Robin Helweg-Larsen's Blog, page 10

Drew Nathaniel Keane, ‘Seventy-Three’

He gave a careless shrug when he had heard
The Delphic Oracle’s prophetic word:
“Beware, my lord, the age of seventy-three”
(For Delphi was renowned for verity).
“I’m thirty now with years to plan for knives
Before the gods’ appointed day arrives.”
Reclining in his litter, bound for home,
Delighted Nero journeyed back to Rome.
 
When he returned, he felt a little drained;
With news like this, how could he be restrained?
Surrendering to pleasure on the way —
To gardens and gymnasia by day,
By night to dance and poetry and drink
In torchlit theatres where bodies slink
Whose dancing ever animates and soothes,
The naked bodies of Achaean youths.
 
Thus Nero rests, while on an arid plain
Far to the west of Rome, in distant Spain,
Old Galba drills his legions secretly,
Old Galba who was spry for seventy-three.

(After C. P. Cavafy’s ‘Η διορία του Νέρωνος’.)

*****

Drew Nathaniel Keane writes: “I’m enchanted by the verse of Constantine Cavafy — ‘a Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe’, as E. M. Forster once described him. In his wry and wistful, gossipy and subtle singing, the Alexandria of Cleopatra feels as immediate as one of his own one-night stands in modern-day Alexandria. It’s quite a contrast to the chest-thumping, hero-worshiping sort of classicism one too often sees on the app formerly known as Twitter. There are already many fine translations of the brief 1915 poem, 
Η διορία του Νέρωνος [‘The Deadline of Nero’], based upon an anecdote in Suetonius’s Life of Nero, of which my favorite is Ian Parks’s paraphrase, published in his little collection The Cavafy Variations (Rack Press, 2013). My paraphrastic version of the poem was inspired by Parks’s, of which one can hear echoes — the “shrug” of line 1, of course, and his turning the punchline into a rhyming couplet gave me the idea to give 
Η διορία του Νέρωνος the Drydenian-Popean treatment I have.

Δεν ανησύχησεν ο Νέρων όταν άκουσε
του Δελφικού Μαντείου τον χρησμό.
«Τα εβδομήντα τρία χρόνια να φοβάται.»
Είχε καιρόν ακόμη να χαρεί.
Τριάντα χρονώ είναι. Πολύ αρκετή
είν’ η διορία που ο θεός τον δίδει
για να φροντίσει για τους μέλλοντας κινδύνους.

Τώρα στην Ρώμη θα επιστρέψει κουρασμένος λίγο,
αλλά εξαίσια κουρασμένος από το ταξίδι αυτό,
που ήταν όλο μέρες απολαύσεως —
στα θέατρα, στους κήπους, στα γυμνάσια…
Των πόλεων της Αχαΐας εσπέρες…
Α των γυμνών σωμάτων η ηδονή προπάντων…

Αυτά ο Νέρων. Και στην Ισπανία ο Γάλβας
κρυφά το στράτευμά του συναθροίζει και το ασκεί,
ο γέροντας ο εβδομήντα τριώ χρονώ.

D. N. Keane (PhD St And) is a Lecturer of English at Georgia Southern University. His verse has been published in Snakeskin (including ‘Seventy-Three’), Spirit Fire Review, Lighten Up Online, Better Than Starbucks, Earth & Altar, and other venues. More of his work can be found at drewkeane.com. 

Photo: “Romeinse keizers Claudius I, Nero, Galba en Otho 5. Clodius 6. Nero 7. Galba 8. Otho (titel op object) Van de Roomsche Keyseren en ‘tgevolgh (serietitel) Twaalf Romeinse keizers (serietitel) Den Grooten Figuer-Bibel , RP-P-1982-306-594” by Rijksmuseum is marked with CC0 1.0.

Using form: sonnet variation: Amit Majmudar, ‘List of Demands’

All the twists in all the tongues, all
the zeroes, all the ones, all the arms of all the goddesses, all
the names of the nameless and bodiless, all the ways the all-
one embodies, all at once, the alls there are, all
our alleles and alphabets, all the forms, yes all,
even the sestina, all our alternating lives and deaths, all
the kingdoms, phyla, classes, orders, all
the peoples borderless as breaths, all the altars, all the all,

none of the zealots with knives for minds, none
of the wars, proxy, holy, shadow, cold, none
of the for-profit prophets in pulpits of gold, none
of the land grabs in the names of the long lost, none
of the one true anything, book or way or son, none
of that nonsense, absolutely none.

*****

Amit Majmudar writes: “The monorhymed sonnet (each line of the octet ending with the same word, each line of the sestet ending with another) is a chance to goad one’s creativity with a constraint just light enough. You have to come up with lines that stay interesting to the reader even though the reader knows how each line is going to end. In that, the line resembles, say, a formulaic genre novel where the hero gets the girl and defeats the villain at the end. Or one of Conan Doyle’s detective stories: You know that Holmes is going to solve the mystery. The number of characters is so low in a Holmes short story that the culprit has to be one of the few people introduced. But the delight is all in how he figures it out. Poems can work like that, too. The foregone conclusion of all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, none, none, none, none, none, none is the equivalent of the certainty that Holmes will crack the case. The internal rhymes and alliteration, the images, the poem’s message exalting pluralism over zealotry—these are, collectively, the equivalent of the mystery and the ingenious solution to the mystery, the Sherlock-unlock, the puzzle (hopefully) satisfyingly worked out.”

‘List of Demands’ was first published in Plume.

Amit Majmudar is a poet, novelist, essayist, and translator. He works as a diagnostic nuclear radiologist in Westerville, Ohio, where he lives with his wife and three children. Recent books include Twin A: A Memoir (Slant Books, 2023), The Great Game: Essays on Poetics (Acre Books, 2024), and the hybrid work Three Metamorphoses (Orison Books, 2025). A new poetry collection, Things My Grandmother Said, is forthcoming in 2026. 
More information at www.amitmajmudar.com

Photo: “Inclusive community (citation needed) (2205859730)” by Matt Mechtley from Heidelberg, Deutschland is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Using form: Ghazal: Peggy Landsman, ‘In the End’

Accept that everything ends in the end.
Nothing is left to defend in the end.

Whatever happens in this world of ours,
What’s not healed or resolved rends in the end.

We want to believe that time heals all wounds,
But we must make our amends in the end.

Justice delayed is justice denied,
Just as they intend in the end.

Feel the iron fist in the velvet glove.
The least bending of wills bends in the end.

“Kein Mensch muss müssen.” No one’s compelled to be compelled.
“Just following orders” is condemned in the end.

There are plenty of substitutes for the truth;
It is disbelief that suspends in the end.

*****

I think this ghazal speaks for itself, but there’s one thing that I’d like to credit. The German “Kein Mensch muss müssen” is from the play Nathan der Weise (Nathan the Wise) by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781).

Peggy Landsman is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Too Much World, Not Enough Chocolate (Nightingale & Sparrow Press, 2024), in which “In the End” appears. To read more of her work, visit her website: peggylandsman.wordpress.com

“FDR Memorial – Washington DC – 00055 – 2012-03-15” by Tim Evanson is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0: “They (who) seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers… call this a New Order. It is not new and it is not order.”

Brooke Clark, ‘High Standards’

I hate whatever novel everybody’s praising now,
I hate any café that draws a crowd,
I hate the kind of people who are friends with everyone—
they’re always “dropping by,” always “have to run”—
I hate, in truth, popularity and the eager horde it brings.
I prefer to seek out rarer things,
and beauty—beauty like yours—is vanishingly rare—but then,
you’ve shared it with so many other men.

*****

Brooke Clark writes: “I hate all common things,” Callimachus says in the original of this poem, which is the Callimachean aesthetic in a nutshell: the search for the unusual word, the lesser-known version of the famous story, to lend your poetry the interest of the unusual. Like other poets of his time, he was searching for a way to get out of the massive shadow cast by Homer, the Epic Cycle, and the earlier lyric poets. I’ve always found the shift from the literary concerns of the first two thirds of the poem to the personal, romantic concerns at the end fascinating; do literary tendencies become a model for how one conducts one’s personal life? Or were the literary concerns just a metaphor for the personal? In those long-ago days when people criticized poetry on Twitter, I was criticized for repeating the phrase “I hate” when Callimachus uses a different verb for “hate” or “dislike” each time (the Callimachean aesthetic at work). I liked the anaphora, though, and I stuck with it.”

This poem originally appeared in Arion, Boston University’s Journal of Humanities and the Classics.

Brooke Clark is the author of the poetry collection Urbanities and has published work in Arion, Literary Imagination, THINK, The Walrus, LA Review of Books, and other places. He is also the editor of the online epigrams journal The Asses of Parnassus and the book reviews editor at Able Muse.
Twitter: @thatbrookeclark
Bluesky: @brookeclark.bsky.social

Photo: “Getty Museum” by kevin dooley is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Sonnet: ‘Maz’ Griffiths, ‘Internal Memo’

Dear Stomach,
… Look, we’ve really had enough.
Your job is simply to digest the stuff
supplied by Hands and Tongue, to move it through,
not chuck it up. Spurned food is déjà vu
and hurts Oesophagus; she’s frankly pissed,
and Face says please forget The Exorcist,
because projectile vomits are not fun
and bloody heartburn hacks off everyone.
Lungs say they’re worried by a niggling cough
and Guts say if you won’t perform: Sod off!
That’s not my phrase–I’m mediating here,
but want to stress the general atmosphere.

Please see these hiccups don’t occur again.
I sign myself, sincerely,
… Upper Brain

*****

Margaret Ann “Maz” Griffiths, born in 1947, suffered for years from a stomach ailment which finally killed her in 2009. Her frankness, good humour, range of interests and insights and her technical skill make her one of the very best English language poets of the early 21st century.

I recommend ‘Grasshopper‘, the 350-page compilation of her known verse, to anyone interested in modern poetry. It is one of those rare books that I reread every couple of years. I would be glad to hear of any more of her verse that has turned up since 2011.

Photo: By David Adkins – Scanned photo provided by David Adkins with permission for reuse, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16997441

David Galef, ‘How to Say “Thank You” Abroad’

Donkey, mercy, grassy ass,
Effin’ Christ, something with God?
Spacey bow and airy ghetto,
Tic-tac-toe—or smile and nod.

Glossary: danke, merci, gracias, efcharisto, deo gratias, spasibo, arigatō, tak.

*****

David Galef comments: “The idea for this short (previously unpublished) poem came to me years ago when I was learning Japanese, and the mnemonic for the phrase “you’re welcome” (dō itashimashite) was explained to me as “don’t touch my mustache.” From there, it was a short step to “airy ghetto” for arigatō or “thank you.” A recent bout of Spanish language instruction yielded “grassy ass,” not that gracias is hard to remember, and the rest, as they say, is hiss Tory. As you can see in the poem, I’ve got eight or so examples, and I’d welcome more.”

David Galef has published over two hundred poems in magazines ranging from Light and Measure to The Yale Review. He’s also published two poetry volumes, Flaws and Kanji Poems, as well as two chapbooks, Lists and Apocalypses. His latest book is the novel Where I Went Wrong. In real life, he directs the creative writing program at Montclair State University.

Photo: “universal thank you note” by woodleywonderworks is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

RHL, ‘In the Spring’

In the spring, an old man’s fancy
ruefully reviews his youth;
thinks of girls both past and present,
wonders can he hide time’s truth.

His always googly gardening eyes
all ever which ways scan and glower
at the bud-bursting blossoming girls
exploding in their flower of power.

What is this green and noisy growth
that’s flourishing, fresh and unkempt?
Old’s good, so’s young… could one be both?
O Fates! from fate make me exempt!

*****

‘In the Spring’ was published in Bewildering Stories, an online weekly of Speculative Fiction, Poetry, Art, etc. Thanks, Don Webb!

“at the museum” by derpunk is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

SF poem: Don Webb, ‘Mars Draws Near’

Do you know where now or in what lands
Are the voices that sang of vibrant Mars?
Of slender spires on iron-red sands
And canals, night-necklaces with stars?
They sang of visions that once seemed clear.
Who sings of the Mars of yesteryear?

Does sadness tinge new Eden’s rainbows
Or the sin-abrading void of space?
Close now, does Mars now close
Its alien, inviting face?
Today we hear triumphant fear.
Who hears the Mars of yesteryear?

Man, covet not the power of stones
Nor jails, nor ruins. Mars draws near.
It once gave flesh to now-dry bones:
Return to the Mars of yesteryear.

*****

Don Webb writes: “I wrote this poem in 2003. That happened to be a special time in astronomy, when Mars was closest to Earth. The ‘yesteryear’ reference was prompted by fond memories of the literature of Ray Bradbury and C.S. Lewis, among others.  The poem’s relevance to today’s world is explained in Bewildering Stories’ series of review articles: ‘Cassandra’s Voices: Warnings to the Modern Age‘  ( https://www.bewilderingstories.com/includes/toc/cassandra_toc.html). All of the works discussed shine important light on 21st-century civilization and continue to be of immediate interest in U.S. and world politics. The nostalgia of Mars invading Earth seems preferable to Trusk & Mump’s earthly imperialism and dreams of an Invasion of Mars.”

Don Webb is a teacher of French language and literature. B.A., Dartmouth College; Ph. D., University of Wisconsin. Major: French; minor: German. Thesis: Jean Jacques Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Héloïse. Most of his career was spent at California State University, Sacramento. Ten years moonlighting as a professional translator of French and Italian. He is currently retired and has taught an on-line course in French for Reading Comprehension for several years and, occasionally, French for Listening Comprehension at the University of Guelph, in Ontario.

For a more complete (and highly amusing) bio with reflections on the various people he has been mistaken for – and the doppelgänger who has been mistaken for him – visit www.bewilderingstories.com/bios/donbio.html

Photo: “Mars the Mysterious (NASA, 1997)” by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Pope Francis: ‘Dear Poets, Help Us Dream’ (excerpts)

Dear poets, I know that you hunger for meaning, and that is why you reflect on how faith questions life. (…) Poetry is open; it throws you into another realm.

In light of this personal experience, today I would like to share some thoughts with you on the importance of your service.

The first thing I want to express is this: you are eyes that see and dream. Not only do you see, but you also dream. A person who has lost the ability to dream lacks poetry, and life without poetry does not work. We humans yearn for a new world that we may never fully see with our own eyes, yet we desire it, seek it, and dream of it. A Latin American writer once said that we have two eyes: one of flesh and the other of glass. With the eye of flesh, we see what is before us; with the eye of glass, we see what we dream. Woe to us if we stop dreaming—woe to us! (…) Indeed, poetry does not speak of reality from abstract principles but rather by listening to reality itself: work, love, death, and all the little and great things that fill life. Yours is — to quote Paul Claudel — an “eye that listens.” (…)

I would also like to say a second thing: you are the voice of human anxieties. Often, these anxieties are buried deep within the heart. You know well that artistic inspiration is not only comforting but also unsettling because it presents both the beautiful realities of life and the tragic ones. Art is the fertile ground where the “polar oppositions” of reality — as Romano Guardini called them — are expressed, always requiring a creative and flexible language capable of conveying powerful messages and visions. For example, consider when Dostoevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov, tells the story of a little boy, the son of a servant, who throws a stone and hits one of his master’s dogs. The master then sets all the dogs on the boy. He runs, trying to escape the fury of the pack, but ultimately, he is torn apart under the satisfied gaze of the general and the desperate eyes of his mother.

This scene has tremendous artistic and political power: it speaks to the reality of yesterday and today, of wars, social conflicts, and our personal selfishness. It is just one poetic passage that challenges us. And I’m not only referring to the social critique in that passage. I speak of the tensions of the soul, the complexity of decisions, the contradictions of existence. There are things in life that, at times, we can’t even understand or find the right words for: this is your fertile ground, your field of action. (…)

That is what I want to ask of you today as well: go beyond the closed and defined borders, be creative, do not domesticate your anxieties or those of humanity. I fear this process of taming because it stifles creativity, it stifles poetry. With the words of poetry, gather the restless desires that inhabit the human heart so they do not grow cold or die out. This work allows the Spirit to act, creating harmony amidst the tensions and contradictions of human life, keeping the fire of good passions alive, and contributing to the growth of beauty in all its forms, beauty that is expressed precisely through the richness of the arts.

This is your work as poets: to give life, to give form, to give words to all that human beings live, feel, dream, and suffer, creating harmony and beauty. It is a work that can also help us better understand God as the great “poet” of humanity. Will you face criticism? That’s okay, bear the weight of criticism while also learning from it. But never stop being original, creative. Never lose the wonder of being alive.

So, eyes that dream, voices of human anxieties; and therefore, you also have a great responsibility. And what is it? It’s the third thing I want to say: you are among those who shape our imagination. Your work has an impact on the spiritual imagination of the people of our time. Today, we need the genius of a new language, powerful stories, and images. (…)

Dear poets, thank you for your service. Continue dreaming, questioning, imagining words and visions that help us understand the mystery of human life and guide our societies toward beauty and universal fraternity.

Help us open our imagination so that it transcends the narrow confines of the self and opens up to the entire reality, with all its facets, thus becoming open to the holy mystery of God. Move forward, without tiring, with creativity and courage!

I bless you.

*****

The above is a substantial excerpt from the letter Pope Francis wrote for the book ‘Verses to God: An Anthology of Religious Poetry‘ (published by Crocetti Editore), curated by Davide Brullo, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, and Nicola Crocetti. The letter is given in full in the Vatican News.

The Economist’s obituary for Pope Francis states he insisted on: “no papal cape or red slippers, just a plain white cassock and his ordinary black shoes. (…) No crest-embellished dinner plates, no new pectoral cross; he kept the iron-plated one he had worn, from 1998, as archbishop of Buenos Aires. No 12-room apartment in the Vatican, but a two-room suite in the guests’ hostel, and meals in the dining room with everyone else. “We’ll see how long it lasts,” said one aide, uncomfortable. It lasted until he died; for in Buenos Aires, after all, he had cooked his own meals and travelled by bus. (…) In Buenos Aires he was called the “Slum Bishop” for insisting that he, and his priests, should go out in the streets and on the margins. (…) He made a point of reaching out, feeding hundreds of homeless with pizza at the Vatican and adopting several families of Syrian refugees.”

So, sympathy for the homeless, and refugees… and poets. There’s a spiritual resonance to that grouping!

Photo: “The Inauguration Mass For Pope Francis” by Catholic Church (England and Wales) is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Weekend read: Odd poem: Joseph Stalin, ‘The Outcast’

He knocked on strangers’ doors,
Going from house to house,
With an old oaken panduri
And that simple song of his.

But in his song, his song—
Pure as the sun’s own gleam—
Resounded a truth profound,
Resounded a lofty dream.

Hearts that had turned to stone
Were made to beat once more;
In many, he’d rouse a mind
That slumbered in deepest murk.

But instead of the laurels he’d earned,
The people of his land
Fed the outcast poison,
Placing a cup in his hand.

They told him: “Damned one, you must
Drink it, drain the cup dry…
Your song is foreign to us,
We prefer to live in a lie!”

*****

Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili was a Georgian romantic poet who led a million-dollar heist that killed 40 people and funded the Bolshevik revolution. We know him as Joseph Stalin. His story is fascinating… and he is the model for the anti-hero Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) in the Star Wars spin-off TV series Andor.

The BBC has an excellent background article on him and the Andor connection: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20250417-how-a-young-joseph-stalin-inspired-star-wars-series-andor:
Yes, the troubled outlaw beloved by Star Wars fans everywhere is based in part on one of history’s most notorious mass murderers, as the series’ creator, Tony Gilroy, has acknowledged. “If you look at a picture of young Stalin, isn’t he glamorous,” Gilroy said in an interview in Rolling Stone in 2022. “He looks like Diego!”

The above poem and two others, all translated by David Shook, can be found here: https://molossusexperiment.tumblr.com/fall1/stalin. The link also contains Shook’s observations on Stalin’s qualities as a poet, and on his persecution of poets like Osip Mandelstam for the Stalin Epigram:
... the ten thick worms his fingers,
his words like measures of weight,

the huge laughing cockroaches on his top lip,
the glitter of his boot-rims.

Ringed with a scum of chicken-necked bosses
he toys with the tributes of half-men...

Not having found a title for Stalin’s poem, in this blog post I titled it ‘The Outcast’, though I considered ‘Panduri’.

Photo: “David and Panduri” by sarah&patrick is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.