Travelling friends often send a 'Wish You Were Here' card from their current (and enviable) location to express their sentiments on the destination they've been lucky enough to inhabit for a week or two. John Gallas decided to send the Carcanet team some poems instead.
The New Zealand poet, author of 52 Euros (an anthology of poems by 26 male and 26 female European poets in translation) recently travelled to Andalucia. Hence:
A Little Andaluciad
1. Welcome. Malaga Airport
Not sail, nor oar,
nor expeditious crew
brings with high labour me
to the hylic strand
by the Andalucian moon:
like sardines slipped in oil,
the planes
pass silver back and forth,
but mostly forth,
through a slow death of rain
to a stranger port.
2. A cactus-filled cleft in the hills
scribble of turquoise chalk
cast
like too many flowers
for a too great wrong
upon the hill’s dark knees
where the sky also sits
with a fist to its furious brow
The Lion of the Alhambra says:
See how with all
abiding beauty long
I bear the still
shining bowl of Time
for the camera, and the stars.
And the Pigeon replies:
I have seen enough of Eternity.
And now I am going to the Gardens
of the Generalife
to visit the Irises
which are Plant of the Month.
4. Palm Sunday not in St Nicholas Church
The velvet tongue of bells
seesaws in blood.
I bring long yellow palms
nailed to the wind.
O Señor Surgenta!
Please At This Hour Do Not Enter.
5. The Gift of Frederico García Lorca
At the House of Manuel de Falla
one hundred packets
of desperate remedies
and a Nose Bath
wait in dead cupboards.
They are flat
as men with watches
at Railway Stations.
The shot salterio,
a lightly powdered wrist
at the strings that are not there,
plucks words down
from the moon.
6. Mantilla ladies in waiting
Rain covers
the corner
of San Matías.
Pearls cling
in black cobwebs,
tears in kufic towers,
crowning each
in the fashion
of some Virgin.
7. The Olive Trees
We have marched on Middle Earth.
We have forgot the ends and causes of our host.
O mi Comandante!
We have borne the fruits of hope.
We have lost our locomotion.
O mi Señor!
We stand but do not wait.
We cover all the land.
O mi Nombre!
We do not seize the moment, for the hour.
We do not seize the season, for the year.
O mi Vida!
O fustian fury!
Stamp upon my heart!
O! O! O!
and through this olive mouth,
your instrument,
it will bleed
poetry!
9. In the gardens of the Baths of the Caliphate of Cordoba
Beneath the high hats of Sorrow
lie the long imagined gardens of Delight.
Here, writes Ibn Hatem,
the branches of the trees
entwine like lovers,
or,
alternatively,
if they stand
a little far apart
to be in a position of
convenient intercourse,
dance.
Turtle doves tuck up to sleep
like beating hearts
in the moonlight.
It is said that they said they would build a church
so bloody Vasto they would say they were mad.
Yikes.
Lions dine on ladies’ ankles.
Martyrs surf on waves of wood.
Brassy babies trample doll-skulls.
Torches launch from severed heads.
Golden eyeballs coo in blood-baths.
Silver nuns weep crowns of lace.
Thou hast conquered, oh dark Reconquista!
The world has grown mad with thy breath.
Thou art mad as a Madman from Madtown:
I am sick with the fullness of Death.
11. Plaza de Toros de la Real Maestranza de Caballería
In this ere Chapel
the Bull prays
before the work of the Beast:
The Immaculate Cow With Golden Brainwaves.
In this ere Ospital
the Bull recovers
after the work of the Beast:
The Heifer Intacta With Antiseptic Udders.
We are the Sack Men,
We are the Sack Men leaning together,
Bearing the Meaning together,
We are the Sack Men,
Bearing our Soul.
Suff’ring Jesus, bruised and beat,
forgive our wobbly failing feet:
we are the stinking flesh of Man,
and carry as we barely can
the story of Thy great Perfection:
Lord forgive our tired erection
as we stagger to our end
be our Saviour and our Friend.
Thump thump sway sway
we labour to bear up
beneath the dropped tablecloth
and the Roman lash.
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| John Gallas |
If you enjoyed these poems, try John's latest collection 52 Euros, a selection of work from the finest European poets, including Akhmatova, Baudelaire, and Pasolini, and the up and coming, the Olafsson brothers, Renée Vivien, and Yulia Zhadovskaya, translated to and refined in English.
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| 52 Euros |