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2 new poems from Michael Igoe: Effigies, Places of Inanimate Glass

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THREE WOMEN: A Poem for Three Voices (Sylvia Plath)

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Shot From A Cannon

I swallow in a December, yellow-bellied and naive, plagued by foreign syrup. I can’t figure out how I leak from the pores, through the arteries. It’s easy to recall, the summer rain, sleets of a winter, as much detested. My street shimmers, in sirens and rockets, with an urge to travel, the sun erupts all day. The opponent bargain I can’t leave a maze in feeble solar arms Ieaving the ground the…

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Two Poems by Michael Igoe

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'Poem Without a Hero' by Anna Akhmatova

I have lit my treasured candles, one by one, to hallow this night. With you, who do not come, I wait the birth of the year. Dear God! the flame has drowned in crystal, and the wine, like poison, burns Old malice bites the air, old ravings rave again, though the hour has not yet struck.

Dread. Bottomless dread… I am that shadow on the threshold defending my remnant peace.

Let the gossip roll! What to me are Hamlet’s garters, or the whirlwind of Salome’s dance, or the tread of the Man in the Iron Mask? I am more iron than they.

Prince Charming, prince of the mockers — compared with him the foulest of sinners is grace incarnate…

That woman I once was, in a black agate necklace, I do not wish to meet again till the Day of Judgement.

Are the last days near, perhaps? I have forgotten your lessons, prattlers and false prophets, but you haven’t forgotten me. As the future ripens in the past, so the past rots in the future — a terrible festival of dead leaves.

All the mirrors on the wall show a man not yet appeared who could not enter this white hall. He is no better and no worse, but he is free of Lethe’s curse: his warm hand makes a human pledge. Strayed from the future, can it be that he will really come to me, turning left from the bridge?

From childhood I have been afraid of mummers. It always seemed an extra shadow without face or name had slipped among them…

You… you are as old as the Mamre oak, ancient interrogator of the moon, whose feigned groans cannot take us in. You write laws of iron.

Creature of special tastes, you do not wait for gout and fame to elevate you to a luxurious jubilee chair, but bear your triumph over the flowering heather, over wildernesses. And you are guilty of nothing: neither of this, that, nor anything..

Besides what have poets, in any case, to do with sin? They must dance before the Ark of the Covenant or die! But what am I trying to say?

In the black sky no star is seen, somewhere in ambush lurks the Angel of Death, but the spiced tongues of the masqueraders are loose and shameless A shout: “Make way for the hero!” Ah yes. Displacing the tall one, he will step forth now without fail and sing to us about holy vengeance…

There is no death, each of us knows — it’s banal to say. I’ll leave it to others to explain.

Is this the visitor from the wrong side of the mirror? Or the shape that suddenly flitted past my window? Is it the new moon playing tricks, or is someone really standing there again between the stove and the cupboard?

This means that gravestones are fragile and granite is softer than wax. Absurd, absurd, absurd! From such absurdity I shall soon turn gray or change into another person. why do you beckon me with your hand? For one moment of peace I would give the peace of the tomb.

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Anna Ahkmatova remained in Leningrad throughout its 900-day siege in World War Two, and spent the rest of her life laboring over ‘Poem Without a Hero’, the elegy for her country’s fallen in World War Two. 

This is only a small excerpt from the beginning of the poem; I’ve unfortunately been unable to find a full translation of its 744 lines online. Still, I think it gets the power of Akhmatova’s imagery across.

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THREE WOMEN: A Poem for Three Voices (Sylvia Plath)

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Last Frontier by Michael Igoe (Prose stories) Last Frontier

Last Frontier by Michael Igoe (Prose stories) Last Frontier

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New Poetry from Michael Igoe

New Poetry from Michael Igoe

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May Poetry Showcase from Michael Igoe

May Poetry Showcase from Michael Igoe

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Re-published poems by Michael Igoe

Re-published poems by Michael Igoe

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2 new poems from Michael Igoe: Effigies, Places of Inanimate Glass

2 new poems from Michael Igoe: Effigies, Places of Inanimate Glass

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Michael Igoe

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New poems from Michael Igoe

New poems from Michael Igoe

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Michael Igoe

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Michael Igoe

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https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/2022/01/four-fabulous-poems-by-michael-igoe.html?m=1

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3 new poems by Michael Igoe : "The Way of A Hero" "Tunnel Vision" & "Human Intervention"

3 new poems by Michael Igoe : “The Way of A Hero” “Tunnel Vision” & “Human Intervention”