The sky puts on the dark blue gown
held up for it by the avenue of limes;
you watch: the landscape divides
one half heavenward, the other half down;

leaving you distinct from either side:
not like the houses, motionless and dark,
nor reaching for infinity like the part
that becomes a star each night and climbs

leaving you to realise in the quiet
how vast is your life is and alone,
how both determined and definite
your heart is at once both star and stone.

Translated by Peter Jukes from 'Abend' by Rainer Maria Rilke

I hate the sea
Not for its salt or violence
But for its quiet desperation
It's terrible monotony.

Dad took us out from the harbour years ago
Cadging for mackerel on nylon lines:
When almost by mistake we hauled one in
It just wouldn't die
Thrashing in the boughs
Like a slice of battered aluminium.
Dad just laughed the more I cried.

He said he'd felt exactly the same
When he was my age and that
One day I'd be telling my son
The same thing he was telling me,
As we lost sight of land
The mackerel thrashing in the boughs
Like a slice of battered aluminium.

And that's why I hate the sea
Not for its salt or violence
But for its quiet desperation
Its terrible monotony

Peter Jukes 1991

It's always dear to me, this lonely hill.
This hedgerow that happens to obscure
The whole vista of the far horizon;
Sitting here, observing - through the endless
Spaces beyond - and the unnatural
Quiet and stillness all around,
I lose myself in my thoughts, and this heart
Misses a beat. A breeze ruffles
The branches. When I hear it and compare
The lonely voice of the leaves to the vast
Cacophony of silence without, I remember
The eternal, the dead seasons, the living
Moments and the murmurs they make, until
My thoughts are drowned out by infinity:
And how sweet it is to be shipwrecked like this.

Translated from the Italian of Giacoma Leopardi by Peter Jukes

After this long dark summer,
I feel the lightness of autumn approach.
The sun is slipping
And the leaves fall
In love with the cooling earth.

Sometimes you have to surrender -
It doesn't matter what
Your plans were, how you feel,
You just have to go with down with
The sun, in layers of coloured silk.

After our hot dry summer
How come I love you even more?
Why doesn't experience dim, or
Familiarity wither? Why do I
Sense my roots mingling with yours?

Our pain, like our sweat, binds us
Closer. You made me angry and
Jealous. But I'm not mad.
Like the leaves I fall
In love with your cooling earth.

Peter Jukes 2006

After our games had ended
In squabbles and in kicks,
Our mouths raw and garish
From too many boiled sweets,
Once we'd spied A to Z
On registration plates
Shimmering
Over the blistered tarmac,
Then up we would pipe
From the back seat:
When shall we see the sea, Daddy
When shall we see the sea?

Through by-passes, fields, industrial estates
Lay-bys where we'd stop to pee, stretch legs,
And sip a thermos of milky plastic,
We'd hark for the cries
Of gulls overhead,
Desolate for the smell of the coast
And though they only wheeled
Over rubbish tips
Not five minutes passed
Before we begged:
When shall we reach the sea, Mummy?
How far is it to the sea?....

Hardly any closer, she'd say,
Since last time you asked. Or Dad:
The more you look forward
The longer it'll take.
So we'd pipe down, tune to the radio news
Bulletins unchanged all afternoon,
Stare out the window
Unable to credit or count
How many seconds make up an hour
How many waysigns between here and there
And if it isn't ages until we arrive
It won't be forever until we leave.

But over every ridge
Behind the tree silhouettes
The sky seemed to ripple, brighten
With a marine light.
And soon there'd be bungalows
With portholes instead of windows,
Yachts on the curtains, toothpaste blue,
Shells in the pebbledash. The street
Would dip away
And between b&b's, candy-floss, tar,
I see the sea. I see the sea. There it is.
Here we are.

What was it all about?
Two weeks to scour up and down the beach
Dodge turds bobbing by the outflow pipe
Lick sand off a molten ice-cream.
But nothing could defeat us,
Even at night
Sunburnt between the cool white sheets
We'd cup the shell
Of our ears to our heads
And drift off
To the waves milling the shingle
Tide rummaging the shore
Sounding like the ocean sounds
But louder.

Without saying good bye
People leave us,
Without saying good bye
Emotions go,

Without a bye or leave
The seasons pass
Like this:

Without saying good bye

2005 Peter Jukes:
translated (with help from Edyta Zalewska) from the Polish of Julia Hartwig

Who recognises this border?

A torn strip of shirt
Hanging on razor wire
In the spotlight of a searchtower
Fledglings feed and hush
Grass gapes through the broken
Concrete of a checkpoint

Do you recognise this border?

I'm standing by the bridge
Looking at the river
Imagining what line I've crossed
What lines I've yet to cross
Will she search me
Refuse my excess baggage
Grant me temporary visa
When does my exile begin?

Writing on the water
Drawing on it

After floods in Honduras
The roads were washed away
But a bridge was left behind
The river flowed around it

Blood flows now
Where it shouldn't flow
The Atlantic Ocean grows
At the same pace as
Our fingernails

There is no border

Peter Jukes 2000

Every song
is a suspension
of love

and every star
is a suspension
of time

a distention

of time

and every breath
a suspension

of grief

Translated by Peter Jukes from Cada Cancion by Gabriel Garcia Lorca

If words
Could keep
You warm

If thoughts
Could take
Form

If letters
Could be hands

Figures
Turn to flesh

This poem would have
Unbuttoned
Your blouse and
Be half way up
Your dress

Peter Jukes 1999