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Waiting For Alexander
To a Painting in the Louvre Museum
The Persian prince reclines against his pillows
in languid elegance,
his shadowed eyes fastened on the carnage surrounding him.
The enemy is only hours away from his palace.
Around his red silk divan are six of his favorite concubines,
their graceful bodies emblematic examples
of female splendor.
Nude, face down,
one young woman kneels at the side of the bed,
the blood from her slit throat
staining the silk in scarlet threads,
while others yield to the blades in the hands
of turbaned male attendants.
These women (and one handsome catamite)
have been brought to the harem from every nation
as obsequious gifts or plunder,
bodies honey-golden or white as the hide
of the pure-bred mare led by a muscular Nubian slave--
for the mare, halter gleaming with gold pailettes,
her nostrils flared, her muzzle soft as grey velvet,
has been conveyed to the sultan’s quarters as well.
Her dark eyes roll in fear at the coppery stink of blood,
her luminous white hide gleams like the flesh
of the naked beauty at the foot of the princely bed,
head stretched backward by her ebony hair
as she, too, succumbs to the knife.
Perhaps the concubines could understand, even accept
that they are the spoils of war,
and perhaps this quick and brutal death
is preferable to what defeat might hold for them--
but the mare knows only a gentle touch and caressing voices.
Although the women might suffer cruel humiliation and torment
at the mercy of the victorious army,
an equine beauty such as this would always be coveted, prized--
which is more than the prince can bear,
and he will have her slaughtered with his women
before he will let her fall into the hands
of the conqueror.
I grant you, there are certainly better paintings than this one in the museum. The scene looks like a Victorian pot-boiler, but for some reason it nudged my sleeping mews into working its furry little buns off. And yes, in a backhanded way, I suppose this is a feminist poem.
Since You Left Me
The days whisper by,
bereft of sun,
filled with tired raindrops
that slide ceaselessly down the window pane.
The shimmering green of lawn and trees
is dimmed and dulled
and it is as if all nature is waiting
for some dread calamity.
A stray breeze gently stirs the feathery leaves
of the jacaranda
and the shocking pink blossoms
of the palo borracho tumble to the ground
in a sad flurry of broken petals.
I find no solace in music,
no meaning in words scattered on a page.
I hold back the tears that fill my throat
and wonder if tomorrow’s sun
will give me the strength
to go on living
...or do I even care.
Ah, My Two Thesauri!
One volume speaks to me sternly in English.
Severely clothed in black,
it proudly declares itself a dictionary
and, without further ado,
announces in the stereotyped white circle,
Webster's New Dictionary of Synonyms--
then shyly confesses,
"The only thesaurus with words
defined, discriminated and illustrated
with quotations.
To help you use
the right word in the right place."
Just lifting its bulk makes my arthritic wrist complain.
The synonyms (what a splendid, singing word!)
are all present, followed by the antonyms,
yapping and snapping and scrapping.
But my pet, my little love
is a plump gold and yellow and red book
I can lift with one-handed ease.
Boldly it declares itself in white on red
OCÉANO
Práctico (white print on black)
(black on bright yellow, discreetly ) Diccionairo
(audacious black)
de Sinónimos
y Antónimos.
Stuffed with innumerable small-print words
in elegant Spanish,
words willing to dance to my creative piping,
it beguiles me, guides me
down the hitherto unknown pathways of my second voice
in this language I adore,
never mocking my eternally confused verb tenses—
a treasure chest of adjectives, adverbs and nouns,
don’t sweat the verbs!
What are bilingual friends for
If not to set one’s grammar straight
while admiring one’s incredible vocabulary?
(Mil gracias, my miniscule Océano!)
Sue Littleton: Born September 25, 1932, in Abilene, Texas, poet Sue Littleton lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has published in various anthologies and literary magazines. She is one of the four founders in 1992 of the Austin (Texas) International Poetry Festival. Sue writes in both Spanish and English: she is an investigative and historical narrative poet and her bilingual epic poem, Corn Woman, Mujer Maíz, the history of corn , which in turn is the history of the great civilizations of the Americas at the time of the Conquest and before, is available in Kindle and soft-cover on Amazon, as well as her autobiographical collection of poems, The Ranch on the Pecos River.
Sue worked with David Roberts, British editor of ww.warpoetry.co.uk on an anthology of poems (Falklands War Poetry) by English veterans, Argentines and Sue herself concerning the Malvinas/Falklands War, which included translating Argentine poets to English and writing a series of 25 annotated poems. She is currently presenting the Spanish version of the anthology as La guerra de las Malvinas (The Malvinas War). Her latest bilingual book is The Little Snake Goddess of Crete, published by Botella al Mar, Uruguay, along with a collection of cat poems in English About Cats. The Poems of Istanbul, published in poetryrepairs, the on-line literary magazine, is being published in an illustrated, bilingual version by Botella al Mar, as well as Lord Byron’s Greece.
Email: Sue Littleton
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