Our Favourite Poems- for a site anthology

Twenty-year Marriage
by Ai

You keep me waiting in a truck
with its one good wheel stuck in the ditch,
while you piss against the south side of a tree.
Hurry. I’ve got nothing on under my skirt tonight.
That still excites you, but this pickup has no windows
and the seat, one fake leather thigh,
pressed close to mine is cold.
I’m the same size, shape, make as twenty years ago,
but get inside me, start the engine;
you’ll have the strength, the will to move.
I’ll pull, you push, we’ll tear each other in half.
Come on, baby, lay me down on my back.
Pretend you don’t owe me a thing
and maybe we’ll roll out of here,
leaving the past stacked up behind us;
old newspapers nobody’s ever got to read again.

Serbian poet, Branko Miljković – In vain I wake her

I wake her for the sun that explains itself in plants
For sky stretched between the fingers
I wake her for words that burn my throat
I love her with my ears.
End of the world should be reached and drops of dew found in grass.
I wake her for some distant things that look like these here,
For people who, without forehead or name, go along the street,
For anonymous words, for squares I wake her,
For manufactured landscapes of public parks.
I wake her for this planet of ours which may become a mine
In bloodshed sky
For smiles in stones, friends fallen asleep between two battles
When sky was no longer a big birdcage but
An airport
My love full of others is a part of dawn,
I wake her for the dawn, for love, for myself, for others,
I wake her, even if it is more in vain than to call a bird
That landed forever
She must have said: let him look for me and see that I am gone
That woman with the hands of a child that I love
That child fallen asleep with tears still not wiped, which I wake
In vain in vain in vain
In vain I wake her
For she will wake up different and new
In vain I wake her
For her mouth will not be able to tell
In vain I wake her
You know the water runs through but says nothing
In vain I wake her
A lost name should be promised someone’s face in sand
If this is not so cut off my arms and turn me into stone

@ plavikavez – that sounds surprisingly good in english

Semezdin Mehmedinović

War

War
and nothing is going on -
I go into town to beg for cigarettes

I’ve always known your scent
but yo’ve never been closer -
sometimes when it’s cold in the morning you
put my underwear on by mistake

in ten years we haven’t been together as much
as we have these five months -
now you’ve got my sweater on all day

your joy
at the packets of humanitarian aid
makes me happy and sad at the same time

and I ask myself: where on earth do
you find us coffee every night?

There isn’t a single pane of glass left in our windows
and there’s just no way to get rid
of the lagging flies

@cam.oran – yes, l was surprised how good , l must say
l wish i can find more poems in English (Crnjanski, Dis, Ujević, Dušan Matić)
And thank you for that beautiful poem (still, its better in Bosnian)

@kavez
Don’t know if this is new/interesting to you, if not someone else might check it out.
Serbo-Croation Poetry Translation
6 poems by Ujevic
And Mehmedinovic on his own, and Jergovic’s site.

Auden

To Goethe: A Complaint

How wonderfully your songs begin
With praise of Nature and her beauty,
But then, as if it were a duty,
You drag some god-damned sweetheart in.
Did you imagine she’d be flattered?
They never sound as if they mattered

@cam.oran thank you :)

What’s it to me that you are sage?
Be beautiful! and be sad! Tears
Add a charm to the countenance
As a stream does to a landscape;
Storms make the flowers fresh again.

I love you most of all when joy
Flees from your oppressed brow,
When your heart is drowned in horror,
When the frightful cloud of the Past
Is spread out over your Present.

I love you when your large eyes shed
Tears as hot as blood, when
In spite of my hand which lulls you
Your unbearable pain comes through
Like a dying man’s death-rattle.

I breathe in, heavenly pleasure!
Profound, delightful hymn!
Every sob from your breast
And I believe your heart lights up
With the pearls that your eyes pour out!

I know, your heart, overflowing
With old, uprooted loves,
Still blazes like a forge
And that there smolders in your breast
Something of the pride of the damned

But my sweet, so long as your dreams
Have not reflected Hell,
While in a nightmare without respite,
Dreaming of poisons and daggers,
Enamored with powder and steel,

Answering the door fearfully,
Seeing misfortune everywhere,
Convulsing when the hour strikes,
You have not felt yourself embraced
By irresistible Disgust;

You cannot, slave and queen
Who love me only with terror,
In the unhealthy night’s horror
Say to me, your soul full of cries,
“I am your equal, O my King!”

Alberto Caiero (Fernando Pessoa): Não basta abrir a janela

Não basta abrir a janela
Para ver os campos e o rio.
Não é bastante não ser cego
Para ver as árvores e as flores.
É preciso também não ter filosofia nenhuma.
Com filosofia não há árvores: há ideias apenas.
Há só cada um de nós, como uma cave.
Há só uma janela fechada, e todo o mundo lá fora;
E um sonho do que se poderia ver se a janela se abrisse,
Que nunca é o que se vê quando se abre a janela.

To see the fields and the river
It isn’t enough to open the window.
To see the trees and the flowers
It isn’t enough not to be blind.
It is also necessary to have no philosophy.
With philosophy there are no trees, just ideas.
There is only each one of us, like a cave.
There is only a shut window, and the whole world outside,
And a dream of what could be seen if the window were opened,
Which is never what is seen when the window is opened.

Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen: Os Gregos/The Greeks

Aos deuses supúnhamos uma existência cintilante
Consubstancial ao mar à nuvem ao arvoredo à luz
Neles o longo friso branco das espumas o tremular da vaga
A verdura sussurrada e secreta do bosque o oiro erecto do trigo
O meandro do rio o fogo solene da montanha
E a grande abóbada do ar sonoro e leve e livre
Emergiam em consciência que se vê
Sem que se perdesse o um-boda-e-festa do primeiro dia –
Esta existência desejávamos para nós próprios homens
Por isso repetíamos os gestos rituais que restabelecem
O estar-ser-inteiro inicial das coisas –
Isto nos tornou atentos a todas as formas que a luz do sol conhece
E também à treva interior por que somos habitados
E dentro da qual navega indicível o brilho

To the gods we attributed a dazzling existence
Consubstantial with the sea the clouds trees and light
In them the waves’ glinting the foam’s long white frieze
The woods’ secret and soft green the wheat’s tall gold
The river’s meandering the mountain’s solemn fire
And the great dome of resonant weightless free air
Emerged as self-aware consciousness
With no loss of the first day’s marriage-and-feast oneness

Anxious to have this experience for ourselves
We humans repeated the ritual gestures that re-establish
The initial whole presence of things –
This made us attentive to all forms known by the light of day
As well as to the darkness which lives within us
And in which the ineffable shimmer travels

Verdes são os campos,
De cor de limão:
Assim são os olhos
Do meu coração.

Campo, que te estendes
Com verdura bela;
Ovelhas, que nela
Vosso pasto tendes,
De ervas vos mantendes
Que traz o Verão,
E eu das lembranças
Do meu coração.

Gados que pasceis
Com contentamento,
Vosso mantimento
Não no entendereis;
Isso que comeis
Não são ervas, não:
São graças dos olhos
Do meu coração.

- Luís de Camões (c. 1524-1580)

Sung by Teresa Silva Carvalho

…………………………………………………………………………….

Povo que lavas no rio
Que talhas com o teu machado
As tábuas do meu caixão.
Pode haver quem te defenda
Quem compre o teu chão sagrado
Mas a tua vida não.

Fui ter à mesa redonda
Bebi em malga que me esconde
Um beijo de mão em mão.
Era o vinho que me deste
Água pura, fruto agreste
Mas a tua vida não.

Aromas de urze e de lama
Dormi com eles na cama
Tive a mesma condição.
Povo, povo, eu te pertenço
Deste-me alturas de incenso,
Mas a tua vida não.

Povo que lavas no rio
Que talhas com o teu machado
As tábuas do meu caixão.
Pode haver quem te defenda
Quem compre o teu chão sagrado
Mas a tua vida não.

- Pedro Homem de Melo (1904-1984)

Sung by Amália Rodrigues

Once a dream did weave a shade
O’er my Angel-guarded bed,
That an Emmet lost its way
Where on grass methought I lay.

Troubled, wildered, and forlorn,
Dark, benighted, travel-worn,
Over many a tangle spray,
All heart-broke, I heard her say:

“Oh my children! do they cry,
Do they hear their father sigh?
Now they look abroad to see,
Now return and weep for me.”

Pitying, I dropped a tear;
But I saw a glow-worm near,
Who replied, "What wailing wight
Calls the watchman of the night?

“I am set to light the ground,
While the beetle goes his round:
Follow now the beetle’s hum;
Little wanderer, hie thee home.”

- William Blake

…………………………………………………………………………

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying

Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dying

Temptation’s page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover that you’d just be one more
Person crying

So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacred

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked

An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it

Advertising signs they con
You into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you

You lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found you

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit
To satisfy, insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something they invest in

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless him

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him

Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn’t talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer’s pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death’s honesty
Won’t fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes must get lonely

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed
Graveyards, false gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough, what else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only

- Bob Dylan

Ah, Amalia!!

Stimmen im Strom – Stefan George

Liebende klagende zagende wesen
Nehmt eure zuflucht in unser bereich ·
Werdet geniessen und werdet genesen ·
Arme und worte umwinden euch weich.

Leiber wie muscheln, korallene lippen
Schwimmen und tönen in schwankem palast ·
Haare verschlungen in ästige klippen
Nahend und wieder vom strudel erfasst.

Bläuliche lampen die halb nur erhellen ·
Schwebende säulen auf kreisendem schuh –
Geigend erzitternde ziehende wellen
Schaukeln in selig beschauliche ruh.

Müdet euch aber das sinnen das singen ·
Fliessender freuden bedächtiger lauf ·
Trifft euch ein kuss: und ihr löst euch in ringen
Gleitet als wogen hinab und hinauf.

Can’t find any english translation online. It seems untranslatable to me anyway.

Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi – Cesare Pavese

Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi –
questa morte che ci accompagna
dal mattino alla sera, insonne,
sorda, come un vecchio rimorso
o un vizio assurdo. I tuoi occhi
saranno una vana parola,
un grido taciuto, un silenzio.
Così li vedi ogni mattina
quando su te sola ti pieghi
nello specchio. O cara speranza,
quel giorno sapremo anche noi
che sei la vita e sei il nulla

Per tutti la morte ha uno sguardo.
Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi.
Sarà come smettere un vizio,
come vedere nello specchio
riemergere un viso morto,
come ascoltare un labbro chiuso.
Scenderemo nel gorgo muti.

Death Will Come with Your Eyes

Death will come with your eyes —
this death that accompanies us
from morning till night, sleepless,
deaf, like an old regret
or a stupid vice. Your eyes
will be a useless word,
a muted cry, a silence.
As you see them each morning
when alone you lean over
the mirror. O cherished hope,
that day we too shall know
that you are life and nothing.

For everyone death has a look.
Death will come with your eyes.
It will be like terminating a vice,
as seen in the mirror
a dead face re-emerging,
like listening to closed lips.
We’ll go down the abyss in silence.

Last two ones :

Petit air I — Stéphane Mallarmé

Quelconque une solitude
Sans le cygne ni le quai
Mire sa désuétude
Au regard que j’abdiquai

Ici de la gloriole
Haute à ne la pas toucher
Dont main ciel se bariole
Avec les ors de coucher

Mais langoureusement longe
Comme de blanc linge ôté
Tel fugace oiseau si plonge
Exultatrice à côté

Dans l’onde toi devenue
Ta jubilation nue.

Little Ditty I

Some kind of solitude
with no swan and no pier
reflects its desuetude
in my gaze withdrawn here

from the vain pomp too high
for anyone to hold
mottling many a sky
with sunset’s varied gold

but languorously skirt
like cast-off drapery
of white some fleeting bird
if nearby joyously

your naked bliss should plumb
the wave that you become.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

I(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness

— e.e. cummings

The Hound, by Robert Francis:

Life the hound
Equivocal
Comes at a bound
Either to rend me
Or to befriend me.

I cannot tell
The hound’s intent
Till he has sprung
At my bare hand
With teeth or tongue.
Meanwhile I stand
And wait the event.

This poem by Neruda is recited in English at the end of the film Mindwalk by Capra.

Enigmas

You’ve asked me what the lobster is weaving there with
his golden feet?
I reply, the ocean knows this.
You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent
bell? What is it waiting for?
I tell you it is waiting for time, like you.
You ask me whom the Macrocystis alga hugs in its arms?
Study, study it, at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know.
You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal,
and I reply by describing
how the sea unicorn with the harpoon in it dies.
You enquire about the kingfisher’s feathers,
which tremble in the pure springs of the southern tides?
Or you’ve found in the cards a new question touching on
the crystal architecture
of the sea anemone, and you’ll deal that to me now?
You want to understand the electric nature of the ocean
spines?
The armored stalactite that breaks as it walks?
The hook of the angler fish, the music stretched out
in the deep places like a thread in the water?

I want to tell you the ocean knows this, that life in its
jewel boxes
is endless as the sand, impossible to count, pure,
and among the blood-colored grapes time has made the
petal
hard and shiny, made the jellyfish full of light
and untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall
from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother-of-pearl.

I am nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead
of human eyes, dead in those darknesses,
of fingers accustomed to the triangle, longitudes
on the timid globe of an orange.

I walked around as you do, investigating
the endless star,
and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked,
the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind.

Translated by Robert Bly

Pablo Neruda

ODYSSEUS ELYTIS: MARINA OF THE ROCKS

You have a taste of tempest on your lips—But where did you wander
All day long in the hard reverie of stone and sea?
An eagle-bearing wind stripped the hills
Stripped your longing to the bone
And the pupils of your eyes received the message of chimera
Spotting memory with foam!
Where is the familiar slope of short September
On the red earth where you played, looking down
At the broad rows of the other girls
The corners where your friends left armfuls of rosemary.

But where did you wander
All night long in the hard reverie of stone and sea?
I told you to count in the naked water its luminous days
On your back to rejoice in the dawn of things
Or again to wander on yellow plains
With a clover of light on you breast, iambic heroine.

You have a taste of tempest on your lips
And a dress red as blood
Deep in the gold of summer
And the perfume of hyacinths—But where did you wander
Descending toward the shores, the pebbled bays?

There was cold salty seaweed there
But deeper a human feeling that bled
And you opened your arms in astonishment naming it
Climbing lightly to the clearness of the depths
Where your own starfish shone.

Listen. Speech is the prudence of the aged
And time is a passionate sculptor of men
And the sun stands over it, a beast of hope
And you, closer to it, embrace a love
With a bitter taste of tempest on your lips.

It is not for you, blue to the bone, to think of another summer,
For the rivers to change their bed
And take you back to their mother
For you to kiss other cherry trees
Or ride on the northwest wind.

Propped on the rocks, without yesterday or tomorrow,
Facing the dangers of the rocks with a hurricane hairstyle
You will say farewell to the riddle that is yours.

(translation)

Dream by Maria Polydouri (1902 – 1930).

wandering about the mount;
a thousand thorns in my view,
my clasping hands in hurt abound.

I longed so much for you to pass
through the icy northern wind,
holding a gift for you –alas-
tight against my bosom’s tilt.

I kept on gazing afar,
full of yearning was my heart
and my eyes streaming tears.

In my craving I failed to see
the dead of night was drawing nigh;
and I cried and cried –whatever be-
me and my roses in the night.

Maria Polydouri: To A Friend

I shall come upon the night, on the way that drags me along,
I shall come and find you there alone.
With indolent movements, eventide will spin her delicate shades,
drifting past your desolate window.

In the stillness of your room you shall have me in-
books scattered around, consigned to silence deep.
And we shall sit side by side, musing over moments past,
yet long before we lose them, still are dying and last.

For the bitterness of ungrateful life, the dreariness,
for having no yearning, no craving,
for decay and silence abiding
plunged in brooding stillness
our speech and ultimate thought shall fade away.

But the night will come to rest
right at your window’s nest.
Scents and glittering stars and fair breezes shall mingle
with the grand call that Nature delivers,
with your heart that even silence itself will not shelter.

TENNYSON: IN MEMORIAM A.H.H
VII

Dark house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,

A hand that can be clasp’d no more–
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.

He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.

Sirkka Turkka: A Thousand Feet of Snow

Stars are again like a teary ballad, and at nights
dogs tune their cloven violins.
I do not let sorrow come,
I do not let it near.
A thousand feet of snow over my heart.
I mumble a lot to myself, in the street
I sing aloud.
Sometimes I see myself in passing, with a hat, perfect food
for winds, with some thought or other aslant.
I talk about death, when I mean life. I walk with my papers
in a mess, I don’t own a single theory, only a swearing dog.
When I ask for liquor, I’m offered ice-cream,
I may be a Spaniard, with my hairline
low like this, indeed:
I may not be from these parts.
I sweat, trying to talk, once and a while
I tremble.
Almost more than for my death, I mourn for my birth.
And all I ask for
is a thousand feet of snow over my heart.

Homer: The Odyssey (opening)

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end,
after he plundered the stronghold
on the proud height of Troy.
He saw the townlands
and learned the minds of many distant men,
and weathered many bitter nights and days
in his deep heart at sea, while he fought only
to save his life, to bring his shipmates home.
But not by will nor valor could he save them,
for their own recklessness destroyed them all —
children and fools, they killed and feasted on
the cattle of Lord Hêlios, the Sun,
and he who moves all day through the heaven
took from their eyes the dawn of their return. . . .

_~~

I remember a teacher, a hard frightening man we would quake in our shoes over- and once i wet myself rather than disturb his writing on the board. He once recited the original Greek, he had a gleam in his eye, the words rolled off his tongue, the sounds were to be savoured, and it was the happiest and softest i ever saw him.

Oh, yes, and how many times have I read/spoken these lines? They don’t age.

Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ
πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσε·
πολλῶν δ’ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω,
πολλὰ δ’ ὅ γ’ ἐν πόντῳ πάθεν ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυμόν,
ἀρνύμενος ἥν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νόστον ἑταίρων.
ἀλλ’ οὐδ’ ὧς ἑτάρους ἐρρύσατο, ἱέμενός περ·
αὐτῶν γὰρ σφετέρῃσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὄλοντο,
νήπιοι, οἳ κατὰ βοῦς Ὑπερίονος Ἠελίοιο
ἤσθιον· αὐτὰρ ὁ τοῖσιν ἀφείλετο νόστιμον ἦμαρ.
τῶν ἁμόθεν γε, θεά, θύγατερ Διός, εἰπὲ καὶ ἡμῖν.

MONTALE: THE LEMON TREE

Hear me a moment. Laureate poets
seem to wander among plants
no one knows: boxwood, acanthus,
where nothing is alive to touch.
I prefer small streets that falter
into grassy ditches where a boy,
searching in the sinking puddles,
might capture a struggling eel.
The little path that winds down
along the slope plunges through cane-tufts
and opens suddenly into the orchard
among the moss-green trunks
of the lemon trees.

Perhaps it is better
if the jubilee of small birds
dies down, swallowed in the sky,
yet more real to one who listens,
the murmur of tender leaves
in a breathless, unmoving air.
The senses are graced with an odor
filled with the earth.
It is like rain in a troubled breast,
sweet as an air that arrives
too suddenly and vanishes.
A miracle is hushed; all passions
are swept aside. Even the poor
know that richness,
the fragrance of the lemon trees.

You realize that in silences
things yield and almost betray
their ultimate secrets.
At times, one half expects
to discover an error in Nature,
the still point of reality,
the missing link that will not hold,
the thread we cannot untangle
in order to get at the truth.

You look around. Your mind seeks,
makes harmonies, falls apart
in the perfume, expands
when the day wearies away.
There are silences in which one watches
in every fading human shadow
something divine let go.

The illusion wanes, and in time we return
to our noisy cities where the blue
appears only in fragments
high up among the towering shapes.
Then rain leaching the earth.
Tedious, winter burdens the roofs,
and light is a miser, the soul bitter.
Yet, one day through an open gate,
among the green luxuriance of a yard,
the yellow lemons fire
and the heart melts,
and golden songs pour
into the breast
from the raised cornets of the sun
(translation)

TENNYSON: IN MEMORIAM: CXV

Now fades the last long streak of snow,
Now burgeons every maze of quick
About the flowering squares, and thick
By ashen roots the violets blow.

Now rings the woodland loud and long,
The distance takes a lovelier hue,
And drown’d in yonder living blue
The lark becomes a sightless song.

Now dance the lights on lawn and lea,
The flocks are whiter down the vale,
And milkier every milky sail
On winding stream or distant sea;

Where now the seamew pipes, or dives
In yonder greening gleam, and fly
The happy birds, that change their sky
To build and brood; that live their lives

From land to land; and in my breast
Spring wakens too; and my regret
Becomes an April violet,
And buds and blossoms like the rest.

(Tennyson’s In Memoriam is one of the moving wonders of poetry in English)

Rumi : BE MELTING SNOW

Totally conscious, and apropos of nothing, you come to see me.
Is someone here? I ask.
The moon.The full moon is inside your house.

My friends and I go running out onto the street.
I’m in here, comes a voice from the house, but we aren’t listening.
We’re looking at the sky.
My pet nightmare sobs like a drunk in the garden.
Ringdoves scatter with small cries, Where, Where.
It’s midnight. The whole neighborhood is up and out
in the streeet thinking, The cat burglar has come back.
The actual thief is there too, saying out loud,
Yes, the cat burglar is somewhere in this crowd.
No one pays attention.

Lo, I am with you always means when you look for God,
God is in the look of your eyes,
in the thought of looking, nearer to you than yourself,
or things that have happened to you.
There’s no need to go outside.

Be melting snow.
Wash yourself of yourself.

A white flower grows in the quietness.
Let your tongue become that flower.

I need a mouth as wide as sky
to say the nature of a True Person, language
as large as longing.

The fragile vial inside me often breaks.
No wonder I go mad and dissappear for three days
every month with the moon.

For anyone in love with you,
it’s always these invisible days.

I’ve lost the thread of the story I was telling.
My elephant roams his dream of Hindustan again.
Narrative, poetics, destroyed, my body,
a dissolving, a return.

Friend, I’ve shrunk to a hair trying to say your story.
Would you tell mine?
I’ve made up so many love stories.
Now I feel fictional.
Tell me!
The truth is, you are speaking , not me.
I am Sinai, and you are Moses walking there.
This poetry is an echo of what you say.
A piece of land can’t speak, or know anything!
Or if it can, only within limits.

The body is a device to calculate
the astronomy of the spirit.
Look through that astrolabe
and become oceanic.

Why this distracted talk?
It’s not may fault I rave.
You did this.
Do you approve of my love-madness?

Say Yes.
What language will you say it in, Arabic or Persian,
or what? Once again, I must tied up.

Bring the curly ropesof your hair.
Now I remember the story.
A True Man stares at his old shoes
and skeepskin jacket. Every day he goes up
to his attic to look at his work-shoes and worn-out coat.
This is his wisdom, to remember the original clay
and not get drunk with ego and arrogance.

To visit those shoes and jacket
is praise.

The Absolute works with nothing.
The workshop, materials
are what dose not exist.

Try and be a sheet of paper with nothing on it.
Be a spot of ground where nothing is growing,
where something might be planted,
a seed, possibly, from the Absolute.

Mallarme : Le guignon

Au-dessus du bétail ahuri des humains
Bondissaient en clartés les sauvages crinières
Des mendieurs d’azur le pied dans nos chemins.

Un noir vent sur leur marche éployé pour bannières
La flagellait de froid tel jusque dans la chair,
Qu’il y creusait aussi d’irritables ornières.

Toujours avec l’espoir de rencontrer la mer,
Ils voyageaient sans pain, sans bâtons et sans urnes,
Mordant au citron d’or de l’idéal amer.

La plupart râla dans les défilés nocturnes,
S’enivrant du bonheur de voir couler son sang,
Ô Mort le seul baiser aux bouches taciturnes !

Leur défaite, c’est par un ange très puissant
Debout à l’horizon dans le nu de son glaive :
Une pourpre se caille au sein reconnaissant.

Ils tètent la douleur comme ils tétaient le rêve
Et quand ils vont rythmant des pleurs voluptueux
Le peuple s’agenouille et leur mère se lève.

Ceux-là sont consolés, sûrs et majestueux ;
Mais traînent à leurs pas cent frères qu’on bafoue,
Dérisoires martyrs de hasards tortueux.

Le sel pareil des pleurs ronge leur douce joue,
Ils mangent de la cendre avec le même amour,
Mais vulgaire ou bouffon le destin qui les roue.

Ils pouvaient exciter aussi comme un tambour
La servile pitié des races à voix ternes,
Egaux de Prométhée à qui manque un vautour !

Non, vils et fréquentant les déserts sans citerne,
Ils courent sous le fouet d’un monarque rageur,
Le Guignon, dont le rire inouï les prosterne.

Amants, il saute en croupe à trois, le partageur !
Puis le torrent franchi, vous plonge en une mare
Et laisse un bloc boueux du blanc couple nageur.

Grâce à lui, si l’un souffle à son buccin bizarre,
Des enfants nous tordront en un rire obstiné
Qui, le poing à leur cul, singeront sa fanfare.

Grâce à lui, si l’une orne à point un sein fané
Par une rose qui nubile le rallume,
De la bave luira sur son bouquet damné.

Et ce squelette nain, coiffé d’un feutre à plume
Et botté, dont l’aisselle a pour poils vrais des vers,
Est pour eux l’infini de la vaste amertume.

Vexés ne vont-ils pas provoquer le pervers,
Leur rapière grinçant suit le rayon de lune
Qui neige en sa carcasse et qui passe au travers.

Désolés sans l’orgueil qui sacre l’infortune,
Et tristes de venger leurs os de coups de bec,
Ils convoitent la haine, au lieu de la rancune.

Ils sont l’amusement des racleurs de rebec,
Des marmots, des putains et de la vieille engeance
Des loqueteux dansant quand le broc est à sec.

Les poètes bons pour l’aumône ou la vengeance,
Ne connaissant le mal de ces dieux effacés,
Les disent ennuyeux et sans intelligence.

" Ils peuvent fuir ayant de chaque exploit assez,
" Comme un vierge cheval écume de tempête
" Plutôt que de partir en galops cuirassés.

" Nous soûlerons d’encens le vainqueur dans la fête :
" Mais eux, pourquoi n’endosser pas, ces baladins,
" D’écarlate haillon hurlant que l’on s’arrête ! "

Quand en face tous leur ont craché les dédains,
Nuls et la barbe à mots bas priant le tonnerre,
Ces héros excédés de malaises badins

Vont ridiculement se pendre au réverbère.

We are the birds always charmed by you from the top of these belvederes
And that each night form a blossoming branch between your shoulders and the arms of your well beloved wheelbarrow
Which we tear out swifter than sparks at your wrist
We are the sighs of the glass statue that raises itself on its elbow when man sleeps
And shining holes appear in his bed
Holes through which stags with coral antlers can be seen in a glade
And naked women at the bottom of a mine
You remembered then you got up you got out of the train
Without glancing at the locomotive attacked by immense barometric roots
Complaining about its murdered boilers in the virgin forest
Its funnels smoking jacinths and moulting blue snakes
Then we went on, plants subject to metamorphosis
Each night making signs that man may understand …
The staircase goes on without end …

excerpt from Postman Cheval, ANDRE BRETON

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“I remember my first birth in water. All round me a sulphurous transparency and my bones move as if made of rubber … . Ejected from a paradise of soundlessness, cathedrals wavering at the passage of a body, like soundless music. This Atlantide could be found again only at night, by the route of the dream. As soon as sleep covered the rigid new city, the rigidity of the new world, the heaviest portals slid open on smooth-oiled gongs and one entered the voicelessness of the dream. The terror and joy of murders accomplished in silence, in the silence of slidings and brushings. The blanket of water lying over all things stifling the voice …

Lost in the colors of the Atlantide, the colors running into each other without frontiers. Fishes made of velvet, of organdie with lace fangs, made of spangled taffeta, of silks and feathers and whiskers, with lacquered flanks and rock crystal eyes, fishes of withered leather with gooseberry eyes, eyes like the white of an egg. Flowers palpitating on stalks like sea-hearts. None of them feeling their own weight, the sea-horse moving like a feather …"

“As we walked along, rockets burst from the street lamps; we swallowed the asphalt road with a jungle roar and the houses with their closed eyes and geranium eyelashes; swallowed the telegraph poles trembling with messages; swallowed stray cats, trees, hills, hedges, Sabina’s labyrinthian smile on the keyhole. The door moaning, opening. Her smile closed. A nightingale disleafing melliferous honeysuckle. Honey-suckled. Fluted fingers. The house opened its green gate mouth and swallowed us. The bed was floating.”

excerpts from House of Incest, ANAIS NIN.

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I

L’eau claire ; comme le sel des larmes d’enfance,
L’assaut au soleil des blancheurs des corps de femmes ;
la soie, en foule et de lys (pur), des oriflammes
sous les murs dont quelque pucelle eut la défense ;

l’ébat des anges ; – (Non)… le courant d’or en marche,
meut ses bras, noirs, et lourds, et frais surtout, d’herbe. Elle
sombre, avant le Ciel bleu pour ciel-de-lit, appelle
pour rideaux l’ombre de la colline et de l’arche.

II

Eh ! l’humide carreau tend ses bouillons limpides !
L’eau meuble d’or pâle et sans fond les couches prêtes.
Les robes vertes et déteintes des fillettes
font les saules, d’où sautent les oiseaux sans brides.

Plus pure qu’un louis, jaune et chaude paupière
le souci d’eau – ta foi conjugale, o l’Epouse ! -
au midi prompt, de son terne miroir, jalouse
au ciel gris de chaleur la Sphère rose et chère.

excerpt from Dernier Vers: Memoire, ARTHUR RIMBAUD