Samuel         (To himself as he struggles
                        to get closer to Jesus.)
                        Naomi? Well . . . How she
                        could know? She did mek up
                        her mind and gwaan her way
                        time me reach Nazareth.
                        And it nuh mek no sense
                        me try fi tell her now.
                        She wouldn’t keep quiet to hear
                        me anyhow.
                                                  When dis child
                        Jesus was a likl bwoy
                        me was apprentice to him pa.
                        A real funny ‘prentice!
                        Me was a big man, forty plus,
                        wid one hand twist, de next
                        one chop off at de wrist.
                        But dat man Joseph teach
                        me how to use hammer
                        and saw and chisel wid
                        mi twist hand and mi stump.
                        . . . Still is de lady Mary
                        dat me couldn’t take
                        mi two eye from. And so
                        me watch her, so she watch
                        dat child. And all de while
                        she going on doing what she
                        have to do. Me cyaan ex-
                        plain to yuh. Is like she
                        know dis child is de most
                        precious thing and like—just
                        how him running up and
                        down chasing him ball—she
                        seeing him dying right dere
                        as she look.
                                                 So me just
                        have to do a likl
                        jostling here today. Me
                        know just now she seeing
                        before her eye what she
                        was looking at for all
                        dem years. See. Is de self-
                        same countenance she gazing
                        on him wid. And him . . .
                        Oh Jesus, don’t look pon
                        her so. She know yuh love
                        her right down to yuh toe.
                        She know yuh never want
                        to leave her so. She know
                        Jah seh is so it haffe
                        go. From yuh was likl
                        Jesus she did know.
from the book A FIERCE GREEN PLACE: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS / New Directions
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Samuel is an older man, so perhaps it’s the tenderness of length-of-days that shapes his recollection of Mary’s gaze on her toddler, a gaze—according to Samuel—informed by a premonition of Jesus’s death, and the same look with which she now regards Him. No mind is me dat make him up, Samuel’s reassurance to Jesus that His mother knows He doesn’t want to leave her in this way, moves me deeply... 

Pamela Mordecai on "Station IV: Jesus Meets His Mother"
Picture of a silhouette of a man looking at stars in a canyon
"In Bad Faith: Notes on Fidelity in Translation"

"As so often happens with translation, the only way to be faithful was to be unfaithful. In this case, in order to be faithful to Fabre’s novel, I had to be unfaithful to the San Juan that English speakers have known for decades....Initially I cowered behind versions of the poems cobbled together from existing translations, adding a few of my own cosmetic adjustments. But that approach wasn’t working, so I went back to the drawing board."

via POETS & WRITERS
READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES
What Sparks Poetry:
Nathan Spoon on Language as Form


"'I Have a Vision for My Poems' belongs to a series of Sylvia Plath found poems Nazifa Islam is writing 'to dissect, examine, and explore the bipolar experience.' The poem exemplifies how Islam is using this series to openly connect with a disabled ancestor, which is important because, while various cognitive disabilities have probably existed as long as humans have, the language to frame and see them as distinct embodiments and identities has not."
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