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Poetry || SubmissionsCome to me, Notice me, Love me (A Desert Song)By Stephen Oliver O Meister Torturer! play a threnody upon your accordion, hauntingly low as a breeze through rushes, let flow the dark streams, I pray. Ai, strike up songs of javelin-hurled oaths in the desert, suddenly flashing on the gem blue sky. Shalom! Ah, Shalom! Grand Inquisitor! place the sacred amphora by the cave mouth deep within this desert stark and red as Adam’s rib; the broken, ridged land asks no blessing. Fiercely blooms the Temple Garden though bronze helmets flash at the gate. Shalom! Ah, Shalom! O Noble Inflictor! draw water from a tribal well that I might slake this thirst. Summon the street-rabble that they may give praise, kneeling before these anointed visions and triumphal vistas; blow the trumpets, announce my arrival. Shalom! Ah, Shalom! This desert song or incantation is taken from a group of Coptic texts known amongst Hebrew and Middle Eastern Scholars as the ‘Ennoia’ folio, from the Greek meaning, A Thought, seventh century B. C. It belongs to a collection of papyri fragments, Codex VI, tractate I, written in ancient Hebrew and Greek characters housed in the New Babylonian Library of Baghdad. There is some suggestion that this text, sung over the preparation of date wine, is largely satirical, warning against the dangers of overly-grand hospitality. For my translation, I have used two heavily glossed and interlinear renditions from the Iraqi Lecture Series, vol iii, section C, page 17, pub. (March) 1958, Baghdad University Text Society. Stephen Oliver b. 1950, Wellington, New Zealand. Poems widely represented in New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, USA, UK, South Africa, Canada, etc. Books published: Henwise (1975), & Interviews (1978), Autumn Songs (1978), Letter To James. K. Baxter (1980), Earthbound Mirrors (1984), Guardians, Not Angels (1993), Islands of Wilderness - A Romance (1996), Election Year Blues (1999), Unmanned (1999). Night of Warehouses: Poems 1978-2000, HeadworX (2001). Covers five collections of poetry and spans two decades. In addition, Stephen Oliver's work can be found in a number of online literary magazines including, Comrades, Drought: A Literary Review, 42Opus, Gangway, Melic Review, Southern Ocean Review, Southern Cross Review, Trout, Turbine, The Poetry Warehouse, Stride, Blackmail Press. Zuzu's Petals. Recent prose work in: Deep South [Contempt: A Survey]. Thylazine [One Day In The Life of Vicki Viidikas]. Stephen Oliver is a transtasman poet based in Sydney, Australia. Email him at: sao@smartchat.net.au Today's Situation
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