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George Oppen, Los materiales. Traducción de Kurt Folch.

#georpge oppen #los materiales #the materials #kurt folch

George Oppen, Los materiales. Traducción de Kurt Folch.

#george oppen #los materiales #the materials #kurt folch

Image of the Engine

1 Likely as not a ruined head gasket Spitting at every power stroke, if not a crank shaft Bearing knocking at the roots of the thing like a pile-driver: A machine involved with itself, a concentrated Hot lump of a machine Geared in the loose mechanics of the world with the valves jumping And the heavy frenzy of the pistons. When the thing stops, Is stopped, with the last slow cough In the manifold, the flywheel blundering Against compression, stopping, finally Stopped, compression leaking From the idle cylinders will one imagine Then because he can imagine That squeezed from the cooling steel There hovers in that moment, wraith-like and like a plume of steam, an aftermath, A still and quiet angel of knowledge and of comprehension. 2 Endlessly, endlessly, The definition of mortality The image of the engine That stops. We cannot live on that. I know that no one would live out Thirty years, fifty years if the world were ending With his life. The machine stares out, Stares out With all its eyes Thru the glass With the ripple in it, past the sill Which is dusty—If there is someone In the garden! Outside, and so beautiful. 3 What ends Is that. Even companionship Ending. ‘I want to ask if you remember When we were happy! As tho all travels Ended untold, all embarkations Foundered. 4 On that water Grey with morning The gull will fold its wings And sit. And with its two eyes There as much as anything Can watch a ship and all its hallways And all companions sink. 5 Also he has set the world In their hearts. From lumps, chunks, We are locked out: like children, seeking love At last among each other. With their first full strength The young go search for it, Native in the native air. But even the beautiful bony children Who arise in the morning have left behind Them worn and squalid toys in the trash Which is a grimy death of love. The lost Glitter of the stores! The streets of stores! Crossed by the streets of stores And every crevice of the city leaking Rubble: concrete, conduit, pipe, a crumbling Rubble of our roots But they will find In flood, storm, ultimate mishap: Earth, water, the tremendous Surface, the heart thundering Absolute desire.

— George Oppen, from The Materials (1962)

#george oppen #the materials #poetry #objectivist poetry #quarantine poetics?