Poetry by Shakila Azizzada

With thanks to Sarah Maguire director of The Poetry Translation Centre for facilitating my selection of poems by Shakila Azizzada.   The poems were translated by Mimi Khalvati and Zuzanna Olszewska for the Poetry Translation Centre

Once Upon A Time   in memory of Leila Sarahat Roshani   Granny used to say always keep your magic sack tucked inside your ribcage.   Don’t say the sun’s worn out, don’t say it’s gone astray. Say, I’m coming back.   May the White Demon protect and watch over you. Oh, daughter of the dawn,   perhaps this sorry tale, stuck in the mud, was of your doing.   Take the comb from the sack, throw it in the Black Demon’s path: seven jungles will grow at his feet.   Don’t say heaven’s too far, earth’s too hard. Don’t throw the mirror if you fear the sea and her nymphs.   Don’t say there was, don’t say there wasn’t, trust in the god of fairytales. May Granny’s soul rest in peace.   Give the mirror to Golnar’s mother who, down by the charred vineyards, dreams of birds and fish.   Don’t say the rooftop’s sun’s too brief. Say, I’m coming and this time, forget love’s foolish griefs.   Shake out the sack. In the name of the White Demon, burn that strand of hair.   Wasn’t there, once upon a time …? Once upon a time there was   a girl in whose long, endless dreams, an old woman with white braids, forever telling beads, would pray:   ‘May the Shomali Plain still fill with song and through the ceilings of its ruined homes, let light pour in.’   Once Upon A Time is © Shakila Azizzada. The literal translation of this poem was made by Zuzanna Olszewska.The final translated version of the poem is by Mimi Khalvati Once Upon A Time: this poem refers to a fairytale in which the hero sets off to fight the Black Demon, aided by the White Demon and the magic powers of a sack with a mirror, a comb and a strand of hair. Fairytales traditionally start with the refrain, ‘There was one, there wasn’t one, apart from God, there was no one.’ View from Afar   I’m left again with no one standing behind me, ground pulled from under my feet. Even the sun’s shoulders are beyond my reach.   My navel chord was tied to the apron strings of custom, my hair first cut over a basin of edicts. In my ear, a prayer was whispered: ‘May the earth behind and beneath you be forever empty’.   However, just a little higher, there’ll always be a land purer than any land Satan could wish on me.   With the sun’s hand on my shoulder, I tear my feet away, a thousand and one times, from the things I leave behind me.   View From Afar is © Shakila Azizzada Translated by Zuzanna Olszewska and Mimi Khalvati.   Haft Seen   If it weren’t for the clouds, I could pick the stars one by one from this brief sky, hang them in your ever ruffled hair and hear you saying:   ‘I’m like a silk rug - the older it gets, the lovelier it grows, even if two or three naughty kids did pee on it.’   Am I finally here?   Then let me spread the Haft Seen tablecloth in the middle of Dam Platz.   Even if it rains, The Unknown Soldier and a flock of pigeons will be my guests.   Haft Seen is © Shakila Azizzada. The literal translation of this poem was made by Zuzanna Olszewska. The final translated version of the poem is by Mimi Khalvati.

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from The Poetry Translation Centre . Shakila Azizzada is a poet from Afghanistan who writes in Dari. Shakila Azizzada was born in Kabul in Afghanistan in 1964. During her middle school and university years in Kabul, she started writing stories and poems, many of which were published in magazines. Her poems are unusual in their frankness and delicacy, particularly in the way she approaches intimacy and female desire, subjects which are rarely adressed by women poets writing in Dari. After studying Law at Kabul University, Shakila read Oriental Languages and Cultures at Utrecht University in The Netherlands, where she now lives. She regularly publishes tales, short stories, plays and poems. Her first collection of poems, Herinnering aan niets (Memories About Nothing), was published in Dutch and Dari and her second collection will be published in 2012. Several of her plays have been both published and performed, including De geur van verlangen (The Scent of Desire). She frequently performs her poems at well-established forums in The Netherlands and abroad.

The Geometry of Love Between the Elements by Fióna Bolger

Caught in the Cross Hairs   I bury my face in the thickness of your hair the darkness, the softness, the smell raw brain sweat, your innermost thoughts desire become scent   beneath the softness the hard skull skin a barrier you need and I want to penetrate   to enter see the wiring observe my image upside down in the back of your head then turn and peer through your eyes   I’d see the world as you   You’ve stolen my tongue   I thought I had the power in dreams I knelt at the chopping board an awkward sacrificial lamb I brought the cleaver down silencing my babble   but you held the knife and while I slept you forced my lips apart and cut at the roots ever the skilled operator you stitched me up needling the thread to connect the severed ends   I can still make sounds some almost words they think they understand but my tongue is in your hands   ‘Blue’ by Vani Vemparala From The Geometry of Love Between the Elements by Fióna Bolger. A Grimoire published by Poetry Bus Magazine.

cure for a sharp shock   it’s that moment when you trust let go the balloon your hope floats up into the air it’s beautiful and red   it bursts empty rubber pieces a shade darker float to earth   I read somewhere if you take these shreds put them between broken pieces of pottery and blow they’ll sound beautiful   I’m not sure I read it somewhere   cure poem for the lovelorn   a woman sits alone her eyes are on the swan feathers dropped by the moon upon the sea   she sees no-one on the horizon but who can walk on water dance on down   by day she weaves her stinging sadness into nettle shirts, by night she waits for her lover – the one who needs   to wear those painful clothes to be fully human again no longer trapped   on a cold moon dropping feathers on the sea   Cure Poems are © Fióna Bolger

Fiona Bolger’s work has appeared in Headspace, Southword, The Brown Critique, Can Can, Boyne Berries, Poetry Bus, The Chattahoochee Review, Bare Hands Poetry Anthology and others. Her poems first appeared in print on placards tied to lamp posts (UpStart 2011 General Election Campaign). They’ve also been on coffee cups (The Ash Sessions). Her grimoire, The Geometry of Love between the Elements, was published by Poetry Bus Press. She is of Dublin and Chennai and is a member of Dublin Writers’ Forum and Airfield Writers.   From Poetry Bus  A Grimoire is a book of magic and what is more magical than poetry? So instead of producing a series of chapbooks we’ve opted to create something a bit more special. Our first poet is Fíona Bolger and her Grimoire is called ‘The Geometry of Love between the Elements’   A beautiful book of poems illustrated by Vani Vemparala and featuring translations into Irish, Polish and Tamil by Antain Mac Lochlainn, Aleksandra Kubiak and R.Vatsala respectively.

Poems by Mary Noonan

The Card   What goes by the name of love is banishment, with now and then a postcard from the homeland. – Samuel Beckett, First Love   I’m looking for a card, one that holds the oriole on the black pear tree – will it be brazen or sweet, junebug or whippoorwill, Tupelo or Baton Rouge? I drape myself in maps, drift in colours and signs, sleep on my seven books of owls, frogs, alligators.   I want a card that quickens codes, spills the secrets of words, sends letters flying. We used to name things, now we travel the lines past ghost-shack and scrub, sun-bothered lizards skittering under creosote and cocotillo.   This card must distil the frenzy of the firefly as it waltzes with its own blazing corpse.   The Card is © Mary Noonan . Carry   To clear my head of talk, I walked the beach and found a pebble, a cuckoo’s egg, held it and saw it was a map.   An oval stone striated with slate-grey markings, one side bore tracings that arced and criss-crossed: polka of narrow roads,   sandpipers darting in bleached grasses, contours of a shoreline, the lines on my palm. A gate opening into a small field.   The curve of the stone offered concentric swirls, a talisman you carry to ward off the evil eye, or the nipple of a breast.   Here it is – an amulet, runes and traces to light and guard you, a cuckoo’s egg in the wrong nest, a gate opening   into a small field, a circle ploughed round a lone hawthorn tree, a map of the way between us. I carry it.   carry is © Mary Noonan   No Direction Home i.m. Gregory O’Donoghue 1951-2005   I wrote that the final days of August would find me washed up, propped in a place where the light of day is tight and mean. You approved, gently tending – even poems lamenting summer’s end were safe with you, lines too concerned with the small ambit of seasons to encompass the impact of a true ending.   And so it was that August swept you off your feet, quenched your breath with ease as she dragged hurricanes and swollen waters in her train. In the middle of your fifty-fourth year – one of the bald facts mourners swapped at the grave, suddenly aware that they did not know you.   I knew only the grace of your yellowed fingers, that elegant pen, your hand feathering its tender script across a page, your hooded eyes, your mug of gin, the small room where we met once a week. I saw you sometimes, walking lopsidedly in the street; once, at a launch, we talked about Bob Dylan   but in the moment I heard of your death I knew that you had guided me to a place – a room, a page – where limping and stammering come into their own, a vast, airy space inviting me to stand my ground, to bellow in tantrum, to rampage, to thrive in my brokenness.   No Direction Home is © Mary Noonan

Mary Noonan lives in Cork. Her poems have been published in The Dark Horse, The North, Poetry Review, Poetry London, The Threepenny Review, Cyphers, The Stinging Fly, Wasafiri and Best of Irish Poetry 2010. She won the Listowel Poetry Collection Prize in 2010. Her first collection – The Fado House (Dedalus Press, 2012) – was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for a First Collection (2013) and the Strong/Shine Award (2013). Mary Noonan at Dedalus Press

Poems from ‘Vocal Chords’ by Maeve O’Sullivan

Vocal Chords by Maeve O’Sullivan Published, Alba Publishing 2014. 64 Pages

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Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair   Bare-legged, in light, pale clothing, three young women stand on an urban rooftop; New York, probably, or some other big city. They are letting the wind dry their hair while white garments sway on a line behind them, and the chimney beside them casts a long shadow.   It is 1912, and Sloan’s subjects could be sisters: one redhead in a green skirt, one brunette, one blonde. The brunette looks approvingly at the redhead, while the blonde brushes her hair which hangs like a curtain, her head titled to the right, the left hand on her hip for balance.   I imagine they are chatting about the night before; what they did, who they saw dancing, girl talk. One of them could be softly humming After The Ball or something jazzy; no World War to bother them yet, and no Depression, this year forever marked by a ship called the Titanic.   This is how I would like my three sisters to be; close, relaxed, hanging out happily, the brunette smiling at the redhead, the blonde still long-haired and carefree, and me, the youngest girl, looking on from the gallery, taking it all in.   Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair is © Maeve O’Sullivan.

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Heartwood West African proverb:’When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.’   Book by book, a library burns down when someone dies in Africa; the fire consumes the memory, the sensorium.   And when he lights his robes of orange-brown, the monk rejects the puja, picks the pyre as, book by book, his library burns down.   Three hundred people in a Midwest town were burnt alive like blossoms on a briar, with loss of all those memories,sensoriums.   Before he left,prognosis barely known, my father trudged his way through the quagmire; then, book by book, his library burned down.   The seeds of our dejectedness were sown when that disease took hold and made a liar of her clouding memory, her sensorium.   And when at last I’m put into the ground, or else cremated, ashes back to Gaia, book by book, my library will burn down, consuming, then, my memory, my sensorium.   Heartwood is © Maeve O’Sullivan

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White Star

the majestic steamer
slips into the sea-
first voyage

spinning his top…
the child who survived
to die three years later
 
she goes back in
for the hat from her mother-
makes the lifeboat
 
the pills in her pocket
eventually identifying
the lost Irishwoman
 
anchor, propeller
side-scuttle…
these rusticles
a hundred years
in the making

White Star is © Maeve O’Sullivan

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Maeve O’Sullivan works as a media lecturer in the further education sector in Dublin. Her poems and haiku have been widely published and anthologised since the mid-1990s, and she is a former poetry winner at Listowel Writer’s Week. Initial Response, her debut collection of haiku poetry, also from Alba Publishing, was launched in 2011, and was well-received by readers and critics alike. Maeve is a founder member of Haiku Ireland (www.haiku-ireland.com) and the Hibernian Poetry Workshop. She also performs at festivals and literary events with the spoken word group The Poetry Divas. Her poem Leaving Vigo was recently nominated for a Forward Prize for a Single Poem by the Limerick-based journal Revival (http://poetry-24.blogspot.ie/2013/08/leaving-vigo.html). Vocal Chords Poetry by Maeve O’Sullivan ISBN 9780957526587 Paperback. 64pp Published: February 2014 £10 / €12 / $16 To order, email: info@albapublishing.com

‘Ceathrúintí Mháire Ní Ógáin’ and ‘A fhir dar fhulaingeas’ by Máire Mhac an tSaoi

Máire Mhac an tSaoi poetry Original Irish versions followed by English translations . Ceathrúintí Mháire Ní Ógáin A fhir dár fhulaingeas… Ceathrúintí Mháire Ní Ógáin I Ach a mbead gafa as an líon so – Is nár lige Dia gur fada san – B’fhéidir go bhfónfaidh cuimhneamh Ar a bhfuaireas de shuaimhneas id bhaclainn Nuair a bheidh arm o chumas guíochtaint, Comaoine is éiteacht Aifrinn, Cé déarfaidh ansan nach cuí dhom Ar ‘shonsa is arm o shon féin achaine? Ach comhairle idir dhá linn duit, Ná téir ródhílis in achrann, Mar go bhfuilimse meáite ar scaoileadh Pé cuibhreann a snaidhmfear eadrainn. II Beagbheann ar amhras daoine, Beagbheann ar chros na sagart, Ar gach ní ach bheith sínte Idir tú agus falla – Neamhshuim liom fuacht na hoíche, Neamhshuim liom scríb is fearthainn, Sa domhan cúng rúin teolaí seo Ná téann thar fhaobhar na leapan – Ar a bhfuil romhainn ní smaoinfeam, Ar a bhfuil déanta cheana, Linne an uain, a chroí istigh, Is mairfidh sí go maidin. III Achar bliana atáim Ag luí farat id chlúid, Deacair anois a rá Cad leis a raibh mo shúil! Ghabhais de chosaibh i gcion A tugadh go fial ar dtúis, Gan aithint féin féd throigh Fulaing na feola a bhrúigh! Is fós tá an creat umhal Ar mhaithe le seanagheallúint, Ach ó thost cantain an chroí Tránn áthas an phléisiúir. IV Tá naí an éada ag deol mo chíchse Is mé ag tál air de ló is d’oíche; An garlach gránna ag cur na bhfiacal, Is de nimh a ghreama mo chuisle líonta. A ghrá, ná maireadh an trú beag eadrainn, Is a fholláine, shláine a bhí ár n-aithne; Barántas cnis a chloígh lem chneas airsin, Is séala láimhe a raibh gach cead aici. Féach nach meáite mé ar chion a shéanadh, Cé gur sháigh an t-amhras go doimhin a phréa’chas; Ar lair dheá-tharraic ná déan éigean, Is díolfaidh sí an comhar leat ina séasúr féinig. V Is éachtach an rud í an phian, Mar chaitheann an cliabh, Is ná tugann faoiseamh ná spás Ná sánas de ló ná d’oíche’ – An té atá i bpéin mar táim Ní raibh uaigneach ná ina aonar riamh, Ach ag iompar cuileachtan de shíor Mar bhean gin féna coim. VI ‘Ní chodlaím istoíche’ – Beag an rá, ach an bhfionnfar choíche Ar shúile oscailte Ualach na hoíche? VII Fada liom anocht! Do bhí ann oíche Nárbh fhada faratsa – Dá leomhfainn cuimhneamh. Go deimhin níor dheacair san. An ród a d’fhillfinn – Dá mba cheadaithe Tréis aithrí ann. Luí chun suilt Is éirí chun aoibhnis Siúd ba cheachtadh dhúinn – Dá bhfaigheann dul siar air. Cathrúintí Mháire Ní Ógáin from, Margadh na Saoire. Dublin: Sairseal agus Dill, 1956, 1971. Mary Hogan’s quatrains I O to be disentangled from this net – And may God not let that be long – Perhaps the memory will help Of all the ease I had in your arms. When I shall have the ability to pray, Take communion and hear Mass, Who will say then that it is not seemly To intercede on yours and on my behalf? But meanwhile my advice to you, Don’t get too firmly enmeshed, For I am determined to let loose Whatever bond between us is tied. II I care little for people’s suspicions, I care little for priests’ prohibitions, For anything save to lie stretched Between you and the wall – I am indifferent to the night’s cold, I am indifferent to the squall or rain, When in this warm narrow secret world Which does not go beyond the edge of the bed – We shall not contemplate what lies before us, What has already been done, Time is on our side, my dearest, And it will last til morning. III For the space of a year I have been Lying with you in your embrace, Hard to say now What I was hoping for! You trampled on love, That was freely given at first, Unaware of the suffering Of the flesh you crushed under foot. And yet the flesh is willing For the sake of an old familiar pledge, But since the heart’s singing has ceased The joy of pleasure ebbs. IV The child of jealousy is sucking my breast, While I nurse it day and night; The ugly brat is cutting teeth, My veins throb with the venom of its bite. My love, may the little wretch not remain between us, Seeing how healthy and full was our knowledge of each other; It was a skin warranty that kept us together, And a seal of hand that knew no bounds. See how I am not determined to deny love, Though doubt has plunged its roots deep; Do not force a willing mare, And she will recompense you in her own season. V Pain is a powerful thing, How it consumes the breast, It gives no respite day or night, It gives no peace or rest – Anyone who feels pain like me, Has never been lonely or alone, But is ever bearing company Like a pregnant woman, in her womb. VI ‘I do not sleep at night’ – Of no account, but will we ever know With open eyes The burden of the night? VII Tonight seems never-ending! There was once such a night Which with you was not long – Dare I call to mind. That would not be hard, for sure, The road on which I would return – If it were permitted After repentance. Lying down for joy And rising to pleasure That is what we practised – If only I could return to it. Translation by James Gleasure. Cathrúintí Mháire Ní Ógáin from, Margadh na Saoire. Dublin: Sairseal agus Dill, 1956, 1971. A fhir dar fhulaingeas… A fhir dar fhulaingeas grá fé rún, Feasta fógraím an clabhsúr: Dóthanach den damhsa táim, Leor mo bhabhta mar bhantráill Tuig gur toil liom éirí as, Comhraím eadrainn an costas: ‘Fhaid atáim gan codladh oíche Daorphráinn orchra mh’osnaíle Goin mo chroí, gad mo gháire, Cuimhnigh, a mhic mhínáire, An phian, an phláigh, a chráigh mé, Mo dhíol gan ádh gan áille. Conas a d’agróinnse ort Claochló gréine ach t’amharc, Duí gach lae fé scailp dhaoirse – Malairt bhaoth an bhréagshaoirse! Cruaidh an cás mo bheith let ais, Measa arís bheith it éagmais; Margadh bocht ó thaobh ar bith Mo chaidreamh ortsa, a óigfhir. Man for whom I endured… Man, for whom I suffered love In secret, I now call a halt. I’ll no longer dance in step. Far too long I’ve been enthralled. Know that I desire surcease, Reckon up what love has cost In racking sighs, in blighted nights When every hope of sleep is lost. Harrowed heart, strangled laughter; Though you’re dead to shame, I charge you With my luckless graceless plight And pain that plagues me sorely. Yet, can I blame you that the sun Darkens when you are in sight? Until I’m free each day is dark – False freedom to swap day for night! Cruel my fate, if by your side. Crueller still, if set apart. A bad bargain either way To love you or to love you not. Translated by Biddy Jenkinson.

Máire Mhac an tSaoi (born 4 April 1922) is one of the most acclaimed and respected Irish language scholars, poets, writers and academics of modern literature in Irish. Along with Seán Ó Ríordáin and Máirtín Ó Direáin she is, in the words of Louis de Paor, ‘one of a trinity of poets who revolutionised Irish language poetry in the 1940s and 50s. (Wiki) Máire Mhac an tSaoi

These poems are published courtesy of Micheal O’Conghaile at Cló Iar-Chonnachta. My thanks to The O’Brien Press for dealing so swiftly with my queries regarding sharing some poetry and translations by Máire Mhac an tSaoi. Thanks to Bridget Bhreathnach at Cló Iar-Chonnachta for providing the physical copies of Mhac an tSaoi’s poetry, and to translators  James Gleasure and Biddy Jenkinson.

• Cló Iar Chonnachta 
• Centre for Irish Studies/ NUI / Galway
• Máire Mhac an tSaoi at CIC
• A fhir dar fhulaingeas… at The Poetry Project