Natalie Linh Bolderston
Because the faces in our photographs
have been bleached to cataracts. Because the author
of our oldest surviving chronicle ended his days in exile,
composing to mountains. Because I once mistranslated
a line of poetry as loosely created creature.
Because no one witnessed those tongueless, swollen ghosts
dragging themselves onto new soil. Because someone I love
told me it is sometimes safer to let things go
untranslated. Because forgetting is a military tactic.
Because, when a word is removed, all we have is the air
it displaced. Because what goes unrecorded, unbodied,
is still part of the architecture. Because to disperse
is to each break off a corner of a country, to keep it
below the throat. Because the redness and fish smell
of memory is uncitable.
Because we do not need proof of our women
to build their temples, to light fires inside.
Because no one is ready to map a city as it buckles.
Because a soundless escape requires you to take only
what will fit against your skin. Because official death counts
change, depending. Because our personal effects
are makeshift altars, the cores of cut fruit,
our most favoured sources of light.
from the journal POETRY LONDON 
READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM
Share Share
Tweet Tweet
Forward Forward
The idea for this poem came when I was trying to research ancient Vietnamese history, myths and folklore. I kept finding gaps, partly due to a lack of accessible physical archives and translations. Such gaps are also present in accounts of my family history; so much is lost from one generation to the next, so we cherish the fragments that do survive all the more. I wrote [deadlink] to explore the reasons for those losses and mysteries.

 Natalie Linh Bolderston on [deadlink]
Color headshot of a smiling Michael Longley
"Michael Longley wins €250,000 Feltrinelli Poetry Prize"

“Longley is an extraordinary poet of landscape, particularly of the Irish West, which he observes with the delicate and passionate attention of an ecologist, and a tragic singer of Ireland and its dramatic history. But with his poetry he has also addressed the seduction, conquest, and fascination of love, as well as the shock of war in all ages."

via THE IRISH TIMES
READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES
Cover of REd Pine's translation of Lao-tzu's Taoteching
What Sparks Poetry:
Christian Stanzione on Lao-tzu's Taoteching

"Whatever is between the subjective and the objective is what we want to experience. Some call this a return to the 'unmediated experience,' others 'theosis,' others 'things-in-themselves,' and others still 'objective properties.' So far as I can tell, Lao-tzu calls this process of moving towards the objective becoming virtuous."
READ THIS WEEK'S ISSUE
View in browser

You have received this email because you submitted your email address at www.poems.com. 
If you would like to unsubscribe please click here.

© 2022 Poetry Daily, Poetry Daily, MS 3E4, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030

Design by the Binding Agency