Poetry

translated from the Yiddish by Mildred Faintly The gallery of my forebears, my people: men in velvet and silk,long pale faces,lips that indicate a weary sensuality,delicate hands that rest caressinglyon…

So ghosts really do exist! Death isn’t the end of it all,    it seems some pallid shadow escapes, defeating the pyre –for I just saw Cynthia, buried in a…

Catullus spent a year in Bythynia (Modern Turkey), the center of Cybele’s worship. The details he gives of her cult, particularly the description of its music, are vividly authentic. A…

translated from the Hebrew by Mildred Faintly Spring And here you are again,forgiving, coaxing, soothing—my heart catches fire afresh. Each spring they come to Tiberiasby thousands, to pray at the…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…