Oxford Poetry

Pea gardens. The way one’s beauty seems to come to an end just as one is learning, finally, to see it. The small intimacy one can foster with a stone. These are some of the events and scenes that occupy the poems in this issue of Oxford Poetry, our ninety-ninth. It’s an issue that’s crisscrossed by rivers: rivers that transport, rivers that obstruct. Sometimes they fall in little drops from the sky. We open, in fact, with that most ancient of rivers across which the translator carries the wolf, sheep, and grain of language into language. Shangyang Fang’s translations of Song Dynasty Chinese poets are a revelation. The sun-ruined, partially uprooted heart. Distant friends. What else is there to write about? And yet. Elsewhere in this issue Fabienne Rink translates…

点绛唇·丁未冬过吴松作 姜夔 燕雁无心， 太湖西畔随云去。 数峰清苦。 商略黄昏雨。 第四桥边， 拟共天随住。 今何许？ 凭阑怀古。 残柳参差舞。 Swallows and swans, heartless, trail the rootless clouds at the west side of Lake Tai. Thin hills stand still in bankruptcy, discussing whether they could afford another rain before sunset. I too wanted to disappear with you at the Fourth Bridge. Friend, where are you now? Beyond the railing, those broken willows dance so brokenly.…

雨霖铃 柳永 寒蝉凄切， 对长亭晚， 骤雨初歇。 都门帐饮无绪， 留恋处， 兰舟催发。 执手相看泪眼， 竟无语凝噎。 念去去， 千里烟波， 暮霭沉沉楚天阔。 多情自古伤离别， 更那堪， 冷落清秋节！ 今宵酒醒何处？杨柳岸， 晓风残月。 此去经年， 应是良辰好景虚设。 便纵有千种风情， 更与何人说？ The sound of cicadas pierces the autumn sky; late against the pavilion, the downpour stops so suddenly. At the makeshift tent, beyond the city gate of the capital, the wine, tasteless. The docked boat like a leaf of magnolia urges your leaving. We hold hands, looking so deeply into each other’s eyes, tearful - for the first time, I feel that more language suggests more hopelessness. Thinking of where you are going – you are going where masses of evening clouds envelop, thicken over an infinite stretch of mist-hooded waters. Those who laugh at me for my sentimentality, come, step inside this lover’s shape that cuts open this desolate autumn day. To what will I wake tonight? At the bank…

My son is not like the other children. He builds a kingdom of stones And loves them well, but silently. Like any parent, He teaches them their nature. I try to do the same. I give him names, taxonomies: I say Limestone is sedimentary. He says Limestone is sedimentary And returns to his silence. One might think stones would make well-behaved grandchildren. This is not the case. They fall over often. They disobey his rules. At this he flaps his arms in distress. His wailing in the night. These broken rows. Our tragedies. None of us can keep an even temper. We alter under pressure. We cleave apart. We cleave together. His cool cheek, marble, chalk. These stones. Our triumphs. My son is like the other children. He knocks stones…

Lipstick sweat: Red, upon the postcard’s lacquer. I prose on, in the courtyard of the Louvre, how I love this fresco precisely; because it shows me what I cannot see, beyond the tomes of tulle over reality: a promised trumpeted unfold, from such thalassic ultramarines. [Trust, chellam: In me. That the expanse we know now bloomed like rhythm under the surface of our gods-given brown skin - What all the floods etched in before us. ] Two nights before Berlin - I exist again: another life entirely. Crumple what I wrote on platform-café napkins, I’ll lick stamps not onto hysterics, upon parallel-stream romantics - but only for the facts: the same err willed through my fatherline. So I write you this, in follow: of wringing raw my bloated fingers, in and…

Men, long or orphaned: I prefer them both. Dusty with belonging, I crash myself. Every form contains a longing for mystery; his sheep’s eyes, sidelong, feed it. Every ricochet, allongé, every yawn. My longevity as a bee beside the red camellias. A fool whose bells betray her, singing along. Oblong white canvas waits for the shadow to grace it. The shadow on a longe-line to the Sunday dawn. Happenstance, prolonged years of near-misses - flung mitten, golden bridge, neighbourhood bar. Just the thing without which not, the longed-for wrote. In stained glass, colour is so clean, livelong. I would write back, longhand, but for the law of the parties. Without which, headlong, yes.…