Silvery Sistra

poetry blog italian + english + french feel free to submit

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Song

When we came home across the hill    No leaves were fallen from the trees;    The gentle fingers of the breeze Had torn no quivering cobweb down.

The hedgerow bloomed with flowers still,    No withered petals lay beneath;    But the wild roses in your wreath Were faded, and the leaves were brown.

T.S. Eliot

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The Cage

In the waking night The forests have stopped growing The shells are listening The shadows in the pools turn grey The pearls dissolve in the shadow And I return to you Your face is marked upon the clockface, My hands are beneath your hair And if the time you mark sets free the birds And if they fly away towards the forest The hour will no longer be ours Ours is the ornate birdcage The brimming cup of water The preface to the book And all the clocks are ticking All the dark rooms are moving All the air's nerves are bare. Once flown The feathered hour will not return And I shall have gone away.

David Gascoyne

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And the Seventh Dream is the Dream of Isis

white curtains of infinite fatigue dominating the starborn heritage of the colonies of St Francis white curtains of tortured destinies inheriting the calamities of the plagues of the desert encourage the waistlines of women to expand and the eyes of men to enlarge like pocket-cameras teach children to sin at the age of five to cut out the eyes of their sisters with nail-scissors to run into the streets and offer themselves to unfrocked priests teach insects to invade the deathbeds of rich spinsters and to engrave the foreheads of their footmen with purple signs for the year is open the year is complete the year is full of unforeseen happenings and the time of earthquakes is at hand today is the day when the streets are full of hearses and when women cover their ring fingers with pieces of silk when the doors fall off their hinges in ruined cathedrals when hosts of white birds fly across the ocean from america and make their nests in the trees of public gardens the pavements of cities are covered with needles the reservoirs are full of human hair fumes of sulphur envelop the houses of ill-fame out of which bloodred lilies appear. - across the square where crowds are dying in thousands a man is walking a tightrope covered with moths there is an explosion of geraniums in the ballroom of the hotel there is an extremely unpleasant odour of decaying meat arising from the depetalled flower growing out of her ear her arms are like pieces of sandpaper or wings of leprous birds in taxis and when she sings her hair stands on end and lights itself with a million little lamps like glowworms you must always write the last two letters of her christian name upside down with a blue pencil she was standing at the window clothed only in a ribbon she was burning the eyes of snails in a candle she was eating the excrement of dogs and horses she was writing a letter to the president of france - the edges of leaves must be examined through microscopes in order to see the stains made by dying flies at the other end of the tube is a woman bathing her husband and a box of newspapers covered with handwriting when an angel writes the word TOBACCO across the sky the sea becomes covered with patches of dandruff the trunks of trees burst open to release streams of milk little girls stick photographs of genitals to the windows of their homes prayerbooks in churches open themselves at the death service and virgins cover their parents' beds with tealeaves there is an extraordinary epidemic of tuberculosis in yorkshire where medical dictionaries are banned from the public libraries and salt turns a pale violet colour every day at seven o'clock when the hearts of troubadours unfold like soaked mattresses when the leaven of the gruesome slum-visitors and the wings of private airplanes look like shoeleather shoeleather on which pentagrams have been drawn shoeleather covered with vomitings of hedgehogs shoeleather used for decorating wedding-cakes and the gums of queens like glass marbles queens whose wrists are chained to the walls of houses and whose fingernails are covered with little drawings of flowers we rejoice to receive the blessing of criminals and we illuminate the roofs of convents when they are hung we look through a telescope on which the lord's prayer has been written and we see an old woman making a scarecrow on a mountain near a village in the middle of spain we see an elephant killing a stag-beetle by letting hot tears fall onto the small of its back we see a large cocoa-tin full of shapeless lumps of wax there is a horrible dentist walking out of a ship's funnel and leaving behind him footsteps which make noises on account of his accent he was discharged from the sanatorium and sent to examine the methods of cannibals so that wreaths of passion-flowers were floating in the darkness giving terrible illnesses to the possessors of pistols so that large quantities of rats disguised as pigeons were sold to various customers from neighbouring towns who were adepts at painting gothic letters on screens and at tying up parcels with pieces of grass we told them to cut off the buttons on their trousers but they swore in our faces and took off their shoes whereupon the whole place was stifled with vast clouds of smoke and with theatres and eggshells and droppings of eagles and the drums of the hospitals were broken like glass and glass were the faces in the last looking-glass.

David Gascoyne

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Death by Water

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead, Forgot the cry of gulls, and the deep sea swell And the profit and loss.                                       A current under sea Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirpool.                                    Gentile or Jew O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

T. S. Eliot

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The Tables Turned

Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books; Or surely you'll grow double: Up! up! my Friend, and clear your looks; Why all this toil and trouble? The sun above the mountain's head, A freshening lustre mellow Through all the long green fields has spread, His first sweet evening yellow. Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife: Come, hear the woodland linnet, How sweet his music! on my life, There's more of wisdom in it. And hark! how blithe the throstle sings! He, too, is no mean preacher: Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher. She has a world of ready wealth, Our minds and hearts to bless— Spontaneous wisdom breathed by health, Truth breathed by cheerfulness. One impulse from a vernal wood May teach you more of man, Of moral evil and of good, Than all the sages can. Sweet is the lore which Nature brings; Our meddling intellect Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— We murder to dissect. Enough of Science and of Art; Close up those barren leaves; Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives.

W. Wordsworth

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Frost at Midnight

The Frost performs its secret ministry, Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before. The inmates of my cottage, all at rest, Have left me to that solitude, which suits Abstruser musings: save that at my side My cradled infant slumbers peacefully. 'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs And vexes meditation with its strange And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood, This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood, With all the numberless goings-on of life, Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not; Only that film, which fluttered on the grate, Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing. Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature Gives it dim sympathies with me who live, Making it a companionable form, Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit By its own moods interprets, every where Echo or mirror seeking of itself, And makes a toy of Thought.                      But O! how oft, How oft, at school, with most believing mind, Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars, To watch that fluttering stranger ! and as oft With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower, Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day, So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear Most like articulate sounds of things to come! So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt, Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams! And so I brooded all the following morn, Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye Fixed with mock study on my swimming book: Save if the door half opened, and I snatched A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up, For still I hoped to see the stranger's face, Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved, My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!         Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side, Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, Fill up the intersperséd vacancies And momentary pauses of the thought! My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart With tender gladness, thus to look at thee, And think that thou shalt learn far other lore, And in far other scenes! For I was reared In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim, And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars. But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds, Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible Of that eternal language, which thy God Utters, who from eternity doth teach Himself in all, and all things in himself. Great universal Teacher! he shall mould Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.         Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee, Whether the summer clothe the general earth With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch Of mossy apple-tree, while the night-thatch Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall Heard only in the trances of the blast, Or if the secret ministry of frost Shall hang them up in silent icicles, Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

S. T. Coleridge

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Carnival

a bird told me once to stop drinking a cricket to “sing about loss” a fox said to do much less thinking a cat called my poetry “dross”

a badger once said I was dying and snuck off all smug in the night a vole said “you’re always denying the fact that you’re losing the fight”

an army of ants on my table once spelled the words “you’re a hack” a rat said “and when you’re able... we’d like all our melodies back”

a wolf at my door called me crazy and ate the song on my lips a stag beetle said I was lazy but asked me for marketing tips

I swear I once heard a dead rabbit making light of a painting I’d made and all of the bees have a habit of saying I’ll never get laid

a crow whispered to me the meaning of life but then quietly said maybe my boy you’re just dreaming and this has been all in your head

K. Henson

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So l’ora in cui la faccia più impassibile è traversata da una cruda smorfia: s’è svelata per poco una pena invisibile. Ciò non vede la gente nell’affollato corso.

Voi, mie parole, tradite invano il morso secreto, il vento che nel cuore soffia. La più vera ragione è di chi tace. Il canto che singhiozza è un canto di pace. E. Montale

[sistridargento]

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ’Cause I walk like I've got oil wells Pumping in my living room.   Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise.   Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops, Weakened by my soulful cries?   Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard ’Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines Diggin’ in my own backyard.   You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise.   Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs?   Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.   Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.

Still I Rise, Maya Angelou

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A free bird leaps on the back of the wind   and floats downstream   till the current ends and dips his wing in the orange sun rays and dares to claim the sky. But a bird that stalks down his narrow cage can seldom see through his bars of rage his wings are clipped and   his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing.   The caged bird sings   with a fearful trill   of things unknown   but longed for still   and his tune is heard   on the distant hill   for the caged bird   sings of freedom.   The free bird thinks of another breeze and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees and the fat worms waiting on a dawn bright lawn and he names the sky his own   But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams   his shadow shouts on a nightmare scream   his wings are clipped and his feet are tied   so he opens his throat to sing.   The caged bird sings   with a fearful trill   of things unknown   but longed for still   and his tune is heard   on the distant hill   for the caged bird   sings of freedom.

Caged Bird, Maya Angelou

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Cessate d'uccidere i morti, Non gridate più, non gridate Se li volete ancora udire, Se sperate di non perire.   Hanno l'impercettibile sussurro, Non fanno più rumore Del crescere dell'erba, Lieta dove non passa l'uomo.

Non gridate più, G. Ungaretti

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Excursions

no more staying indoors there are battles to build and cities to burn carpets to muddy and waking to earn someone’s to something, and somethings to learn come now, no more staying indoors

there’ll be no more staying indoors less of the loning, the ardent lust more of the breathing, in breathing we trust more of the beating of hearts in the dusk no more staying indoors

here now, no more staying indoors there are fears to a’frighten and pockets to fill dreams for forgetting and hopes to be killed words to be written, and written but still it’s awfully warm here indoors

Keaton Henson

[shikkaku]

Un éclair… puis la nuit! – Fugitive beauté, Dont le regard m’a fait soudainement renaître, Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l’éternité?

Ailleurs, bien loin d’ici! trop tard! jamais peut-être! Car j’ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais, O toi que j’eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais!

C. Baudelaire - à une passante

[harlecore]

mad girl’s love song (sylvia plath)

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Debole sistro al vento d'una persa cicala, toccato appena e spento nel torpore ch'esala.   Dirama dal profondo in noi la vena segreta: il nostro mondo si regge appena.   Se tu l'accenni, all'aria bigia treman corrotte le vestigia che il vuoto non ringhiotte.   Il gesto indi s'annulla, tace ogni voce, discende alla sua foce la vita brulla.

E. Montale

[shikkaku]

Quando mi desterò dal barbaglio della promiscuità in una limpida e attonita sfera   Quando il mio peso mi sarà leggero   Il naufragio concedimi Signore di quel giovane giorno al primo grido

Preghiera, G. Ungaretti (via shikkaku)