Two Lines 6: Fires
Fall 1999
Out of Print
Lou
Lou
Lou, in the rearview mirror of a brief instant
Lou, don’t you see me?
—from “Still the Two of Us” by Henri Michaux, translated from the French by James Brook
Writing about fire, I am haunted by what it has cost me, by memories of passions that flared and singed and were stomped out, memories of homefires suddenly doused, of the dead silence after the fire finally crackled down to nothing. I am newly wary of standing too close to the flame. Passion might destroy me—a moth with experience, with a memory—and burn the page. Worse yet, the fire, personal or creative, might never be sparked again. If I approach the flames now, what can I afford to lose? Without a hearth to hold the fire, will my passions spread out of control? If I step into the fire, will all hell break loose? —THE EDITORS
Table of Contents
Poetry
With Savage Fire: Poems
Translated from Bengali by Carolyne Wright and Mohammad Nurul Huda
Ramona Rosbif
Translated from Catalan by Josefa Devesa-Seva
Firebreak
Translated from German by Marilya Veteto-Conrad
Lightning and Shadows
Translated from Japanese by Samuel Grolmes and Yumiko Tsumura
Lyric Fires of the Persian Baroque: Ghazals
Translated from Persian by Paul Losensky
Fireflies
Translated from Spanish by Robert Klein Engler
Survival: Eight Stanzas of Commentary on the Words of Buddha
By Mirko Lauer
Translated from Spanish by John Oliver Simon
Fiction
Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire: A Cuban Tobacco Legend
Translated from Spanish by Kirk Anderson
Commitments
Translated from Spanish by Elizabeth Bell and John Ross
Other
Fire Signs
Translated from Spanish by Michael Koch