Psalm I
Dedicated to Karl Kraus
There is a light which the wind has extinguished.
There is a village pump which a drunk quits in the afternoon.
There is a vineyard, burnt and black, with holes full of spiders.
There is a room they have whitewashed with milk.
The madman has died. There is a southsea island
to receive the sun god. The drums are being beaten.
Men perform warlike dances.
Women sway their hips in creeping plants and fire-flowers,
When the ocean sings. O our paradise lost.
The nymphs have deserted the golden woods.
The stranger is buried. Quivering rain begins to fall.
The son of Pan appears in the form of a digger
Who sleeps through the midday hour on scorching asphalt.
There are little girls in a yard in dresses of heart-rending poverty!
There are rooms filled with chords and sonatas.
There are shadows that embrace before a dulled mirror.
By the hospital windows those on the way to health warm themselves.
A white steamer on the canal conveys bloody contagion.
The strange sister appears once more in someone’s evil dreams.
Resting in hazel thickets she plays with his stars.
The student, perhaps a double, gazes long after her from the window.
Behind him his dead brother stands, or walks down the winding stair.
In the shade of brown chestnuts the form of the young novice pales.
The garden is in the evening. Bats flutter about in the cloisters.
The caretaker’s children cease playing and look for the gold of the sky.
Final chords of a quartet. The little blind girl runs shivering down the avenue,
And later her shadow feels its way along cold walls surrounded by
fairy tales and sacred legends.
There is an empty boat that at evening drifts down the black canal.
In the gloom of the ancient asylum human ruins decay.
The dead orphans lie by the garden wall.
Out of grey rooms step angels with muck-spattered wings.
Worms drip from their yellowed eyelids.
The square before the church is dark and mute, as in the days
of childhood.
On silver soles former lives glide past
And the shades of the damned descend to the sighing waters.
In his grave the white magician plays with his serpents.
Silently, above the Place of Skulls, God’s golden eyes open.
Translated by Alexander Stillmark
Page(s) 47-48
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