Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Poetry Library Southbank Centre - The Poetry Library housing the Arts Council Collection at Southbank Centre

« Previous item
Contents of this issue
Next item »

Marina Galina

print this page

Ghazal

          I shall idolise a Turkish woman from Shiraz,
          return Samarkand, and Bukhara for
          the sake of her birthmark,
                                                  (Hafez)

For the sake of a Turkish woman from Shiraz, consumed in the
             deadly fumes,
I shall pull the post-modern infection out by the roots.
For the moon’s face and the shapes of gazelles and tight curls,
I shall drop Jaspers, Derrida and Deleuze, and Jung too
Ah, no need of more in the garden of frantic delights.
There, weeps Mircea Eliade, no Iliad can match his plight.
What’s so special about Jaspers – it’s the jasper of her cheeks,
             the agate of eyes,
onto the grass her variegated, argus-eyed silks cascade . . .
You’re no passion – you’re a splinter that cannot be pulled out by
                                                                                           force.
Towards you the native tongue creeps through snows from our
                                                                                  kolkhoz
to the moony fields of the East, to its mine fields,
where the gentle palm of a prophet lifts up a sword with its
             crescent maw.    

Translated by Daniel Weissbort

Page(s) 61

Back to top