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
كـنـيـسـة سـانـــت انـتــونـــي
قصيدة كليفتون سنايدر
ترجمة الحبيب الواعي
في كويستا بنيو مكسيكو،
نصبت لافتة
على قاعدة تمثال
خارج أبواب الكنيسة
لتكرم كل قتلى
أطفال العالم
"الذين لم يولدوا بعد "
بحثت بلا جدوى
عن لافتة مشابهة
لأكرم العظام الرقيقة
لأطفال يتضورون جوعا
أو يموتون بسبب الايدز
في جنوب وسط لوس انجليس،
في ألبوكرك أو سانتا في،
في أحياء أسفل الحدود،
في السودان وشوارع
كالكوتا أو كوريا الشمالية،
لأكرم أطفالا بدون سواعد
في العراق وجنودا بلا أرجل
في جميع بلدان العالم،
وأعدادا لا تحصى
من آباء وإخوة وأخوات،
.وعشاق مكروبين
نظرت حولي و وجدت
زهورا برية جميلة, صفراء وبرتقالية
تنمو في مبذرة بيضاء صيغت
.على شكل صليب
. حقوق الطبع والنشر © كليفتون سنايدر، 2012
(© El Habib Louai and Clifton Snider)
El Habib Louai's translation of "St.
Anthony's Church," as well as his translation into Arabic of my poem,
"Before I Go," have been published in the Moroccan daily newspaper,
Rissalat al-Ouma (
The Message of the Nation), 25
October 2013.
Click
here
for a video of my reading "St. Anthony's Church" in the original
English with El Habib Louai reading his translation into Arabic in
Tamri, Morocco, 20 October 2018.
Page copyright © by Clifton
Snider,
2019. All rights
reserved.
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.
Page last revised 14 January 2019