I’m presently working on translations of Mayan and Aztec poetry (for a volume titled Flower, Song, Dance), and several people have asked me about my process. As a result, I’ve decided to break down the translation of a relatively short Nahuatl poem from Cantares Mexicanos, one of the few existing…
From my volume of Mesoamerican verse, Flower, Song, Dance: Aztec and Mayan Poetry (Lamar University Press 2013). This poem is the first in a collection of Nahuatl songs known as the “Cantares Mexicanos” or Songs of Mexico written down by indigenous scholars in the 16th century. The original title of…
The Labyrinth Zeus could never untangle the nets of stone that surround me. I have forgotten the men I once was; I follow the hateful path of monotonous walls which is my destiny. Straight galleries which curve in secret circles as the years wear on. Parapets cracked by the usury…
Rhyme LII Giant waves that braying break upon remote, deserted beaches, wrapped in your sheets of foam, take me with you! Hurricane blasts that rip away from the towering woods their withered leaves, dragged along in your blind whirlwind, take me with you! Tempest clouds that the sunbeam breaks and…
From the Shi Jing or Holy Book of Songs, a collection of ancient Chinese poetry written between 1600 and 600 B.C.E. (the collection may have been edited down to its present 305 pieces by Kung Fu-Tzu [Confucius]): 23. In the wilds there is a dead doe In the wilds there…
Ode 1.5 What slender boy bathed in a flowing smell Courts you, Pyrrha, on roses Within some pleasant cave? Whom do you braid that golden hair for, Simple and neat? Ah, how often He’ll weep at how faith and gods change, And he’ll marvel, unaccustomed, At this rough sea that’s…
Here’s a put-down poem by one of my favorites, Catullus, one of a group of young Roman poets who revolutionized poetry in the 1st century BCE: XLII Come, Hendecasyllables, come one and all, From everywhere, as many as you may be, For an ugly, skanky slut thinks I’m a joke…
A Prayer to Aphrodite On your dappled throne, Aphrodite—deathless, ruse-devising daughter of Zeus: O Lady, never crush my spirit with pain and needless sorrow, I beg you. Rather come—if ever some moment, years past, hearing from afar my despairing voice, you listened, left your father’s great golden halls, and came…
The Fall of Bagdad[1] Don Pedro wakes this autumn day, Descends the stairs to his bar, And wiping down the rough-hewn wood, Prepares to pour the drinks. For years his cantina thrived on gold That cotton transport culled From slaves that Texas cruelly worked Throughout the Civil War. In fact,…
Silence Silence creeps like a thick, white fog To fill her ears and her mind with naught. In the stillness of the blackest night, It amplifies her every fright. Silence— She hates the silence: She wants to fill that void with a joyous sound. The skittering sounds that silence makes…
