On Translations
	
	The children scurry from play when the rains first come.
	I hear a motherly voice usher them to safety as nature intends.
	One remains behind, gathering pooling mud in
	His hands. A genius, I think, before the strictures of personality
	set in.
	

 

 

	The rains come and go as do religion here
	
	The rains come and go as do religion here.
	Fire eats wood, and rock wears
	A suit of brook rattling in its mouth.
	I hear the madness of cows in their pasture
	Stuck in the intimacy of evening.
	My garden, half-blind, stands like
	A wooden harbor planked in rolling fields.
	When we pass a small man with a mule
	I think of the wine he is carrying.
	His sun burnt shoulders like twin
	Asps navigating the untilled acres.
	And I return from the complex pyres
	Built for the eternal savior, and embrace
	The wild harshness of knowing.
	

 

 

John Joynt is currently a Senior Poetry Editor at Drunken Boat and was co-Poetry-Editor for Mary -Online in 2003 (a publication affiliated with the MFA program at Saint Mary's College at Moraga). He has been published in a variety of online literary magazines. His poetry can currently be viewed in the latest issue of Jack Magazine.