Strange Harbors
Strange Harbors
edited by John Biguenet and Sidney Wade
(Two Lines World Writing in Translation XV, 2008)
This lovely anthology of world literature came to me from Scott Esposito over at The Quarterly Conversation. There are extraordinary excerpts from novels and short stories and whole poems (with the original language next to the translated English text) from around the globe: Bangladesh, Spain, Guatemala, France, Israel, Portugal, Poland, Lithuania, Mexico, Turkey, Ireland, Mexico, Brazil, Romania, Haiti, El Salvador, Philippines, Algeria, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Palestine, and, a pleasant surprise, Latvia.
Many assume upon seeing my name that I am Russian, but my husband (whose name I love and was quite eager to take as my own 21 years ago) and his family are Latvian. I had the pleasure of visiting Latvia before I ever met my husband, back in 1984 when I was on a study tour in the former Soviet Union. Most of the Latvian literature I've seen over the years that has been translated into English are memoirs about wartime and refugee experiences and children's folktales. So I was quite thrilled to find two Latvian poems represented in Strange Harbors. The poems are by Peters Bruveris from a collection entitled Black Thrush, Red Cherries. Reading the poem "Parting from Semba" below, I was reminded of charcoal-colored stones, the cobbled square of Old Town Riga, the spire of its central cathedral whose lines are reminiscent of German soldier helmuts. I also remembered the tale my husband told me when I gave him a gift one Christmas of a traditional Latvian Namejs Ring. He told me that an ancient King of Latvia wore that ring. When his country was about to be invaded (sadly an eternal part of Latvian history), he ordered that all male subjects of Latvia wear copies of this ring so the invaders would not be able to distinguish the Royal family from its subjects and so the lives of the King and his sons would be spared and to live and fight another day.
"Parting from Semba"
I remember little: fog lay
over the field, in fir crests
blackened
the features of forgotten warriors; down the trail
no one came,
in the skies voiceless
reeled
my destiny, but at the well's edge,
covered with a burdock learf
a toad squatted;
(you'll no longer awaken --
the red deer, on whose horns
your Sun set,
is hunted down, dead.)
in the distance the clash of weaponry quieted,
a black raven's wing
covered
my snow-white hand,
closed my eyes,
and I no longer see
what I'm wrestling with --
with mist, with night?
with a crystal tortoise king's chthonic breath?