Poems That Make Grown Men Cry (31 page)
Read Poems That Make Grown Men Cry Online
Authors: Anthony and Ben Holden
Extract from
and our faces, my heart, brief as photos
What reconciles me to
my own death more than anything else is the image of a place: a place where your bones and mine are buried, thrown, uncovered, together. They are
strewn there pell-mell. One of your ribs leans against my skull. A metacarpal of my left hand lies inside your pelvis. (Against my broken ribs your breast like a flower.) The hundred bones of
our feet are scattered like gravel. It is strange
that this image of our proximity, concerning as it does mere phosphate of calcium, should bestow a sense of peace. Yet it does. With you I can
imagine a place where to be phosphate of calcium is enough.
(1984)
The actor, writer, and director Simon McBurney (b. 1957) cofounded the theatre company Complicité in 1983 and remains its artistic
director. His productions for the
company include
The Elephant Vanishes
(2003),
A Disappearing Number
(2007) and
The Master and Margarita
(2012). He has also directed Broadway productions of
The Resistible
Rise of Arturo Ui
, starring Al Pacino (2002), and
All My Sons
(2008). He has acted in films such as
The Last King of Scotland
(2006) and
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
(2011),
and in the television
comedies
The Vicar of Dibley
and
Rev.
His publications include a volume of essays,
Who You Hear It From
(2012).
DOUGLAS DUNN
(1942– )
RICHARD EYRE
There are not many poems about death which don’t carry some baggage about the life eternal or, in offering comfort, offer advertisements for religious consolation. What
moves me so much about Douglas Dunn’s poem – which comes from a collection called
Elegies
, all relating to the death of his wife –
is that it’s about love and the
survival of love.
Sandra’s Mobile
A constant artist, dedicated to
Curves, shapes, the pleasant shades, the feel of colour,
She did not care what shapes, what red, what blue,
Scorning the dull to ridicule the duller
With a disinterested, loyal eye.
So Sandra brought her this and taped it up –
Three seagulls from a white and indoor sky –
A gift of old artistic comradeship.
‘Blow on them, Love.’ Those silent birds winged round
On thermals of my breath. On her last night,
Trying to stay awake, I saw love crowned
In tears and wooden birds and candlelight.
She did not wake again. To prove our love
Each gull, each gull, each gull,
turned into dove.
(1985)
Director of Britain’s National Theatre from 1987 to 1997, Sir Richard Eyre (b. 1943) has won numerous awards including five Oliviers for productions ranging from
Guys
and Dolls
to Tom Stoppard’s
The Invention of Love
. His film credits include
Iris
(2001),
Notes on a Scandal
(2006) and
The Other Man
(2008). His opera
productions include
Carmen
for the Metropolitan Opera, New York, 2010.
MAURICIO ROSENCOF
(1933– )
JUAN MÉNDEZ
I read this sonnet only in 2012, although for decades I had known the story of the inhumane conditions in which the Uruguayan ‘hostages’ were held for eleven years.
Coming at the very end of the remarkable
Memorias del Calabozo
, the poem brought tears to my eyes because it made me think of
my own father and his unyielding moral support for me when I was
a political prisoner in Argentina. I remembered also how I imagined my dad’s sadness and at times distress, as I spent my days in a cell under conditions that could change for the worse at
any time. They did for several friends of mine and I can only imagine the despair of their own fathers.
The poem is written in the familiar
Spanish of the River Plate and it describes a Sunday ritual that is very common to families in the Southern Cone of South America. My father was also fond of
a drink with family before a Sunday luncheon. He preferred vermouth to grappa, but the effect is the same: an opportunity to share a loving ritual with offspring and to share the events of the week
and plans for the future with sons,
daughters, and grandkids. When those moments are rendered impossible by prison or exile, their remembrance stings with nostalgia, guilt, and love.
Brindis con el Viejo
Yo sé que los domingos, casi al mediodía,
Abrís con cautela el viejo aparador,
Y vertís en un vaso el mismo licor
Que en los buenos tiempos con vos compartía.
Yo sé que a ese
trago le falta alegría
Y que al tomarlo no le hallás sabor,
Porque a veces suele borrar el dolor
Su gusto al vino y la luz al día.
Pero vos sabés que la tormenta pasa
Y que el implacable sol no se detiene
Cuando un nefasto nubarrón lo tapa.
Por eso sé que volveré a tu casa
Algún domingo que el almanaque tiene,
Para beber con
vos una risueña grapa.
(c. 1987)
Raising a Glass with My Old Man
I know that on Sundays, at around midday,
You cautiously open the ancient sideboard
And pour a glass of the same grape liquor
We used to share in better times.
I know you’re not happy now when you drink it,
That it’s lost all savor for you,
Because sometimes sorrow can quite erase
One’s taste for wine and the light of day.
But you know, as I do, that the storm will pass
And that the implacable sun doesn’t simply stop
When obscured by a dark, pernicious cloud,
Which is why I know I’ll return to your house –
On a Sunday that’s there on the calendar –
And laugh with you over a glass
of grappa.
TRANSLATION BY MARGARET JULL COSTA
The Argentine-born human rights lawyer Juan Méndez (b. 1944) was adopted as an Amnesty International ‘Prisoner of Conscience’ in the mid-1970s after his
arrest, imprisonment and torture by the Argentinean regime for representing political prisoners. Now based in the United States, he launched Human
Rights Watch’s Americas Program, has served
as president of the International Center for Transitional Justice and is currently the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture.
BEI DAO
(1949– )
WUER KAIXI
Bei Dao, one of the leading thinkers in my generation, enlightened tens if not hundreds of millions of Chinese with his poems. In the time of the Cultural Revolution or the
years following it, the people of China had long forgotten the ability to think independently. With his words, Bei Dao truly showed
us that concepts like integrity, honesty, courage and, most of
all, the longing for freedom are so beautiful and worth living for, worth fighting for, worth crying for.
I came across his poems when I was a teenager. It was the 1980s in China, when people were waking up. Yet one thing the regime did not want to stir in the deeply hibernating minds of the people
was the consciousness of
independence. His words, particularly these lines from his celebrated poem ‘An End or a Beginning’ – ’If fresh blood could make you fertile / The
ripened fruit / On tomorrow’s branches / Would bear my colour’ – brought tears to my sixteen-year-old eyes, and have kept the flame of ideas kindled in my heart.
An End or a Beginning
(for Yu Luoke)
Here I stand
Replacing another, who has been murdered
So that each time the sun rises
A heavy shadow, like a road
Shall run across the land
A sorrowing mist
Covers the uneven patchwork of roofs
Between one house and another
Chimneys spout ashy crowds
Warmth effuses from gleaming trees
Lingering on the wretched cigarette
stubs
Low black clouds arise
From every tired hand
In the name of the sun
Darkness plunders openly
Silence is still the story of the East
People on age-old frescoes
Silently live forever
Silently die and are gone
Ah, my beloved land
Why don’t you sing any more
Can it be true that even the ropes of the Yellow
River towmen
Like sundered lute-strings
Reverberate no more
True that time, this dark mirror
Has also turned its back on you forever
Leaving only stars and drifting clouds behind
I look for you
In every dream
Every foggy night or morning
I look for spring and apple trees
Every wisp of breeze stirred up by honey bees
I look for the seashore’s ebb and flow
The seagulls formed from sunlight on the waves
I look for the stories built into the wall
Your forgotten name and mine
If fresh blood could make you fertile
The ripened fruit
On tomorrow’s branches
Would bear my colour
I must admit
That I trembled
In the death-white chilly
light
Who wants to be a meteorite
Or a martyr’s ice-cold statue
Watching the unextinguished fire of youth
Pass into another’s hand
Even if doves alight on its shoulder
It can’t feel their bodies’ warmth and breath
They preen their wings
And quickly fly away
I am a man
I need love
I long to pass each tranquil
dusk
Under my love’s eyes
Waiting in the cradle’s rocking
For the child’s first cry
On the grass and fallen leaves
On every sincere gaze
I write poems of life
This universal longing
Has now become the whole cost of being a man
I have lied many times
In my life
But I have always honestly kept to
The
promise I made as a child
So that the world which cannot tolerate
A child’s heart
Has still not forgiven me
Here I stand
Replacing another, who has been murdered
I have no other choice
And where I fall
Another will stand
A wind rests on my shoulders
Stars glimmer in the wind
Perhaps one day
The sun
will become a withered wreath
To hand before
The growing forest of gravestones
Of each unsubmitting fighter
Black crows the night’s tatters
Flock thick around
(1986)
TRANSLATION BY BONNIE S. MCDOUGALL