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Hymn

As complicated as a nightingale, as tinny as, kind-hearted as, as crease-proof, as traditional, as green grave sour, as streaky, as symmetrical, as hairy, as near the water, true to the wind, as fireproof, frequently turned over, as childishly easy, well-thumbed as, as deeply cellared, domestic as, as easily lost, shiny with use, as thinly blown, as snow-chilled as, as independent, as mature, as heartless as, as mortal as, as simple as my soul. Günter Grass, from In the Egg and Other Poems Translated by Michael Hamburger

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Colours

When your face appeared over my crumpled life at first I understood only the poverty of what I have. Then its particular light on woods, on rivers, on the sea, became my beginning in the coloured world in which I had not yet had my beginning. I am so frightened, I am so frightened, of the unexpected sunrise finishing, of revelations and tears and the excitement finishing. I don't fight it, my love is this fear, I nourish it who can nourish nothing, love's slipshod watchman. Fear hems me in. I am conscious that these minutes are short and that the colours in my eyes will vanish when your face sets. Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Translator unknown

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I Have Longed To Move Away

I have longed to move away From the hissing of the spent lie And the old terrors' continual cry Growing more terrible as the day Goes over the hill into the deep sea; I have longed to move away From the repetition of salutes, From there are ghosts in the air And ghostly echoes on paper, And the thunder of calls and notes. I have longed to move away but am afraid; Some life, yet unspent, might explode Out of the old lie burning on the ground, And, crackling into the air, leave me half-blind. Neither by night's ancient fear, The parting of hat from hair, Pursed lips at the receiver, Shall I fall to death's feather. By these I would not care to die, Half convention and half lie. Dylan Thomas

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Part Two - 14

See the flowers, faithful to what is earthly, to whom we lend fate from the border of fate,-- yet who knows! If they regret their wilting, it is for us to be their regret. All things want to float. And we go about like weights, lay our self upon everything, delighted with gravity; O what wearing teachers we are for things, while they succeed at eternal childhood. If one took them into intimate slumber and slept deeply with things--: o how lightly he would come, another to another day, out of the common deep. Or he would stay perhaps; and they would bloom and praise him, the convert, who is now like one of them, like all those quiet sister and brothers in the wind of the meadows. Rainer Maria Rilke, from Sonnets To Orpheus Translated by MD Herter Norton

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Part I - 16

You, my friend, are lonely, because… We, with words and finger-pointings, gradually make the world our own, perhaps its weakest, most precarious part. Who points with fingers to a smell?– Yet of the powers that threaten us you feel many... You know the dead, and you shrink away from the magic spell. See, now we two together must bear piece-work and parts as though it were the whole. Helping you will be hard. Above all, do not plant me inside your heart. I should grow too fast. But I will guide my master’s hand and say: Here. This is Esau in his pelt. Rainer Maria Rilke, from Sonnets To Orpheus Translated by MD Herter Norton

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-:-

It shakes a fragrant branch, drinks its treasure in the dark, this raindrop, drunk on storm, hops from cup to cup. Rolling from cup to cup, it straddles and clings to them, hangs there like an agate, sparkles, and shies away. Tortured and flattened by wind over meadowsweet, divided, whole--they go on drinking, kissing. Laughing, breaking up again then straightening out, they will never be spilled from the pistils, cut them--they will not die. Boris Pasternak, translated by Mark Rudman

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Is/Not

Love is not a profession genteel or otherwise sex is not dentistry the slick filling of aches and cavities you are not my doctor you are not my cure, nobody has that power, you are merely a fellow/traveler Give up this medical concern, buttoned, attentive, permit yourself anger and permit me mine which needs neither your approval nor your surprise which does not need to be made legal which is not against a disease but against you, which does not need to be understood or washed or cauterized, which needs instead to be said and said. Permit me the present tense. ___ Atwood, Margaret.

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We were driving to your funeral & our father was not crying because he has a way of tying ribbons around grief. It was the year we learned the piercing that prefaces the blood holds the most delicate of darknesses. Then it was the year we opened all our faucets & waited for the sea to bleed to death. Then it was the year we set fire to your mitt. Then, suddenly the year we started to believe every thorn was just a bridge. Then the year all we talked about was boxing. Then the year my stomach hurt all year, & then the year no one spoke of you. If there were an antonym for suicide we could all choose when to be born. I would have been born after that day so I could not remember you. So my fingers would stop pointing at all the things that aren't there. González, Kevin.

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Untitled haiku

Glow worm  sleeping on this flower - your light’s on.

Kerouac, Jack, and Regina Weinreich. Book of Haikus. 2003.

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Envejecer

Envejecer también es cruzar un mar de humillaciones cada día;  es mirar a la víctima de lejos, con una perspectiva  que en lugar de disminuir los detalles los agranda.  Envejecer es no poder olvidar lo que se olvida.  Envejecer transforma a una víctima en victimario.  Siempre pensé que las edades son todas crueles,  y que se compensan o tendrían que compensarse  las unas con las otras. ¿De qué me sirvió pensar de este modo?  Espero una revelación. ¿Por qué será que un árbol  embellece envejeciendo? Y un hombre espera redimirse  sólo con los despojos de la juventud.  Nunca pensé que envejecer fuera el más arduo de los ejercicios,  una suerte de acrobacia que es un peligro para el corazón.  Todo disfraz repugna al que lo lleva. La vejez  es un disfraz con aditamentos inútiles.  Si los viejos parecen disfrazados, los niños también.  Esas edades carecen de naturalidad. Nadie acepta  ser viejo porque nadie sabe serlo,  como un árbol o como una piedra preciosa.  Soñaba con ser vieja para tener tiempo para muchas cosas.  No quería ser joven, porque perdía el tiempo en amar solamente.  Ahora pierdo más tiempo que nunca en amar,  porque todo lo que hago lo hago doblemente.  El tiempo transcurrido nos arrincona; nos parece  que lo que quedó atrás tiene más realidad  para reducir el presente a un interesante precipicio.

  Ocampo, Silvina. "Envejecer".

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Esperas

            se oyen pasos

            de alguien que no llega nunca

                        Enrique Molina

  uno sigue esperando

sin responder a nadie

entre otras cosas porque

Las sombras no preguntan

uno estira el silencio

abandonado y torpe

con los ojos abiertos

y la esperanza inmóvil

el cielo está tan lejos

y la tierra tan cerca

que no vale la pena

soñar con el futuro

  en secreto se aguardan

noticias del vacío

y sin embargo nadie

se asoma entre la niebla

  ___

Benedetti, Mario. «Esperas». Inédito.

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Liberty

On my notebooks from school

On my desk and the trees

On the sand on the snow

I write your name

  On every page read

On all the white sheets

Stone blood paper or ash

I write your name

  On the golden images

On the soldier’s weapons

On the crowns of kings

I write your name

  On the jungle the desert

The nests and the bushes

On the echo of childhood

I write your name

  On the wonder of nights

On the white bread of days

On the seasons engaged

I write your name

  On all my blue rags

On the pond mildewed sun

On the lake living moon

I write your name

  On the fields the horizon

The wings of the birds

On the windmill of shadows

I write your name

  On the foam of the clouds

On the sweat of the storm

On dark insipid rain

I write your name

  On the glittering forms

On the bells of colour

On physical truth

I write your name

  On the wakened paths

On the opened ways

On the scattered places

I write your name

  On the lamp that gives light

On the lamp that is drowned

On my house reunited

I write your name

  On the bisected fruit

Of my mirror and room

On my bed’s empty shell

I write your name

  On my dog greedy tender

On his listening ears

On his awkward paws

I write your name

  On the sill of my door

On familiar things

On the fire’s sacred stream

I write your name

  On all flesh that’s in tune

On the brows of my friends

On each hand that extends

I write your name

  On the glass of surprises

On lips that attend

High over the silence

I write your name

  On my ravaged refuges

On my fallen lighthouses

On the walls of my boredom

I write your name

  On passionless absence

On naked solitude

On the marches of death

I write your name

  On health that’s regained

On danger that’s past

On hope without memories

I write your name

  By the power of the word

I regain my life

I was born to know you

And to name you

  LIBERTY

  Éluard, Paul. "Liberty." Translated by A.S. Kline.

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Peace

What is this fragrance around me? What is this quietness? What is this knowledge of peace in my heart? What strange, great, new thing is this?

I can hear the flowers growing and the talk of the trees in the wood. I think all my old dreams are ripening, all the hopes and the wishes I sowed.

Everything’s quiet around me, Everything’s gentle and sweet. Great flowers are opening up in my heart with a fragrance of deepest peace.

Leino, Eino. "Peace." Sata ja yksi laulua. 1898. Translated by Lola Rogers.

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Cuarto solo

Si te atreves a sorprender  la verdad de esta vieja pared;  y sus fisuras, desgarraduras,  formando rostros, esfinges,  manos, clepsidras,  seguramente vendrá  una presencia para tu sed,  probablemente partirá  esta ausencia que te bebe.

______________

Pizarnik, Alejandra. «Cuarto solo». Los trabajos y las noches. 1965.

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Morning Song

Love set you going like a fat gold watch

The Midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry

Took its place among the elements.

  Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue

In a drafty museum, your nakedness

Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.

  I'm no more your mother

Than the cloud that distils a mirror to reflect its own slow

Effacement at the wind's hand.

  All night your moth-breath

Flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen:

A far sea moves in my ear.

  One cry, and I stumble from bed, cow-heavy and floral

In my Victorian nightgown.

Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square

  Whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try

Your handful of notes;

The clear vowels rise like balloons.

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Plath, Sylvia. "Morning Song." Ariel. 1967.

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Having Crossed the River

Having crossed the river,

where will you go, O friend?

There's no road to tread,

No traveler ahead,

Neither a beginning, nor an end.

There's no water, no boat, no boatman, no cord;

No earth is there, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford.

You have forgotten the Self within,

Your search in the void will be in vain;

In a moment the life will ebb

And in this body you won't remain.

Be ever conscious of this, O friend,

You've to immerse within your Self;

Kabir says, salvation you won't then need,

For what you are, you would be indeed.

_______________

Kabir. "Having Cross the River." Translated by Sunil Uniyal.

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    A boat beneath a sunny sky,      Lingering onward dreamily      In an evening of July—

       Children three that nestle near,      Eager eye and willing ear,      Pleased a simple tale to hear—

          Long has paled that sunny sky:      Echoes fade and memories die.      Autumn frosts have slain July.

       Still she haunts me, phantomwise,      Alice moving under skies      Never seen by waking eyes.

       Children yet, the tale to hear,      Eager eye and willing ear,      Lovingly shall nestle near.

       In a Wonderland they lie,      Dreaming as the days go by,      Dreaming as the summers die:

       Ever drifting down the stream—      Lingering in the golden gleam—      Life, what is it but a dream?

__________________

Lewis Carroll. Through the Looking-Glass.