Hrishikesh Srinivas

The Ferryman

a translation of Émile Verhaeren’s poem ‘Le passeur d’eau’ from Les Villages illusoires

The ferryman,

            hands at the oars

Against the tide           

                                    so very long,

a green reed    

            between the teeth                     heaved on.

            But she who hailed him,

                                                alack!

                                                            Out there

                                                beyond the waves,

                                    Always further on, there

                        beyond the waves

            Amidst mists

fell back.

The windows with their eyes

And the clock faces of towers on the bank

Watched him toil and persist

Torso in two plied

Muscles in spasm.

A sudden oar’s breaking

            The current’s for the taking,

                        In gravid waves, toward the ocean.

            She out there who

                                                hailed him

                                                            In the mists and in the wind

                                                seemed to him

                                    To twist

                        her arms dearer

            At his getting

no nearer.

The ferryman with

            remaining oar

Went at his work so

            hard

His whole body cracked with

            the graft

His heart shook with

            fever and terror.

In a swift blow the rudder’s breaking

                        The current’s for the taking,

                                                Doleful tail rag, toward the ocean.

The windows on the river est.,

Like wide and febrile eyes

And the clock faces of towers, old wives

Thousands on thousands on the riverbanks upright

Were stubbornly set on

This loggerhead, in his wanton

Prolonging of his mad quest.

            She out there

                                                who hailed him

                                                            In the mists cried,

                                                cried to him

                                    Her head

                        frighteningly prone

            To the exp-

anse unknown.

The ferryman, as if made of bronze

            In the white storm stemmed

With the single oar between his hands

            Beat on the tides, bit at the tides, even then.

His old imagined instances

            Lit up the distances

Whence still came her cries

            Pitiful, beneath cold skies. 

The remaining oar’s breaking

                                    The current’s for the taking,

                                                                        Like stover, toward the ocean.

The ferryman, arms down, worn

            on his seat collapsed forlorn,

haunches torn in futile labor.

                                    A jolt hit his vessel adrift

He saw behind him the bank’s lift:

            he hadn’t left               the shore.

The windows and the clock tower dials

With their wide, unsullied eyes

Took note of his plight of passion

                                    But the wily old ferryman

Kept, till God knows when,

            The reed between his teeth                  ever green.

The Fountain

a translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Vergers poem 26 ‘La Fontaine’

one lesson

I only want the                         that’s yours,

Fountain, who back                 onto yourself falls, —

again

precarious waters

That of                                                             to whom befalls

This heavenly                          toward earthly life

redescent

your

As much as                              myriad murmur

None would begin to                                                   serve me exemplar;

You

oh light column                        of the temple

   itself                                                                            of its own

Destroying                                                                                                       nature.

In your                         how flexes

drop

Each water flume         ending its dance.

How I find myself                   a pupil, amanuensis

To your            nuance

immeasurable

But what more than your song sets me on you

Is that moment of silence in delirium

When at night              across             your liquid move

Your own return passes, breath taken.

Hrishikesh Srinivas hails from Sydney, Australia. He enjoys reading and writing poetry, with poems having appeared or forthcoming in UNSWeetened Literary Journal, Hemingway's Playpen, Otoliths and Mantis. He was awarded the Dorothea Mackellar National Poetry Award in 2011 and the Nillumbik Ekphrasis Poetry Youth Award in 2013, also being included in the 'Laughing Waters Road: Art, Landscape and Memory in Eltham' 2016 exhibition catalogue. He is currently a graduate student in electrical engineering at Stanford University, USA.
 
 
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