Category: Poetry
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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" […]
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Becoming our father
[Photo by Javier Beraluce] (Written for and inspired by Matt) Yes, I am now attracted to the mute certainty Of arms as oars The sunstroke back too and the smell of Bruts When you stammered for the right words you found (when every little nail starts to grow inwards and every little injustice is anticipated) […]
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Singular
fold tomorrows rain and under the loose world night play blind on young ground ………… one earth full of single stars blown here by unrelenting years those seas of sorrows know written in liars lines saying come and become the past full like her darkest pity to show such thought is mine ………. might I […]
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Outside
The medieval bells sound The church light angles in Across our lowly bed But come what sorrow can This confounded appetite Will count its own worth And feed from troughs of minutes
Brett Hetherington 