כאן!"



c. Elisha Porat, 2008.

 
I CANNOT SEE YOU
 
 
What adventures have you experienced-
From animal furs to human garments?
What hardships of your youth-
Are the long steps of the ladder?
 
We would make another long leap.
But we need water rings.
Because this room would reject us.
I mean here---, this time.
Testing us---, always testing us.
 
Too much has happened, too much-
There is no honest reality anymore.
And if you don’t trust, I must pity you.
For trust is my first reality.
 
It is the designs of my religion.
Wheels and wheels upon wheels-
Rolling like an insane wheel.
Even this will go---,
 
You are looking for another frontier?
We could go there and never return.
We will grow, we will evolve.
Are there any strange animals there?
 
Find it in your palms, this planet.
You are holding it----, find it!
You anger knows it-
Where your reason does not.
Cling to it, wallow in it.
 
How does a child knows it?
What would a child choose?
Your youth still demands-
That you be given your moment.
 
But if one of you dies---
It is only the required event.
One direction is as good as another.
You cannot go back---
 
The sun comes up-
Sand is soft beneath out feet.
This is what we drink.
The sand is our enemy.
The longer I endure it-
The more vulnerable I am.
 
I love you by right of loneliness.
And I read you by your emotions.
This is the worth of your measure-
The motivation for the leap,
Is lost in this revelation.
 
My love does not discard-
Accumulate, stimulate, delude.
My love is without centre, self,
My love has no desires of results-
Goals, perfections, visions----.
My love accepts your nakedness.
 
You say you are not arguing, but---
I permit you to know nothing else.
This derives from our ancestors.
You can create nothing, but yourself.
 
You can see your tracks on the sand,
But your tracks do not have flesh.
You will go---, but may never return.
And I can’t follow you-
Because I cannot see you.
 
 
 
THE SUN EXISTS IN ITSELF
 
I take up my subject-
And let it be--, about religion.
And they say, is he capable?
Then my mouth opens up awareness.
Cursing backwards to a time-
A time without parallels, lost in mysteries.
Invoking the licence to dream!
 
Peering down---down---down.
I see people with layers.
Free-verse eyes in their faces.
And I feel so lonely, I cannot pray.
For prayer is a demand for pity.
In the power of desperation.
Like giving water to death.
 
Religions wrecks from within-
And some live lives like mayflies.
I can see their ending in ice.
Not soon enough as I endure it.
How I hate ice?
My body frozen!
 
I want you to look into this horror-
----That you have seen without,
Seeing it or knowing it.
And if I could, I would shed tears.
Consider this wish as an act.
 
This wish would become a miracle.
And you are as great as any miracle.
Because you speak with your own life.
Speaking directly into your senses.
Speaking things not cast in words.
Because you don’t need words.
 
And if I choose good,
Does that make you bad?
And if you choose bad,
Does that make me good?
Must we always judge?
Must we always seek forgiveness?
The sun exists in itself!
 
When you behold a rainbow
What colour do you like most?
Do you think all the other colours-
Would die for want of suitors?
Like when a thing vanishes,
And leave no shadows.
 
But I can see their shadows,
Can see them walking silently.
And I can feel----
The sour colours of their fears.
Driving inside me like hungry pains-
Minutiae of an angry humanity.
Hungry for lost infinity.
 
But we still carry the detritus.
Because we did not separate.
Scatter out at night, this night-
Or another, time did not stop for us.
We had the choice everyone has-
To die now or to die later---.
 
 

 

Now live where the fear of being-
----And the love of being,
Resides in rooms next to each other.
Now live where the courage of love-
----And the faith in life,
Resides in time that changes the past.
Now live for the quality of activity.
 
For you are a seed blown-
In yesterday’s winds.
You will be tomorrow’s plume tree.
Where the nightingale nestles-
Its cares, its feathers, its eggs.
 
And I feel the satellites of my life-
Instruments which plays music,
Warming, cooling, addressing.
My fears, my angers, my memories.
Memories of myself uncovering.
The holy city that I see in distances.
So beautiful in the morning light.
 
And I was like that city once.
But it was in another life.
Another lifetime- a lifetime,
Which does not have ties with any time.
A lifetime that dissolves with contact.
 
 
ODE TO GRIEF
 
There is no space under the sky.
There is no universe that can scour grief.
Time has stopped and frozen.
You cannot find a street on it.
There is no island, no continent-
And there is no wider door,
Which opens this world of silence.
There is no tremor, no earthquake-
And the ocean does not empty,
Swallows and bleeds-
The sands on its beaches.