Things Seen In A Battle

Clear diamond heart,
I have been hunting death
Among the swords.

But death abhors my shadow,
And I come back
Wounded with memories.

Your eyes,
For steel is amorous of steel
And there are bright blue sparks.

Your lips,
I see great bloody roses
Cut in white dead breasts.

Your bed,
For I see wrestling bodies
Under the evening star.

From the Turkic.

Edward Powys Mathers

Edward Powys Mathers was an English translator and poet, best known for translating the French Orientalist J.C. Mardrus's translation of 'The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night' in 1923. In addition to translations, Powys Mathers was an influential figure in the realm of cryptic crosswords, devising some of the most challenging puzzles for 'The Observer'. His translations have been lauded for their literary beauty and for introducing English-speaking audiences to classic Persian, Arabic, and Turkish poetry.

Edward Powys Mathers

The Western Window

Edward Powys Mathers, Simple Poetry

Two Similes

Edward Powys Mathers, Simple Poetry

Distich

Edward Powys Mathers, Simple Poetry

English

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The Flight

Softly into the saddle
Of my black horse with white feet;
Your brothers are frowning
And grasping swords in sleep.
My rifle is as clean as moonlight,
My flints are new;
My long grey sword is sighing
In his blue sheath.
Fatima gave me my grey sword
Of Temrouk steel,
Damascened in red gold
To cut a pathway for the feet of love.

My eye is dark and keen,
My hand has never trembled on the sword.
If your brothers rise and follow
On their stormy horses,
If they stretch their hot hands
To catch you from my breast,
My rifle shall not sing to them,
My steel shall spare.
My rifle's song is for my yellow girl,
My eye is dark and keen,
I'll send my bullet to the fairest heart
That ever lady loved with in the world.

My han...

Edward Powys Mathers

See The Field Of Battle Gleams.

See, the field of battle gleams
Yonward past the tented streams,
There the foe is camping;
By the thirst-assuaging rill,
From the copse behind the hill
Hear his war-steeds champing.

Northern Knights and Southern Sons,
Onward to the gleaming guns!
Now's the hour of battle!
Though his files be ten to one,
Seek the foe from sun to sun,
Where his muskets rattle.

O'er the walls with slaughter wet,
O'er the ball-scarred parapet,
Daring man and missile,
Charge to meet his best or worst,
Where his shrieking bombshells burst
And his bullets whistle.

Roll in waves of living blue,
Pierce the columned centre through,
Fill the world with wonder;
Rush, as with a lion's will,
Where his lightnings flash to kill
And his cann...

A. H. Laidlaw

Hunter's Song

Not a stone from my black sling
Ever misses anything,
But the arrows of your eye
Surer shoot and faster fly.

Not one creature that I hit
Lingers on to know of it,
But the game that falls to love
Lives and lingers long enough.

From the Turkic.

Edward Powys Mathers

Distich

Your face upon a drop of purple wine
Shows like my soul poised on a bead of blood.

From the Turkic of Hussein Baikrani.

Edward Powys Mathers

Battle Passes

A quaint old gabled cottage sleeps between the raving hills.
To right and left are livid strife, but on the deep, wide sills
The purple pot-flowers swell and glow, and o'er the walls and eaves
Prinked creeper steals caressing hands, the poplar drips its leaves.
Within the garden hot and sweet
Fair form and woven color meet,
While down the clear, cool stones, 'tween banks with branch and blossom gay,
A little, bridged, blind rivulet goes touching out its way.

Peace lingers hidden from the knife, the tearing blinding shell,
Where falls the spattered sunlight on a lichen-covered well.
No voice is here, no fall of feet, no smoke lifts cool and grey,
But on the granite stoop a cat blinks vaguely at the day.
From hill to hill across the vale
Storms man's terrific iron gale;<...

Edward

Where The Battle Passed

One blossoming rose-tree, like a beautiful thought
Nursed in a broken mind, that waits and schemes,
Survives, though shattered, and about it caught,
The strangling dodder streams.

Gaunt weeds: and here a bayonet or pouch,
Rusty and rotting where men fought and slew:
Bald, trampled paths that seem with fear to crouch,
Feeling a bloody dew.

Here nothing that was beauty's once remains.
War left the garden to its dead alone:
And Life and Love, who toiled here, for their pains
Have nothing once their own.

Death leans upon the battered door, at gaze
The house is silent where there once was stir
Of husbandry, that led laborious days,
With Love for comforter.

Now in Love's place, Death, old and halt and blind,
Gropes, searching everywhere ...

Madison Julius Cawein