New work

Uncollected work
by Jill Jones

Here is some work recently published but currently uncollected.
I will change this page around from time to time.

valley

rain is burnt
wind heavy as tonnage of tanks

falling stars
history cracks the air

fields fill with mud memory
prayer bows silent on the mat

blood is avid, a great swift vessel
enters the river as caravans cross the east

buried forests remember

- first published in the Journal of Literature and Aesthetics (India)

The space is alive

a bell, a curved space
the songs nags
round the labyrinth
ting ting this is
our chance, our breeze
our slippage
tending towards
breasts & white
towards other angles
under the daylight
how we hang on each other

wear my history
my columns
the more subtle poses!
go in & find!

if not chaste then pure
now
always, each time
a stream alongside you
that rocking water
that ancient spice trade
the sticky ache
and teeth like little flowers
pink & alive, recited
across skin
where the heart beats in valleys
and the nipple rises
to the tongue
belly where
the navel curls
the beginning then the end
pubic field, labial en-
trance
furrow & wet, the inevitable
bruise
clench on going
back there those
seconds

where becoming
is also coming apart
a stranger
at slipping
the way
and exhausting the other
and limits

- first published in Salt-lick Quarterly

Staring out

It is liquid, this evening, open, accumulating sky and sea, slip and swell, tempo, opal surface. Earth's hands are big enough when sea is patient, not aiding the storm out there on the bay, not conspiring when clouds pass over their reminders of passengers in the blue who died in soft machines this afternoon.

On the other hand, I'm curious about a passing cigarette, the other guy's car, a break in the weather, his girlfriend on the veranda, the origin of species, dry shells, green flesh, penetrated fabric, rays, sirens, refrigerated trucks that push fill for the perpetual supermarket at the top end of the street. A radio guitar cries like a cat. Who has passed and what's easier, the old times or days to come? Where cars and bodies are kissing corners, hugging the line, I could break my arms apart, knowing the wrong choice is a ghost. You forget, I've seen it before as clouds cross branches on the moon.

Children smoke in steel doorways, on roads. Children always running until they find their own history of traces, layers of night from other generations, waves, what they may be and what world makes of them, being caught up in a storm, and of what's beyond, behind walls, animating the hidden.

- first published in Salt-lick New Poetry

My green name

Instructions are the death
in this age of phony wars.
The measurement of roads is moveable.
There's a humming in the mangroves
while the building is shaking
and rain crashes like a bomb.

If I knew my name, like that song
- remember how it went -
a red wisp of thought
before you step onto the path.
Once the cordons are down
even with the passports closed
it slips past and flowers wild
in the cracks of an obelisk.

Though sky is soothed by ground
the leaves are not mistaken.
Dry grass and yearning hears me
or I am barefoot among stacks
turning green in the wind.

- first published in Agenda (UK)

The pleasure of tides

Sky forgets.
Rain waits today.
Nothing glides forever.

The wind crosses.
Colours decrease.
Green yellow ground.

Twists of trees.
A loose grid.
Air push time.

My thought.
Storm waits night.
Wash in the wind.

Held rain.
Clouds fly north.
Moving afternoon.

Garden tap tension.
Gravity. A drop.
Water returns sky.

- first published Squid Ink, Vol 1, 2002

Translations

And here are some translations of two well-known poems:
by Eugenio Montale, La casa dei doganieri, and Li Po, A Quiet Night.

La casa dei doganieri

You do not recall the coast watcher's house
on the sheer cliff edge above the reef
desolate and expecting you since that evening
when the swarm of your thoughts entered
and lingered there, restless.

For years southerlies have whipped the weary walls
the sound of your laughter no longer fresh
the compass totters wildly and the reckonings
of the dice no longer add up. You do not recall
confused with other times, a thread winds on.

I still hold an end of it but the house recedes
and on the roof the smoke-black weathervane
turns crazily without pity.
I still hold an end of it but you remain alone
not here, not breathing in this dark.

And on the receding skyline, the lights
of petrol tankers burn faintly.
Is this my way through? (The waves
still pound against the cliff that falls away ...)
You do not recall this place, my evening
and I do not know who goes or stays.

Eugenio Montale (translated by Jill Jones)

A quiet night

Before my bed a pool of moonlight
or maybe frost upon the ground.

I look up and see the bright moon
I look down and dream I'm home.

Li Po (translated by Jill Jones)

Copyright Jill Jones

Updated 15 August 2005