Towards Better Democracy

I’ll be back in a moment, she said,
and left the door open.
This was a special evening for us,
A rabbit stew simmering on the stove,
With chopped onion, sliced carrot
and garlic cloves.
She did not a coat with her
nor put lipstick on.  I do not ask
where she is going.
This is how she is
She never has a sense
Of time,
Is always late for meetings,
So she said that night –
I’ll be right back;
And did not even close the door.
Six years later after that night
I meet her on different street from ours
And I think she was a little concerned
like someone who remembers
that they  had forgotten to turn off the iron
or something like that…
Have you turned off the stove, she asks.
I have not, I say,
these rabbits are pretty tough.

The Love Rabbit, 2003
Georgi Gospodinov

Worked from the Bulgarian  Любовният заек, 2003
Malcolm D B Munro
Thursday 14 April, 2016

Copyright of the original is retained by the Copyright owner. The Copyright of this Translation is vested with the Author. The original, from which this translation is made, is used under the provisions of Section 107 of the US Copyright Act 1976, which allows for fair use of the original for translation purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship and research.

Filed under: poetry

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/11/how-to-take-off-a-sari

New Yorker
Monday 11 April, 2016

Posted Saturday 30 April, 2016

Filed under: poetry

J’écris des poèmes pour les personnes
Pour tu, et tu, et tu
Qui choisir de lire mon travail.

J’écris pour accéder les gens
Pour avoir un impact sur la vie des personnes
Pour dire la vérité
De lever ton esprits
A faire mouche
Et toucher ton
Cœur.

Pour écrire de ce qui importe
Le plus.

Malcolm D B Munro
Samedi 30 Avril, 2016

Filed under: poetry

Regular readers of the blog know me to be appreciative.

Thank you to those of you who have opted to
follow the blog and for reading those poems which
catch your fancy, to those of you who expressed a
like, and especially to those of you who have made a
comment. The comments made so far have been heart
warming.

Thank you to those of you, while not followers,
return regularly to read the poems; those that take
your fancy and those that don’t.

Welcome to those who have recently come to the
blog to read the poems and to follow the blog.

While all of us are discriminatory, able distinguishing between
good poetry, and the bad and indifferent, whatever a poem’s
merits, there will always be those poems we do not like or
don’t care for. Thankfully, we can’t, and don’t, like everything.

I do not write with the aim of appealing to the cognoscenti,
though surely they, too, are welcome and appreciated.

Malcolm D B Munro
Saturday 30 April, 2016

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I write poems for people
For you, and you, and you
Who choose to read my work.

I write to touch people
To impact people’s lives
To speak the truth
To reach inside you
To strike home
And pierce people’s
Hearts.

To write of matters
Most.

Malcolm D B Munro
Saturday 30 April, 2016

Filed under: poetry

But never too tired to be human
Now that I have a heart, larger
Than this globe upon which we live
To care.

And today we have naming of parts
Of the body which region of the planet
I have never known. The extremities, of course
I have always known. These we learn upon
Our knees at the feet of our mothers
When very small, don’t we?

Yes, today we have naming of parts
Of the body particular. Of post natal
Congenital heart defects,  fresh from out
our mother’s womb.

Where the left or right atrium
And ventricle may be malformed or damaged
And, as a result, the child’s life is
Significantly threatened. The pulmonary
Artery and vein, and the aorta and return,
the vena cava, cannot function. A bridge
Or stent must be used to
Allow oxygenation of the blood.

And the correct stent with the correct
Sized choke must be selected, which
Sizes are a guess on the part of
The surgeon, however skilled,
Or the child will choke to death.

Today we have naming of body
Parts.

Malcolm  D B Munrio
Friday 29 April, 2016

Filed under: poetry

Uncertain, tremulous
Which way to go.

The path forks
No sign. A certain
Lassitude hangs.

A cloud over me
Tired from the week
So long, so eventful.

Tired, rest I say
And don’t find that
Easy.

There seems so much
To do. Time is precious
Now with three quarters
Of a life gone.

Not squandered I suppose
But unfulfilled. Of not,
Of never, having done
What I wanted to do.

Even these lines have
Have a heaviness, the
Keys leaden, the finger
Tips fumbling across
The QWERTY, stumbling.

Why not relax. Take it
Easy. EEE AYE AHOO
That is difficult to
Let go the reigns
When you are still
Upon the horse.

Which, too, seems,
Unguided, slow
This fine steed
So good in the gallop
Today, like me, is all
But idle.

Malcolm D B Munro
Friday 29 April, 2016

Filed under: poetry

I am stranger here
Been here for years
Yet it does not feel
Like home.

The people are different
Yet the same. The have funny
Accents, especially here in
Texas.

They, Americans
Treat you well
Don’t mistake me
But they are …
Not the same.

They are enthusiasts
For strange games
American football
Incomprehensible
All beefy types.

Colliding with each other
Where’s the ball
And they seem to stop
A lot. Why? Then baseball
This is not cricket, that game
That only gentlemen played
But is professional now.

When racing cars they
Have race tracks of oval
Shape. Round and round
And round and round
At dizzying speeds
What’s the skill in
That?

And they say funny things
Like, “Have a nice day,”
“Have a wonderful day.”
“Thenk yooo,” “Talk to you
Soon,” whom you never see
Again. Are they never downhearted
Grumpy, sleepy.

They go to bed early and
Rise early, ready to get going
The locomotion driven
In perpetual motion
Energy to build mountains.

And the women, the women
Running, jogging, while on the
Cell phone, of course
The men, no they don’t
Run outside in the sweltering
Wet air, but run on machines
In gyms with personal trainers
Flaying them, flogging.

Do they ever relax, these human
Dynamos? One feels fatigued just
Watching them. They eat health food
And junk food all in the same breath
Restaurants close a ten and are empty
At nine. Is this civilization?

They talk loud as if to have people in
Chicago hear them, stood two feet
From each other apart. And parents run
Their children to school in the morning
And again at the end of school
And queue in lines, to drop off
Voluble children, all on their cell phones
At the doorstep one car at a time
Do these parents not have lives?

Yes, it is strange here, the same
In some ways and yet foreign in
Others. I tell Jordanians, Albanians,
French, Italians, ‘n all,” I am a foreigner
Too. That I too have a funny accent.”

To be English in America; here
Yet not at home.

Malcolm D B Munro
Friday 29 April, 2016

Filed under: poetry

I just witnessed a curious scene
I nickname this city the City of
Ten Thousand Oaks. This number
Is low and may be 100,00 Oaks.

Over the past two or three weeks I have
Wondered, here on Post Oak, the name
is a giveaway, about young oak trees in the
Median. Every second or third oak
Has a yellow tape tied around its
Midriff. Why?

But one sees such things in a city
And one day they are gone, not the trees
Necessarily, but the tape. And one
Never learns their purpose. Not just
Yellow tape but, for example
Small orange flags, “Fibre Optic
Cable” they might say. And a workman
Spraying orange paint on the side
Walk, a dotted line. Curious
You may ask the fellow and his
Reply may perplex.

This morning, a group of
Three, who do not look like
Worker types, heavy lifters
More office squatters, have an
iPad, some kind of measuring
Device, tagging the base of
The trees with small plastic labels
At the base, “100 23,” “125”
And so on. Like the kind, paper
White, that you might find at
Office Depot, small with white
String to tie. What are they doing
They lean back, looking up
Studying the foliage and branches
Of these mid life trees.

The fear is, “Are they going to
Cut them down?” Then they are gone
Never to be replaced and the median
Is destroyed to create yet another
Traffic lane.

So the road gets wider and wider,
To encroach on human space
Will they go? I daren’t ask
But in a neighborhood, as you
Stand and smoke and look around
And get familiar, day by day
You notice more and more.

Will these trees go and make
The city less human than it is
One more American concrete
Jungle, depressing as that is
No stopping, a juggernaut
The mindless, careless progress
To provide us with more and more
Of what we do not want

Malcolm D B Munro
Friday 29 April, 2016

Filed under: poetry