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Two poems

World Literature Today

Two Poems

Translator 
 
 
Wildflowers
Photo: Public Domain/Pixabay

Untitled

The wildflowers don’t bloom on command
nor can their seeds be sown
rebellious winds whirl at dawn
winnowing seeds toward the ossuaries of the fields
in the temple of rocks.

At night
gardeners spit the dew of the earth
spit its disarray

 

The Upside-Down Pear

                                      Between six petals
                                      like the Sabbath, Queen of days
                                                   – Abraham A. Cohen (eleventh century)

 

The Sabbath is mirrored in your gaze
Desire a citrus growing in my body
Let my treetop fill with fruit, let it moisten
Inches away from your loins
Which peeled back lustfully like
a pear

Translations from the Greek
By Adam J. Goldwyn

 

Born in Chania, Crete, in 1938, Iossif Ventura is a prominent Greek-Jewish poet and translator, a member of the Hellenic Authors’ Society, and the director of the electronic poetry magazine Poeticanet (www.poeticanet.com). His first volume of poetry, Υγρός κύκλος (Liquid circle), appeared in 1997 and his most recent volume, Το Παιχνίδι (The game), in 2015.

Adam J. Goldwyn is an assistant professor of English at North Dakota State University, where he specializes in Greek literature. His article “Joseph Eliyia and the Jewish Question in Greece: Zionism, Hellenism, and the Struggle for Modernity” appeared in the October 2015 issue of Journal of Modern Greek Studies.

Editorial note: From Scholia in Black (2006).

From "WORLD LITERATURE TODAY", January 2016.
(http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2016/january/two-poems-iossif-ventura)

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