تشارك آن جَيْكوب بنصوصها الشعرية الحديثة المتنوعة ومن ضمنها الهايكو
لا إيرلندي ولا أسود
نظرة جامدة فقط
Poems by Ann Jacob
Featured illustration by ©Ed Fairburn
Outsiders
What worlds of meaning lie
in that small space
between apart and a part.
What price this Motherland? we ask
Which sought our help with toil and task,
But greets us now with frigid mask
of friendlessness.
Though toting bale and heaving cask
our lives are less.
Response was cold, no welcome there,
“No Irish, Blacks” – just stony stare,
“We do not have a room to spare”
the answer comes.
So on we trudge in chill despair;
rejection numbs.
What contrast then with those whose lives
From warm acceptance strength derive;
No endless struggle to survive,
to be ‘a part’
How long we wonder must we strive
to shed ‘apart’?
What price this Motherland? we ask
Which sought our help with toil and task,
But greets us now with frigid mask
of friendlessness.
Though toting bale and heaving cask
our lives are less.
Response was cold, no welcome there,
“No Irish, Blacks” – just stony stare,
“We do not have a room to spare”
the answer comes.
So on we trudge in chill despair;
rejection numbs.
What contrast then with those whose lives
From warm acceptance strength derive;
No endless struggle to survive,
to be ‘a part’
How long we wonder must we strive
to shed ‘apart’?
Three Haikus
Stone in my pocket
Feels rounded, smooth and glossy
But hard, like my words.
***
Small silver flower
Cherished lover’s gift from you
Is all that remains.
***
Grey stone walls sun-warmed
Gold lichen creeping over
Writes the tale of years.
Dream Poem
At five my first real school,
Red brick, institutional, high windows,
stone steps to wide front door,
partitioned classrooms, woodblock floor.
Broad asphalt strip, on one side hedged,
leads down from entrance gate past door and round
to hard but tree surrounded yard – our playground where
on my first day, in ‘break’, in that confusing, tumbling space,
a girl was mean to me and I felt lost.
Sometimes I used to dream of endless lines
of huge and terrifying railway trucks,
detached from their rails and engineless,
loosed from the station yard nearby,
rumbling and rattling, creaking, grinding,
trundling, relentless, down that asphalt path,
unstopping and unstoppable – and I stood helpless
in a flimsy unprotected corner by the side.
