The International Literary Quarterly
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February 2010

 
Contributors
 

Rose Ausländer
Charles Bernstein
Amy Bloom
Jean Boase-Beier
Carmen Bugan
Moira Burgess
Larry Butler
James Byrne
Jim Carruth
Neil Charleton
Ronald Christ
A.C. Clarke
David Dawnay
Patricia Delmar
Des Dillon
Anne Donovan
Gerrie Fellows
Cheryl Follon
Ronald Frame
Hazel Frew
Rodge Glass
David Goldie
Jane Goldman
Martin Goodman
Siobhan Harvey
Beatriz Hausner
Kusay Hussein
A.B. Jackson
Kapka Kassabova
Velimir Khlebnikov
David Kinloch
Micaela Lewitt
Zhimin Li
Gerry Loose
James McGonigal
Gerry McGrath
Donal McLaughlin
Kate McLoughlin
Andrea McNicoll
Willy Maley
Peter Manson
Laura Marney
Ernst Meister
Lina Meruane
Edwin Morgan
Ewan Morrison
Laura Muetzelfeldt
Hom Paribag
Mario Petrucci
Clare Pollard
Sheila Puri
Claire Quigley
Elizabeth Reeder
Alan Riach
Dilys Rose
Suhayl Saadi
Sue Reid Sexton
Bina Shah
Yasir Shah
Jim Stewart
Zoë Strachan
Chiew-Siah Tei
Valerie Thornton
Anthony Vivis
Marshall Walker
Zoë Wicomb
Xu Xi

40 Glasgow Voices

Volta: A Multilingual Anthology
(One poem: 82 languages)

Issue 10 Guest Artist:
John Hoyland RA

Founding Editor: Peter Robertson
Deputy Editor: Jill Dawson
Art Editor: Calum Colvin

Consulting Editors
Marjorie Agosín
Daniel Albright
Meena Alexander
Maria Teresa Andruetto
Frank Ankersmit
Rosemary Ashton
Reza Aslan
Leonard Barkan
Michael Barry
Shadi Bartsch
Thomas Bartscherer
Susan Bassnett
Gillian Beer
David Bellos
Richard Berengarten
Charles Bernstein
Sujata Bhatt
Mario Biagioli
Jean Boase-Beier
Elleke Boehmer
Eavan Boland
Stephen Booth
Alain de Botton
Carmen Boulossa
Rachel Bowlby
Svetlana Boym
Peter Brooks
Marina Brownlee
Roberto Brodsky
Carmen Bugan
Jenni Calder
Stanley Cavell
Hollis Clayson
Sarah Churchwell
Kristina Cordero
Drucilla Cornell
Junot Díaz
André Dombrowski
Denis Donoghue
Ariel Dorfman
Rita Dove
Denise Duhamel
Klaus Ebner
Robert Elsie
Stefano Evangelista
Orlando Figes
Tibor Fischer
Shelley Fisher Fishkin
Peter France
Nancy Fraser
Maureen Freely
Michael Fried
Marjorie Garber
Anne Garréta
Marilyn Gaull
Zulfikar Ghose
Paul Giles
Lydia Goehr
Vasco Graça Moura
A. C. Grayling
Stephen Greenblatt
Lavinia Greenlaw
Lawrence Grossberg
Edith Grossman
Elizabeth Grosz
Boris Groys
David Harsent
Benjamin Harshav
Geoffrey Hartman
François Hartog
Molly Haskell
Selina Hastings
Beatriz Hausner
Valerie Henitiuk
Kathryn Hughes
Aamer Hussein
Djelal Kadir
Kapka Kassabova
John Kelly
Martin Kern
Mimi Khalvati
Joseph Koerner
Annette Kolodny
Julia Kristeva
George Landow
Chang-Rae Lee
Mabel Lee
Linda Leith
Suzanne Jill Levine
Lydia Liu
Margot Livesey
Julia Lovell
Willy Maley
Alberto Manguel
Ben Marcus
Paul Mariani
Marina Mayoral
Richard McCabe
Campbell McGrath
Jamie McKendrick
Edie Meidav
Jack Miles
Toril Moi
Susana Moore
Laura Mulvey
Azar Nafisi
Martha Nussbaum
Sari Nusseibeh
Tim Parks
Clare Pettitt
Caryl Phillips
Robert Pinsky
Elena Poniatowska
Elizabeth Powers
Elizabeth Prettejohn
Martin Puchner
Kate Pullinger
Paula Rabinowitz
Rajeswari Sunder Rajan
James Richardson
François Rigolot
Geoffrey Robertson
Ritchie Robertson
Avital Ronell
Carla Sassi
Michael Scammell
Celeste Schenck
Sudeep Sen
Hadaa Sendoo
Miranda Seymour
Mimi Sheller
Elaine Showalter
Penelope Shuttle
Werner Sollors
Frances Spalding
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Julian Stallabrass
Susan Stewart
Rebecca Stott
Mark Strand
Kathryn Sutherland
John Whittier Treat
David Treuer
David Trinidad
Marjorie Trusted
Lidia Vianu
Victor Vitanza
Marina Warner
David Wellbery
Edwin Williamson
Michael Wood
Theodore Zeldin

Associate Editor: Jeff Barry
Associate Editor: Neil Langdon Inglis
Assistant Editor: Ana de Biase
Assistant Editor: Sophie Lewis
Assistant Editor: Siska Rappé
Art Consultant: Angie Roytgolz

 
Click to enlarge picture Click to enlarge picture. Oh Mother, My Mother! by Hom Paribag  

 


Oh Mother, My Mother!

This DNA of yours you left as trace within a Cell
Of this life that it was always there 
After that nine months
After that toddling
After that quenching of thirst and hunger
After that growth!
And that you wanted me to be always 
Within you and me always away from you!

As I marched passed the lives of life
To grow old to measure up my own being grown
Against your height, heart and soul perhaps
I flew away probably to trick you only
So that you would often ask
Where did I have to go?
Since you knew, in your heart that
I didn’t need to go 
I didn’t need to be so cruel

Every moment, did I know that!
I was there to cry when I didn’t understand the
Gravity of your affection and care for me!
Instead, I would whine so that you would come to fetch me- your son
To feed the food of love that you had right from the
Origin of the Cell that transferred your traces in me
On these detail, tiny minute of the DNA that I behold you in me
Always and ever no matter who I am and wherever I go!

Oh mother, my mother!
You knew what I did to upset you
You knew that I didn’t need to 
And even to let that grow within my very own need of life 
That defined the nature of mankind that you implanted in me
In the very way I grew so big, 
As if sometimes bigger than yourself and the
Galaxy like bigger love that you'd fed in me 
With the DNA that you’re now and ever
To become so unruly, for I wouldn’t want you to confine me 
Within you for I didn’t want to 
Since I felt that I knew you, just knew you
Through my own being, for you knew I was you and you were me! 
As I grew and raised with the energy to display all those
Notwithstanding the stubbornness of that kind that
Had come from you so that I could see how tough and yet loving 
You were, by assuming as if it was nothing, but simply 
The mother, Oh my mother!! 

Today, I have broken the connection in the rite
That you’d have not wanted just because you love me
That my hands are shaking, eyes tearing and heart pounding
As I didn’t do what you would want me to do 
What you would want me to be but you
Therefore I did exactly the same thing that you would herald time and again
In your pain that only tears from your eyes could have washed it
The joy of love and affection and your enormity of kindness and wish of freedom
That you dreamt I’d deserved out in the open, exactly the way you’d want 
No matter how many times, I had deliberated to hurt you
Often just letting the wound to be left to mend on its own!
Therefore, I flew away, so far away, so conditionally
I left you behind and still letting me to have this arrogance of life 
That I can care for myself, be my own cell, my own shelf notwithstanding 
The pain I could have caused in your heart 
Even then you felt joyous, just when I felt rejoicing, 
You felt more pain when I was hurt
You felt sad when I cried
You felt everything that you meant to feel
What I felt and that what you too felt! 
Mother, Oh My Mother!

And today, you have left me, almost as if it is forever! 
Because I’d left you even when this true facet of life hadn’t 
You knew you were going to leave before me 
Therefore you never wanted me to leave you
But as I did time and again, you now have done so powerfully
That simply that you’ve run away as if 
I would never ever going to meet with you
That I would never ever caress, touch and hug you
Even to ask for your final love of care so that I could be with you
Oh mother, my mother!

Yes I know I am flooding in the tears of remorse
That you have left me because not wanting though
I’d left you to let your heart mind and soul 
To be tested and weighted that as your child I’d always wanted
From the very beginning when the Cell of your Love and Life
Had been implanted in me to be the way I am of what I am now 
So big but lonely without you, so powerful but mongrel 
So vivid and so full but empty without you
Oh mother, Oh My mother 
You know how much the love you had for me meant for you
Exactly the way I feel it’s now 
In your love that I shall grow old, but never free from it
I shall run away but never to disappear from it
I shall be with you ever and ever 
Mother, Oh my mother!
 
(23rd of November 2009, 13 days of the loss of my Mother!)