Send us your poems and poetry translations! You can send them through the Contact Us page or through e-mail: vsp@vivecasmithpublishing.com Viveca Smith, translator
We will post them on the website and compile them into a book at a later date.
The Bathtub
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
As a bathtub lined with white porcelain,
When the hot water gives out or goes tepid,
So is the slow cooling of our chivalrous passion,
O my much praised but-not-altogether-satifactory lady.
from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question . . .
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.
Ibycus
6th Century B.C.E.
Early in spring the Cydonian
Quinces are watered by streams flowing
Out of the rivers, where virgins have
Gardens untouched, and the first shoots of new vines
Grow strong in the shade of the flourishing vine leaves.
But for me, desire
Never rests, not even for a season,
Blazing with lightning that flashes
In the Thracian North Wind as it storms
Along Cypris, from the depths of darkness with scorching madness
In darkness, without fear he strikes,
From the earliest memory of childhood, Eros,
The master of my will.
Viveca Smith, translator
Song of Solomon
Septuagint
2:10-13
My beloved called to me and said,
"Rise up, come away
My near one, my beautiful one, my dove.
Behold, the winter has passed,
The rain has come and gone,
The flowers are blooming in the land,
the season of cutting is at hand,
The voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.
The fig tree has brought forth her new fruit,
The vines are blooming and fragrant.
Rise up, come away
My near one, my beautiful one, my dove."