THE SONG OF THE CASTAWAYS

Born in Montbéliard, 11 November 1952,

Jean-Michel Maulpoix has published poetry,

including A History of blue, the writer imagined,

Public Domain, and not on snow,published

in the Mercure de France. He also published critical studies on Henri Michaux, Jacques Réda and René Char,

as well as testing general poetic

(including poetry nevertheless poetry as lovepoetry and Du). Her writing, which constantly interact prose and poetry,

claiming volontiers a "critical lyricism.

Jean-Michel Maulpoix directs the quarterly journal of literature

and criticism New Series (ed. Field valley Seyssel 01420)

Alumnus of the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud,

modern literature, and author of a doctoral thesis on state

"notion of lyricism, he teaches modern poetry at the University

of Paris X-Nanterre where He also hosts a team of research

entitled "MonitoringoFcontemporary poetry -

------- photo Tony Elieh

"The song of the castaways

Poem extracted from « Dans l'interstice » (« Through the chinks… »

by Jean-Michel MAULPOIX, & Fata Morgana, publ., 1991

Translated by Catherine Wieder

We are the wrecked castaways of language

To and fro do we wander from one country to another, clinging on to the floated woods of our

phrases

Such are the remains of an old vessel crashed so long ago

But desire still plots whilst we ship adrift

And sculpt in those planks statuettes of sirens with blue hair

And go on singing with those very same lungs

Let us repeat the sea

Do not bring any stupid trial to the blue

The sea, clinging on to the sea

Shivers and slides on the sea

Its movements of a skirt,

its blows of the shoulders, its redundancies

And all this blue coming to us on the wide flats of the sea

We like the way the small craft passes and goes

Swaying from one wave to another, dancing its fluttering turmoil to meet the sea again
And its weird jingling sound

When music unfolds itself on the huge score of the sea

The sea mingles with the sea

Mixes its lakes and puddles

Its ideas of gulls and foams

Its dreams of seaweeds and cormorants

With its heavy blue chrysanthemums from the open sea

With clumps of forget-me-nots on the white walls of the islands

With the bruises of the horizon

With switched off light-houses

With the dreams of the unfathomable sky

The sea is a fallen blue sky

Long ago did the sky indeed lose its keys in the sea

Under which suns should we from now on lose ourselves ?

On which shoulder will we rest the fever of our wet head ?

Our dreams are birds' feet on the sand

Fragments of nails cut a few inches away from the sea

We burn on the beach huge heaps of corpses

Since such are the words with their bones and smokes

Heaps of thighbones and metacarpusses

A pyre of sweet-smelling blades of grass and crackling powders

A dry meadow would be kindled next to the sea
High flames headlong jumping among the brooms

And all of a sudden a woman's chest erected in the spluttering

Offered to that mad love

Throwing towards heaven the long moan

Of he who scorched his heart

Alone, does he walk towards her, on the narrow granite jetty

Embarking his perishable body towards nothing

She remains the huge lying shape, running towards him

Throwing towards him her flurries and petticoats

Lo ! here does he stand,

He the small man, standing up straight on the dyke with his pencil

Tightly pressed against her, but apart

Both so close and yet losing sight of each other

Pressing on to each other, their hearts badly anchored

The blue bathes a little that small body of a man

The blue catches him in its nets

A speck of flesh or chip of bashful love

A tuft of light between his palms

Stained with deep ink

Lips tightly closed by the wave

Muted, having nothing to reply to the open blue

Voiceless in the water's maze

Why can't we put out our roots in the sea

As drowned men and weeds do ?

We would easily carry on our shoulders

The never fading blue sky

Which however dreams of colours and hues

And the lukewarm wool of the foams

And the poisonous fruits of the open sea

In which no human lip did ever bite

Thus would we return to the infinite garden

We won't fill the sea with our tears

We'd rather support with our songs the efforts of the storms

Throwing their cries and leaches on to our heads

And when our watery eyes no longer see anything

We'll know better still what the sea is

The scales covering our hearts will have fallen

And our nacreous skin will at last be so white

That we would no longer fear the mad love of the sirens

Cheers to the skies of the open sea

So will we drink from chalices and ciboriums

Gluttunously will we drink the sea

No water will ever quench our thirst

We are thirsty of the salt

Our lips are greedy

In the blue sea, it's always Sunday

When gold fishes kneel

Since the days when the floodtide started carrying us

We started a liking for eternity

Water has gotten into our head

And crystal droplets in our blood

We hardly remember our fellow creatures

Whose gardens fade

And whose children grow

Our heart is so blue.

A STRANGE SHEPHERD

Elşen Hudiyev

Elşen Hudiyev or Elshen Khudiyev (born 1980) is Turkish contemporary poet and essayist. After receiving his degree in Political Science and International Relations from Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences of Bosphorus University , he worked different positions but never reached stable life. His early works proved to be premature, but later especially with the series of "Abnormal Poetry" he achieved deep emotional, symbolic and pessimistic style. Mainly concerns with global problems rather than local, he writes in turkish and very rarely in azeri. His poetry mainly based on free verse, however he had some haiku and sonnets too. He is important literary figure because his poetry can described as 'new wave poetry of Azerbaijan' and he is the second poet afterHuseyn Javid writing in turkish rather than native azeri language. In his prose he touches problematic issues such as prejudice, lie and another human controversies. Although he is arguing that his essays are non-philosophical, some deep philosophy sacred behind his plain dialogue based essays. In this manner his works look like a catechisis book of humanism.

A Strange Shepherd

I do not want the storm, composure

worse.

I can not love the sun, the nigh

will bring heartbreak.

To cry of joy was the last point

Loneliness disgust, love severe pain.

Do you have that, do you have that,

it is a human?

All things are separate from the

middle.

Not a mite on black and white,

What in the dark, keep the light

quark

I was crying with joy when you wrap.

I wanted to like the light of the

sun,

Night when you cried.

I was alone in the night searching

for you.

Night storm was more than alone.

I was alone when the sun yellow.

SUNDAY EVENING

--Johan on Couch, 1925 - Edward Weston photo

Sunday Evening

Toni Davis (Aus) Catherine Mair (NZ)

aiming the fly spray at the curtain

I cough and the shadow rises feeling

the flush of wine in my cheeks

fluttering downwards to old drunkedness

still zooming above our heads & the unwashed dishes

another day settles around the sink

resting her head on the old woman's crocheted rug

darkness descends and the start of a dream

LITTLE FLY

Little Fly

Thy summers play,
My thoughtless hand
Has brush'd away.
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou
A man like me?
For I dance
And drink and sing
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.
If thought is life
And strength and breath;
And the want
of thought is death;
Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live,
Or if I die.

-- William Blake

MYSTERY...

JIMENEZ DEREDIA

TRISTAN TZARA

The Great Lament Of My Obscurity Three

by Tristan Tzara

where we live the flowers of the clocks catch fire and the plumes encircle the

in the distant sulphur morning the cows lick the salt lilies

my son

my son

let us always shuffle through the colour of the world

which looks bluer than the subway and astronomy

we are too thin

we have no mouth

our legs are stiff and knock together

our faces are formeless like the stars

crystal points without strength burned basilica

mad : the zigzags crack

telephone

bite the rigging liquefy

the arc

climb

astral

memory

towards the north through its double fruit

like raw flesh

hunger fire blood

Tristan Tzara (April 16, 1896 - December 25, 1963) is the pseudonym of Sami Rosenstock, born in Moinesti, Bacău, Romania. A poet and essayist who lived for the majority of his life in France, he is known mainly as a founder of Dada, a nihilistic revolutionary movement in the arts.

TAKAKO ARAI

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When the Moon Rises

It is the night shift in an abandoned spinning

factory

There is only a single light bulb here

The spools of thread turn by themselves

Click goes the bobbins

Changed by the machines

It has already been a decade

Since this place shut down

But when the moon rises, it begins to work

Its strange automation

They say soon after the war

A factory worker’s hair got tangled

In the machines, killing her

There are things that float here

But this is not the work of ghosts

No

In the factory

There are peculiar habits

That is what I mean

Peculiar habits remain here

An old lady who spun thread

For forty-four years here

Still licks her index finger and twists

Even on her deathbed

She cannot escape that gesture

That must be true in the netherworld too

Since threads are so infinitely thin

The gestures sink into the bodies

Of those who manipulate the machines

They possess them Look

How the raw silk thread

Is pulled smoothly

From the factory woman’s fingers

Then dances endlessly

The factory is that way too

The axle of the spinning whee

Remembers

The molecules of steel

Hang their heads in the

Direction in which they spin

Then get caught up

Clanging emptily

When the moonlight pours in

It is not just the tide that is full
Emptily

Emptily

The spinning wheels spin

The threads swim

Through the abandoned factory

Translation by Jeffrey Angles