The HyperTexts

POEM IN FOCUS

Every month in The HyperTexts, the poet, critic and our contributing editor, Martin Mc Carthy, selects and comments on a poem, old or new, that has attracted his attention.



Poem in Focus, November 2025:

Judith
by Adah Isaacs Menken

“Repent, or I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight thee with the sword of my mouth.”
―Revelation 2:16

I
Ashkelon is not cut off with the remnant of a valley.
Baldness dwells not upon Gaza.
The field of the valley is mine, and it is clothed in verdure.
The steepness of Baal-perazim is mine;
And the Philistines spread themselves in the valley of Rephaim.
They shall yet be delivered into my hands.
For the God of Battles has gone before me!
The sword of the mouth shall smite them to dust.
I have slept in the darkness—
But the seventh angel woke me, and giving me a sword of flame, points to the blood-ribbed cloud, that lifts his reeking head above the mountain.
Thus am I the prophet.
I see the dawn that heralds to my waiting soul the advent of power.
Power that will unseal the thunders!
Power that will give voice to graves!
Graves of the living;
Graves of the dying;
Graves of the sinning;
Graves of the loving;
Graves of the despairing;
And oh! graves of the deserted!
These shall speak, each as their voices shall be loosed.
And the day is dawning.

II
Stand back, ye Philistines!
Practice what ye preach to me;
I heed ye not, for I know ye all.
Ye are living burning lies, and profanation to the garments which with stately steps ye sweep your marble palaces.
Ye places of Sin, around which the damning evidence of guilt hangs like a reeking vapor.
Stand back!
I would pass up the golden road of the world.
A place in the ranks awaits me.
I know that ye are hedged on the borders of my path.
Lie and tremble, for ye well know that I hold with iron grasp the battle axe.
Creep back to your dark tents in the valley.
Slouch back to your haunts of crime.
Ye do not know me, neither do ye see me.
But the sword of the mouth is unsealed, and ye coil yourselves in slime and bitterness at my feet.
I mix your jeweled heads, and your gleaming eyes, and your hissing tongues with the dust.
My garments shall bear no mark of ye.
When I shall return this sword to the angel, your foul blood will not stain its edge.
It will glimmer with the light of truth, and the strong arm shall rest.

III
Stand back!
I am no Magdalene waiting to kiss the hem of your garment.
It is mid-day.
See ye not what is written on my forehead?
I am Judith!
I wait for the head of my Holofernes!
Ere the last tremble of the conscious death-agony shall have shuddered, I will show it to ye with the long black hair clinging to the glazed eyes, and the great mouth opened in search of voice, and the strong throat all hot and reeking with blood, that will thrill me with wild unspeakable joy as it courses down my bare body and dabbles my cold feet!
My sensuous soul will quake with the burden of so much bliss.
Oh, what wild passionate kisses will I draw up from that bleeding mouth!
I will strangle this pallid throat of mine on the sweet blood! I will revel in my passion.
At midnight I will feast on it in the darkness.
For it was that which thrilled its crimson tides of reckless passion through the blue veins of my life, and made them leap up in the wild sweetness of Love and agony of Revenge!
I am starving for this feast.
Oh forget not that I am Judith!
And I know where sleeps Holofernes.

Commentary by Martin Mc Carthy

In the Bible, The Book of Judith tells the story of a Jewish widow who murders an Assyrian general named Holofernes to save her town from invasion. In brief, she seduces him while he is intoxicated. Then, while he is sleeping it off, she decapitates him, and this assassination gives her people the clear advantage they need to overcome their enemies.

In this poem, titled 'Judith', Adah Isaacs Menken uses biblical allusions and references to underscore how she herself will wreak havoc and vengeance upon her enemies, with God’s help, for she is the righteous one and has just cause to do so.

'They shall yet be delivered into my hands.
For the God of battle has gone before me!
The sword of mouth shall smite them to dust.'

In stanza two, Menken seems to revel in this aggressive, challenging attitude, and does not depict herself as being in any way subservient to men, or anyone else who ever tried to undermine her for being a woman. Instead, she is more than a match for all because others live dark lives and commit crimes, and she doesn't.

'Creep back to your dark tents in the valley.
Slouch back to your haunts of crime.'

In stanza three, this lack of subservience in her genetic makeup is again emphasised when she directly takes issue with Mary Magdalene's outright worship of Jesus, and the idea that kissing the hem of his garment is good enough for her. No, there is a huge distinction here in how she sees herself, as opposed to that passive figure.

'I am no Mary Magdalene waiting to kiss the hem of your garment ... 
I am Judith ...
And I know where sleeps Holofernes.'

By ending the poem in this manner, Menken is totally unapologetic about being equal to all, and vengeful to those who do harm to others. So, like it or not, (and I do) this is a very powerful poem, with powerful things to say, just as the Feminist Movement was coming into being. 

Adah Isaacs Menken (1835-1868) was an American actress, dancer, poet, lecturer and painter, and was the highest-earning actress of her time. She was best known for her controversial role in a play called Mazeppa, in which she appeared semi-nude while riding a horse on stage. Despite her success as an actress, Menken sought to be known as a writer. She published 20 essays and 100 poems, many of which featured Jewish themes. Infelicia, a book of her collected poems, was published posthumously.

Originally published in The New Stylus



Poem in Focus, October 2025:

The Lovemaker
by Robert Mezey 

I see you in her bed,
Dark, rootless epicene,
Where a lone ghost is laid
And other ghosts convene; 

And hear you moan at last
Your pleasure in the deep
Haven of her who kissed
Your blind mouth into sleep. 

But body, once enthralled,
Wakes in the chains it wore,
Dishevelled, stupid, cold,
And famished as before, 

And hears its paragon
Breathe in the ghostly air,
Anonymous carrion 
Ravished by despair. 

Lovemaker, I have felt 
Desire take my part, 
But lacked your constant fault 
And something of your art,
 
And would not bend my knees
To the unmantled pride 
That left you in that place,
Forever unsatisfied.

Commentary by Martin Mc Carthy

"The Lovemaker" by Robert Mezey is not so much a poem about love, or love-making, as it is a rather sharp and candid reflection on the nature of lust and how it can remain forever unsatisfied if that is all there is to a relationship and its "rootless" conjoinings.

So, who then is the speaker? Is it the male participant in the love-ritual that is being enacted in stanza two, before he moans “at last” and falls asleep? Perhaps it is. Or, more accurately, some aspect of the speaker's higher self that once participated in such rituals, before he learned to remove his spiritual side just far enough to see how the body, after experiencing its moments of intense pleasure, rests just briefly, then “Wakes in the chains it wore, / Dishevelled, stupid, cold, / And famished as before.”

In other words, the body becomes a mere slave to lust and the constant animal cravings that keep it famished and unsatisfied when desire is not a physical expression of the warmth and affection a genuine lover should feel for his sexual partner.

So now, even though lust still seizes the speaker occasionally, he does not allow it to be a “constant fault”, or one that would make him less than a full person — a mere ghostly figure, or a piece of “Anonymous carrion / Ravished by despair.”

What a truly remarkable poem this is! What a candid exploration of love, lust, intimacy and genuine spiritual / sexual fulfilment!

Robert Mezey (1935-2020) was an American poet, translator, critic and academic. He studied at Kenyon College, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Stanford University, and he taught at Pomona College from 1976-1999. His poems, prose, and translations have appeared in many journals, textbooks, and anthologies. His poetry collections include The Lovemaker (1961), White Blossoms (1965), The Door Standing Open:
New & Selected Poems (1954-1970), Evening Wind (1987), Natural Selection (1995) and Collected Poems 1952-1999. Mezey received many awards for his poetry, including the Robert Frost Prize, the Lamont Poetry Prize for The Lovemaker, a PEN prize for Evening Wind, and the Poets’ Prize for Collected Poems. He died in 2020.

Originally published in The New Stylus



Poem in Focus, September 2025:

My Religion
Attributed to Sappho, translated by Michael R. Burch.

I sought the Goddess in your body’s curves and crevasses.

Commentary by Martin Mc Carthy

What is truly remarkable about this short piece by Sappho is how modern and enlightened it is for a single line, a single fragment of a poem, written circa 600 BC, because the sentiment expressed in it, and I will quote it here again – “I sought the Goddess in your body's curves and crevices” – is exactly how millions of people, including me, view the act of love-making, now that we have freed ourselves from the shackles of shame and guilt that many misguided religions put on us with the false assertion that physical intimacy with another human being is somehow wrong and sinful, and displeases God due to the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. But Eden is simply a myth, a story, and maybe the so-called “fall” was never that, but something that was always fated to be, in order for the human race to begin its long journey to consciousness.

No, it’s not physical intimacy that is wrong, but the denial of it, and this has led to horrific crimes of rape, sodomy and paedophilia within churches and religious orders because, as Sigmund Freud asserted in his monumental study of sexual behaviour, “Whatever is repressed always returns in a perverted form.”

So here, in this poem by Sappho, which predates these religions by hundreds of years, we have this insightful one line fragment of timeless wisdom telling us where to find what is most sacred in this world, and perhaps the next one also. There is arguably more wisdom in one line by Sappho than in all of the religious texts put together. Is it any wonder then that religious zealots destroyed her writings after the 4th century because of the beauty of their erotic and rather holy imagery?

Sappho was the most famous Greek poet of all time, and yet, not much is known about her, except that she was born around 630 B.C. on the island of Lesbos in the port city of Mytilene, and was apparently exiled to Sicily around 600 B.C. and may have continued to live there until her death around 570 B.C. She was also a musician, who played the lyre and was accomplished enough to set her own work to music.

In regard to that work, what survives of it is mostly Fragments, and this makes it particularly hard to translate, even in a word for word manner that might only give us a slight sense of who Sappho was. Yet, despite this major obstacle, some translators, including Michael R. Burch, have managed to bring her startlingly back to life, both as a poet and as a woman who was modern, fearless, erotic, liberated, and way ahead of her time. The Greek philosopher Plato held her in high esteem and called her “the Tenth Muse”.

Originally published in The New Stylus



Poem in Focus, August 2025:

VIII — from "Sunday Morning"
by Wallace Stevens

She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay."
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old despondency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

Commentary by Martin Mc Carthy

In this particular excerpt from "Sunday Morning", a woman – who is possibly asleep and dreaming of the Holy Land – hears a voice "without sound" telling her that "That tomb in Palestine / Is not the porch of spirits lingering" – that it is, in fact, no more than the grave of Jesus, a very real man, who was crucified and lay there for a time.

The extract then continues to emphasise the very real world around her, rather than religious fantasies. It tells us quite starkly that "We live in an old chaos of the sun" – that there is day and night, solitude and things we can't escape from. It tells us also that there is great beauty in this world – that "Deer walk upon the mountains" and "Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness", even though this beauty is temporary and real and ultimately doomed to "sink".

This, however, is just an excerpt from "Sunday Morning", and the poem as a whole argues that the temporary nature of earthly things and earthly experiences is precisely what makes them beautiful, and thus that true beauty could never exist in an everlasting, deathless paradise. So rather than some miraculous other world, it's death that gives this fleeting life its meaning and moments of divinity.

What an intriguing, thought-provoking poem – written as far back as 1915, and still as powerful as ever!

Wallace Stevens (1879 – 1955) was a prominent American modernist poet known for his complex and imaginative verse. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance company in Hartford, Connecticut. Throughout his career, Stevens published several acclaimed volumes of poetry, including Ideas of Order and The Collected Poems, the latter winning him both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Despite his success, he remained a private individual, often avoiding public appearances. Stevens’s work had a tremendous impact on modern American poetry, and this impact has continued into the 21 st century.

Originally published in The New Stylus



Poem in Focus, July 2025:

After the Persian
by Louise Bogan

I

I do not wish to know
The depths of your terrible jungle:
From what nest your leopard leaps
Or what sterile lianas are at once your serpents' disguise
      and home.

I am the dweller on the temperate threshold,
The strip of corn and vine,
Where all is translucence (the light!)
Liquidity, and the sound of water.
Here the days pass under shade
And the nights have the waxing and the waning moon.
Here the moths take flight at evening;
Here at morning the dove whistles and the pigeons coo.
Here, as night comes on, the fireflies wink and snap
Close to the cool ground,
Shining in a profusion
Celestial or marine.

Here it is never wholly dark but always wholly green,
And the day stains with what seems to be more than the
      sun
What may be more than my flesh.

II

I have wept with the spring storm;
Burned with the brutal summer.
Now, hearing the wind and the twanging bow-strings,
I know what winter brings.

The hunt sweeps out upon the plain
And the garden darkens.
They will bring the trophies home
To bleed and perish
Beside the trellis and the lattices,
Beside the fountain, still flinging diamond water,
Beside the pool
(Which is eight-sided, like my heart).

III

All has been translated into treasure:
Weightless as amber,
Translucent as the currant on the branch,
Dark as the rose's thorn.

Where is the shimmer of evil?
This is the shell's iridescence
And the wild bird's wing.

IV

Ignorant, I took up my burden in the wilderness.
Wise with great wisdom, I shall lay it down upon flowers.

V

Goodbye, goodbye!
There was so much to love, I could not love it all;
I could not love it enough.

Some things I overlooked, and some I could not find.
Let the crystal clasp them
When you drink your wine, in autumn.

Commentary by Martin Mc Carthy

This fine poem by Louise Bogan explores themes of art, time, change, memory, and the poet's experience of life as a creative artist. 

In stanza II, she makes it clear that she was always conscious of time, the harsh changes that come with it, and the inevitable winter that awaits us all in the end.

I have wept with the spring storm;
Burned with the brutal summer.
Now, hearing the wind and twanging bow-strings,
I know what winter brings.

Then, in stanza IV, she suggests, rather fatalistically, that the creative artist is given specific areas of interest that he or she feels compelled to write about (at the expense of others) in order to gain the wisdom necessary to shed that burden in this lifetime.

Ignorant, I took up my burden in the wilderness.
Wise with great wisdom, I shall lay it down upon the flowers.

So, with that task achieved, there is a strong sense in the closing two stanzas that the poet is looking back on her life and work and trying to evaluate honestly how she fared. But the words and the melancholy tone of these stanzas register a feeling of regret for being unable to love this world enough because there was simply too much in it to experience it fully. So she inevitably made her choices from what she found and saw, even though she knew there was still more, overlooked and untasted in life's crystal glass.

Goodbye, goodbye!
There was so much love, I could not love it all;
I could not love it enough.

Some things I overlooked, and some I could not find.
Let the crystal clasp them
When you drink your wine, in autumn.

This poem is reflective, powerful and compelling. It is also, I might add, one of the truly great poems of the 20th century.

Louise Bogan (1897-1970) was an American poet, translator, and literary critic. She was appointed the fourth Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress in 1945, and was the first woman to hold this title. She was the poetry editor of The New Yorker from 1931-1969. Bogan received numerous awards, including the Bolligen Prize from Yale University. She died in New York City, in 1970, aged 72.

Originally published in The New Stylus



Poem in Focus, June 2025:

He Lived: Excerpts from “Gilgamesh”
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

I.
He who visited hell, his country’s foundation,
Was well-versed in mysteries’ unseemly dark places.
He deeply explored many underworld realms
Where he learned of the Deluge and why Death erases.

II.
He built the great ramparts of Uruk-the-Sheepfold
And of holy Eanna. Then weary, alone,
He recorded his thoughts in frail scratchings called “words”:
Frail words made immortal, once chiseled in stone.

III.
These walls he erected are ever-enduring:
Vast walls where the widows of dead warriors weep.
Stand by them. O, feel their immovable presence!
For no other walls are as strong as this keep’s.

IV.
Come, climb Uruk’s tower on a starless night—
Ascend its steep stairway to escape modern error.
Cross its ancient threshold. You are close to Ishtar,
the Goddess of Ecstasy and of Terror!

V.
Find the cedar box with its hinges of bronze;
lift the lid of its secrets; remove its dark slate;
read of the travails of our friend Gilgamesh—
of his descent into hell and man’s terrible fate!

VI.
Surpassing all kings, heroic in stature,
Wild bull of the mountains, the Goddess his Dam
—She bedded no man; he was her sole rapture—
Who else can claim fame, as he thundered, “I AM!”

Commentary by Martin Mc Carthy

These six extracts from “Gilgamesh” are part of the prelude to this great epic poem, and are in essence an introduction to Gilgamesh himself - his world, his personality, and his past deeds that have brought him great renown. So what exactly do they tell us?

In Verse 1, we are told that Gilgamesh visited hell and was familiar with underworld realms and dark places, and that the tale of the “Deluge”, which he heard there, gave him his first real sense of man's mortality. (This is a very important detail in terms of the overall narrative of the story.)

In Verse 2, we find that he built the great city of Uruk and erected a beautiful temple to Eanna. Then he made his own deeds immortal by meticulously recording them on stone tablets.

In Verse 3, we are told that Gilgamesh's walls (his constructions) are “ever-enduring” and that no other walls can hope to match them.

In Verse 4, the poem's translator gives us an absolutely exquisite stanza that depicts the tower of Uruk on a starless night, and also mentions the goddess, Ishtar, who attracted many lovers but treated them badly.

Come, climb Uruk's tower on a starless night -
Ascend its steep stairway to escape modern error.
Cross its ancient threshold. You are close to Ishtar,
the Goddess of Ecstasy and of terror!

In Verse 5, we are told that Gilgamesh's epic tale, when it was finally written, was preserved for posterity in a cedar box with bronze hinges, and also that his “descent into hell” forms an integral part of the tale to come. Interestingly, Gilgamesh seems to be both narrator and hero of his own story, shifting between the past, the present and the future, as he writes.

In Verse 6, our hero is synopsised against the backdrop of his fame, his heroic deeds and a goddess who yearns for him, in another exquisite stanza.

Surpassing all kings, heroic in stature,
Wild bull of the mountains, the Goddess his Dam.
She bedded no man; he was her sole rapture.
Who else can claim fame, as he thundered, “I AM!”

Presumably, “I AM!” in the last line is a short way of saying “I am King” or “I am King of all I survey.” But this translation by Michael R. Burch is so sublime that he rarely misses an opportunity to suggest other meanings through the sheer power of language. In all, these six extracts from “Gilgamesh” are beyond good.

“Gilgamesh”, from which these extracts were taken and loosely translated by Michael R. Burch, is an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia. The epic dates from c. 2150 – 1400BCE, and is considered the oldest epic in the world.

Originally published in The New Stylus



Poem in Focus, May 2025:

Lament to the Spirit of War
by Enheduanna
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

You hack down everything you see, War God!

Rising on fearsome wings
you rush to destroy our land:
raging like thunderstorms,
howling like hurricanes,
screaming like tempests,
thundering, raging, ranting, drumming,
whiplashing whirlwinds!

Men falter at your approaching footsteps.

Tortured dirges scream on your lyre of despair.

Like a fiery Salamander you poison the land:
growling over the earth like thunder,
vegetation collapsing before you,
blood gushing down mountainsides.

Spirit of hatred, greed and vengeance!

Dominatrix of heaven and earth!

Your ferocious fire consumes our land.

Whipping your stallion
with furious commands,
you impose our fates.

You triumph over all human rites and prayers.

Who can explain your tirade,
why you go on so?

Commentary by Martin Mc Carthy

“Lament to the Spirit of War” is the very first anti-war poem, and a very appropriate poem to publish right now, when wars are still raging all around us, and eventual victory seeming likely to go to those with the best weapons. But in this poem, it’s abundantly clear from the very first line and its strong disapproving tone that this Sumerian poet/priestess does not approve of warfare, or war gods, and all their barbaric acts of destruction:

“You hack down everything you see, War God!”

Then she goes on to describe the scene, the violence raging like a tempest, as the pawns of those in power “rush to destroy the land”. Not only does Enheduanna describe the destruction, but she directly names the very source that motivates it all:

“Spirit of hatred, greed and vengeance!
Dominatrix of heaven and earth!
Your ferocious fire consumes our land”

and how powerless right-minded people, endeavouring to enact “holy rites and prayers” feel in the light of all this violent, senseless tyranny.

Finally, she concludes her poem by asking, with Zen-like calm, what any passionate anti-war protestor, confronting the very same atrocities and horrors in Gaza and Ukraine would ask today:

“Who can explain your tirade,
why you go on so?”

What a truly remarkable poem this is! How timeless and relevant Enheduanna's words are! And how little has changed in over 4,200 years, when it comes to those who willingly serve the dark gods of warfare, who are still with us today!

Enhedaunna was the High Priestess of the goddess Ianna and the moon god Nanna. She lived in the Sumerian city-state of Ur (modern day Iraq) over 4,200 years ago, and is the earliest known poet ever recorded.

Originally published in The New Stylus.

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