Matthew Caley
So, fuck off, please
After Ezra Pound's translation of Sophocles' Women of Trachae
Translation is the art
of mishearing one word for another.
All the great translators
sat on their masters' knees and gulped a glass of water
whilst simultaneously clacking their jaws.
Never have truck with such an avatar.
Into the dust they all go.
Cutie nicked all the prizes.
She's poison, piss and poison
but there's no-one else who's such a shaker,
a mover and a shaker, yet unshaken.
We all know we're beneath her.
Yet no-one has the right to give her away.
Into the dust they all go.
Imagine. Two E-heads bust-up over a babe -
all spittle and angel-dust,
rivers of it... bike-horns honking
like obdurate bulls in Pamplona
at the end of their tether,
lashing and broody.
Into the dust they all go.
They twang car ariels
outside The Paradise Club
and Fracas, his pina-colada spiked
believes he's the Son Of God.
Legless under a Thunderbird duvet, Cutie's a fallen bride
eying a dowsing rod.
Into the dust they all go.
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