The Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition

Jeff Bien

dovesellers

I remember its song
its night of broken glass
when the chalice was wooden
and one blind dove became its scribe.

Desire with its paper boats came
cut its monkish lip
scripture filled its shattered heart
a feather fell against its weight.

Firewands and sermon lit up its beggar’s sky.
The hymns of riversickness and moon blindness
the tricksong evangelists sing
the braille of history
the hillsong that stings the eye.

Fear bled away its autumn light
wild dogs and crows
nested in the hundred and one names of god.
Lions and wolves and lambsong
dressed the soul.

Caesar crossed the flood
with its black flag burning.
Faith lists and show trials strirred its ashes,
carried Jehovah into battle
in caskets of gold.

A gospel of bright moons and broken sextons
threw its voice into idols
and beat the drum in its valley of psalms.
Set aflame the secret garden of its names.
The manna of its broken heart
striped upon its back.

Nicodemus in a shoreless night.

Slow moving in the thicket
the pantomime of nations
drunken boats and glass hills of silence,
beauty spinning its veils.

The sabre rattling
of the Lost Book of War and the Song of Lamac
the Flower Palace and Palace of Jewels
in Tarshis and Nineveh
and the Book of Numbers.

The children of the conquered
and the children of the conquerors
shouting down its name.

Jeff Bien has been translated and published in more than a dozen countries  and his work has been internationally acclaimed. He has read and performed throughout Canada and Europe, including reading tours supported by the Canadian Embassy and Foreign Affairs in Paris, London and most recently Cuba, where his work is now being translated towards a bilingual volume of his poetry.   He has received a Leacock award, a Canadian Author’s Association award, a National Magazine Nomination from Descant, and  a Canada Council award for recordings of his work.   The title poem of "Prosody at the Cafe du coin" was selected by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes for the distinguished Arvon anthology in Great Britain.  Mr. Bien is completing a new book of poems “The Poet Sings”, and recordings of “Prosody at the cafe du coin”, a more formal collection of his work.