Poems That Make Grown Men Cry (4 page)

A Chilean-American citizen born in Argentina, the novelist and playwright Ariel Dorfman (b. 1942) has written many works in English and Spanish, published in over fifty
languages. His plays have been performed in more than one hundred countries, including
Death and the Maiden
(filmed in 1994 by Roman Polanski),
Purgatorio
, and
Speak Truth to
Power: Voices from Beyond the Dark.
A Distinguished
Professor at Duke University, human rights activist, and contributor to major papers and journals across the world, he has received numerous
international awards for his poetry, essays, and novels. His latest work is the memoir
Feeding on Dreams: Confessions of an Unrepentant
Exile
, a sequel to
Heading
South, Looking North
, both of them dedicated to his wife, Angélica.

The Spanish novelist
Javier Marías (b. 1951) has published thirteen novels, three collections of short stories, and several volumes of essays. His novels include
Todas las almas / All Souls
(1988)
, Corazón tan blanco / A Heart so White
(1992),
Mañana en la batalla piensa en mí / Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me
(1994)
, Negra espalda del tiempo
/
Dark Back of Time
(1998), and
Los enamoramientos / The Infatuations
(2013). He is also the translator of various English classics into
Spanish, notably
Tristram Shandy
. He has held academic posts in Spain, the United States, and Britain as Lecturer in Spanish Literature at Oxford University.

FUKUDA CHIYO-NI
(1703–75)

BORIS AKUNIN

I think that I understood the meaning of poetry for the first time when I read this
hokku
written by Chiyo, a Japanese poetess of the eighteenth century.

To understand poetry, to be deeply moved by its beauty and force, one needs a key. I felt immediately that there was a mystery in this formula, which
sounds so beautiful in Japanese
(‘
Tonbo-tsuri kefu wa doko made itta yara?
‘), but looks devoid of meaning. A dragonfly catcher? Is it a symbol of some kind clear only to a Japanese?

The mystery made me dig deeper and I learned that, no, it wasn’t something esoterically Japanese.

Chiyo wrote that poem when her little son died. On writing the
hokku
she became a nun.

In the original
there are only seventeen syllables. This masterpiece moves me so much that in homage to it I once wrote a long, long novel. The first volume consists of seventeen chapters and is
called
Dragonfly Catcher
. The second volume,
Between the Lines
, is four times thicker and explains the meaning of the first. All in all, it is five hundred pages, and it cannot even
remotely compare to Chiyo’s miniature.
That’s what poetry is about.

The Russian philologist, critic, essayist, and translator Boris Akunin (b. Grigory Shalvovich Chkhartishvili, 1956) began publishing detective stories in 1998 and has become one
of the most widely read authors
in Russia. His Erast Fandorin series of books, full of literary games and allusions, are translated into English by Andrew Bromfield. This translation of
Chiyo’s
hokku
(later known as a ‘haiku’) is his own.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
(1749–1832)

JOHN LE CARRÉ

I chose this poem in part because it is a gem of German lyrical poetry; and in part because the beauty of the German language has long been lost on British ears, and it’s
high time for a revival. And finally because the ‘Nachtlied’ is a moving and exquisite contemplation of
old age.

Often billed a spy turned writer, John le Carré (b. David
Cornwell, 1931) prefers to describe himself as ‘a writer who, when very young, spent
a few ineffectual but extremely formative years in British Intelligence’. His many books include the ‘Smiley’ novels,
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
(1963)
, The
Naïve and Sentimental Lover
(1971),
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
(1974), and, most recently,
A Delicate Truth
(2013).

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
(1772–1834)

SEBASTIAN FAULKS

Coleridge was a shambolic man who was too often distracted by drugs and worldly matters to write the poetry his talent warranted. Yet for a moment here everything is held in
perfect poise. Alone, late at night, a man and his sleeping child . . . The warmth of the flickering fire
keeps at bay the freezing night, and in the silence Coleridge travels back into his life.
He touches on a Wordsworthian sense of the spirit that impels and runs through all natural things. Then, with a surge of paternal love, he projects himself into his son’s future: the regrets
and constraints of his own life shall underwrite the joy and liberation of his child’s.

The clinching first
word of the last stanza, ‘Therefore’, resonates like the church bell of Ottery St Mary, where Coleridge was reared. The language achieves a Shakespearean beauty
and command, with the impudent repetition of ‘quiet’ in the final line.