Oblique Landscape JP Jacobsen, I read your poem of a boundless heath with mossy stones where you were born and where you returned with the tungsind poet that ‘died the death, the difficult death.’ Shadowgraph naturalist, translator of Darwin enduring sufferer of tuberculosis who loved six enraged steadfast women for the poet to tune the mood to … Read more
Dawn sun, distant mountains, red cliffs near, white clouds scattered, still world, until a breeze caresses the desert floor, and a scorpion awakes, resting on a piece of earth where no human ever stood. In this wilderness stands a horse, and sitting on the horse a rider. Tail swishing, standing still, a motionless man watching, … Read more
Saturday morning and Lil’Johnny was on his way to work on the Market. He walked along the long curve of street that ran along the bottom of the hill bordering the old marshes where now stood council estates. The tall towers stood like giants against the clear cold blue sky where the first rays of … Read more
It feels like centuries must have passed, but it is only decades. Years grow shorter as they multiply. Back then a year was long. Winters moved slowly through the seasons, bookending the boundless summers. I remember the newness of things then. When I was a boy, in my imagination, I could picture death, but it … Read more
Lovely Dead If I were to let you go who would I show this garden to; who would be there to tell me ‘no’ it’s not enough to say it’s blue in June, when echiums greet the bees (just as later they give finches seeds) and turns yellow in summer sun, burns to red with … Read more
_ Where beckons the quiver…? Are there no spirits moving in the air _ ruling the region between earth and sky ? And do you shine from the sky _ goddess in decay, _ as respite from the spit of day ? For this world could not hold you ? Whose arm twitches … Read more
A Chapter in the WarAppian, 95-165 CEUnder orders from Octavian, the hardened captains – Pansa, Carfulenus – patrolled the narrow pass they had determined to defend, with the Martian legion and half a dozen cohorts in their train.Surrounded all about by mulling marshland, heavy bogs, eight miles south-east of Mutina, their suspicions as they carried … Read more
Then the Lord said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me. And if not, I will know.” – Genesis 18:20-21 They were an ancient and patient race. … Read more
I owe my life to a bullet that pierced my father’s skull. The time was July 1942, the place, Staraya Russa. But Staraya Russa is not the way to begin this story; it belongs in the second part of the middle, closer to the end. The beginning was in Moscow, a few years before the … Read more