Rafael Drinot Silva
I Can See My Grandfather on the Balcony
I can see my grandfather gazing at the sea from the balcony
My grandmother shouts
and screeches
and like a monkey refuses to budge from between grandfather’s
legs
They’re old
I wandered up and down the beach collecting pebbles and shells
That’s La Punta: it got stuck in my head like a hook
Behind the copy of Onar Khayyan a demijohn of Chilean wine
or perhaps anis
But I never saw him staggering
like the sailors in the bars of the port
Grandmother didn’t like liquor
They were old
In front of grandfathers portrait
-eight decorations
six from Belgium
one from France
one from Peru
My photo with a face like an old dinghy
That’s La Punta and its sad memories
and my grandparents anchored there and later ran aground - day
after day
eating noodles because they’d lost their teeth, drinking soup
with vermicelli for their indigestion -
My grandmother like a monkey refusing to budge from between
grandfather’s legs
Now they’re dead.
Translated by Jane Ramsden, C.A. de Lomellini and David Tipton
Page(s) 32
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