Luis Antonio de Villena
Wandering Cleric
Walking through the snow of gothic scents
on the long routes of wide Europe
by cathedrals and long shadowed towns
goes a badly dressed man with a deep gaze.
He has read Ovid, Latin verses, bestiaries,
he may have drunk of every wine on earth.
He has fucked and loved in taverns and brothels
girls without a past and legendary courtesans.
He knows that life is only a strange
thread of disconnected things, pleasures and suffering,
drunkenness and misery, books and gold.
There is no end or no one knows the end.
Walking through the snow, happy and pissed,
perhaps he's been chucked out of some noble house,
he burbles Latin verses, on the road to nowhere,
the old Arch poet, cleric in Cologne
Homo videt faciem, sed cor patet Iovi
There is no end or no one knows the end.
Translated by Christopher Twigg
Page(s) 40
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