TOM YUILL

SAETA

freely after Antonio Machado

Tendrils groping,  

  blood

on Christ’s hands, 

songs of nails torn 

from Christ’s 

       wrists, 

  the songs 

Andalusions 

sing every spring

in search of 

      Christ’s 

pain. 

Their prayers

are like ladders,  

                     each day a bouquet  

for the Christ 

       of the Passion. 

Who do you 

love?

Who chews 

off his leg 

to get 

out 

  amble-

tumbling, as

each wince swims

against

  the

tug of

the  

mouths 

of the past? 

They 

 skin us—

   those songs. 

      Not 

  to 

pietas in 

  Christ’s pained 

         face 

do I sing,

  but the flower, 

ancient, 

that glides 

in the night, 

         to Christ 

as he 

      walks  

       on the 

  water.  

ACOUSTIC SHADOW OF BALLADE DES PENDUS

Villon

Freres humaines, qui aprez nous vivez,

don’t let your hearts get hard: the more 

you pity us, the more God pities you.

Not for you, to you, Brothers, do we pray.

We hang here by our necks, and Hell

and bile and hard tack acne glisten.

Magpies on our shoulders dab

our swollen cheeks. We’re scab

and bloated flesh, don’t laugh, just listen.

God loves, but doesn’t save us from ourselves.

We hang, we guess,

for not obeying laws, but see:

among us all just some will pass

as living their lives legally.

Hell’s thunder whelps 

us, Virgin Mary kisses us,

on Sundays sing the birth of Christ,

but neither Christ nor Mary save us from ourselves.

Lashed by sun, ligaments dried

and slapped by the dark, then kissed,

our brows are plucked, eyes

too. Cheeks like swollen thimbles. No mist,

no rest from whipped 

snow, never at peace.

We once decided what to do,

Now here, now there—we’re swept that way and this. 

Fuss of fat through thimble holes

the crows peck in our cheeks. Condemn us but don’t hate us, 

people. God won’t save you from yourselves.

Prince Jesus of bodies and of souls, just

keep us out of Hell. No wealth, nor hatred,

do we seek. Just people, please don’t send us there. 

Prince Jesus doesn’t save us from ourselves.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Yuill’s first book of poetry, “Medicine Show,” is published by the University of Chicago Press. He has poetry, translations and interviews published or forthcoming in Great River Review, A Public Space, Newsday, Literary Imaginations, Salamander and Dalhousie Review and featured on Poetry Daily, among others. Yuill is writing a literary biography of Francois Villon containing his own translations, adaptations, imitations and acoustic shadows of Villon’s poetry. He teaches in the World Languages and Cultures Department, Honors College, English Department, and guest lectures in the French Department, at Old Dominion University, and recently completed the first draft of his next book of poetry. Yuill also teaches various poetry classes at the Muse Writer’s Center in Virginia, and in the English Department at Norfolk State University.