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Better Than Starbucks
Poetry and Fiction Journal
. . . if you love diversity and creative writing in any and every form, then you’re in the right place . . .
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May 2022
Vol VII No II
Published quarterly:
February, May, August,
and November.
Poetry Translations
with Susan McLean
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Featured
Sonnet
A refutation of flatteries perceived as blind error;
inscribed by the truth on a portrait of the poet.
This that you see, this brightly-hued pretense,
here by the grace of art rendered appealing,
through specious feats of colorful deceiving
is cleverly deployed to cheat the sense;
this, in which flattery’s munificence
has sought to mask the blows the years are dealing
so as to conquer time, thereby concealing
the horrors wrought by age and negligence,
is effort undertaken for no gain,
is a frail flower in the windy squall,
is a defense from fate mounted in vain,
is labor mad and wasted, doomed to fall,
is a fool’s errand, and, regarded plain,
is corpse, is dust, is dark, is not at all.
Previously published in The Raintown Review.
Sonnet
In which the poet complains of her fate, notes her aversion
to luxuries, and justifies her pleasure in the Muses.
When you pursue me, world, why do you do it?
How do I harm you, when my sole intent
is to make learning my prize ornament,
not learn to prize ornament and pursue it?
I have no treasure, and I do not rue it,
since all my life I have been most content
rendering mind — by learning — opulent,
not minding opulence, rendering tribute to it.
I have no taste for beauties that decay
and are the spoil of ages as they flee,
nor do those riches please me that betray;
best of all truths I hold this truth to be:
cast all the vanities of life away,
and not your life away on vanity.
Previously published in The Raintown Review.
Dominican-born Rhina P. Espaillat has published thirteen books, four chapbooks, and two CDs, comprising poetry, essays, and short stories, in English and Spanish, and translations into both languages, winning the Richard Wilbur Award, Nemerov Prize, Eliot Prize, and others.
Soneto: (Este que ves, engaño colorido)
Este que ves, engaño colorido,
que del arte ostentando los primores,
con falsos silogismos de colores
es cauteloso engaño del sentido;
éste, en quien la lisonja ha pretendido
excusar de los años los horrores,
y venciendo del tiempo los rigores
triunfar de la vejez y del olvido,
es un vano artificio del cuidado,
es una flor al viento delicada,
es un resguardo inútil para el hado:
es una necia diligencia errada,
es un afán caduco y, bien mirado,
es cadaver, el polvo, es sombra, es nada.
Soneto: (En perseguirme, mundo, que interesas?)
En perseguirme, mundo, que interesas?
En qué te ofendo, cuando sólo intento
poner bellezas en mi entendimiento,
y no mi entendimiento en las bellezas?
Yo no estimo tesoros ni riquezas;
y así, siempre me causa más contento
poner riquezas en mi entendimiento,
que no mi entendimiento en las riquezas.
Yo no estimo hermosura que, vencida,
es despojo civil de las edades,
ni riqueza me agrada fementida,
teniendo por mejor en mis verdades,
consumir vanidades de la vida
que consumir la vida en vanidades.
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651-1695, Mexico), born of Spanish and Creole parents, became a nun to avoid marriage and to write, becoming the first great poet of the Americas. Warned by the Inquisition to stop writing, she died tending sick nuns during a pandemic.
Seawater Ballad
To Emilio Prados
(cloudhunter)
The sea
smiles from the distance.
Teeth of ocean spray,
lips of sky.
What is it you’re selling, wild young woman,
half-naked, breasts bared?
I’m selling, sir, water
from the sea.
What is it you carry, dark-skinned young man,
mixed into the blood of your veins?
I carry with me, sir, water
from the sea.
Where is it these salt-laden tears of yours
come from, dear lady?
My tears, sir, are water
from the sea.
And tell me, heart, this terrible bitterness,
what is the source of it?
Bitter indeed is the water that comes
from the sea!
The sea
smiles from the distance.
Teeth of ocean spray,
lips of sky.
Brittany Hause lived in Bolivia, the USA, and South Korea before moving to the UK to pursue a degree in linguistics. Their verse translations and original poetry have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Star*Line, NewMyths.com, and elsewhere.
La balada del agua del mar
A Emilio Prados
(cazador de nubes)
El mar
sonríe a lo lejos.
Dientes de espuma,
labios de cielo.
¿Qué vendes, oh joven turbia
con los senos al aire?
Vendo, señor, el agua
de los mares.
¿Qué llevas, oh negro joven,
mezclado con tu sangre?
Llevo, señor, el agua
de los mares.
Esas lágrimas salobres
¿de dónde vienen, madre?
Lloro, señor, el agua
de los mares.
Corazón, y esta amargura
seria, ¿de dónde nace?
¡Amarga mucho el agua
de los mares!
El mar
sonríe a lo lejos.
Dientes de espuma,
labios de cielo.
One of Spain’s most celebrated poets, Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) drew on medieval tradition and local folklore to produce reams of transformative, boundary-pushing verse before his politically motivated murder at the onset of the Spanish Civil War.
Ode ii.15
Soon now these princely palaces will spare
But little room for ploughland, and you’ll find
Artificial fishponds everywhere
Wider than lakes, and the plane tree, un-vined,
Will conquer the old elms; violets then,
And myrtles and the nostrils’ treasured scents,
Throughout the olive grove that former men
Had harvested, will waft their decadence:
Then with thick branches laurel will exclude
The burning sunbeams. This is not the way
That Romulus and Cato taught our rude
Forefathers, who lived simply in their day.
The private wealth they kept was miniscule,
The public wealth enormous; portico
Columns weren’t measured with a ten-foot rule
That citizens might catch the Great Bear’s glow
At home, nor did the law let them decline
Huts roofed with humble earth, but gave the nod
To cities built at public cost, a shrine
Made beautiful with marble for each god.
First published in Proteus Bound: Selected Translations, 2008-2020
Ryan Wilson is the author of The Stranger World (Measure, 2017), How to Think Like a Poet (Wiseblood, 2019), and Proteus Bound: Selected Translations (Franciscan, 2021). Editor-in-Chief of Literary Matters, he teaches at The Catholic University of America.
Ode ii.15
Iam pauca aratro iugera regiae
moles relinquent, undique latius
extenta visentur Lucrino
stagna lacu, platanusque caelebs
evincet ulmos; tum violaria et
myrtus et omnis copia narium
spargent olivetis odorem
fertilibus domino priori;
tum spissa ramis laurea fervidos
excludet ictus. non ita Romuli
praescriptum et intonsi Catonis
auspiciis veterumque norma.
privatus illis census erat brevis,
commune magnum: nulla decempedis
metata privatis opacam
porticus excipiebat Arcton
nec fortuitum spernere caespitem
leges sinebant, oppida publico
sumptu iubentes et deorum
templa novo decorare saxo.
Quintus Horatius Flaccus, known as Horace (65-27 BCE),was the Poet Laureate of Rome during its Golden Age.
Archive of Poetry Translations
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May 2019 March 2019 January 2019 November 2018 September 2018 July 2018 June 2018
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