Jam & Jerusalem E-Book

Yvonne Green

• Herausgeber: The Poetry Business
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 54

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Yvonne Green's latest collection extends the urgent and compelling territory of her earlier, award-winning books. Politically engaged, many of the poems consider the human cost of war, while others deal equally intensely both with ideas and with domestic and city landscapes. A final section furthers the translations from Russian she began in 2011 with her PBS Recommended title, After Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin.

Leseprobe

Jam & Jerusalem

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the following who have published, broadcast, and in some cases commissioned various of these poems: Exiled Writers Ink, Haaretz, Harif, Ledbury Poetry Salon, Majalla Magazine, Migration And Faith Communities anthology (Hachette), Miracle Magazine, Peace One Day, PN Review, Stand With Us, Taking The Temperature (JW3), Tipton Poetry Journal, The Knesset, The Jerusalem Post, The North.

Published 2018 by Smith|Doorstop Books

an imprint of The Poetry Business

Campo House

54 Campo Lane

Sheffield S1 2EG

www.poetrybusiness.co.uk

Copyright & poems © Yvonne Green 2018

The moral rights of the author of have been asserted.

ISBN 978-1-912196-99-9

All Rights Reserved

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, storied in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Designed & Typeset by Utter

Cover image: Head of Catherine Lampert 2015-17,

© Frank Auerbach, courtesy Marlborough Fine Art.

Smith|Doorstop is a member of Inpress,

www.inpressbooks.co.uk.

The Poetry Business receives financial support from Arts Council England

Contents

Diplomats

Diplomats

About Her Person

Furlough

Joker

Honourable Discharge

Shelter

Not Afraid

He Became a Criminal

Risen

When It Started to Appear

Teachers

Change

From Before

Gazan Bird

Inna Lisnianskaya

The Listener

Stalker

Childhood Memories With Animals

The Moscow River

At What Price Innocence?

Imperatives

Politics

Beware

Courage

Courage

Siren

Goodbye

Hers

Love List

What?

Abroad

August Challenge

You Thank Her

Delay

Daddy’s Girls

It’s Not Everyone Who’s Interested

To Wait

Delay

The Unspoken Illness

Landscape

Overheard

Rainy House

Herzelia’s Big Desk 1

Herzelia’s Big Desk 2

Herzelia’s Big Desk 3

The People Of The Book

Terms

Rosh Khodesh

Shtum

Bedeken

Four Corners 1

Four Corners 2

Four Corners 3

Four Corners 4

Towards Language

Bikur Kholim

The People Of The Book

Jam And Jerusalem

A Soldier’s Scribe

The Farhud

Jam and Jerusalem

Hundred Years’ War

‘All Poets Are Jews’ – Marina Tsvetaeva

Now The Rhetoric

You Won’t Apologise

The Jews Of Paris

Poetry In The Pogroms

Fight Back

St James’s Church Piccadilly 2013/14

Thursday 19th November 2015

After Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin

Early Summer

Evening In Lykhny

Moonlight

You Appeared To Me In My Home Town

Autumn At The Sea

On The River Istra

In The Field Behind The Forest

Ghosts

Hear Them

Nomadic Fire

Glossary

Notes

For Michael

Diplomats

Diplomats

We left none of our blood in the stones

Which you battered, bit and torched.

Our hearts are not in the leather suitcases

In which we keep the documents

Of our sojourn in your midst.

The sea of hatred which has washed you

Is tidal. There’s no monopoly

On suffering, no contest, no winners.

About Her Person

You see her as a bully,

Stiff as she moves around.

What you don’t know

Is that she carries something difficult

About her person, a history

She can’t talk about to herself,

Along with things she’s heard.

Furlough

You think it makes no sense

As you look up, walk

Across the lawn,

Your rifle shouldered.

For a moment it seems your unit’s

The only place you feel at home.

As you get closer, smell your dinner,

You remember.

Joker

Unmasked,

Every word you speak

Wears its own question.

“Joker,” they say

And laugh, that always

Comes as a surprise.

If you wore make up,

Skewed your clothes,

Dyed your hair, would

The way you were heard

Be different?

The way you hear yourself,

Only on paper,

After a long time,

Unrecognisable.

Masks, jugglers, acrobats,

Clowns go home and wait

Quietly for a visit, before

Going back to work.

Honourable Discharge

1

What You Know Is

His nerves are shot.

Well they would be, and his mother,

Well she doesn’t know what to do,

Leaves him to himself mostly.

That girlfriend of his

Hasn’t been seen since March,

The good weather did it,

Off to Margate was her excuse,

He’s got nothing to say on that

Or anything else. Yes he’s had

A lot to contend with,

His tours were all in Afghan,

Bomb disposal, it’s a wonder

He came back at all,

Well he hasn’t really

In a way. He never goes out,

But you’ve got it from Mavis

That he looks shocking.

II

Have You Heard What They’re Saying?

It’s easy for them

To tell your story,

Dine out on it,

When you’re not there

To say different.

Bowed and broidered

Even jumped-up and kick-started

You can’t go anywhere

With your eyes up from the pavement,

Thoughts unconstricted, fists unready.

All it’d take, would be to buy the story

Along with rounds of drinks

And back slaps

Unflinched over, all it’d take

Would be for you to do the shopping,

Cook something, take a bath, shave,

Open your mail, switch on the telly,

Answer the phone, share, smile, plan something,

Leave your room, stop waiting, interrogating silence.

Shelter

She can’t believe what happens,

Even with the welts on her arms

Her children mock her,

Even with the promise of escape

He rules her breath,

Deafens the promise of shelter.

Not Afraid

A living thing

Lay on the pavement.

Someone else had trodden

On it until the stone shone red

And made other people slip.

You hadn’t slipped,

But had knelt down

And put your palms out,

Tried to rub them raw.

He Became a Criminal

When his whole family introduced him

To the craft, first it was pockets

To pick, daylight robbery.

Later he learned how to open a computer

And raid its bank accounts,

Now it’s books he steals from, first

He pats them down, then after a glance,

Spits their pips onto his pencil,

Everything’s unsayable.

Risen

Silenced cobalt, copper, bauxite, amethyst, topaz

Rise like the curve of a wave, you say,

Water is the heal of your hand’s cycle

From the future to the past, even while roads

Sussurate with cars so no one can hear

Any part of you, when you’re buried,

Forgotten, your bones are dry, colour

Here speaks sharp as flint, soft as cub-love,

Day is paint, rain is polish.

When It Started to Appear

It wore a suit and tights and always

Smelled of perfume, had a joke,

New hairstyle, wore a string of pearls.