I wrote this poem on a residence fellowship at The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, Taos, in the summer of 2004.  It was published in Chiron Review, #81, winter 2005, in its GLBT issue. 

Chiron Review Press published my books, The Alchemy of Opposites and Aspens in the Wind, and I am pleased to have been published in its pages since its beginnings as the Kindred Spirit in 1982.  Needless to say, I recommend this issue highly.

"St. Anthony's Church" has also been published in the anthology, Poetic Voices Without Borders, ed. Robert L. Giron (Arlington, VA: Gival Press, 2009), and it is in my new book of poems, Aspens in the Wind.  I am pleased to note that the anthology in which "St. Anthony's Church" appears won the 2009 National Best Book Award for Fiction & Literature: Anthologies, sponsored by USA Book News.

"St. Anthony's Church" is also in my retrospective collection, Moonman: New and Selected Poems.

I am pleased to post the poem as translated by Melvin Rosales into Spanish.

Iglesia de San Antonio

en Questa, Nuevo México,
erigió una placa
en un pedestal
fuera de sus puertas
para honrar a todos los muertos
"los niños no nacidos"
del mundo.
 
Busqué en vano
para una placa correspondiente
en honor a la esquelética
bebés mueren de hambre o morir de VIH
en South Central, L.A.
en Albuquerque o Santa Fe,
en los barrios por debajo de la frontera,
el Sudán, las calles de
Calcuta o Corea del Norte,
los niños sin brazos
en Irak, los soldados sin patas de
todos los países, los números incalculables
de afligidos padres, hermanos, hermanas,
y los amantes.
                        Miré y encontrados
hermosas flores silvestres amarillas y naranja
creciendo en una maceta en forma de blanco
como una cruz.

--Copyright © by Clifton Snider and Melvin Rosales, 2012.

"St. Anthony's Church" has also been translated into Arabic by the Moroccan poet and translator, El Habib Louai.  I am pleased to present it here.  Read more about El Habib Louai on this site: http://www.woolf.cam.ac.uk/people/profile.asp?ItemID=586

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Home.
Top.
A Poet Against the War.
Art and Poetry, with translations of my poem, "Aspen in the Wind," in French and in Spanish.
Before I Go, with translations into Arabic and Spanish.
My Selena, with translations into Spanish.

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