translated from the Hebrew by Mildred Faintly Nightmare In my dream, I was being led awayto be stoned to death: an adulteress.The mute seated judges shook their headsas the sentence…
Poetry
Lorelei: Part 2
No sentinels stand guard upon these ramparts,yellow wall-flowers have overgrown their stones;the only motion here is when these bloomsare stirred by the breeze.Here comes a woman , head bowed in…
Jean Lorrain’s Lorelei
translated from the French by Justin Brumby I The guardsmen stood in two lines, halberds in hand,in baggy knee breeches, noses in the air,while the rabble and the street kids…
Poetry: Rachel Blaustein
translated from the Hebrew by Mildred Faintly from Brought Low He came by night, the spectral emissary,he sat on the edge of my hospital bed:his bones jutting up, tenting the…
Jean Lorrain: Odile
I Stone saints, seated in symmetric seriesalong the pointed vault, graven angelsof the transept, and the sonorous golden soulof the bells imprisoned in the tall slender cageof the belfry tower—all…
Catullus: Ariadne
Ariadne, a poem by Catullus, translated from the Latin They say Mount Pelion’s topmost pinesonce swam the great sea’s fluent waveswhen the chosen, toughest young men of Greece,hoping they could…
from “Collected Poems”
Visiting When I first came on a visitto your limewashed house– a clean-kneed child from town –your two great fists impressed me, for theywere ponderous chunksof granite, notchedcarelessly for fingers…
Tentative Melodies
translations from Vivien’s 1901 book Études et Préludes Undine There’s a light in your laughter and a darkness in your touch.Your lips are cold. You smile at the distressyour kisses…
A Ballad from the Hills of Westphalia
He fell for a devil of a woman,and she was a devil of a woman for him to fall for,his own sister! She was affectionate, you have to grant her…
Poems from Flares and Fathoms
The review of Flares and Fathoms, from which the following poems are taken, appeared in the previous issue. Blizzard: Brooklyn View A man shovels in a parking lotfor a car…