The Tattooed Poets Project, Day 20: Moira Egan
Today's poem comes to us from Moira Egan, the "European Correspondent" on the Best American Poetry blog. A hearty thank you to Stacey Harwood at the BAP blog, who helped me with the formatting of the poem!
Moira explains:
This poem comes from a series called Strange Botany that I wrote last year. The poems are written in syllabics (somewhat after Marinane Moore, one of my poetry heroes) and each poem takes as its title the Latin botanical name of the plant that acts as its central metaphor.
* * *
Ficus carica
In this country
it’s a tradition
to make a wish upon
the first bite
of the season’s fruit,
the first peach, cherry, nectarine,
cachi, so as I peel this
first fig, slowly pull its skin away
like a mammalian membrane,
I make the wish
that each of our
days might have some of
that taste of reunion
after long
absence, the salty-
sweet homecoming kiss, the airport
embarrassment of laughing
and crying both into each other’s
shirts. And it seems to me the fig
is the perfect
embodiment
of all the above,
the fruit of yin and yang,
masculine
in shape, yet deeply
feminine in its opening;
how, on the one hand, it was
a tree like this under which Buddha
sat and found enlightenment, while
on the other,
these were the leaves
that Adam reached for
to clothe their humanness
when they saw
that they were naked
and learned of shame. How many fruits
acquire their musky sweetness
from the strange symbiosis of wasp
and worm? I don’t know, but I think
of the first figs
of that summer
when we met, how he
carefully peeled the fruit,
offered me
the sweet and strangely
tentacular flesh, almost too
ripe but not quite, and he kissed me
and church bells clamored out the Angelus
and he kissed me again and (yes)
I made a wish.
(The English version first appeared in The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Winter 2008)
* * *
Ficus carica
In questo paese
è tradizione
esprimere un desiderio
al primo assaggio
di un frutto di stagione,
la prima pesca, ciliegia, albicocca,
il primo caco, così sbuccio
il primo fico, ne stacco adagio la pelle
come membrana di mammifero,
esprimo il desiderio
che ognuno dei nostri
giorni possa avere un po’
del sapore di ri-unione
dopo lunga
assenza, il dolce-salato
bacio del ritorno a casa, l’imbarazzo
all’aeroporto di ridere
e piangere entrambi sulla camicia
dell’altro. E a me il fico pare
la perfetta
incarnazione
di quelle manifestazioni,
il frutto di yin e yang,
mascolino
nella forma, ma profondamente
femminile nel suo aprirsi;
e poi, da un lato, è stato
sotto un albero del genere che Buddha
si è seduto e ha ricevuto l’Illuminazione,
dall’altro
le sue sono le foglie
cui Adamo tese la mano per
nascondere la natura umana
quando videro
che erano nudi
e conobbero vergogna. Quanti frutti
acquisiscono la loro dolcezza muscosa
dalla simbiosi arcana di vespa
e verme? Io non lo so, ma penso
ai primi fichi
di quell’estate
che ci incontrammo, alla
premura con cui sbucciò il frutto,
me ne offerse
la carne, dolce e inusitatamente
tentacolare, quasi troppo
matura, ma non proprio, e mentre
mi baciava le campane esplosero nell’Angelus
e ancora mi baciava e (sì)
espressi un desiderio.
Translated by Damiano Abeni
(The Italian version is forthcoming in an anthology entitled Poesie per anime gemelle, Newton Compton Editori, Rome, 2009)
Moira Egan lives in Rome with her husband, Damiano Abeni, who is a translator of American poetry into Italian. Their most recent collaboration is La Seta della Cravatta/The Silk of the Tie, a bi-lingual collection of Moira’s poems with Italian versions by Damiano. It is so hot off the press that it’s not even up on the publisher’s website (though keep trying; it will be there any day now!) www.edizionilobliquo.it If you’re interested in getting a copy, feel free to email Moira at moira_egan@yahoo.it and/or check it out on her website www.moiraegan.com.
Previously, Moira and Damiano also collaborated on Un mondo che non può essere migliore: Poesie scelte 1956-2007, a substantial selection of the poems of John Ashbery (Sossella Editore, 2008) which can be found here: http://www.lucasossellaeditore.it/arte_poetica/un_mondo.html
When she is not translating or writing poems, Moira teaches poetry workshops here, there, and online. She is also thrilled to check in occasionally as the “European Correspondent” on the Best American Poetry Blog.
Please check out Moira's tattoo over on Tattoosday here.
