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The Violin Concert
by Nonnie Augustine

I. Prelude
 
She is too young for a passionate man. I know this.
C’est vrai, Gabrielle is no longer the child I tutored in violin
when I was twenty and a stranger in Rouen. Her vivacité
kept me alive and when she sang I was a rich man.

I make as little sound as a busy rabbit or squirrel as I seek to spy
her through the trees. There, I see her! She bends to choose a windfall
apple, rubs it against her thigh, bites, spits it out in distaste and wipes
her pink lips with the hem of her apron. The fruit was too old to enjoy.

As my mare and I journey to the next town, I compose.
In concert halls like this I play her song, racing through the year
until this return to Rouen. I’ll give you Gabrielle’s music and my hope
to find her heart womanly, ready for courtship. From my violin will pour
a melody of green eyes, unpinned hair whipping in the wind, light steps
despite the weight of dark blue wool, the muslin underneath her skirt.

II. Nocturne
 
I seek Rouen’s best barber, converse with the clever tailor who repairs
the small tear in my brocade sleeve, then return to my inn to bathe, rest.
No longer penniless and sick with impatience for a jeune fille to turn

fifteen—I am a gentleman with time to prepare for this evening.
Après le diner I will visit Gabrielle’s mother, now widowed. I am calm,
though Madame Janvier never liked me. Also, she has no ear for music.

The innkeeper’s wife serves me cassoulet, refills my glass with tart
vin de maison, gushes with compliments— my music, my costume—
and shares town gossip. Madame Bazinet’s words become icy shards

that jab my neck, chest, loins. I am chilled, then feverish. Fury builds
until my fist pounds the table. Alors! she cries. I down my wine, leave.
That devout fool, that cold parent, has bartered with the priests, traded

her daughter’s blithe sprit for her own odious salvation and sent Gabrielle
to a cloistered convent. My lark is silenced, her bright head bowed. I finger
the neck of my instrument wishing to squeeze the neck of that mother

who buys God’s grace, abandons her child to a life of dark Catholic
devotions. The Abbess reaches into Gabrielle’s mind to squeeze, wrench,
mold. Listen to my violin. Listen. Allow melodies and minor chords

to wrap you up, take you to sweet heights, then down and down.
My bowing speaks to you, does it not? Do you ache with loss of your own?
Listen to my violin. Listen. Let there be nothing between us.

 
III. March
 
I do not accept, I do not!
    Good people of Rouen join me!
       Follow through the black trees to the fortress.
          Climb the convent walls.
             Break down the door of her cell,
                Steal my Gabrielle away from the nuns,
                   Run deep into Normandy’s great forest.
                      Make love to her with me you women, you men!

 
IV.
 
The audience stands, shouts “Bravo! Bravo! Bravo!”

Alongside
by Hiram Larew

All this time I’ve known somehow
That ferns meant more to me
Than names ever could.
They’ve meant more than crows,
More than faith,
More than pies will ever.
Ferns with roots and me with eyes –
They took me without even trying to.
They made me by furling.
I could start and end with them,
And I’ll leave nearly everything else behind
So long as ferns look like ferns do when it rains

All these years
I’ve almost felt alongside them –
Not itchy or polished or pushed or on corners,
But far back whispered and at last.
So, I can say for sure
That whatever else I become or do,
I’ll always look from the side first
And sway.

Chernobyl at 30
by Bryan R. Monte
 
A yellow Ferris wheel in a concrete square
facing three, grey, deserted, concrete towerflats
dodge-em cars with trees growing between them

a classroom with schoolbooks still on the tables
paint flaking from green walls and blue bookcases
a nursery lined with empty, rusty bedframes

red foxes and grey wolves
roving city streets at midday,
their dens in ground floor flats

birds’ nesting on balconies
or in trees
that grow in living rooms

an empty school bus stopped
in the middle of the road,
its doors wide open

framed photos of Lenin
fallen to the floor
their cords rotted or rusted away

barges still moored
along the river
listing by 15 degrees

the charred side of a power plant
its Northern wall blown out
covered in a white, concrete dome

a Geiger counter’s crackle over a pile
of firefighters jackets and breathing masks
dumped on the abandoned hospital’s floor.
 
 
Tsjernobyl op 30
vertaald door Bryan R. Monte en Philibert Schogt
 
Een geel reuzenrad op een betonnen plein
voor drie, grijze, verlaten, betonnen torenflats
dodge-em auto’s met bomen, die ertussen groeien

een klaslokaal met schoolboeken nog altijd op de tafels
verf die van groene muren en blauw boekenkasten schilfert
een kindercréche omzoomd door lege, roestige beddenonderstellen.

rode vossen en grijze wolven
zwerven rond het middaguur door de stad
hun holen in begane grond flats;

nestelende vogels op flatbalkons
of in de bomen
die in huiskamers groeien

een lege schoolbus zomaar
midden op de weg,
zijn deuren wijd open

ingelijste foto’s van Lenin
op de vloer gevallen
hun draadjes verrot of weggeroest

binnenvaartscheppen nog afgemeerd
langs een rivier
15 graden overhellend

de verkoolde zijkant van een elektriciteitscentrale
de noordelijke muur weggeblazen
overdekt met een witte, betonnen koepel

het gekraak van een geigerteller boven een stapel
brandweerjassen en ademhalingsmaskers
gedumpt op een verlaten ziekenhuisvloer.

Time and Still
by Joyce Parkes

               in memory of Robert Juniper

Ironstone rock – a mass
of conglomerated pebbles –
nestling in the hills
east of Perth
alongside granite,

clay and sand, shaped
the Darling Ranges’ ridges
where jarrah trees and bamboo,
kangaroo-paws* and roses,
grow on what was first

Gondwanaland, then
Laurasia, then the Great
South Land — grounds,
propelling painters
and their friends

to sketch the scarp,
read the road, hue
the heavens,
sculpt abodes, dwell
on leaves and grit.
 
*) Kangaroo-paws: any of several plants of the Western Australian
genus Anigozanthos, having an inflorescence bearing resembling
a kangaroo-paw, especially A. manglesii, red and green kangaroo-
paw, the floral emblem of Western Australia.