Two Zero One Nine, Do You Read Me?

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#bringingbacktheglosa, Alain C. Dexter, Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, glosa, medieval Spanish fixed verse

~~a glosa~~

We stand on the far promontory of centuries!
What is the use of looking behind us
since our task is to smash
the mysterious portals of the impossible?

—“Futuristic Manifesto”, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
~~~ 

Everything’s progression. You and me,
we’re both respective tips of blades
made sharp—or dull— by “Father looked
at life like this, and mother that, so I…” 
And if we die sans heirs, we all still
influence. Creation grinds our vagaries
to dust beneath my feet and frees
me from the appetite to disagree.
Keep up or don’t. Like Etruscan sentries,
we stand on the far promontory of centuries,

contributing with earthy bits and pieces
to terroir that grows a wine particular
to you, I find abrasive or a sickly sweet,
and yet, I’ll creep at night to taste again, in case
I missed some subtlety, and by a single peep
my concave/convex lens adjusts. It grinds us
into sharper focus or like plates tectonic
grates and makes distinct new continents:
Pangaea, panacea, panegyrics, all blinds us.
What is the use of looking behind us

if dread and praise have lock stepped 
so that nothing good I say to you
is heard, and every unintended slight
cuts to the bone? We’ve split apart 
and there’s a fact that oceans of affinity
will never trouble to correct. You dot, I dash,
we are a code no more in vogue, a set
of peeves like kitchen knives whose history
provokes no interest, even less of cash.
Since our task is to smash, 

as far as I can tell, the misbelievers
of their woebegotten truths so there’ll be
less of them, it stands to reason that by leaving you
to tilt your mills and me to grind my axes,
some third construct of our selves will
circumlocute to an axis made more plausible,
dare I say fun, with extra-sensate lubricants.
Meanwhile, the new year, like a chariot, rolls in,
its wheels, friction-free, making audible
the mysterious portals of the impossible.

~~~ 

Filippo Marinetti (1876-1944) was a poet and founder of the Italian Futurist movement. His work is brash and energetic and crackles with outrage. If Marinetti were alive today, social media would be all over him, and we’d be making or breaking friendships based on our alliance. Love it or loathe it, Post-modernism, too, will be history one day.

The image comes from a deck of inspirational cards called Art Oracles. This glosa proves to me they work. 

© Elaine Stirling, 2018

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Romance in the New Year

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#bringingbacktheglosa, Canadian poet, Chilean poet, Elaine Stirling, Gabriela Mistral, glosa, love poems, medieval Spanish fixed verse

~~a glosa~~

Give me your hand and we will dance;
give me your hand and you will love me.
Like a single flower we will be,
like a single flower, nothing more.

—“Give Me Your Hand” (“Dáme la Mano”) by Gabriela Mistral

I dreamed of a friend in an orange checkered suit,
garish, clashing patterns, layered shades of yolk.
He milled, a hydrant, awkward midst the artsy party crowd.
Mortified, I hissed: why are you here?
He brightened. I’ve looked everywhere!
I thought I’d lost my chance.
The places I frequent are thin in godless times;
to be Olympian, hope and patience teeter.
But enough of that. Do you like my pants?
Give me your hand and we will dance.

He drew the blinds and took me in his arms.
I do not know the steps, I whined, and shuffled stiff.
They’re easy, he replied, though I often wonder if
the laurels people hang on strife
and being an enduring wife or husband
have not muddied things a bit. You see,
I do not need a maid and trust
you’ve had enough of joyless handymen
who’d nail your freedom to a tree.
Give me your hand and you will love me.

In time, my limbs began to melt
and I misplaced embarrassment. He led,
not like a general or a cold front pushing through
but like the tall straight mast of a merchant
sailing ship, with goods fair traded
in his hold. I think that we shall be,
he whispered in my ear, a golden pair
well matched, unfolding like the petals
of a rose, unprecedent, named Liberty.
Like a single flower we will be.

We woke entangled in a king-size bed
in Tuscany beneath an arbour
woven with bay laurel and anemone.
It must be spring, I reasoned, peering
‘neath the sheets at what he’d brought.
A lot! We laughed from bed to floor
and rolled across to where our view
of self-created destiny was clear.
We’d risen, both, to all that we adore
like a single flower, and nothing more.

Happy New Year, one and all!

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2017
Image of Tuscan garden design by Tim Street-Porter
Translation of “Dame La Mano” by Elaine Stirling

We are family, Dytiscidae…

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#AlainCDexter, #bringingbacktheglosa, #thistooshallpass, Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, glosa, Spanish medieval fixed verse

~~a glosa~~

Alive, we are like a sleek black water beetle
skating across still water in any direction
we choose, and soon to be swallowed
suddenly from beneath.

—“Night”, Robert Bly

~~~

Have you lost count of your senses?
Someone who loves you long ago made certain
you had five on each hand
and five, wiggling, on each prehensile
pinkening foot. Symbolic and prime
you burst from cramped and pensive foetal
with a joyful cry—I am arrived!
And not just to mark time or fulfill
biology. You and I intended joy, full
alive, we are like a sleek black water beetle.

Surface creature, you can smell the deep
and dip your skinny feet wherever taste
and fancies send you, yet a surfeit
skim, some oily practicality, pollutes,
lopping like a fisher’s scaling knife
permitted from forbidden. Vivisection
of the vastness of the sparkling neural
universe within has become the gauge
by which we sniff another’s misattention,
skating across still water in any direction,

frantic, fearing too much clamour and
the probability that all accelerates
toward more of better, more of worse. Appetites
of yesterday, I eschew, convinced through
dimming, wrongly disavowed sixth sense that
someone’s making off with mine & ours. Hollowed
by the scummy years of digging in & digging up,
asphyxiating from de-oxygenated history,
desire, healthy-gilled, moves on. Hallowed
we choose, and soon to be swallowed

this moment and the next, we entertain
dread for sake of conversation. Final breath
the switch that flips dusk to dawn, you and I
enter, one by one, the ark, the mothership.
We all must board that skiff eventually.
Why should I care if the pH of your belief
is pond sludge to my frisky brine? Some
silver, shiny, passing school that’s learned
to count past five will snatch both joy & grief
suddenly from beneath.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

Dytiscadae: predaceous water beetles
The gorgeous image of a pond surface comes
from http://www.miriadna.com.

2016, the first 720 minutes

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#bringingbacktheglosa, #HappyNewYear, Canadian poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Elaine Stirling, glosa, Spanish medieval fixed verse

~~a glosa~~

But then it does not matter. Strange how few,
after all’s said and done, the things that are
of moment. Few indeed! When I can make
of ten small words a rope to hang the world!

—from “Interim”, Edna St. Vincent Millay

The year is new. I have not found
a meme or dubious quotation yet to press
upon the friends I mostly haven’t met.
There’s been no sunset at this longitude,
only rise through which I slept and dreamed
of small regrets. I should get out and do,
but what? One friend is on a plane,
another has six horses to attend. The one
who’s dieting thinks she must lose a size or two,
but then it does not matter. Strange how few

the options seem when the calendar
is fresh, and life and death do not hang
in the balance. I could be content,
pursue new lines of thought, imagine
worlds that might have been, and could be still.
If I’m unfed, one day, by images of war,
infernos, floods, and raging politics,
would I be less a worthy citizen? Would my
withdrawal wound the Senate, leave a scar?
After all’s said and done, the things that are

would be such anyway, or could it be—
strange brew—that my continued
observation seeps like mustard gas
into habitual, low-lying banks of thought
where greenery and possibility once
flourished? Oh, give my head a shake!
Go play outside. Fresh air will do you good.
Inspiration didn’t come back then—I swam
in it, a dolphin, flippered, finned, with no mistake
of moment. Few indeed! When I can make

of this day a borderless idea that the planet
will outlive my worry, longevity’s irrelevant,
that those in little boots with flashing lights,
absorbed in making snowmen, are more
worthy of my admiration than the crumbling
antiquated systems that confused and whirled
me from frivolity to lockstep, then perhaps
I will have made some worthy contribution,
after all, an original pattern knit and purled
of ten small words, a rope to hang the world—

a bright infinity scarf to warm this good New Year!

Happy 2016!

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2016

Lovers & Clairvoyants, Despairers & Thieves, 2015

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#bringingbacktheglosa, Canadian poet, Elaine Stirling, glosa, narrative poem, New Year's Eve prophecies, Silvina Ocampo, Spanish medieval fixed verse

Last year on this day, December 31, I danced a glosa, “there are no lost amigos”, with Jack Kerouac from his Book of Sketches. The poem still reads well, and much of it came true—as poems ought to, on this most prophetic occasion. This year, two female poets blend their say with mine. The first is Silvina Ocampo, an Argentine contemporary of Jorge Luis Borges. “The range of her spirit is much greater than my own,” says Borges generously of his friend in a preface to her short story collection, Thus Were Their Faces. Ocampo was also a clairvoyant, which makes the writing of this New Year’s Eve glosa all the more enchanting.

~~~

I have received it all. Oh, nothing, nothing is mine.
I am like the reflections of a gloomy lake
or the echo of voices at the bottom of a blue
well when it has rained.

—from “Song” by Silvina Ocampo, translated by Jason Weiss

I wonder if you’ve noticed, says the tall
thin man to me at the bar, that far less
oxygen is breathed globally on New Year’s
Eve than any other night—until the sex,
of course. They’ve measured it. We
suspend respiration from a fear of time
passing. Brain cells die from forced inebriation.
We greet the new year stupider. That’s why
I only drink soda and thousand dollar red wine.
I have received it all. Oh, nothing, nothing is mine.

He doesn’t know I came with you. You’re mingling
somewhere so I listen to his hypotheses.
They ramble from a scorched dead Earth
to why his mother shelled her peas
to Patsy Cline and BBC, no other.
He grabs my arm. Oh, look, the flake
is here! Comes every year, tells fortunes
by your posture. Snap! I straighten,
nearly wrench a shoulder. Great.
I am like the reflections of a gloomy lake,

deep, and only vaguely fascinating. I sidle
over, do not catch her name. She’s Kola Sami,
Lapp, born on some Arctic fjord. You’re bored
too easily, she says. All that you once could see,
that saw you back, you’ve stopped believing.
Wait around for others to establish what is true,
and then you preach it, divide yourselves
between the ones who drink and screw and those
who wish they could. If you don’t dissolve the glue
or the echo of voices at the bottom of a blue

mood, nothing will ever arrive to improve.
She vanishes into the crowd with a whiff
of salt spray and spruce. A Canada goose
calls to her mate from the head of a V
in the moment you appear. Let’s get out of here!
We drive through empty streets until nothing remains
of old anxieties. Above the lake stir Northern Lights,
phosphorescent green. You are lovers, I hear the Sami
say. Be that, no other, as an overflowing, unrestrained
well, when it has rained.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2015

New Habitants

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#bringingbacktheglosa, #CanadianPoet, Elaine Stirling, glosa, medieval Spanish fixed verse, PM Justin Trudeau, poetry

~~a glosa~~

Free thinker! Do you think you are the only thinker
on this earth in which life blazes inside all things?
Your liberty does what it wishes with the power it controls,
but when you gather to plan, the universe is not there.

—from “Golden Lines”, Gérard de Nerval, 1854,
translated by Robert Bly

~~~

I have a shelf in a quiet corner
of my house where books appear,
where spines with startling titles
wink like coin upon a beach
you think, at first, is crumpled foil.
I move in close. You little stinker,
where’d you come from? Didn’t I just
dust here yesterday? Three Bly collections,
now there’s four! Best not to blink or—
free thinker! Do you think you are the only thinker?

Laughter of the cynical sounds hardy
like a whack across the shoulder blades.
Well met, friend! One scarcely hears
the swallowed—gullible—or feels
the poisoned tip of reason penetrate.
The spy pretends to care. He brings
his little eye of mean intelligence,
then shrinks. He’s leather in the rain.
I know him well. I know he stings
on this earth in which life blazes inside all things.

Meanwhile, this new-found book,
the fourth or maybe fifth this year
falls open as do all things freshly
manifest, and from its novel pages
pour like immigrants through Ellis
and old Halifax onto these shoals
new habitants, thoughts never known.
Tides reverse. My salty backward-facing pillars
burble, angry, smash their begging bowls.
Your liberty does what it wishes with the power it controls,

The pale brittle shell of politics is broken.
Newborn patriots stand blinking in a sun
that’s never shone like this till now.
The rush of sea, the boats well laden
with supplies will dry all eyes
once sorrowful. You who swear
the age of miracles is dead, you’ll find your proofs.
Who negates life for afterlife, division
as your goal, we too will meet somewhere.
But when you gather to plan, the Universe is not there.

~~~

It’s been a while since I’ve written a glosa, but even longer since I’ve felt proud of my nation and government down to the cellular level. There’s been a sea change in Canada since the election of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. I see young people politically engaged for the first time. American friends post videos of our PM greeting new arrivals and say they feel the shift too, even through all their media clamour.

If glosas and form poetry appeal to you, please visit my website where you can learn more–and perhaps buy a book or two.

© Elaine Stirling, 2015
Robert Bly’s scintillating translation of Nerval comes from News of the Universe: poems of twofold consciousness, published in 1980.

The Morning Tree: A Glosa

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#bringingbacktheglosa, Elaine Stirling, Federico Garcia Lorca, glosa, medieval Spanish fixed verse, poetry

A tree of blood moistens the morning
where the new mother groans.
Her voice leaves crystals in the wound
and a diagram of bone in the window.

Meanwhile the coming light holds steady
and overtakes blank limits of fable that forget
the tumult of veins in its flight
toward the turbid cool of the apple.

–“Adam”, from Federico Garcia Lorca’s Primeras Canciones, 1922

~~~

The drop of ink that falls
absorbed between the fibers
of a parchment bed no pen
of yours or mine can resurrect
is spreading. Footprints of tar
pace a figure eight, delineating
nakedness that none of us can see
except in vaguely worded fantasies.
Debris across the mountain feels like warning;
a tree of blood moistens the morning

while I am still senseless
and too sensitive, I can refrain
from driving home some vagrant
point of fact no one has invited,
least of all that dead bore couple,
habit and experience. Phones
attached to hips are gathering
lone gods of randomness in droves.
Beggars with no credit offer loans
where the new mother groans

labouring to no avail, you’d think,
would set off some alarm—what child
is this? But no one’s claiming fatherhood,
and that fat bastard capital forgets
to keep his mouth closed when he chews.
What trickles from his chin is spooned
into tubes, shot straight into the veins
of pretenders to Cassandra, whose Trojan
never breaks and is still well tuned.
Her voice leaves crystals in the wound

that rub against synthetic outrage
waiting for its moment—that will never
come—of sweet approval. What tendency
is this to sprinkle vinegar upon a neighbour’s
olive grove that looks to be abandoned?
No succulent upon a fence can grow
when roots are parched of laissez-faire.
We subatomic dancers hate rehearsal,
swiftly leave behind our sold-out show
and a diagram of bone in the window.

So what did the rich man say
to the ferryman? I’ll be damned!
Only he wasn’t and still the river
foams in hopes that someone might
approach her self-creation
in a feathered cape with dignity.
Sir Walter and the puddle knew
Good Bess was on her way. All others
in the fractious crowd stayed petty.
Meanwhile the coming light holds steady

and the errant ink grows jittery
for having glimpsed the perfect
quill in V-formation flying over
Parry Sound. What if I dry
and flake apart before we two
can prove the world is wet?
The goose without a fleeting honk
flies on. She does not give her tail lightly.
Eggs of gold each day she brings to market
and overtakes blank limits of fable that forget.

Two things depreciate at the moment
of purchase: the second is worry.
Grinding mandibles on behalf of another
foretells a long decline toward mush
and not much else. No imagination
will fling you out of Eden. Paths of right
and wrong confuse the tenant farmer,
not the lord who views all he surveys
with potential, green and bright,
the tumult of veins in its flight.

Oh, sweet desire, now that you know
my name, let’s draw the canopy against
drunk beetles banging on their broken
schemes. Not all shells are suitable
for dyeing, though every word, I’m told,
will find its violin and grapple
for the pitch it hears in dreams
of paradise, giving way to the refugee,
nourished in his flight by sunlight’s dapple
toward the turbid cool of the apple.

~~~

This glosa borrows the first two stanzas of Garcia Lorca’s poem, “Adan”. The original Spanish can be found here. I’ve published a book of glosas, Dead to Rights, with an accompanying novella, Dead Edit Redo, which you can find here.

© Elaine Stirling, 2015
Translation by Elaine Stirling, © 2015
Image: pastel painting by Jill Wagner from http://www.jillwagnerart.com

there are no lost amigos

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#bringingbacktheglosa, Alain C. Dexter, Elaine Stirling, form poetry, glosa, Jack Kerouac, medieval Spanish fixed verse, poem for the New Year

~ a glosa in three parts ~

contact between you &
God means no church,
no society, no reform,
& almost no relationships,
& almost no hope in
relationships—but
kindness of hope inherent
in that what is good,
shall live & what is
bad, dies—Your
flesh will be a husk,
but yr. soul a star—

—from Jack Kerouac, Book of Sketches, Oct. 31, 1952

~~~

I

I see you’ve lined up
yr bottles for tonight’s
obliteration, hoping for a
hit, some kind of catapult,
another dis-appointment with
old friends & lovers banned
from sobriety. Let me tell you
now, friend, there are no
lost amigos, only grand
contact between you &

incomplete, you say,
without that special someone
every day a seek
& almost find, that time
in Jalisco if you hadn’t been
blind drunk, the search
would be long over, yeah?
insatiable she was,
only her crucifix made you lurch
God means no church

but enough about me—
how’s life treating you?
Have you learned yet
to take a compliment,
or does that old leather
strop torn
from its nail in the woodshed
still reek of bay rum?
do you still bleed his scorn?
no society, no reform

I’ve been there, I know.
All that shit between pretty
covers with my name
on it, I scrounged hard
from railyards—rusty
I-beams and wet pine chips
for a bed, alone
now I’m practically a saint—
all those women, a few drips,
& almost no relationships

II

so here’s the thing—
there are no dead poets
there is no dead anything
sure, mountains are melting
& a certain green salamander
won’t be unfurling her thin
pink tongue for termites anymore—
but it’s not yr doing; she’s done
here for now, a slow grin
& almost no hope in

wishing your fellow man
were not so immune
to yr discontent.
Life seems easier
when you can stir up
guilt in yr little grass hut
like a pot of beans
on low simmer—
hell, you can’t shut
relationships—but

you can confuse yourself
over & over like those old wooden
paddle toys with rubber ball
attached—k’bonk, k’bonk, k’bonk,
what’d I do? what’d I do? what’d I do?
short answer: nothing. A fine gent
you are, always will be.
Inner space, same as outer,
nothing lost, mis- or unspent,
kindness of hope inherent

but you’ve heard all this—
smoked it & wrote it
& sold it to a few
worse off than you. Maybe
it’s time to clear off those
shelves. They’ve been yr hood,
yr holy armor, for how long now?
No one wants a soldier with flat
feet. Letting go’s the only rood
in that what is good

III

So. Make friends with emptiness.
Yesterday’s om and a planet’s
worth of mountaintops
won’t save yr bored soul.
Practice saying, I am deep
& meaningful, leave the biz
of others to others
never ask them why
believe love and genius
shall live & what is

is. There’s no other
tense and no better
way to let go the tension.
Stop gluing name tags
to intolerance—gluten, lactose—
give up keeping score;
everything you look at
multiplies—boom, ka-ta-boom!
ignore
bad, dies—Your

the one in charge
of what comes around
& who stays away
but still,
we’re amigos to the end,
bro, through love & lust—
throw out the dishwater
from yr last best date—one day
you’ll smell, it’s not a healthy musk
your flesh will be a husk

I have to split soon.
You got tons of visitors
cuter than me lined up. I just
came to oil yr valves, give
the silver in yr irises a gleam.
The New Year isn’t far;
it’s continuous New Now. We’ll
meet again soon. You’ll see
that nothing leaves a scar—
but yr soul a star!

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Image by Kara Bobechko, © 2014

Raining Frogs and Razor Blades

Tags

#bringingbacktheglosa, Canadian poet, e.e.cummings, Elaine Stirling, glosa, medieval Spanish fixed verse, poetry

a glosa

trust your heart if the seas catch fire
live by love though the stars walk backward
losing through you what seemed myself, I find
selves unimaginably mine, beyond…

“dive for dreams”, e.e. cummings

~~~

The man with the kind smile is in the news today
for shame; I think his mother must be feeling
terrible. How hard she’s scrubbed what hangs in
public view. It’s not her laundry now, nor mine, and
yet I cannot help but cringe. This brine cooked up
by marketeers of low repute electrocutes—the wire
running through us all burns hot and white. It rips us
into trenches, splitting wrong from everybody’s right.
To him, the kind one, I offer this: while all seems dire,
trust your heart if the seas catch fire.

Let’s say, for sake of argument, that an institution
knows what’s best for you and me between the
sheets and who we call to warm them. The exit
signs are clearly marked; I know the rules,
you know who dominates, submits. Our excitation
knows no bounds…so far, so good, our sword
play’s in good fun—what’s this? You run to papa,
now? What’s changed? This wasn’t in our game!
The pain that binds us reappears, inside outward:
Live by love, though the stars walk backward.

Now we’re raining frogs and razor blades,
the “I would nevers” puffing up, their croaks
if not harmonious, at least, are sanctimonious.
Meanwhile, in stalls high up in marble halls,
stars of varying repute, nova, dark and dwarf,
fear toppling like you from their hard-won blind
heavens. What can I do to extract promises
from the many I have loved most awkwardly?
Not much. I thought I’d left you all behind.
Losing through you what seemed myself, I find

a vast, polluted land that someone promised
me, I can’t remember when or why. I have no
maps or guide. The bondage that delighted
us, our thumbing nose to pharaohs, seems,
in retrospect, like sweet repose. The failure
of success I feared most cruelly has dawned
an angry sun. What would my father say?
I made him proud and do so, still…perhaps,
these plagues I’ll weather and discover fond
selves, unimaginably mine, beyond…

~~~

I have taken some liberties with this glosa, a form that many of you may now recognize. The lines I’ve taken from e.e. cummings’ poem, “dive for dreams” are not a consecutive quatrain. I gleaned them from the larger poem in response to a current event, which, in its vividness and universality, addresses us all. Cummings, no stranger to controversy in his lifetime (1894-1962), probably wouldn’t mind.

© Elaine Stirling, 2014
Image from Wikimedia Commons

They Tried to Burn My King Today: Part III

Tags

#bringingbacktheglosa, Elaine Stirling, glosa, King Croesus, medieval Spanish fixed verse, narrative poetry, revisiting mythology

The first two parts may be read here and here.

Book Three

To be as rich as Croesus, or to live without
a care? These matching oars, once mastered
by our helmsmen, twin plowshares that rode easy
in a tiller’s hands, the world has split to either/or.
Your name, dear king—a mockery by tyrants
and vintners of the sour grape—I call
in secret, and you never fail to come. I do not ask
permission of the domed or steepled lot. I let them
plot and scratch. Your pillow talk I still recall:
break loose your trim ship’s hawsers, haul

the baggage of your past and toss it to the dolphins!
History is not, you loved to say, the purview of
the winners but the ones afraid of what comes next.
Your counsel to Great Cyrus could not penetrate
the circles of disdain and scorn that mottled
his fine spirit, though a few did understand.
Freed men and widows, wealthy now beyond imagining,
you’ll find them on no Senate floor or king’s list,
but they’re teaching younger generations well to hand
the anchor from its harbor nest, and stand

among the growing mass who knows there is no
victimhood, only the choice of each to limit or allow.
Your tolerance of wealth, my beloved Croesus,
knows no boundaries. Your opting to ascend
to legend frees us both. Today, I am no concubine.
Nameless as I ever was, you’ll find no grand
or mawkish monuments to one of thousands who
adored you, but I know what we achieved, and why
you set me on that boat, with Apollo’s helping hand,
up into the trade winds off the headland.

So, now I turn to you, dear reader, impatient
in your search for all that’s new. I see the scimitars
of doubt you try to hide; I hid them too, until I met
the richest king who’d ever lived and walked
broad streets absent of poverty, no crime,
and all deaths natural, in their time. The trails
we left are narrow, yes, but clean as an arrow’s arc.
If you would just give up concern; the king was never
burned! Your golden talent’s limitless. Forget travails,
your woven, patched, and thrice stitched sails.

~~~

© Elaine Stirling, 2014

If you’ve been reading Oceantics for awhile, glosas will be nothing new to you. One of my goals is to restore this glorious Spanish medieval form to appreciative modern audiences. My novella of horror and good medicine, Dead Edit Redo, creeps into the darkest mysteries of the glosa. My compatriot of sorts, Alain C. Dexter, published a whole book of them called Dead to Rights. And while we’re on the topic of self promotion, please take a peek at my newest novel of mystery and magical realism, Daughters of Babylon.

Now I should like to give credit to two other poets, without whom this glosa could not have been written. Antipater of Sidon lived in Greece in the 2nd century. His poem, “The Bidding of the Harbor God”, forms the tenth line of every stanza and drives the glosa’s rhyme scheme. The masterful translation is by Sherod Santos, an American poet and author of Greek Lyric Poetry: A New Translation. I’ve included Antipater’s full poem here, Santos’s translation, so you, too, can appreciate the talent of both poets.

The Bidding of the Harbor God

Take your thwarts, oarsmen, it’s time to carve
new sea-lanes through the breasting swells.
Wild gales no longer avalanche the shoals
or harrow the rigging of a sail’s nerve,

and already out of mud and clay, swallows
build their jug-nests underneath your eaves.
So quickly now, before the gulled moon leaves
its slumberous lightweight in the meadows,

break loose your trim ship’s hawsers, haul
the anchor from its harbor nest, and stand
up into the trade winds off the headland
your woven, patched, and thrice stitched sails.

—Antipater of Sidon, circa 150 BCE
Translation by Sherod Santos, © 2005