Poetry
Zyanya Citlalli For Unsplash+
The Martian Chronicles
(for Dmitry Blizniuk)
переведи меня на марсианский
через черную ночь.
[translate me into the Martian tongueacross the black night]
Dmitry Blizniuk, Kharkiv, Ukraine
Is there a planet where words silence
a cannon’s demented mouth?
Here, on Earth, furious iron roars
past all reason, past all pleading.
No warding it off
with incantations, prayers,
poetry.
Who will translate you,
carry your voice across the black night?
I cry out, calling
on a mighty alien,
on God,
on a sublime translator,
Render him into the heavenly tongue,
the refuge of a different world.
I wait for an answer.
At last, I’m able to interpret
the silence—
It is not you, but me
crying for the impossible.
Your words reach for another realm—
they name the destination;
they chart the course;
they call to me:
There are Bradbury’s Martians—
haven’t you learned their tongue?
Opening a cargo bay inside my mind,
I stow your poem, line by line,
readying it for the journey.
Cesura
You come to a pause in a line—
a rift.
The gap is barely papered over
by a smooth, snowy blank.
The crevasse concealed underneath—
emptiness as the only answer
to your drawn-out whyyyy? —
is so jagged, so unfathomably dark,
that when you find yourself
over on the far side,
you just get going again,
as if nothing has happened.
You read on, you turn the page
without a backward glance.
For what’s the good of backtracking,
of searching?
Your old self is irretrievable—
nothing but pure, crystalline surprise,
interred in that silence.
One Hundred Horses by Giuseppe Castiglione
(known as Láng Shìníng)
“Finding God in All Things: The vision that Ignatius places at the beginning of the Exercises ... Hence, Jesuits have always been active in the graphic and dramatic arts, literature, and the sciences.”
—Wikipedia, “Ignatian spirituality”
The air is soft in the river valley
but the breeze brings a rumor of snow
from faraway, invisible peaks.
The leaves are turning.
It feels good to breathe in the scent of pines.
Horses fording the placid stream
pause to drink sweet water.
Young stallions mock-fight, trampling the grass.
The patriarch of the herd keeps grazing,
paying no heed to their silly tussle.
A pinto mare nuzzles her brush-tailed foal,
as he suckles, intoxicated by the rich milk.
Hoof-thunder jolts the ground—a white horse bolts;
a herdsman gallops in pursuit.
Rope whistles,
tightens.
The man’s shout of triumph is sharp as a hawk’s cry.
It feels good to be swept along by the chase.
Brother Giuseppe, in your long lifetime,
your brushwork pleased three emperors,
but didn’t have the power
to deliver the Celestial Empire to your church.
Master Láng, for centuries,
your scroll has worked a different miracle.
Millions of eyes—
right now, my own, nonbeliever’s eyes—
witness your Finding God in All Things.