At the age of 92, Willis Barnstone is a miracle. The translator of The Gnostic Bible (2003) and The New Covenant: Commonly Called The New Testament (2009), he has turned over the grounds of Greek and Aramaic, and unsettled dogmatic readings. Jesus, for example, became Joshua, his real name. The poetry of the Bible, seen mostly as exemplary before Barnstone, became poetry in his rendering of The Poems of Jesus Christ (2012.) Barnstone knows languages and he knew and translated Borges. He also brought into English Heraklitus, Sappho, and Machado, alongside many volumes of his own vigurous verse. Recently he has revisited the entirety of Guillaume Apollinaire. This is about half the canon of Western civ reborn in American Lyric Space. It baffles me that he was never Poet Laureate of the United States. He is a founder. I hereby nominate him for the Laureate laurels. Reading his latest poem is watching Laocoon and the snakes. The snakes might win but we won’t remember their names. Barnstone’s we will, and he’s working with Keats.
ALL CREATORS HAVE A CONTRACT WITH TIME
by Willis Barnstone
When Guillaume Apollinaire, near death, begged
For help, “Save me, doctor, I’ve so many
Things to say,[1] neither a bootlegged
Truck-load of medicines, a Christmas tree,
Or 7 railroad cars loaded with caviar
Could save him. The flu was a bayonet
In the heart of 50 million, the Czar
Of Murder, more than generals in lorgnette
And clouds of medals could invent to kill
A nation’s youth. We artists have a soul,
A mortal one. We need time to fulfill
Our unique creations, our dream to bowl
A 10-strike each time we roll our hope
In a new work. Marketing garners fame.
But the artists’ god is time, time to pen,
To paint. and to compose. No fame is shame
And sorrow, but worse is absence of time,
The motor grease, the black harbor where words,
Brush strokes and music notes suddenly chime
And George Herbert leaps from his grave, birds
In hand, clocks wound, to wake the dead, equip
Them with right glasses. Then they and we read
A book, linger in galleries, and flip
A lock in time to grant new decades, seed
New lands in Castilla. Lucky, I wrote
81 books. No vanities. But I
Need at 91 a decade to smote
The Devil of Disorder deep in me. Try
I do to choose among my sonnets 5
Hundred so that A Rose in Hell will buy
Me hope for a lifelong project. I freeze
Thinking I’ll leave a mess. And I’ve a ton
Of stars I’d like to roam, and so I seize
Whatever Little Prince asteroid I watch,
Tame, and steal into my poetry barn
Or fiction ranch. Stars brighten. Lest I botch
It all, I’ll work desperate like a sophomore
Before finals. The incompletion of
A life tames raw infinity. Male whore
And conman, I publish anywhere that
Will run my sheets of life as verse. Like you,
Like every artist, born hungry I’m fat
In vision. Old days I could disappear
In China, France, Greece or Spain. I try still
With my last sous. Nothing new in my fear.
The artist is a gambler who will win
And lose. Time be kind. If I stay around
I’ll droop from stars, quake like a mandolin
In a wild Java ensemble. Go back to school
And teach so I can blue my head. What’s best
Write, compose, paint? Or be a patient fool.
I’ve no contract with time but try to stretch
The years with time to write, gymming my flesh
With pushups, mind with verse. I must not kvetch,
The contract is impossible, yet know
The goal keeps me fanatic. I won’t be here
To check things out. Look at the rolling brow
Of the ocean. In splashing foam, I swim
Unseen. Please overhear a gleeful miser.
Listen. Hear clouds coughing an unheard hymn.
2019
Sauvez-moi, docteur, J’ai tant de choses à dire.
Have you compared Shelley to Browning? Is your name Joyce Randolph?
Posted by: Marielle Heartless | July 15, 2024 at 12:32 AM