Pem Sluijter
New Year
The coveted terebinth
has lost its leaves:
all appearance wilts
as light follows darkness
the thinnest red
chases after the sun –
behind it new days
of fratricide smoulder.
I look out on the failure of gardens
I’ve chosen, myself a garden
that no longer gives water.
What does it mean
seven women
clutching one man?
Help me
explain this –
when you toss riddles at me
not being
watered I
come up
with nothing.
Violence masses above us
like the mountain exalted
above the hills: no people has ever
beaten swords into ploughshares
yet in Manila Cory prays
for rebels who give roses and in Accra
behind the crumbling slaveforts
(one named longsuffering) a car
proclaims: Let us not hate Whites.
Translated by Shirley Kaufman
Page(s) 189-190
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The