Here below are links to four poems.  Each was written in a language spoken by people Mr Trump wants to ban from the United States of America. Please read them. The non-English original texts all have good English translations alongside.

Farsi Ebrahimi

Persian Khoi

Arabic Monzer Masri (Syrian)

Somali Samadoon

The poems come from a project  I run called Poems for…

Over two hundred small poster-poems for public display. Poems for speaking honestly across space and among people. Poems for opening borders.

The project has been funded by the UK Arts Council, the NHS, the John Lewis Partnership, the King’s Fund, the Baring Foundation, the Mayor of London, the Foreign Office.

All its poems come free of charge. They are downloaded for display in schools and hospitals all over the world.

The four poems above are taken from Poems for…One World, which is the largest and latest of the project’s three main collections. This one offers mostly bilingual poems, with 50 languages represented. But it also includes a collection on mental health and one on learning disability.

Our other main collections are : Poems for…Waiting and Poems for…All Ages.

The collections, and any poem from them, can be downloaded from the project’s website, once you have registered there. No charge for doing so. The site also contains a great deal more information about the project and its development.

See : www.poemsfor.org

 

 

 

Three of them. I haven’t yet found a way of actually displaying them as a post here, though it’s easily done on Facebook.

But this link takes you to a pdf version : Sad Songs of the Brain

Why the paltry brain, the paltry individual ? Why “in here” where the brain is ? Why not “out there” where all the trouble is ? All the confusion, the inhumanity, the sound and fury, the earth quaking  ?

But of course the answer is obvious. The trouble is in here too. Here is where it started. Here is where most of us are experiencing it.

And I keep thinking of that image from Star Wars. The dark star advances through the void, threatening the home star of the glowing blue seas wrapped in their feathery swirl. And that in turn is an apt image for the hemispheres of our brain, and the void that separates them, the enormity, the momentousness, of the struggle between them.

1.

I remember how I sat, even. Bunched.

There was nothing to hold on to

except my own flesh and the strong

bones inside. I’d never been

conscious of my bones before

(except when I broke them).

Everything in my world around

was either in shreds

or seeking to shred me.

And he said, since there is plainly

nothing you can do

and no solutions you can conjure up

you have to let go of such useless

questions as

what am I to do ?

what rune can I intone

to raise this vast portcullis  ?

Just sit back.

Breathe in. Then out.

Ready yourself

for opportune events.

There’s nothing better.

There’s nothing else.

 

2.

I discover my bones only when I break them

or when they clench together and scratch

along each other’s surfaces. I’m told that stress

sometimes makes them act that way.

And then the whole body catches fire

and you cannot see the world any more –

just your own flames all round. I met a wall once

with my left foot held to the fore. Afterwards I noticed it

dangling and I shrieked and then someone in white

used the word “reconstruction” and squared his shoulders.

Later he said, you now have quite a lot of

refined steel inside you, along with nails and screws.

You won’t usually notice them except

when sometimes, usually in January,

the weather turns especially cold.

I am old I am old

the rivets in my flesh grow cold.

 

Rogan Wolf January/February 2017