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I never had you and no doubt I never
will. A few words, an approach
like at the bar two days ago – nothing more. For me,
I must admit, I’m sorry. But we others,
the Art’s adepts, by force of concentration, can create
fleetingly, sometimes, a pleasure
that impresses one by being almost concrete.
Thus, in the bar, two days ago, with alcohol
helping me greatly in its kindly fashion,
that half-hour was for me profoundly erotic.
It seemed to me you understood, and deliberately
you lingered just a little. Now, what was there
was something very necessary, for, with all
possible fantasy and the magic of alcohol,
I had to see your lips as well,
I had to have your body near.
Translated from Greek by by D.M. Black. From Modern Poetry in Translation, New Series no. 18, 2001
Poems by C P Cavafy (1863-1933) appeared in MPT 13, where the translators – David Ricks, Avi Sharon and George Kalogeris – simply stated that he “needs no introduction”.
DM Black’s translations from Goethe appeared in MPT 13 and 16.
A shotgun in her parlour, Amazon says Enter.
A barefoot wedding. She gestures like treacle,
a guttering of purple in a dugout canoe on the
dream banks of the living room carpet. A diva, she
demands more body. Her want is citrus scented.
She waits in silence, a pulsating black
widow's abdomen. A calling. When you finally
wade into the first-sex smell of nectarines, she
tells you a night-time scare story : of alien
autopsy, the power of the drum, and the psychic
potential of humankind. Designed to send your
blood into the web. "Relinquish" she mouths into
the spaces between your outstretched fingers. Give
way to the sinking vibration of a temple bell. Let
her drop you, head first into the green with
nothing more to cling to than the ozone, ivy and
spider within.
After dark I call you up,
just to hear the weather report,
that the nights are drawing in now,
and how much you paid
for your latest pair of trousers.
You’ll tell me the one about
PLUTO, the giant pipeline rolling out
under the Channel on a steel drum,
how it kept the tanks fed
for our boys on the continent,
how the ice cream hut along the bay
was really a pump in disguise,
like those Ruperts that kept the Führer
guessing. And the Kamikaze who’d blaze
unswerving to the end, the enemy
you couldn’t help but admire. And I’ll
sing you American Pie again,
like that last night in the hospital,
however many times you try to die.
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