Translations from Memory
FRED D’AGUIAR
Translations from Memory
For Aniyah
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Museum Gilgamesh
Greek & Latin
Greco-Roman
Homer
Diderot, One
After Horace
Before Ovid
Sappho, Oh Sappho
Aeschylus
Africa
Milesians
Heraclitus Meets Parmenides Meets Empedocles
Protagoras
Socrates Plato Aristotle
Archimedes
Hellenists Versus Hedonists
Cynics & Skeptics
Epicureans & Stoicism
Romany
Plotinus
Catholics & Jews
St Benedict
Gregory The Great
Dark Ages
Islam
Hannibal
St Thomas Aquinas
Franciscans
Renaissance
Galileo’s Snowflake
Machiavelli
Erasmus
More
Reformation
Burton’s Anatomy
Slavery Intro
Tidal
Francis Bacon
Heads, Hobbes; Tails, Descartes
Spinoza
Leibniz
Liberals
Locke Meet Hume
Hume Meet Locke
Romantics
Pushkin
Rousseau
Kant
Hegel
Equiano
Schopenhauer
Nietzsche
Utilitarian
Marx
Sojourner Truth
Bergson
Marie Curie
Douglass
Tagore
Einstein
Phenomenology
Levi-Strauss
Fanon
Barthes
W.E.B. DuBois
Malcolm
MLK Intro
The Sirens’ Song by Romare Bearden
Wilson Harris
Dante
Pushkin Redux
Anna Akhmatova
Lighthouse
George Seferis
Lorca
Hitchcock’s Vertigo
Aime Cesaire
Calvino
Our King James
Martin Carter
Sargasso Sea
Mandela
Diderot, Two
Walter Rodney
Trans Coda
Yeats, Eliot, Pound
DW
KB
About the Author
By the Same Author
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Tidal emerged out of a residency at Liverpool University English Department’s Travel, Transculturality and Identity in England (TIDE) project led by Professor Nandini Das, and published in Transitions (USA).
The Sirens’ Song by Romare Bearden appeared in the anthology Bearden’s Odyssey: Poets Responding to the Art of Romare Bearden, edited by Kwame Dawes and Matthew Shenoda (Northwestern University, 2017).
Other poems appeared in part or in revised form in the following: Griffith Review (Australia), Faultline (USA), Island (Australia) and Poetry (USA).
Museum Gilgamesh
A teen couple, hand-in-hand, breeze past
The senior uniformed greeter and barely glance
One semi-colon, backlit, carved from elephant
Tusk, an intro to the whole, displayed behind glass.
Instead they head for backrooms, where apostrophe,
Tilde, dieresis, look less prized, and shadows invite
These lovers to steal a kiss or two, out of sight,
Or so they think, unaware as they are of security
Cameras discreetly placed in corners to record
All in those quiet rooms. As they head for the exit
The pair approaches a full stop, the last big exhibit,
Mounted as grandly as any finality accords.
Both pray, Sweet Jesus, let this last, but they know
For all their present magic, they must end now.
Greek & Latin
1
A puzzle of perfumed rubble,
Ethnologists in white gloves brush,
label, date and crate, slaves under
laden tables, who bare teeth, force
smiles, for a motion, a wager, tabled
for all seated around – well, yes – High
Table; they look out one eye, named
progress, passed from hand to mouth
to hand, back and forth, as women
enter, exit, Morse code foot shuffle
headdress disguise, fashion muzzle.
2
There is more to race than a tanning
salon suggests. Take our woman in black,
pink gums, pink cuticles, white instep,
her black is seasonal and in your face.
She walks into and out of her skin
as one would a supermarket
without a second thought for
all the things in her shopping
cart: tanning oil, roll-on anti-perspirant,
(begin sax solo) quail, plus sales tax.
Greco-Roman
Poor language, gives away too much
too soon, asks for too little too late,
or else basks in continual deferral?
Peel my dead skin, layer by rusted layer,
watch how limited time reddens, folds
under scrutiny, yields to touch
as much as talk, and looks,
if looks could kill, rather than this blank
silence among dead, this echo in a shared grave.
Homer
The topless towers on South Beach
Keep their shape with a watering can
That stops them crumbing in the sun.
Under the overpass homeless men,
Women and some children stake out
Ground with cardboard and shopping carts.
Armies of tourists snap the castle and stare,
News crews aim and shoot the ramparts
From various angles and interview
The architect – a shy young man
Bronzed like a Greek god with hair
Involuntarily bleached by sun and sea
Dirty blonde and twisted by neglect
Into dreads, no Jah, no Rastafari,
No mercy, mercy, me, a stone’s throw
From those poor folk with no temples
But the pillars that support the overpass,
Under a starlit roof named after gods.
Diderot, One
Had nothing to do with Cicero,
Allegro or Negro, so I summon Mango,
Mandingo, tango, Shango, call,
Nay, summon, my Uncle Joe,
Whose panegyrics grip, gyrate me,
Let me go, wound string, tight spool,
My high speed aim for a redacted name.
No drink to twist, smoke to turn
My head towards that particular sun.
Work my fingers to the bone
Until my thumbs lose their print,
Sunrise and dusk land on a line
I walk sideways, look askance.
Hear Aunty Bess, hear Aunty Bess,
Hear Aunty Bess a holler;
What she a-holler, what she
A-holler, what she a-holler for?
This skin school where we must all
Play fools just to get by or die,
Heroes in early graves marked
By an absence of h
eadstones.
The books say the brave die young.
What they do not say must be found.
Oh Lord, me bucket got a hole
In the center, and if
You think I telling lie,
Push your finger.
After Horace
They say the blind feel out
What they see.
Think of Gloucester,
Eyes traded for insight.
But hungry belly alters
20/20 hindsight.
My birdfeeder designed
For Hummingbirds,
Sports red syrup and nozzles
Shaped for knitting-needle beaks,
Chestnut-sized sticklers, to tread
Air and syringe away.
This time, soup kitchens
Filled to capacity, turn away
More hungry than they can
Accommodate, more among us
Running on empty, some of us
Stuffed so full we cannot see.
Before Ovid
Change or die made me choose
My skin, a watertight suit
Zipped from head to foot,
Whose clasp I merely pincer
Between thumb and index finger
To undo history of –
And step away from –
As one might shun a nest of vipers,
Asleep in the shape of a jar.
Sappho, Oh Sappho
Danced on coals after the fire
Died and light started on the horizon
After a night of dancing around a fire
She lay with more than one head
Beside her belonging to more women
Than those she called lover or sister,
Some were cooks, some sang or played
Instruments, others just looked good,
All left it to her to say what this meant
For the city behind battlements ripe
For an invading army to plunder
Just as that fire reduced to ash
But not without fighting words
From this woman put to music
And choreographed for a troupe.
Aeschylus
The gift came in the post.
The post arrived in my sleep.
I woke with the package in my head,
On the nib of my tongue, fingertip,
Gift asked me to clear a moment
Before breakfast, grab this look,
No more than an eye-corner glance.
Could I say no to a surprise gift?
Africa
Skull for a continent,
baobab tree cradled,
rocked by a hand none
can see, palm pressed
small tamarind back,
urges me on, find something
I know nothing about, that trips
off my tongue as much as
off my hips, things to make me
go ah, think I have peacock eyes
behind my head, a fantail speckled
with eyes tripped by mist, light,
taste glands on my bare soles,
Nile in these veins, Sahara skin,
Gold Coast fort flesh; knock,
on wood, on bone, tap my spine,
needle pores, Africa, what you
is to me but some part in waves,
crease in mud, B’s door
imperceptibly ajar, let me in.
Milesians
Not far from here, mist thrown from hilltop to deep valley,
from capital to border crossings, posted sentries; tunics,
shields, helmets, togas, head-in-cloud dreams,
cloud shapes, heads drift away from sloped shoulders
towards Athens, Rome, where books and fiddles scream,
burn, where fire toys with men, women, children, flora, fauna.
Heraclitus Meets Parmenides Meets Empedocles
1
Chaos, zigzag rain paints disused
shed window, cracked, polished,
sees in or out, framed by downpour
searching glass for portals, porters,
pores. There is language in this rain.
There is no word for race.
Rain without any history
I care to name or can name
out of care. Something happens to skin
that listens to water, amounts to more than…
2
A principle is a principle,
so says the Englishman without a hat,
under a noonday tropical sun,
in his wild search for an establishment
that serves a good cup of tea,
he believes will cool him down,
by working up a fine sweat on his brow;
all he needs is a breeze to crown the scene;
all he gets is a cold sweat when that sun dips,
lengthens his shadow, sets.
3
Air, my messenger.
Water, my consumer.
Earth, between my toes.
Fire, in my earlobes, taste buds.
Carry me quartet,
till kingdom come to town;
contain what’s left of me;
consume me when I am dead.
Protagoras
There is nothing to say that the gods exist or do not
which is to say that the temples may be built on
sand rather than rock. Take time to carve your
initials in an apple-shaped lifelike sliced life.
There is nothing to say that the gods do not
exist or that they do, yet they may take exception,
in fact do, to your devotion to another living thing,
my point, since lightning must strike you, live your life.
Socrates Plato Aristotle
1
Talked himself into a corner and a sacrament
he considered a blessing in heavy disguise.
Walked into a mountaintop mine with the disposition
of a canary on the up and up, whistle stop.
Could not see his hand, his face in black raiment,
dark being thick rock, rock that left him bruised.
2
Is not to be confused with potato,
though both have skins that a lash might peel
and a stroke of love might heal.
Is not to be confused with plate
near empty for the hungry
brimful for the rich.
Is not late too little too late,
as in, she is late this month,
or fame came too late for Rhys,
for Lear, to appreciate it, when
Gloucester said, I see you.
Not Pluto, demoted to a rock.
May as well stick with a cartoon dog
3
Poor found a stage for a home,
house without a roof,
theatre with eyes for windows,
for looking in, plucked, not out,
and a doublewide porch for a mouth.
Archimedes
Stop me if light bends in water and shapes the window I look through
At a pond of light, glass where I see my reflection staring back at me.
Stop me before dust mars my sight as I pivot between the thing under
My nose and that far off, rain-full, dimple in earth, mirror for one sky after
Another curved sky, when the string that joins us, elastics too thin, breaks
Points of light, to send me reeling into dark, and you left to track my scent,
Where I cannot find you even if I could fit pieces whole again, no seam.
My footprints on water, your fingers on the wrong side of a pane my face
Almost touched, water-skin-punctured, backbone-bend-of-light entry,
For all to see who look with one eye above and one below the surface.
Hellenists Versus Hedonists
Wherever I hang my hat that’s my home,
We are the wild b
oys, the fast boys
Assuming there isn’t a rope around my neck
The flash boys, we are the boys the girls
And that hat on my head hangs just so.
Call nasty, we make our mothers cry.
The ones who lived and the ones who died;
The ones who laughed and the ones who cried.
I need a hat stand and a hall for that stand.
We rejoice in our bad times and regret our joys.
A hat maker and tailor with clothes to match
We cannot know peace and know old is not for us,
My hat, and a barber to keep my head trim.
We are the wide boys who welcome the grave.
The list lengthens into conquest of a region.
We make children and never become fathers
My stay lengthens into the resistance to my need
We make love and never know solace
For a Spivey hat and all those trimmings.
We live as wide boys in malls, content.
The ones who lived and the ones who died;