tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17615745407234592052024-02-20T18:30:58.065-08:00Mr.Topo's Anthology Of Favorite VersUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-27187432365770723562007-07-09T09:14:00.000-07:002007-07-09T09:26:03.763-07:00By Candlelight<span style="color: rgb(255, 102, 0);" name="KonaFilter"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: times new roman;"> This is winter, this is night, small love --</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">A sort of black horsehair,</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">A rough, dumb country stuff</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">Steeled with the sheen</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">Of what green stars can make it to our gate.</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">I hold you on my arm.</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">It is very late.</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">The dull bells tongue the hour.</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">The mirror floats us at one candle power.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">This is the fluid in which we meet each other,</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">This haloey radiance that seems to breathe</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">And lets our shadows wither</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">Only to blow</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">Them huge again, violent giants on the wall.</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">One match scratch makes you real.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">At first the candle will not bloom at all --</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">It snuffs its bud</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">To almost nothing, to a dull blue dud.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">I hold my breath until you creak to life,</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">Balled hedgehog,</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">Small and cross. The yellow knife</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">Grows tall. You clutch your bars.</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">My singing makes you roar.</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">I rock you like a boat</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">Across the Indian carpet, the cold floor,</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">While the brass man</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">Kneels, back bent, as best he can</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">Hefting his white pillar with the light</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">That keeps the sky at bay,</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">The sack of black! It is everywhere, tight, tight!</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">He is yours, the little brassy Atlas --</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">Poor heirloom, all you have,</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">At his heels a pile of five brass cannonballs,</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">No child, no wife.</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">Five balls! Five bright brass balls!</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">To juggle with, my love, when the sky falls.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">By Sylvia Plath</span><br /></span> </span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-77699781125891110792007-07-09T09:11:00.000-07:002007-07-09T09:12:30.270-07:00April 18<span style="color: rgb(255, 153, 0);" name="KonaFilter"><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: times new roman;"> the slime of all my yesterdays</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">rots in the hollow of my skull</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">and if my stomach would contract</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">because of some explicable phenomenon</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">such as pregnancy or constipation</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">I would not remember you</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">or that because of sleep</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">infrequent as a moon of greencheese</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">that because of food</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">nourishing as violet leaves</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">that because of these</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">and in a few fatal yards of grass</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">in a few spaces of sky and treetops</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">a future was lost yesterday</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">as easily and irretrievably</span><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">as a tennis ball at twilight<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(153, 0, 0);">By Sylvia Plath</span><br /></span> </span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-30615436509760230562007-07-09T09:06:00.000-07:002007-07-09T09:11:28.891-07:00A Radio With Guts<table style="width: 677px; height: 645px; color: rgb(255, 153, 0);" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><span name="KonaFilter"></span><td style="font-family: times new roman;" valign="top" width="20"><br /></td> <td style="font-family: times new roman;" valign="top"><span style="color: rgb(128, 0, 0);font-size:100%;" > it was on the 2nd floor on Coronado Street<br />I used to get drunk<br />and throw the radio through the window<br />while it was playing, and, of course,<br />it would break the glass in the window<br />and the radio would sit there on the roof<br />still playing<br />and I'd tell my woman,<br />"Ah, what a marvelous radio!"<br />the next morning I'd take the window<br />off the hinges<br />and carry it down the street<br />to the glass man<br />who would put in another pane.<br />I kept throwing that radio through the window<br />each time I got drunk<br />and it would sit there on the roof<br />still playing-<br />a magic radio<br />a radio with guts,<br />and each morning I'd take the window<br />back to the glass man.<br />I don't remember how it ended exactly<br />though I do remember<br />we finally moved out.<br />there was a woman downstairs who worked in<br />the garden in her bathing suit,<br />she really dug with that trowel<br />and she put her behind up in the air<br />and I used to sit in the window<br />and watch the sun shine all over that thing<br />while the music played.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">By Charles Bukowski</span><br /> </span></td></tr></tbody></table>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-22539930264112781822007-06-15T09:09:00.000-07:002007-06-15T09:10:23.167-07:00To ClymèneMystical singing-birds,<br />romances without words,<br />dear, because your eyes<br />the shade of skies,<br /><br />because your voice, strange<br />vision that will derange,<br />troubling the horizon<br />of my reason,<br /><br />because the rare perfume<br />of your swanlike paleness,<br />because the innocence<br />of your fragrance,<br /><br />ah, because all your being,<br />music so piercing,<br />clouds of lost angels,<br />tones and scents,<br /><br />has by soft cadences<br />with its correspondences,<br />lured my subtle heart, oh<br />let it be so!<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">By Paul Verlaine</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-54148788753968694862007-06-15T09:05:00.000-07:002007-06-15T09:08:06.057-07:00My Familiar DreaI often have this dream, strange and penetrating<br />of a woman, unknown, whom I love, who loves me,<br />and who’s never, each time, the same exactly,<br />nor exactly different, she knows me, she’s loving.<br /><br />Oh she knows me, and my heart, growing<br />clear for her alone, is no longer a problem,<br />for her alone, she alone understands, then,<br />how to cool the sweat of my brow with her weeping.<br /><br />Is she dark, blond, or auburn? – I’ve no idea.<br />Her name? I remember it’s vibrant and dear,<br />as those of the loved that life has exiled.<br /><br />Her eyes are the same as a statue’s eyes,<br />and in her voice, distant, serious, mild,<br />the tone of dear voices, of those who have died.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">By Paul Verlaine</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-11442532683597207362007-06-15T09:03:00.000-07:002007-06-15T09:04:38.652-07:00The Graveyard ClubI meet B. in the graveyard.<br />She is my age, more or less.<br /><br />I have been coming here for nine years,<br />every Sabbath - she explains -.<br />My little son died in his sleep.<br />A sudden death.<br />I had gone to work at the cannery.<br />My elder son, the seven year old, realized<br />that he could not wake him up<br />to go to school.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">By Miren Agur Meabe</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-13837895507689417822007-06-15T09:02:00.001-07:002007-06-15T09:02:59.230-07:00The ColdFrost spat in my eyes<br />at four in the morning.<br />The sheets were clean,<br />but her lips are a puddle on the pillow.<br /><br />I put on her stockings.<br />Now she has warm feet.<br />I thought she smiled at me.<br /><br />They tolled the bell. Funeral rites.<br />I shall never again touch this body.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">By Miren Agur Meabe</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-61633633734292450462007-06-15T08:58:00.000-07:002007-06-15T09:00:57.911-07:00L’AllumetteFire makes a body of the match.<br />A living soul with its own expression,<br />its own glory, its own short history.<br />The gas rising from it blazes;<br />bestowing wings, a costume, even a body:<br />a truly moving thing,<br />stirring.<br /><br />It all happens so quickly!<br /><br />Only the head has the power to catch fire<br />when it comes into contact with harsh<br />reality<br />- sounds like the crack of a starting pistol.<br />But, as soon as it takes hold,<br />the flame<br />- upright, swift, a sail blown like a racing yacht -<br /> travels the length of its own wooden boom,<br /><br />And hardly has it come about<br />it leaves<br /> black as the hat of a parish priest.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">By Francis Ponge</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-28487829079743930152007-06-13T08:27:00.000-07:002007-06-13T08:30:45.653-07:00As someone on his back for months of illnessAs someone on his back for months of illness<br />would leave the bed one morning; tries and tries<br />with little help from bone or muscle, striving<br />upward, he doubles over, cannot rise;<br />just so with me: I struggle against loving;<br />wish to believe what thought assures me of,<br />only cannot, cannot - no strength remaining<br />after the long infirmity of love.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);"> By Ausiàs March</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-69180258165903682842007-06-13T08:26:00.000-07:002007-06-13T08:31:58.433-07:00My November GuestMy Sorrow, when she's here with me,<br />Thinks these dark days of autumn rain<br />Are beautiful as days can be;<br />She loves the bare, the withered tree;<br />She walks the sodden pasture lane.<br /><br />Her pleasure will not let me stay.<br />She talks and I am fain to list:<br />She's glad the birds are gone away,<br />She's glad her simple worsted gray<br />Is silver now with clinging mist.<br /><br />The desolate, deserted trees,<br />The faded earth, the heavy sky,<br />The beauties she so ryly sees,<br />She thinks I have no eye for these,<br />And vexes me for reason why.<br /><br />Not yesterday I learned to know<br />The love of bare November days<br />Before the coming of the snow,<br />But it were vain to tell her so,<br />And they are better for her praise.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">By Robert Frost</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-21204812275214649202007-06-13T08:24:00.000-07:002007-06-13T08:26:20.988-07:00The PastureI'm going out to clean the pasture spring;<br />I'll only stop to rake the leaves away<br />(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):<br />I shan't be gone long. -- You come too.<br />I'm going out to fetch the little calf<br />That's standing by the mother. It's so young,<br />It totters when she licks it with her tongue.<br />I shan't be gone long. -- You come too.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">By Robert Frost</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-43008630344357432732007-06-13T08:23:00.000-07:002007-06-13T08:24:21.212-07:00Sí tosto come aven che l’arco scocchiAs soon as ever he has launched his arrows,<br />the expert archer can see from afar<br />which shots have gone astray, and those<br />he’s sure will hit the target he assigned:<br /><br />so you knew the arrows from your eyes,<br />lady, had pierced straight to my deepest part,<br />and I’d be forced to weep eternally<br />because of the wound my heart received.<br /><br />And I am certain of what you said then:<br />‘Wretched lover, where will crying lead him?<br />Behold the arrow by which Love hoped he’d die.’<br /><br />Now, seeing how grief has bound me,<br />all that my enemies do with me now,<br />is not to kill me but increase my pain.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">By Petrarch</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-90803863022882651772007-06-13T08:21:00.000-07:002007-06-13T08:22:01.036-07:00And when you are goneAnd when you are gone there will be no memory<br />Of you and no regret. For you do not share<br />The Pierian roses, but unseen in the house of Hades<br />You will stray, breathed out, among the ghostly dead. <br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">By Sappho</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-50375519828861191972007-06-13T08:16:00.000-07:002007-06-13T08:17:32.047-07:00Hopkins ForestI'd gone out<br />to get water from the well, near the trees,<br />and I was in the presence of another sky.<br />Gone were the constellations<br />there a moment before.<br />Three fourths of the firmament was empty,<br />the intensest black shone there alone,<br />though to the left, above the horizon,<br />in among the tops of the oaks,<br />there was a mass of reddening stars<br />like firecoals, from which smoke even rose.<br /><br />I went back inside<br />and re-opened the book on the table.<br />Page after page,<br />there were only indecipherable signs,<br />clusters of forms without any sense,<br />although vaguely recurring,<br />and beneath them an abyssal white<br />as if what we call the spirit<br />were falling there, soundlessly,<br />like snow.<br />Still, I went on turning the pages.<br /><br />Many years earlier,<br />in a train at the moment when the day rises,<br />between Princeton Junction and Newark,<br />— that is to say, two chance places for me,<br />two arrows fallen out of nowhere —<br />the passengers were reading, silent<br />in the snow that was sweeping the gray windows,<br />and suddenly,<br />in a newspaper open next to me —<br />a big photograph of Baudelaire,<br />a whole page,<br />as if the sky were emptying at the world's end<br />in recognition of the chaos of words.<br />I put together this dream and this memory<br />when I walked, all of one fall,<br />in woods where snow would soon triumph,<br />among the many signs we receive,<br />contradictorily,<br />from the world devastated by language.<br />The conflict between two principles,<br />it seemed to me, was nearing an end,<br />two lights were becoming one,<br />the lips of a wound closing.<br />The white mass of the cold was falling in gusts<br />on color, but a roof in the distance, a painted<br />board, standing against a gate,<br />was color still, and mysterious,<br />like someone coming out of a tomb, laughing,<br />and telling the world, "No, don't touch me."<br /><br />Truly I owe a lot to Hopkins Forest.<br />I keep it on my horizon, in that place<br />where the visible gives way to the invisible<br />in the trembling of the blue in the distance.<br />I listen to it, amid other sounds,<br />and at times even, in summer,<br />kicking the dead leaves of other years<br />lying as if lit in the shade of oaks<br />grown densely among stones,<br />I stop: I believe that the ground is opening<br />to the infinite, that the leaves are falling into it<br />without hurry, or coming up again,<br />above and below no longer existing,<br />or sound, only the light<br />whispering of snowflakes that soon<br />multiply, draw closer, bind together —<br />and then I see again the whole other sky,<br />I enter for a moment the great snow.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">By Yves Bonnefoy</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-88718795097053415262007-06-13T08:14:00.000-07:002007-06-13T08:15:43.103-07:00The Oldest ChildThe night still frightens you.<br />You know it is interminable<br />And of vast, unimaginable dimensions.<br />"That's because His insomnia is permanent,"<br />You've read some mystic say.<br />Is it the point of His schoolboy's compass<br />That pricks your heart?<br /><br />Somewhere perhaps the lovers lie<br />Under the dark cypress trees,<br />Trembling with happiness,<br />But here there's only your beard of many days<br />And a night moth shivering<br />Under your hand pressed against your chest.<br /><br />Oldest child, Prometheus<br />Of some cold, cold fire you can't even name<br />For which you're serving slow time<br />With that night moth's terror for company.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">By Charles Simic</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-68612252402707100002007-06-13T08:13:00.000-07:002007-06-13T08:14:26.152-07:00Hotel InsomniaI liked my little hole,<br />Its window facing a brick wall.<br />Next door there was a piano.<br />A few evenings a month<br />a crippled old man came to play<br />"My Blue Heaven."<br /><br />Mostly, though, it was quiet.<br />Each room with its spider in heavy overcoat<br />Catching his fly with a web<br />Of cigarette smoke and revelry.<br />So dark,<br />I could not see my face in the shaving mirror.<br /><br />At 5 A.M. the sound of bare feet upstairs.<br />The "Gypsy" fortuneteller,<br />Whose storefront is on the corner,<br />Going to pee after a night of love.<br />Once, too, the sound of a child sobbing.<br />So near it was, I thought<br />For a moment, I was sobbing myself.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">By Charles Simic</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-84099779380208516192007-06-13T08:09:00.000-07:002007-06-13T08:13:08.894-07:00‘Yo eschuco los cantos’I follow the songs<br />with age-old rhythms<br />the children are singing<br />while they are playing<br />and showing in song<br />what their souls are dreaming,<br />like stone fountains<br />that show their water:<br />in monotonous murmurs<br />of undying laughter<br />that has in it no joy,<br />of ancient weeping<br />that has in it no pain<br />and speaks of sadness<br />the sadness of loving<br />of ancient legends.<br /><br />In the mouths of children <br />the singing brings<br />the tale’s confusion,<br />pain that’s clear<br />as that clear water,<br />brings the message<br />of ancient love,<br />that it conceals.<br /><br />Playing in shadows<br />of an ancient plaza<br />the children, singing…<br /><br />The fountain of stone<br />poured out its eternal<br />crystal of legend.<br />The children were singing<br />innocent songs<br />of things that go on<br />and are never ending:<br />the story confused<br />the suffering clear.<br /><br />The fountain serenely<br />continued its tale:<br />erasing the story,<br />telling the pain.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">By Antonio Machado</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-33275729120189344842007-06-13T08:07:00.000-07:002007-06-13T08:09:54.380-07:00The wisdom handed down by the ancientsThe wisdom handed down by the ancients<br />breaks up into miserable fragments the moment I breathe<br />at every beat stasis renders it vain<br />confirmed and unsurprising.<br />How can we forget that the shades, the disquietudes<br />merely dissimulate rigid rest<br />a silence already immense?<br />The wisdom handed down by the ancients<br />therefore, must only be thought of<br />as the headlong flight of a herd<br />of animals pursued by fire:<br />a not unnatural, non-formal event<br />which happens many times in a life<br />and millions of times in every memory<br />and imagination – an event<br />both vital and mortal<br />and fundamental<br />which makes of existence an extinction<br />and not only the appearance of movement.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">By Andrea Raos</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-73018532153224361622007-06-02T20:15:00.000-07:002007-06-02T20:17:51.271-07:00MyselfIt’s filled with light, is<br />my heart of silk, and<br />with bells that are lost,<br />with bees and with lilies,<br />and I will go far off,<br />behind those hills there,<br />close to the starlight,<br /> to ask of the Christ there<br />Lord, to return me<br /> my child’s soul, ancient,<br /> ripened with legends,<br />with a cap of feathers,<br />and a sword of wood.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">By Federico Garcia Lorca</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-1116706473122623652007-06-02T20:12:00.000-07:002007-06-02T20:14:01.452-07:00The house where I was born (01)I woke up, it was the house where I was born,<br />Sea foam splashed against the rock,<br />Not a single bird, only the wind to open and close the wave,<br />Everywhere on the horizon the smell of ashes,<br />As if the hills were hiding a fire<br />That somewhere else was burning up a universe.<br />I went onto the veranda, the table was set,<br />The water knocked against the legs of the table, the sideboard.<br />And yet she had to come in, the faceless one,<br />The one I knew was shaking the door<br />In the hall, near the darkened staircase, but in vain,<br />So high had the water already risen in the room.<br />I took the handle, it was hard to turn,<br />I could almost hear the noises of the other shore,<br />The laughter of the children playing in the tall grass,<br />The games of the others, always the others, in their joy.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">By Yves Bonnefoy</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-40037085869643982052007-06-02T20:10:00.000-07:002007-06-02T20:11:00.677-07:00Close To MidnightClose to midnight.<br />Flies dying in a glass.<br />The fire has died out.<br />Fair Vida, there is<br />sorrow in your memory.<br />Stravinsky in a car.<br />The roaring of the sea.<br />Oh, to be alone for 5 minutes.<br />The heart-Trieste is ill.<br />That is why Trieste is beautiful.<br />Pain blossoms in beauty.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">By Srečko Kosovel</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-41810966692004389622007-06-02T20:07:00.000-07:002007-06-02T20:09:24.442-07:00A Suicide in front of a MirrorA suicide in front of a mirror.<br />A frightened soul.<br />The wind moans in the black woods.<br />The night's tempest tears my heart from my chest.<br /><br /><br />My spirit, you are the Flying Dutchman,<br />always returning to the primal darkness,<br />getting drunk on the blowing of the wind!<br />A policeman blowing his whistle.<br /><br /><br />It is frightening to be a brother to the storm!<br />Frightening to be a brother to the silver sun.<br />Stay broken and slain, my spirit,<br />do not look to the dead slopes for salvation.<br /><br /><br />I walk through the woods. The tree trunks are black.<br />Two go leaning towards each other.<br />The black chasm of the universe above me.<br />I am leaning into it<br />and listening.<br /><br />I walk through the woods. The tree trunks are black.<br />Two go leaning towards each other.<br />The black chasm of the universe above me.<br />I am leaning into it<br />and listening.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">By Srečko Kosovel</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-43793140009715890432007-06-02T20:05:00.000-07:002007-06-02T20:07:16.405-07:00Homeless Poet Writing to His LoveI will build us a house made of words.<br />Nouns will be bricks<br />and verbs will be shutters.<br /><br />With adjectives we will adorn<br />the window sills<br />as with flowers.<br /><br />In perfect silence we will lie<br />beneath the baldachin of our love.<br />In perfect silence.<br /><br />Our house will be too beautiful<br />and too fragile for us to endanger it<br />with an inflation of words.<br /><br />And if we speak,<br />we will name objects<br />visible only to our eyes.<br /><br />Because every verb<br />could shake the foundations<br />and demolish them.<br /><br />Therefore, hush, mon amour,<br />hush, pour le beau demain<br />à notre maison.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">By Peter Semolič</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-85694915339829702532007-05-30T19:46:00.000-07:002007-05-30T19:48:24.829-07:00Book I Elegy V: Corinna in an AfternoonIt was hot, and the noon hour had gone by:<br />I was relaxed, limbs spread in the midst of the bed.<br />One half of the window was open, the other closed:<br />the light was just as it often is in the woods,<br />it glimmered like Phoebus dying at twilight,<br />or when night goes, but day has still not risen.<br />Such a light as is offered to modest girls,<br />whose timid shyness hopes for a refuge.<br />Behold Corinna comes, hidden by her loose slip,<br />scattered hair covering her white throat –<br />like the famous Semiramis going to her bed,<br />one might say, or Lais loved by many men.<br />I pulled her slip away –not harming its thinness much;<br />yet she still struggled to be covered by that slip.<br />While she would struggle so, it was as if she could not win,<br />yielding, she was effortlessly conquered.<br />When she stood before my eyes, the clothing set aside,<br />there was never a flaw in all her body.<br />What shoulders, what arms, I saw and touched!<br />Breasts formed as if they were made for pressing!<br />How flat the belly beneath the slender waist!<br />What flanks, what form! What young thighs!<br />Why recall each aspect? I saw nothing lacking praise<br />and I hugged her naked body against mine.<br />Who doesn’t know the story? Weary we both rested.<br />May such afternoons often come for me!<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">By Ovid</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1761574540723459205.post-37539454139403364462007-05-30T19:33:00.000-07:002007-05-30T19:42:21.602-07:00Requiem for a Friend(For Paula Modersohn-Becker 1876-1907)<br /><br /> I have dead ones, and I have let them go,<br />and was astonished to see them so peaceful,<br />so quickly at home in being dead, so just,<br />so other than their reputation. Only you, you turn<br />back: you brush against me, and go by, you try<br />to knock against something, so that it resounds<br />and betrays you. O don’t take from me what I<br />am slowly learning. I’m sure you err<br />when you deign to be homesick at all<br />for any Thing. We change them round:<br />they are not present, we reflect them here<br />out of our being, as soon as we see them.<br />I thought you were much further on. It disturbs me<br />that you especially err and return, who have<br />changed more than any other woman.<br />That we were frightened when you died, no, that<br />your harsh death broke in on us darkly,<br />tearing the until-then from the since-that:<br />it concerns us: that it become a unique order<br />is the task we must always be about.<br />But that even you were frightened, and now too<br />are in terror, where terror is no longer valid:<br /><br />that you lose a little of your eternity, my friend,<br />and that you appear here, where nothing<br />yet is: that you, scattered for the first time,<br />scattered and split in the universe,<br />that you did not grasp the rise of events,<br />as here you grasped every Thing:<br />that from the cycle that has already received you<br />the silent gravity of some unrest<br />pulls you down to measured time –<br />this often wakes me at night like a thief breaking in.<br />And if only I might say that you deign to come<br />out of magnanimity, out of over-fullness,<br />because so certain, so within yourself,<br />that you wander about like a child, not anxious<br />in the face of anything one might do –<br />but no: you are asking. This enters so<br />into my bones, and cuts like a saw.<br />A reproach, which you might offer me, as a ghost,<br />impose on me, when I withdraw at night,<br />into my lungs, into the innards,<br />into the last poor chamber of my heart –<br />such a reproach would not be as cruel<br />as this asking is. What do you ask?<br />Say, shall I travel? Have you left some Thing<br />behind somewhere, that torments itself<br />and yearns for you? Shall I enter a land<br />you never saw, though it was close to you<br />like the other side of your senses?<br />I will travel its rivers: go ashore<br />and ask about its ancient customs:<br />speak to women in their doorways<br />and watch when they call their children.<br />I’ll note how they wrap the landscape<br />round them, going about their ancient work<br />in meadow and field: I’ll demand<br />to be led before their king, and I’ll<br />win their priests with bribes to place me<br />in front of their most powerful statues,<br />and leave, and close the temple gates.<br />Only then when I know enough, will I<br />simply look at creatures, so that something<br />of their manner will glide over my limbs:<br />and I will possess a limited being<br />in their eyes, which hold me and slowly<br />release me, calmly, without judgment.<br />I’ll let the gardeners recite many flowers<br />to me, so that I might bring back<br />in the fragments of their lovely names<br />a remnant of their hundred perfumes.<br />And I’ll buy fruits, fruits in which that land<br />exists once more, as far as the heavens.<br />That is what you understood: the ripe fruits.<br />You placed them in bowls there in front of you<br />and weighed out their heaviness with pigments.<br />And so you saw women as fruits too,<br />and saw the children likewise, driven<br />from inside into the forms of their being.<br />And you saw yourself in the end as a fruit,<br />removed yourself from your clothes, brought<br />yourself in front of the mirror, allowed yourself<br />within, as far as your gaze that stayed huge outside<br />and did not say: ‘I am that’: no, rather: ‘this is.’<br />So your gaze was finally free of curiosity<br />and so un-possessive, of such real poverty,<br />it no longer desired self: was sacred.<br />So I’ll remember you, as you placed yourself<br />within the mirror, deep within and far<br />from all. Why do you appear otherwise?<br />What do you countermand in yourself? Why<br />do you want me to believe that in the amber beads<br />at your throat there was still some heaviness<br />of that heaviness that never exists in the other-side<br />calm of paintings: why do you show me<br />an evil presentiment in your stance:<br />what do the contours of your body mean,<br />laid out like the lines on a hand,<br />so that I no longer see them except as fate?<br /> Come here, to the candlelight. I’m not afraid<br />to look on the dead. When they come<br />they too have the right to hold themselves out<br />to our gaze, like other Things.<br />Come here: we’ll be still for a while.<br />See this rose, close by on my desk:<br />isn’t the light around it precisely as hesitant<br />as that over you: it too shouldn’t be here.<br />Outside in the garden, unmixed with me,<br />it should have remained or passed –<br />now it lives, so: what is my consciousness to it?<br />Don’t be afraid if I understand now, ah,<br />it climbs in me: I can do no other,<br />I must understand, even if I die of it.<br />Understand, that you are here. I understand.<br />Just as a blind man understands a Thing,<br />I feel your fate and do not know its name<br />Let us grieve together that someone drew you<br />out of your mirror. Can you still weep?<br />You cannot. You turned the force and pressure<br />of your tears into your ripe gaze,<br />and every juice in you besides<br />you added into a heavy reality,<br />that climbed and spun in balance blindly.<br />Then chance tore at you, a final chance<br />tore you back from your furthest advance,<br />back into a world where juices have will.<br />Not tearing you wholly: tore only a piece at first,<br />but when around this piece, day after day<br />reality grew, so that it became heavy,<br />you needed your whole self: you went<br />and broke yourself, in pieces, out of its control,<br />painfully, out, because you needed yourself. Then<br />you lifted yourself out, and dug the still green seeds<br />out of the night-warmed earth of your heart,<br />from which your death would rise: yours,<br />your own death for your own life.<br />And ate them, the kernels of your death,<br />like all the others, ate the kernels,<br />and found an aftertaste of sweetness<br />you did not expect, found sweetness on the lips,<br />you: who were already sweet within your senses.<br /> O let us grieve. Do you know how your blood<br />hesitated in its unequaled gyre, and reluctantly<br />returned, when you called it back?<br />How confused it was to take up once more<br />the body’s narrow circulation: how full of mistrust<br />and amazement, entering into the placenta,<br />and suddenly tired by the long way back.<br />You drove it on: you pushed it along,<br />you dragged it to the fireplace, as one<br />drags a herd-animal to the sacrifice:<br />and still wished that it would be happy too.<br />And you finally forced it: it was happy<br />and ran over to you and gave itself up. You thought<br />because you’d grown used to other rules,<br />it was only for a while: but<br />now you were within Time, and Time is long.<br />And Time runs on, and Time takes away, and Time<br />is like a relapse in a lengthy illness.<br />How short your life was, if you compare it<br />with those hours where you sat and bent<br />the varied powers of your varied future<br />silently into the bud of the child,<br />that was fate once more. O painful task.<br />O task beyond all strength. You did it<br />from day to day, you dragged yourself to it,<br />and drew the lovely weft through the loom,<br />and used up all the threads in another way.<br />And finally you still had courage to celebrate.<br />When it was done, you wanted to be rewarded,<br />like a child when it has drunk the bittersweet<br />tea that might perhaps make it well.<br />So you rewarded yourself: you were still so far<br />from other people, even then: no one was able<br />to think through, what gift would please you.<br />You knew. You sat up in childbed,<br />and in front of you stood a mirror, that returned<br />the whole thing to you. This everything was you,<br />and wholly before, and within was only illusion,<br />the sweet illusion of every woman, who gladly<br />takes up her jewelry, and combs, and alters her hair.<br /> So you died, as women used to die, you died,<br />in the old-fashioned way, in the warm house,<br />the death of women who have given birth, who wish<br />to shut themselves again and no longer can,<br />because that darkness, that they have borne,<br />returns once more, and thrusts, and enters.<br />Still, shouldn’t a wailing of women have been raised?<br />Where women would have lamented, for gold,<br />and one could pay for them to howl<br />through the night, when all becomes silent.<br />A custom once! We have too few customs.<br />They all vanish and become disowned.<br />So you had to come, in death, and, here with me,<br />retrieve the lament. Can you hear that I lament?<br />I wish that my voice were a cloth thrown down<br />over the broken fragments of your death<br />and pulled about until it were torn to pieces,<br />and all that I say would have to walk around,<br />ragged, in that voice, and shiver:<br />what remains belongs to lament. But now I lament,<br />not the man who pulled you back out of yourself,<br />(I don’t discover him: he’s like everyone)<br />but I lament all in him: mankind.<br />When, somewhere, from deep within me, a sense<br />of having been a child rises, which I still don’t understand,<br />perhaps the pure being-a-child of my childhood:<br />I don’t wish to understand. I wish to form<br />an angel from it, without addition,<br />and wish to hurl him into the front rank<br />of the screaming angels who remind God.<br />Because this suffering’s lasted far too long,<br />and no one can bear it: it’s too heavy for us,<br />this confused suffering of false love,<br />that builds on limitation, like a custom,<br />calls itself right and makes profit out of wrong.<br />Where is the man who has the right of possession?<br />Who can possess what cannot hold its own self,<br />what only from time to time catches itself happily,<br />and throws itself down again, as a child does a ball.<br />No more than the captain of the ship can grasp<br />the Nike jutting outwards from the prow<br />when the secret lightness of her divinity<br />lifts her suddenly into the bright ocean-wind:<br />no more can one of us call back the woman<br />who walks on, no longer seeing us,<br />along a small strip of her being<br />as if by a miracle, without disaster:<br />unless his desire and trade is in crime.<br />For this is a crime, if anything’s a crime:<br />not to increase the freedom of a Love<br />with all the freedom we can summon in ourselves.<br />We have, indeed, when we love, only this one thing:<br />to loose one another: because holding on to ourselves<br />comes easily to us, and does not first have to be learned.<br />Are you still there? Are you in some corner? –<br />You understood all of this so well<br />and used it so well, as you passed through<br />open to everything, like the dawn of a day.<br />Women do suffer: love means being alone,<br />and artists sometimes suspect in their work<br />that they must transform where they love.<br />You began both: both are in that<br />which now fame disfigures, and takes from you.<br />Oh you were far beyond any fame. You were<br />barely apparent: you’d withdrawn your beauty<br />as a man takes down a flag<br />on the grey morning of a working day,<br />and wished for nothing, except the long work –<br />which is unfinished: and yet is not finished.<br />If you are still here, if in this darkness<br />there is still a place where your sensitive spirit<br />resonates on the shallow waves<br />of a voice, isolated in the night,<br />vibrating in the high room’s current:<br />then hear me: help me. See, we can slip back so<br />unknowingly, out of our forward stride,<br />into something we didn’t intend: find<br />that we’re trapped there as if in dream<br />and we die there, without waking.<br />No one is far from it. Anyone who has fired<br />their blood through work that endures,<br />may find that they can no longer sustain it<br />and that it falls according to its weight, worthless.<br />For somewhere there is an ancient enmity<br />between life and the great work.<br />Help me, so that I might see it and know it.<br />Come no more. If you can bear it so, be<br />dead among the dead. The dead are occupied.<br />But help me like this, so you are not scattered,<br />as the furthest things sometimes help me: within.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">By Rainer Maria Rilke</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0