Archilochus: The Idea of Iambos

This post was inspired by the recent publication of Andrea Rotstein’s The Idea of Iambos, a new and exceedingly well-researched work on Greek Iambic poetry. Rotstein’s work, published in February of 2010, was reviewed in the Bryn Mawr Classical Review. This post is not part of the Found in the Folio series.

I’ve debated adding Archilochus (ca. 680 – 645 BC) to the Folio list. The reasons against are strong – his work only exists in mangled, scattered fragments and he is not well-studied (The Folio methodologically consists of the most written about poets). Readers often assumed that Guy Davenport, his main translator into English, invented the poet [So it’s clear: He didn’t]. When the entire corpus was assembled and translated in the early 1960s, it amounted to less than 25 pages. Short enough that I, and every other Archilochus fan I know, first devoured the collection in one sitting. If you have the time, you might well read all of it – the Carmina Archilochi [behind a JSTOR paywall]. A small enough collection that a 30-line erotic papyrus discovered in the 1970s transformed the direction of Archilochus criticism.

So why Archilochus?  We could easily begin with “the firsts”: he is the first extant poet to write lyric work in the first person. He invented poetry’s I. In addition, he is the first extant poet to write in Iambic meter. [Not pentameter, but rather trimeter. Chaucer likely invented iambic pentameter, superseding the rhyming octosyllabic couplet of Medieval French poetry that his friend John Gower employed in Middle English as well as the Anglo-Saxon accentual tetrameter of Beowulf.] Between  those two ideas, Archilochus is perhaps the most innovative poet of western literature. Not bad for 25 pages.

But innovative still isn’t enough. Was Archilochus any good?  For an answer, I’ll let Roberto Bolaño speak.  From the semi-autobiographical “Meeting with Enrique Lihn“:

I’m talking about 1981 or 1982, when I was living like a recluse in a house outside Gerona, with no money and no prospect of ever having any, and literature was a vast minefield occupied by enemies, except for a few classic authors (just a few), and every day I had to walk through that minefield, where any false move could be fatal, with only the poems of Archilochus to guide me. It’s like that for all young writers. There comes a time when you have no support, not even from friends, forget about mentors, and there’s no one to give you a hand; publication, prizes, and grants are reserved for the others, the ones who said “Yes, sir,” over and over, or those who praised the literary mandarins, a never-ending horde distinguished only by their aptitude for discipline and punishment—nothing escapes them and they forgive nothing. Anyway, as I was saying, all young writers feel this way at some point or other in their lives. But at the time I was twenty-eight years old and under no circumstances could I consider myself a young writer. I was adrift. I wasn’t the typical Latin-American writer living in Europe thanks to some government sinecure. I was a nobody and not inclined to beg for mercy or to show it.

If for no other reason, we can thank Archilochus for sustaining Bolaño long enough to write The Savage Detectives, 2666, and The Romantic Dogs. But Folio Found is about poetry and not in the business of reviewing fiction, so I have to suspend that policy to say read those books if you haven’t already.

Biographical details are scarce: He was born on the island of Paros but moved to a colony founded by his father at Thasos, supposedly at the command of the Delphic Oracle. Archilochus lived his days as a mercenary, rootless. Those facts are about all we know with any certainty.  He has a handful of great legends swirling about him though.  A persistent one has it that the poet was promised the daughter of Lycambes’ hand in marriage. Subsequently refused, Archilochus sang mocking lyrics so vicious that Lycambes and his daughters hanged themselves as a family [JSTOR paywall again].

Which brings us to the poetry. It’s written in a fairly archaic Greek and is quite fragmentary, so even those who have studied Ancient Greek are likely to have trouble with the language. Your best bet is to get a copy of the side-by-side Loeb Greek Iambic Poetry: From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries B.C. collection if you want to examine the original. The most famous piece, the last fragment included in this sample, inspired Isaiah Berlin’s popular The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History [Although some argue, a bit pedantically, that Berlin misrepresented Archilochus]. The first poem is from a translation by Lattimore, and the remainder are from Davenport.  Davenport’s translations of Archilochus, along with those of other early lyrics poets, can be found in the great book 7 Greeks.

67.

Heart, my heart, so battered with misfortune far beyond your strength,
up, and face the men who hate us. Bare your chest to the assault
of the enemy, and fight them off. Stand fast among the beamlike spears.
Give no ground; and if you beat them, do not brag in open show,
nor, if they beat you, run home and lie down on your bed and cry.
Keep some measure in the joy you take in luck, and the degree you
give way to sorrow. All our life is up-and-down like this.

11.

Uninspired but sentimental
Over one sadness or another
As a subject for his poems,
The voluble poet whets his stylus.

17.

The oxherd picks tarantulas from his oxen,
The cocksman keeps his prick dainty and clean:
The nature of man is diverse and surprising,
Each finding his pleasure where the heart wills,
And each can say, I alone among mankind
Have what’s best, what’s fine and good
From Zeus, God, Father of men and gods.
Yet Eurymas finds fault with everybody.

24.

Some Saian mountaineer
Struts today with my shield.
I threw it down by a bush and ran
When the fighting got hot.
Life seemed somehow more precious.
It was a beautiful shield.
I know where I can buy another
Exactly like it, just as round.

27.

As one fig tree in a rocky place
Feeds a lot of crows,
Easy going Pasiphile
Receives a lot of strangers.

37.

What a burden off my neck!
What a joy to escape marriage!
Another time, Lykambes,
father-in-law almost.
I can’t bring you to your knees.
Honor presupposes a sense of shame,
And that you haven’t got.

50.

How many times,
How many times,
On the grey sea,
The sea combed
By the wind
Like a wilderness
Of woman’s hair,
Have we longed,
Lost in nostalgia,
For the sweetness
Of homecoming.

52.

And the heart
Is pleased
By one thing
After another.

54.

Night.
The wind
Blows landward.
Branches
Creak.

65.

What breaks me,
Young friend,
Is tasteless desire,
Dead iambics,
Boring dinners.

98.

Old and
At home.

105.

Damp
Crotch.

127:

Fortune is a wily one
Fire in her right hand,
Water in her left.

151.

When you upbraid me
For my poems,
Catch also a cricket
By the wings,
And shout at him
For chirping.

153.

Fox knows many,
Hedgehog one
Solid trick.

Litmag Roundup

Refresh yourself on the last batch of picks here.

New and Recommended Poems

• Lucia Perillo contributes to The New Yorker.  Last month, Folio Found recommended her recent collection Inseminating the Elephant.
• “A Correction” by Idris Anderson in Agni.
• Also in The New Yorker, Richard Wilbur writes “A Prelude.“
• Poetry features a handful of works from Eleanor Ross Taylor, who was awarded the Ruth Lilly Prize last month.  The selection is solid, start perhaps with “Where Somebody Died.”  We’ll be posting more on Taylor, but her Captive Voices: New and Selected Poems, 1960-2008 (Southern Messenger Poets) is well worth a read.
• In the New Criterion, Adam L. Dressler writes of “The Lacedaemonian boy.“
• Mary Jo Salter won Poetry Northwest’s Theodore Roethke Prize for her “Unbroken Music” and “From a Balcony, Lake Como.”
• Robert Pinsky examines two Robert Frost poems at Slate, asking: Was Frost a Modernist?

img/Nobuyoshi Araki

Tuesday links

• David Biespiel calls for poets to involve themselves in civic discourse in the cover article for the new issue of Poetry. “American democracy needs the citizen-poet to address a gamut of difficult-to-solve public issues such as cultural fragmentation, national health care, decrepit infrastructure, threats of terrorism, energy consumption, climate change, nuclear proliferation, warfare, poverty, crime, immigration, and civil rights. ” He continues: “And just as soon as the American poet actually speaks in public about civic concerns other than poetry, both American poetry and American democracy will be better off for it.” But culture rarely has the civilizing effect Biespiel hopes for. Take, for example, Peeling the Onion, where Günter Grass describes lusting after masterpieces of art – Botticelli, Caravaggio, Frans Hals, Rembrandt – only to enthusiastically join the Waffen-SS as a 17-year-old. Artistic and moral faculties develop separately, he would later write. Poetry is unlikely to make us civically engaged, vote smarter, or even better people in the timeframe demanded by elections.
• Poet Karl Kirchwey looks at Derek Walcott’s new book, White Egrets, in the NYTimes Book Review.
• I recently linked to an Edith Grossman article in Guernica and a review of Why Translation Matters in the Times Book Review.  Chad Post reviews the book over at the Quarterly Conversation, arguing that her thoughts on translation (especially the poetry section) are worth the price of admission, but that the book is ultimately “a bit misguided” as a defense of the art.
• The poetry of Langston Hughes has been adapted by Walter Marks and Kent Gash at the UrbanStages Theater. (Extended through May 9). A favorable notice in the New Yorker:
  

  This new musical, about the life of the poet Langston Hughes, does a beautiful job covering a lot of ground. We learn about the time Hughes spent hanging out in Harlem with Zora Neale Hurston in the nineteen-twenties, when they were young and unknown, and that during the Harlem Renaissance he was subsidized by a rich white woman with connections in publishing who found out about his poetry from her maid; we are also told that he became so angry about what he saw on the streets of Harlem in the nineteen-forties and fifties that he lost, for a while, his patron, his friends, and his ear for poetry. But what’s astounding about this show, directed by Kent Gash, with music by Walter Marks, is how well Hughes’s evocative verse, used as dialogue and for all the lyrics, lends itself to the biographical musical-theatre genre. Because the poetry is deep and gorgeous, the book (co-written by Gash and Marks) and the lyrics are, too. And it doesn’t hurt that the singing—jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues—and the dancing, choreographed by Byron Easley, are inspired.

• Harvard UP announces the Murty Classical Library of India series with the goal of providing critical editions of works from Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Marathi, Persian, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, and other Indian languages.

Theater in Translation News

• Strawdog Theatre’s production of The Good Soul of Szechuan by Bertolt Brecht is receiving solid reviews in Chicago. Dir. Shade Murray uses a 2008 translation by David Harrower (Blackbird, Knives in Hens). Through May 29.
• August Strindberg’s Creditors gets a new translation by David Greig.  Ben Brantley writes favorably about the production, directed by Alan Rickman (Through May 16 at BAM Harvey Theater):
  

  In the world of August Strindberg, where everyone is always armed and dangerous, it takes only 90 minutes to destroy a marriage. That’s the time required to perform the thrilling new interpretation of “Creditors,” which opened Tuesday night at the Harvey Theater of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. When this impeccably acted three-character drama has put the last of those minutes to cruel and careful use, you’re likely to feel you’ve had the breath knocked out of you. Despite yourself, you’ll probably be smiling too.

img/Richard Barnes

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Found in the Folio: Maria Konopnicka

We read Catullus last week to introduce the series.

Poland had little political future, it seemed, in the aftermath of 1863’s January Uprising.  Russia responded to the insurrection with harsh retribution against local economic and political leaders: hanging some four hundred, deporting tens of thousands to Siberia, and confiscating 1,600 estates. Poland had been divided politically over the past century through a series of partitions, and Russian administrators now hoped to eradicate any residual sense of loyalty to a Polish state. The Catholic Church, the backbone of resistance, was officially denied any union with Rome in 1875. Sermons were to be in Russian and traditional hymns abandoned. No bishop remained at the head of his diocese after 1870. The Russians also attempted economic change. The landowning gentry were especially hard hit, driven from their land by excessive tax levies or outright confiscation. As a result of the economic instability, a number of former landowners moved to the cities in search of employment over the following decade. (Wandycz, pp. 196-9)

21-year-old Maria Konopnicka (1842-1910) married shortly prior to the insurrection.  In the intervening years, she would raise six children before separating from her much older husband.  Like many of her class and generation, Konopnicka could not find economic opportunities in rural Poland, and moved to Warsaw to work as a literary editor and translator. As an editor for the journal Swit, she helped to shape the intellectual trends of her nation’s politically-conscious urban population.

Poland’s political and cultural leadership was a unique phenomenon at the time in Europe. It remained similar to Russian influences, but with one key difference:  Russian intellectuals were largely alienated within their own state due to the political dominance and repression of the Romanovs.  Their Polish counterparts, however, had no state of their own on account of the partition. With no political identity to unify Poland, those looking for a national consciousness turned towards cultural leaders. For most of the 19th century, the Polish rallied around Romantic thinkers and writers like Adam Mickiewicz who saw Poland in an intensely patriotic light and advocated armed resistance against outside political dominance.

After the harsh response to the January Uprising, some began to rethink the revolutionary ideals of Polish Romanticism in favor of a Positivist “Organic work” (praca organiczna) that attempted to foster the growth of the nation as a whole organism.  Influenced by Auguste Comte’s Course of Positive Philosophy, Konopnicka’s poetry reflects this trend through a concern for contemporary political and social problems.  Her poem “The River,” for example, can be read both as an account of a thawing stream as well as an extended metaphor for her partitioned homeland.

“The River” (“Rzeka“), trans. Watson Kirkconnell

Gleaming pool and rippling ford
Now are held in ice abhorr’d;
Gone are foam and living tide,
Hid in depths of frozen pride:

Lost his spring-dawn’s
Ecstasy:
Lost his journey
Far to sea.

Dark, cold river, ice as king
Brings no new and fatal thing;
Every year the winter chains thee,
Every year the blizzard pains thee.

Spring at last
In buxom glee
Sends thee dashing
Far to sea.

Not for aye the sun hides deep;
Not for aye earth falls asleep;
Not for aye the flowers are furl’d;
Not for aye frost rules the world.

Buxom spring arrives with glee;
Streams go dashing
Far to sea!

Za tą głębią, za tym brodem,
Tam stanęła rzeka lodem;
Ani szumi, ani płynie,
Tylko duma w swej głębinie:

Gdzie jej wiosna,
Gdzie jej zorza?
Gdzie jej droga
Het, do morza?

Oj, ty rzeko, oj, ty sina,
Lody tobie nie nowina;
Co rok zima więzi ciebie,
Co rok wichry mkną po niebie.

Aż znów przyjdzie
Wiosna hoża
I popłyniesz
Het, do morza!

Nie na zawsze słonko gaśnie,
Nie na zawsze ziemia zaśnie,
Nie na zawsze więdnie kwiecie,
Nie na zawsze mróz na świecie.

Przyjdzie wiosna,
Przyjdzie hoża,
Pójdą rzeki
Het, do morza!

“Waiting,” trans. Watson Kirkconnell

Once, and twice, the heavy plough
Through our land has riven now;
Black the cloven clods remain –
Waiting, sowing, waiting grain.
-Seedtime, sower, come, we plead!
-Do not tarry at our need.

Storms have awed the heart of earth;
Winds wail’d o’er with course of death;
Fruitful rain has fall’n from heaven;

Still we lack the sower’s leaven!
-Nation’s soul and prairie soil,
-Sower, wait thy vital toil!

With our fathers’ bones each field
Hallow’d, grants an ampler yield;
Slow the sun dispels our shadows;
Roses tremble down the meadows.
-Sower, mankind supplicates you-
-Earth, the ancient, here awaits you!

Przeorały raz i drugi
Ziemię naszą ciężkie pługi;
A po każdym skiba czarna
Czeka siewu, czeka ziarna.
Hej, siewacze, błogi czas!
Czemuż dotąd nie ma was?
Burze wstrząsły ziemi łonem,
Wiatr przeleciał nad zagonem,
Spadły z nieba żyzne deszcze,
A was dotąd niema jeszcze!
Hej, siewacze, na wasz trud
Czeka ziemia, czeka lud!
Kości ojców, ich mogiły,
Pola nasze użyźniły,
Słonko wschodzi nam powoli,
Białe rosy drżą na roli…
Hej, siewacze, błogi czas!
Stara ziemia czeka was!

“Contra Spem Spero,” trans. Michael J. Mikos

Against the hope, which stands upon a cloud
Of tears, anchored to the swift winds’ crest
And turns its eyes toward the stormy shroud
And tempest,
I trust in the stars undimmed in squall’s scope
Against all hope.

Just as a blind bard, embraced by the night,
Though he knows the sun won’t rise for him anew,
Lifts his frenzied eyes toward the utmost height,
His trembling hands too,
And with his dimmed eye drinks nocturnal spray,
Trusting the password of day.

I know the birds that brought us long ago
The light of glory, flew to a distant shore,
And waters of our rivers do not flow
To the sea as before…
And a son feeds on bitter ears of grain
From his fathers’ domain.

Over us God Himself quenched the flambeau
And shook off the ashes upon each narrow house.
We go, just as the homeless wanderers go,
With withered brows,
And the trail of our footsteps is buried soon
By the wind of doom.

I know, let a sad echo stop telling me
What burns me with shame and brings painful turmoil,
For I also come from a big cemetery
And from blood-soaked soil…
And I also fly like a maddened quail
Driven by the gale.

And yet with wings beating against darkness,
Enveloped in a sphere of our hell aglow,
My eyes are seeking the day’s sun and brightness
Contra spem – spero…
In the depth of the graves I feel life’s thrill,
And I trust still…

Against all hope and against confidence
Of frigid spirits and death of augurs,
I trust in new life of ashes and bones hence,
In the dawn of azures.
And in the people’s star I trust in squall’s scope,
Against all hope!

Przeciw nadziei, co stoi na chmurze
Łez, prędkim wichrom rzuciwszy kotwicę,
I obrócony wzrok trzyma na burze
I nawałnice,
W niezgasłe gwiazdy ufam wśród zawiei
Przeciw nadziei.

Tak pieśniarz ślepy, gdy go noc otoczy,
Choć wie, że rankiem nie wzejdzie mu słońce,
Podnosi w niebo obłąkane oczy
I dłonie drżące
I mroki pije źrenicą zagasłą,
Wierząc w dnia hasło.

Wiem, odleciały te ptaki daleko,
Co nam na skrzydłach niosły chwały zorze,
I z rzek już naszych te wody nie cieką,
Które szły w morze…
I syn się karmi kłosami gorzkiemi
Z ojców swych ziemi.

Sam Bóg zagasił nad nami pochodnię
I na mogiły strząsnął jej popioły.
Idziem, jak idą bezdomne przechodnie,
Z zwiędłemi czoły,
A stopy naszej zasypuje ślady
Wicher zagłady…

Wiem, niech mi smętne echo nie powtarza
Tego, co wstydem pali i co boli.
Bom ja też rodem z wielkiego cmentarza
l z krwawej roli…
I ja też lecę jak ptak obłąkany
I wichrem gnany.

Przecież o zmierzchy skrzydłami bijąca
I piekieł naszych ogamiona sferą,
Oczyma szukam dnia blasków i słońca.
Contra spem – spero…
I w mogił głębi czuję życia dreszcze,
I ufam jeszcze…

Przeciw nadziei i przeciw pewności
Wystygłych duchów i śmierci wróżbitów
Wierzę w wskrzeszenie popiołów i kości,
W jutrznię błękitów…
I w gwiazdę ludów wierzę wśród zawiei,
Przeciw nadziei!

“And Why Do You, Morning Dewdrops…” (“A czemuż wy, chłodne rosy…“), trans. Michael J. Mikos

And why do you, morning dewdrops,
Fall to the ground?
When I’m naked, when I’m barefoot,
Hungry homebound?
Isn’t it enough when man is crying
On this earth?
Why then would the night be shedding
Silver tears?

If I only walked to and fro
In the ploughland
And just counted those tears that flow
Into the sand…
From this sowing people would dread
To glean a sheaf,
For all the stacks would be blood red
Beyond belief!

The sun will appear in the blue,
Rising aglow,
And will drink the abundant dew
In the meadow…
And yet to dry up the entire
Sea of our tears,
You’d have to set the world on fire,
Lord of the spheres!

A czemuż wy, chłodne rosy,
Padacie,
Gdym ja nagi, gdym ja bosy,
Głód w chacie?…
Czy nie dosyć, że człek płacze
Na ziemi?
Co ta nocka sypie łzami
Srebrnemi?

Oj, żebym ja poszedł ino
Przez pole
I policzył łzy, co płyną
Na rolę…
Strach by było, z tego siewu
Żąć żniwo,
Boby snopy były krwawe
Na dziwo!

Przyjdzie słonko na niebiosy
Wschodzące
I wypije bujne rosy
Na łące…
Ale żeby wyschło naszych
Łez morze,
Chyba cały świat zapalisz,
Mój Boże!

Sources for More Maria Konopnicka

Ushered to prominence by Czeslaw Milosz, post-war Polish poets such as Zbigniew Herbert, Wisława Szymborska, and Adam Zagajewski have greatly succeeded in English translation.  Pre-20th century authors, however, have not fared quite as well. As a result, a number of significant Polish poets are still widely untranslated. Konopnicka, for example, has not had a full-length volume of poetry translated into English, despite her continued prominence among Polish readers.  Her translated verse rests in anthologies, like that of a good deal of her contemporaries. The best recent source for her work in English is Michael J. Mikos’ Polish Literature from 1864 to 1918. Konopnicka’s poems, in addition to two of her stories, are also anthologized in Adam Gillon and Ludwik Krzyzanowski’s Introduction to Modern Polish Literature (1982). These two works are solid guides to Polish literature after 1864.

The political and intellectual foundations of Konopnicka’s poetry are important for understanding her specific concerns. She should not be read in a vacuum. Stanislaus A Blejwas’ Realism in Polish Politics: Warsaw Positivism and National Survival in Nineteenth Century Poland traces the parallel growth of Positivism and Organic work before and during the poet’s era. Additionally, The Lands of Partitioned Poland, 1795-1918 by Piotr S. Wandycz serves as a valuable study of the developments in each of Poland’s three partitions.

Litmag Roundup

• The Missouri Review publishes a series of “Dream Poems” by Richard Bausch.
• Joanna Klink talks poetry in Jubilat.  Looking forward to her next collection, Raptus, which Penguin is releasing this May (preorder a copy).
• Rae Armantrout in Poetry.
• Robert Bly in the APR, “Nirmala’s Music.”
• Bly is hitting the magazines hard this month.
• Poetry Northwest announces its newest issue with a poem by Rick Barot. He is the author of Want: Poems– a book worth a few readings.
• After this week’s premiere of Treme on HBO, I like to imagine John Goodman reciting this poem.  Fady Joudah in Callaloo – behind a wall for subscribers and libraries.
• Atlanta Review has the most bizarrely charming web presence.  I’m not even sure this is the entirety of Michael Lee Phillips’ prize-winning poem, but it’s still a solid narrative piece.
• Adam Zagajewski, translated from Polish by Clare Cavanagh, in Five Points.

img/yayoi.kusama

The Finalists, Pulitzers #3

Rae Armantrout’s Versed deservedly won yesterday’s Pulitzer, and will likely garner more analysis and discussion in other outlets as a result. So as to not ignore the finalists, here are a few thoughts on the books:

1. Inseminating the Elephant, by Lucia Perillo. It’s a troubling sign when poetry reviewers call a book “funny” – it means one of two equally bad options: A) The poet wrote footnotes for a bilingual pun they’re quoting in the original Sanskrit. Or, B) Grandmothers and members of the clergy are likely to chuckle. So I was surprised when I caught myself laughing throughout this excellent collection. The poet’s humor is both aggressive and humble. It forced me to recognize in Perillo’s multiple sclerosis my body’s own fragility. Recommended.
2. Tryst, by Angie Estes.  Estes makes a lot of references – opera librettos, letters of Petrarch, Nijinsky’s fountain pen, Cimabue, the Indy 500.  I found myself skipping through just to look at the italicized quotes, which were always more engaging than the poems themselves. By the end of the book, I hadn’t been able to find Estes in her work – she was lost behind a constant display of erudition. Allusion for allusion’s sake. At one point, her footnotes actually recommended I try Google Translate. This collection might have fared better instead as quotes anthology.

——-

• Yesterday I mentioned having seen something odd in the Drama category.  Pulitzer jurist and theater critic Charles McNulty confirmed my suspicions in an interesting article in today’s LA Times. He writes “the [Pulitzer] board ignored the advice of its drama jury in favor of its own sentiments.”  In doing so, he argues that the board is on the wrong side of “the new guard of American playwriting.“

Litmag Roundup

• Todd Boss with “It Is Enough to Enter” in Poetry.
• Natasha Trethewey goes fishing in the New England Review. Her most recent collection is the highly recommended Native Guard.
• Jynne Dilling Martin throws the first fish back (Ploughshares).
• Ricardo Pau-Llosa in the Kenyon Review, “Nicodemus Man.“
• Sensing a nautical theme this week – Sarah Cohen as “Scylla and Charybdis” (Threepenny Review).
• In New American Writing, a longer poem by Mahmoud Darwish, “Counterpoint, for Edward Said.” Trans., Fady Joudah.  It is difficult to read this poem and not be reminded of Adonis’ “Grave for New York.”

img/pieter.hugo