Europa: Charlie Mansfield's linguistic journey |
HYPERTEXT IS OUR new slot for the best in creative writing by UK students.
This month’s selection is from ‘Europa’, a new collection of poems by Charlie Mansfield, a postgraduate student of contemporary French culture at Northumbria University. ‘Europa’, a fragmentary epic journey across a thousand years of European history and language, is now published by Mare & Martin.
Breten
"Breten is gar-secges ieg-land,
thaet waes geo geara Albion haten:
is gesett betwix north-daele and west-daele,
Germanie and Gallie and Hispanie,
thaem maestum daelum Europe, micle faece ongean."
From Bede (translated c.871-901)
He never had a name,
Just Albion, the bull.
A hundred stone of bone
And muscle, lithe in living leather.
Not me but the other.
Spring brought the blood
Coursing to his brain,
Hurled him at the gate,
Unfootèd him on the stone.
Smashed his neck.
He sent me for the knife,
Blunt blade that carved his sons.
Then I held his head
While he ragged and sped
Through throat and fur and vein.
Soundless, a purple tide
Welled and ran,
Flushing muddy puddles of spring rain red.
Islanded on rocks we stood.
Marooned mud filled and moved between us.
Water
Fickle water, I thought you pure.
I read in science how you'd pour
Only clockwise down tub or plug.
'Til the equator turned your head.
We Europeans, who stayed at home,
Would never feel
Your giddy, counter-clockwise reel.
A certainty in the spy's mad whirl;
Identified in cargo hold, or trapped in train,
Morocco-bound, she'd pull the plug
And that familiar spiralling would signal sure
Her closeness to the northern shore.
But now I find, a wrist twist,
A gentle paddle in the swirl and,
You spin the other way,
A vortex of licence,
Self-flowing liberation.
On second-thoughts,
It was science had me fooled,
Or stories. And your swirling pools
Wanted human hand to stir,
Desiring intervention,
And science never knew
That mutual attraction
Narcissistic for our watery selves.
Mauer, meaning Wall
'Je m'appuierai si bien et si fort à la vie'
'L'Empreinte' Anna de Noailles (1876-1933)
These are all the fragments of the metropolis,
What becomes of them now is no concern of mine:
Metro, meaning mother and fast electric train,
Item two, a hundred hurried morning faces
Yes, and old walls worn from fret and fevered paces,
Steps slowly scooped by quick-shine shoe and houseworn heel.
She turned into Friedrichstraße. Mutter,
Meaning mother, pushed fast from firm, cold lips,
Running cold and sore from gaol-rods of ice-barbed rain.
She hadn't forgotten her money, she had none.
'I will press myself so hard, so well à la vie,
I will mark it with my print, or it will mark me.'
Item, a room, boots, jacket, cap, a grate with ashes,
Und hier, an der Mauer, the same rain lashes.
All poems, copyright: Charlie Mansfield
Send in your poems, short stories, monologues, non-fiction prose& any examples of your writing that you would like to see published online, as email attachments to editor@hero.ac.uk , and write ‘Hypertext’ in the subject field. Include your course details, and any details of previous publication. Max 1000 words per issue (longer stories may be abridged or split over two issues).
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