Tuesday 28 April 2015

X is for xxxxx

Cut me some slack on this one, I decided to give you a couple of anonymous poems. Anonymity in writing is sometimes used, to hide behind, when saying something you know will be disapproved of, socially or politically, but these I guess are just really old. 

From 'The Virago Book of Wicked Verse', labelled 12th century AD, translated from Sanskrit by Willis Barnstone:

I like sleeping with somebody different

often

It's nicest when my husband is in a foreign country

and there's rain in the streets at night
and wind

and nobody


And the second one I read about somewhere on my travels through the poetry universe and found it, coincidentally, in 'The Rattle Bag', titled The Seven, translated from Sumerian by Jerome K. Rothenberg:

They are 7 in number, just 7
In the terrible depths they are 7
Bow down, in the sky they are 7

In the terrible depths, the dark houses
They swell, they grow tall
They are neither female nor male
They are a silence heavy with seastorms
They bear off no women their loins are empty of children
They are strangers to pity, compassion is far from them
They are deaf to men's prayers, entreaties can't reach them
They are horses that grow to great size that feed on mountains
They are the enemies of our friends
They feed on the gods
They tear up the highways they spread out over the roads
They are the faces of evil they are the faces of evil

They are 7 they are 7 they are 7 times 7
In the name of Heaven let them be torn from our sight
In the name of Earth let them be torn from our sight

(Linking back to the A to Z Challenge)

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Thanks for stopping by. Thoughts, opinions and suggestions (reading or otherwise) always most welcome.