The Ofi Press Magazine

Poem by Marilyn Longstaff (UK), Published in Issue 29.

 The North East Special Edition: Displacement (Part 1)

Translated by Karenina Osnaya.

For a Lost Love

The old girl has been tarted up so much
I fail to recognise her varicose lanes.
An operation has removed all clots
and she is neatly sewn into elastic skin.

Her once decaying rows of cottages are
crowned like teeth, they sparkle and gleam,
each in a pristine New England colour,
their smelly nooks and crannies sanitised,

lobster pots, nets and old trucks tidied away
in rustic sheds whilst car parks in her outskirts
spill their contents down her cliff paths in a wave
that laps up local ice cream and tourist tat.

I miss her wild anarchic heart,
her shabby style: a strange vitality. 

Para un Amor Perdido

La viejita se ha arreglado tanto

Que no puedo ni reconocer sus callejones varicosos.

La operación le ha quitado todos los coágulos

y está pulcramente cosida en elástica piel.

Sus una vez decadentes hileras de casuchas están

coronadas como dientes, ellas brillan y resplandecen,

cada una en un prístino color Nueva Inglaterra,

sus grietas y ranuras desinfectadas,

cazuelas de langosta, redes y camiones viejos guardados

en rústicas covachas mientras estacionamientos a sus faldas

derraman los contenidos en sus curvas, una ola

que lengüetea el helado local y las turísticas chucherías.

Extraño su salvaje anárquico corazón,

su desaliñado estilo: una extraña vitalidad.

Marilyn Longstaff’s poetry collections are: Puritan Games (Vane Women Press) Sitting Among the Hoppers (Arrowhead Press) and, most recently, Raiment (Smokestack Books). She is a member of the Vane Women collective (http://www.vanewomen.co.uk/)

Image: From Velasquez's painting "Christ in the House of Martha and Mary"