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Poetry by Carl Selph

Page 11

"O flower of the branch, O bird among the leaves,
O silver fish that my two hands have taken
  Out of the running stream, O morning star..."
                           --  W.B.Yeats

Her Complaint

 
He dreams in the orchard
under an apple tree.
I am sick and tired of waiting
neither bound nor free.
      
 
He's a lunatic in the moonlight,
by noon sunblind for the day.
Look down, look down.  I am here
and I would like to stay.
      
 
But my purse has money in it,
my gladstone's in my hand,
and though you'd never think it,
this cowpath leads to Samarkand.

© Carl Selph, 1999

Avis Compared

 
Avis was thin.  Théophile Gautier
wrote, "Carmen est maigre."  The differences lie
in more than the name or tense of the verb.
A thin flame, one girl burns thin in the tense
dance, like a patterned fire.  Our oldest lust
ravages her into permanence.  Avis
was thin, from her long, white, narrow feet to
her bright lips -- their sassy, glassy talk -- and
to her pale eyes, sharp as two gray pins.
      
 
Oh, little sparrow, you do not madden
like the agile Spaniard.  Nothing of you
quickens the beat.  The little thoughts glitter
in your ice-green brain.  I think how your skin
cooled as I leaned over your fragile bones.

© Carl Selph, 1991 
    First published in the San Miguel Writer

Barbara Speaks to the River

 
 
O why does Barbara, widowed young, arise
And walk through midnight in her long white gown,
No kerchief covering her blowing hair?  
      A voice there is hid under foam  
      Though lips and rough brown head are gone.

Look! Barbara leans against a cypress tree
And says, "O come, O come, listen to me,"
To glittering water and a drifting moon.  
      An ear there is hid under foam  
      Though eye and speaking glance are gone.

"My one husband," says she beside the stream,
Now lift your spirit from the riverbed
And hear I have a lover with green eyes."    
      A pulse there beats hid under foam  
      Though heart and rushing blood are gone.

"The dead are dead, and that forevermore,"
Cries she.  "You, by this stream bewitched and drowned,
Forced to my arms a man with yellow hair."    
      A touch there is hid under foam  
      Though arms and two fine hands are gone.

Now Barbara walks toward home beneath the moon,
Strides blind through midnight in her long white gown,
No kerchief covering her blowing hair.    
      Two hearts there are hid under foam  
      Though blood from only one is gone.

© Carl Selph, 1961 
    First published in Whetstone

The Unfaithful Wife   
(a translation of  "La Casada Infiel"  by Federico Garcia Lorca)

       
And I went off down to the river
thinking she was single
and instead she had a husband all along.
     It was the night of Santiago
and I almost felt I had to.
The streetlamps were all turned off
and the crickets were on fire.
The last corner at the edge of town
I touched her sleeping breasts
and they opened right up to me
like bunches of hyacinths.
The starch in her petticoat sounded in my ears
like a piece of silk ripped by ten knives.
Without the silver light on their leaves
the trees had grown bigger
and a horizon full of dogs
barked far away from the river.
     Past the brambleberries
the rushes and the hawthorn
she made a tent over the mud
with her falling hair.
I took off my necktie.
She took off her dress.
I my belt and revolver.
She her four underthings.
Neither tuberoses nor snails
have skin so fine
nor crystals in moonlight
shine with that gleaming.
Her thighs slipped away from me
like fish surprised,
half full of fire
half full of cold.
That night I ran the best of roads
on a filly of mother-of-pearl --
with no bridle, with no stirrups.
I won't repeat, as an honest man,
the things she told me.
The light of understanding
has made me a lot nicer.
I came away from the river
dirty with kisses and sand.
The swords of the lilies
battled the breeze.
     I behaved myself like the man I am.
Like a real gypsy.
I made her a present -- a big sewing box
of good, plain straw
and I didn't want to fall in love
because when I took her to the river,
although she was a married woman
she told me she was a single girl.
      
      
                                     Translation © Carl Selph, 1997 
                                     First published in El Independiente

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