D.M. Black
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
D.M. Black was born in South Africa in 1941, and brought up in Scotland from 1950. He is married and lives in London and Wiltshire. In the 1960s and 1970s he published four collections, including Gravitations (1979) from M. Macdonald (Edinburgh). In 1991 he produced a Collected Poems (Polygon). He was included in the first Penguin Modern Poets series (1968) and his poems have appeared in many anthologies including British Poetry since 1945, ed Lucie-Smith. Penguin. 1970, The Faber Book of Twentieth Century Scottish Poetry, ed Douglas Dunn. Faber, 1992, Emergency Kit, ed Jo Shapcott and Matthew Sweeney. Faber. 1996, and Wild Reckoning, ed Maurice Riordan and John Burnside. Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. 2004. Since 1991 he has published a collection of translations of Goethe, Love as Landscape Painter (Fras). His new collection, Claiming Kindred, is due from Arc Publications early in 2011.
Anacreon’s Grave
Here where the roses bloom, where vines intertwine with the laurel,
Here where the turtle-doves call, here where the cricket shrills,
To what grave have we come, that every God has delighted
Thus to festoon with life? - Here Anacreon lies.
Spring, and summer, and fall enchanted the fortunate poet;
Now from winter the earth keeps him secure in the end.