en

12910

Logo lyrikline pure Logo lyrikline claim
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  
all results
  • Contact
  • Partners
  • Donation
  • deutsch
  • english
  • français
  • slovenščina
  • العربية
  • русский
  • español
  • português
  • 中文
  • POETS
    • A-Z 
      • A
      • B
      • C
      • D
      • E
      • F
      • G
      • H
      • I
      • J
      • K
      • L
      • M
      • N
      • O
      • P
      • Q
      • R
      • S
      • T
      • U
      • V
      • W
      • X
      • Y
      • Z
    • by languages 
      • afrikaans
        albanian
        amharic
        arabic
        armenian
        basque
        belarusian
        bengali
        bosnian
        breton
        bulgarian
        burmese
        catalan
        chinese
        cree
        croatian
        czech
        danish
        dutch
        english
        estonian
        finnish
        french
        galician
        georgian
        german
        greek
        gujarati
        hebrew
        hindi
        hungarian
        icelandic
        indonesian
        irish
        italian
        japanese
        kalaallisut
        kannada
        korean
        kurdish
        latvian
        lithuanian
        macedonian
        malay
        malayalam
        maltese
        marathi
        nepali
        northern sami
        norwegian
        oriya
        persian
        polish
        portuguese
        punjabi
        rhaeto-romance
        romanian
        russian
        scottish gaelic
        serbian
        shona
        sindhi
        sinhala
        slovak
        slovenian
        southern sami
        spanish
        swahili
        swedish
        tamil
        telugu
        tswana
        turkish
        ukrainian
        urdu
        uzbek
        vietnamese
        welsh
        xhosa
        yiddish
    • by countries 
      • Albania
        Algeria
        Andorra
        Angola
        Argentina
        Armenia
        Australia
        Austria
        Bahrain
        Bangladesh
        Belarus
        Belgium
        Bolivia
        Bosnia and Herzegovina
        Botswana
        Brazil
        Bulgaria
        Burundi
        Cambodia
        Canada
        Chile
        China
        Colombia
        Congo - Kinshasa
        Costa Rica
        Croatia
        Cuba
        Cyprus
        Czech Republic
        Côte d’Ivoire
        Denmark
        Dominican Republic
        Egypt
        Estonia
        Ethiopia
        Finland
        France
        Georgia
        Germany
        Ghana
        Greece
        Greenland
        Guatemala
        Guinea-Bissau
        Haiti
        Honduras
        Hungary
        Iceland
        India
        Indonesia
        Iran
        Iraq
        Ireland
        Israel
        Italy
        Jamaica
        Japan
        Kenya
        Kuwait
        Latvia
        Lebanon
        Libya
        Lithuania
        Luxembourg
        Macedonia
        Malawi
        Malaysia
        Malta
        Martinique
        Mexico
        Moldova
        Montenegro
        Morocco
        Mozambique
        Myanmar [Burma]
        Netherlands
        New Zealand
        Nigeria
        Norway
        Oman
        Pakistan
        Palestinian Territories
        Paraguay
        Peru
        Poland
        Portugal
        Puerto Rico
        Romania
        Russia
        Saint Lucia
        Saudi Arabia
        Senegal
        Serbia
        Singapore
        Slovakia
        Slovenia
        South Africa
        South Korea
        Spain
        Sri Lanka
        Sweden
        Switzerland
        Syria
        São Tomé and Príncipe
        Taiwan
        Trinidad and Tobago
        Tunisia
        Turkey
        Ukraine
        United Arab Emirates
        United Kingdom
        United States
        Uruguay
        Uzbekistan
        Venezuela
        Vietnam
        Yemen
        Zambia
        Zimbabwe
  • POEMS
    • by languages 
      • afrikaans
        albanian
        amharic
        arabic
        arawak
        armenian
        basque
        belarusian
        bengali
        bosnian
        breton
        bulgarian
        burmese
        catalan
        chinese
        cree
        croatian
        czech
        danish
        dutch
        english
        estonian
        finnish
        french
        galician
        georgian
        german
        greek
        gujarati
        hebrew
        hindi
        hungarian
        icelandic
        indonesian
        irish
        italian
        japanese
        kalaallisut
        kannada
        korean
        kurdish
        latvian
        lithuanian
        lushai
        macedonian
        malay
        malayalam
        maltese
        maori
        marathi
        nepali
        northern sami
        norwegian
        oriya
        persian
        polish
        portuguese
        punjabi
        rhaeto-romance
        romanian
        romany
        russian
        scottish gaelic
        serbian
        shona
        sindhi
        sinhala
        slovak
        slovenian
        sorbian language
        southern sami
        spanish
        swahili
        swedish
        tamil
        telugu
        tswana
        tumbuka
        turkish
        ukrainian
        urdu
        uzbek
        vietnamese
        welsh
        western frisian
        xhosa
        yiddish
    • in translation 
      • abkhazian
        afar
        afrikaans
        albanian
        arabic
        araucanian
        armenian
        assamese
        basque
        belarusian
        bengali
        berber
        bosnian
        breton
        bulgarian
        buriat
        catalan
        chechen
        chinese
        chuvash
        corsican
        croatian
        czech
        danish
        duala
        dutch
        english
        esperanto
        estonian
        finnish
        french
        galician
        georgian
        german
        greek
        gujarati
        haitian
        hebrew
        hindi
        hungarian
        icelandic
        indonesian
        irish
        italian
        japanese
        kalmyk
        kannada
        kashmiri
        kazakh
        kirghiz
        korean
        kumyk
        kurdish
        latin
        latvian
        lezghian
        lithuanian
        lushai
        macedonian
        malay
        malayalam
        maltese
        marathi
        mayan language
        mongolian
        nepali
        norwegian
        occitan
        oriya
        persian
        polish
        portuguese
        rhaeto-romance
        romanian
        romany
        russian
        sanskrit
        sardinian
        scots
        scottish gaelic
        serbian
        shona
        sindhi
        sinhala
        slovak
        slovenian
        sorbian language
        southern sami
        spanish
        swahili
        swedish
        swiss german
        tajik
        tamil
        tatar
        telugu
        tetum
        turkish
        turkmen
        udmurt
        ukrainian
        urdu
        uzbek
        vietnamese
        welsh
        yakut
    • genres & aspects
      • experimental poetry
      • concrete poetry
      • sound poetry
      • visual poetry
      • poetry projects
      • series & cycles
      • poetry for children
      • humorous poetry
      • narrative poetry
      • poems on poetics
      • Ecopoetry / Nature writing
      • political poetry
      • erotic poetry
      • dialect
      • performance
      • with music / sound
      • spoken word / Rap
      • translingual / hybrid / Pidgin
    • poetic forms & terms
      • ode
      • haiku / tanka
      • collage / montage
      • Dinggedicht
      • prose poem
      • rhymed stanza
      • renshi
      • sestina
      • sonnet
      • terza rima
      • villanelle
      • ghazal
      • ballad
    • issues
      • society
        • identity (collective)
        • traditions
        • homeland
        • cities & urban life
        • history
        • politics
        • war
        • exile
        • economy
        • social critique / cultural criticism
      • life & relationship
        • family
          • birth
          • child
          • mother
          • father
        • infancy & youth
        • age
        • memory
        • identity (personal)
        • gender & sexuality
          • woman
          • man
          • sex & eroticism
          • homosexuality
        • friendship
        • love
        • marriage
        • relationship conflict
        • work
        • illness
        • body
        • violence
        • loss & separation
        • death & grief
        • funeral
        • religion & sprituality
        • Dream
        • travel
        • time
        • eating & drinking
        • alcohol & drugs
      • culture & science
        • architecture & design
        • poetry & poets
        • art & painting
        • literature & reading
        • fairy-tales & legends
        • medicine & science
        • music
        • mythology
        • philosophy
        • photography & film
        • popular culture
        • language
        • theater & dance
        • writing (poetry)
      • nature
        • spring
        • summer
        • fall
        • winter
        • landscape
        • water
        • animals
        • plants
    • Rhythmic Patterns
      • Parlando
      • Cadence
      • Variable Foot
      • Sprung Rhythm
      • Syncopations
      • Rubato
      • Permutations
      • Gestic rhythm (= Stressed Enjambements)
      • Cut-ups
      • Ellipses
      • Syllabic decompositions
      • Lettristic Decomposition
  • NEW
    • Poems
    • Poets
    • Translations
Login
  •  

Jill Jones

My Ruined Lyrics

  • 1 My Ruined Lyrics
  • 2 Wave
  • 3 The Beautiful Anxiety
  • 4 The Slide
  • 5 Afternoon Grey In
Language: english
  • play
  • pause
Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.

My Ruined Lyrics

“You forget whole years, and not necessarily the least important ones.”
— Javier Marías, The Dark Back of Time
 
1. Hold On
 
The song isn’t as loud
as you think it should be
 
It accompanies the road
nonetheless
 
You hear it in the rain
 
Hang on, even a cicada has got
its dream rhythm
 
That walks with you
through the door
 
After you’ve crossed the river
look back, it’s passed you
 
The notes trail
 
Its attributes are lies and truth
the clash of pasts
 
 
2. I’m Coming
 
I can’t give you any more
although the weir overflows
 
And here in my pockets
another flow
 
Of cellophane, an old musket
a slide rule, seed catalogues, powers
 
The river rises
in the hundred year flood
 
There’s something planetary
in the moan of levees
 
I lay my hands on
evidence changing gears
 
My logbook is full of
sneaky miles
 
The lie is of the tongue
 
And I would kiss you with it
when I come
 
 
3. Fields of Wheat
 
The hour is a vast frontier
moving into day.
In it I spent a year
and then a decade
moving you all around.
 
It was all down to
bad timing at a desk
the design of borders
a lack of motivation and petrol
and now the Russians have come
with gold lame g-strings
and a kind of unattractive
comedy
that beats queuing.
 
I know these are dreams of salvage
and dawn the rescue hour
climbing stairs into duties.
But the orders are confused
and nothing seems to grow.
 
I ask the Russians for true grain
and a giant sleigh
but it’s become too warm
and foghorns tumble.
 
It is each according to need
and the sun strikes up the band.
 
 
4. Bird on the Run
 
Somewhere the war
is outside my window
showing on a graph
heart-shaped
and inevitable.
 
But I do not roar in pain
yet.
 
I am waiting for the birds
then I’ll know.
They are not a chorus.
They do not know
how to come home.
They no longer bear
the message.
 
Which is why
 
I jump the sill
I jump the rocket launcher.
 
I jump the map
 
and it bears me.
 
Hear my wings!
 
 
5. Flesh and Spark
 
And when I came
to you
it was raining
 
We had to be covered
in something other
than ink-black night
 
The guitars had all drifted
in their boats
animals were nervous
 
If we don’t get access
there’s still
recall, its open moment
 
Along the curled map
of seeds
and their prices
 
Among the shot
the falling lead
and winged cartography
 
There, let us have
our doubts
we grave them secret skins
 
Though covered
they tell flesh
and spark
 
 
6. Unusual
 
The air fills with
petrichor
after rain on sandstone.
 
It’s unusual, and we must
speak it
this drought, this daring.
 
It will be fire.
It will be cord and rope.
We’ll sing it long.
 
The war wasn’t a lie.
The bombs dropped … so.
And near where you told me.
 
Trace it on the sheet
and this once
dream it on the beach.
 
Then outside awakened
again we walk in the depth
of field.

© Jill Jones
Audio production: The Red Room Company, 2015

Translations:

previous poem
   (Afternoon Grey In)
1 / 5
next poem
(Wave)   
listen to all poems

Jill Jones

photo © private
* 01.01.1951, Sydney, Australia
lives in: Adelaide, Australia

Jill Jones has published nine books of poetry, and a number of chapbooks. In 1993 she won the Mary Gilmore Award for her first book, The Mask and the Jagged Star (Hazard Press). Her latest books are Breaking the Days (Whitmore Press), and The Beautiful Anxiety (Puncher and Wattmann), which won the 2015 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry. Her work is represented in a number of major anthologies including the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature, The Turnrow Anthology of Contemporary Australian Poetry and The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry. 

 photo © private
She has been an invited guest at most of the major literary festivals in Australia as well as poetry festivals in Canada and the Czech Republic, and has appeared as a featured reader in events in the US, UK and NZ. Her poems have been translated into a number of languages including Chinese, French, Czech and Spanish. She edited, with Michael Farrell, Out of the Box: Contemporary Australian Gay and Lesbian Poets. She has collaborated with photographer Annette Willis, artist Bruno Leti, artist and poet Angela Gardner, and other visual and sound artists on a number of multi-media projects, which have been presented at various festivals and events in Australia, NZ and the UK. She was poet-in-residence at Stockholm University for five months in 2014-15. She is a member of the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, University of Adelaide.

Publications
  • The Mask and the Jagged Star

    The Mask and the Jagged Star

    Christchurch: Hazard Press, 1992

  • Flagging Down Time

    Wollongong: Five Islands Press, 1992

  • The Book of Possibilities

    Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1997

  • Screen Jets Heaven: New & Selected Poems

    Cambridge: Salt Publishing, 2002

  • Struggle & Radiance: Ten Commentaries

    Wild Honey Press, 2004

  • Broken/Open

    Cambridge: Salt Publishing, 2005

  • Dark Bright Doors

    Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 2010

  • Breaking the Days

    Breaking the Days

    Whitmore Press, 2015

  • The Beautiful Anxiety

    The Beautiful Anxiety

    Puncher and Wattmann, 2015

Awards
  • 1993 Mary Gilmore Award

  • 2003 Kenneth Slessor Poetry Prize, NSW Premier's Literary Awards

  • 2015 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Poetry

Links
  • Website of the poet

    Website
  • Blog

    Website
  • Jill Jones@ Australian Poetry Library

    Website

Remember poem / Add to List

all public lists

Poem already on my list

If you want to remember or list a poem, become a community member.

Login/Register now
more poets from Australia more poems in english Translations into english

Random poem

PUSH!

gedicht page complete: (0,085s)
  • About
  • Links
  • Blog
  • Newsletter
  • Produced by
  • privacy
lyrikline is created by Literaturwerkstatt Berlin in cooperation with its international network of lyrikline partners