8. The moth by Miroslav Holub - A Friend to Claudia
In this episode of our podcast, you will hear Claudia talking about the poem that has been a friend to her: ’The moth' by Miroslav Holub.
We are delighted to feature 'The moth' in this episode and would like to thank Bloodaxe Books for granting us permission to use the poem in this way. Do visit them for further inspiration!
Claudia visited The Poetry Exchange at Greyfriars Chapel in Canterbury, as part of Wise Words Festival in September 2014. We’re very grateful to Wise Words for hosting The Poetry Exchange.
Claudia is in conversation with The Poetry Exchange team members, Fiona Lesley Bennett and Michael Shaeffer.
'The moth' is read by Michael Shaeffer.
*****
The moth
by Miroslav Holub
The moth,
having left its pupa
in the galaxy
of flower grains
and pots of rancid dripping,
the moth
discovers in this
topical darkness
that it’s a kind of butterfly
but
it can’t believe it,
it can’t believe it,
it can’t believe
that it’s a tiny,
flying, relatively
free moth
and it wants to go back,
but there’s no way.
Freedom makes
the moth tremble
for ever. That is,
Twenty-two hours.
Miroslav Holub, Poems Before & After: Collected English Translations. Trans. Dana Hasova and David Young (Bloodaxe Books, 2006)
*****
Adaptation
by Fiona Lesley Bennett.
Czechoslovakia 1976
A man is shuttered away in a laboratory
he stares down the lens of a microscope
into the peppercorn eyes of a moth.
At night words fall through him like particles
that cluster and mutate in spiralling patterns
Nemuze uverit, nemuze uverit, nemuze uverit .
Every twenty-two hours
the moth hangs in its pupa
waiting for the blood to fall
and for the wind and the currents.
Columbia 2011
A woman is kept in a jar, the jar
is kept in darkness, the darkness
is blacker than her eyes. Inside herself
she dreams she is a girl running barefoot
with a net in the garden.
creelo, creelo, creelo
Somewhere
between thought and dream, between
decades and hemispheres and species
the edge of belief begins
like a wing that trembles
and then lifts.
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