Category: Poetry
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May poem
don’t believe in anything you can’t take apart
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Pandemic poem
(30 Jan. 2022) Cut down Cut down to bone Cut off to spite it and Cut off from Cut away to put away Stay away Cut out Cut out your needy Cut me down I’m Not cut out for it
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La mà que va signar el paper* (The Hand That Signed The Paper) by Dylan Thomas
(*Translated into Catalan below with Antoni Cardona) La mà que va signar el paper va enderrocar una ciutat; Cinc dits sobirans van posar taxes a l’alè, Van duplicar els morts a la terra i van partir pel mig un país; Aquests cinc reis van fer que morís un rei La poderosa mà porta a una…
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“The skin of a bull” by Salvador Espriu (My translation from Catalan*)
Sometimes it is necessary, essentialthat a man dies for a peopleBut an entire people must never diefor a single man:Remember this, Sepharad. Make sure to keep the bridges of dialogue safeand try to understand and lovethe different reasonings and tongues of all your children.Drop by drop, let the rain fall on the seedlingsand the air…
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On Diagonal Avenue
Here is the woman who walks With a chest like a man Carrying two Bowling balls in a bag And here is the hair-lip man Who pours two packets of sugar Into his coffee cup With two hands as two fists Now a different man Who gesticulates As if he is Casting a…
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The colours of Asturias
the flag of the region (if we must have any damn flags at all) should be green black and red Asturias is certainly verdant green but it is also black the black of the miner’s lung and the almost permanent colour of his stained spit it is also that sightless place…
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Early doors day
(This poem was first published in Burrow here at Old Water Rat’s Publishing ) soft lines of fog trees not the desert but quiet like the desert we look at the stars to see what we come from body not yet the enemy light slowly befriends you
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Review of Nathan Shepherdson’s “Sweeping the Light Back Into the Mirror”
[A shorter version of this article was first published under the titled “A stretched agony” in Catalonia Today magazine, June 2016.] small children trade the world for distraction deal in statements with the grammar of a road sign they’re happy to put the sun in the top corner of the page count backwards from 9…
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What Have We?
[An extract of this poem was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, December 2014.] There’s the vacant look of history’s books Slave labour and murder thy neighbour Innocents torture and screw your own daughter This is the past we still have We see human remains and bullet-trains Product wars and useless laws Greed…
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Carnal mud
spring in winter and free wine today it was as if somewhere a switch was flicked hungry but don’t want to eat only bitterness can be wrung from the cold (but disaster is only a muscle twitch away) is there a word for that sensation of "this happy moment cannot last"…
Brett Hetherington 