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from LETTER IN APRIL: IV
Already on the street
with our money clutched
in our hands,
and the world is a white laundry,
where we are boiled and wrung
and dried and ironed,
and smoothed down
and forsaken
we sweep
back
in children’s dreams
of chains and jail
and the heartfelt sigh
of liberation
{excerpt}
{translated by Susanna Nied}
Inger Christensen: The Last Words Are Hers by Siri Hustvedt
"Inger Christensen is dead. A great writer has died. I know that great is a word we often use to decorate a venerable cultural figure and then put him or her on a high shelf with the other moldering greats, but this is not my intention. Great books are the ones that are urgent, life-changing, the ones that crack open the reader’s skull and heart. I was in my early twenties when I first read Det, and I felt I had been sent a revelation. This work was like no other I had ever read—its rhythms and repetitions were of my own body, my heartbeat, my breath, the motion of my legs and the swing of my arms as I walked. As I read it, I moved with its music. But inseparable from that corporeal music, embedded in the cadences themselves, was a mind as rigorous, as tough, as steely as any philosopher’s. Christensen did not compromise. Paradox upon paradox accumulated in a game of embodied thought. Logic, systems, numbers came alive and danced for me, but they did so hand in hand with ordinary things, which her voice enchanted and made strange. She made me see differently. She made me feel anew the power of incantation." --- http://www.poetryfoundation.org/jour...html?id=236636
(Poland, b. 1924]
TO MARCUS AURELIUS
(for Professor Henryk Elzenberg)
Good night Marcus put out the light
and shut the book For overhead
is raised a gold alarm of stars
heaven is talking some foreign tongue
this the barbarian cry of fear
your Latin cannot understand
Terror continuous dark terror
against the fragile human land
..........................
Well Marcus better hang up your peace
give me your hand across the dark
Let it tremble when the blind world beats
on senses five like a failing lyre
Traitors-- universe and astronomy
reckoning of stars wisdom of grass
and your greatness too immense
and Marcus my defenseless tears
{translated from the Polish by Czelaw Mlosz and Peter Scott, excerpt}
{Hungary, 1922-1991}
BETWEEN
The great sleeves of air,
air on which the bird
and the science of birds bear
themselves, wings on the fraying argument;
incalculable result
of a moment's leafy silhouette
bark and branch of a haze living upwards
like desire into the upper leaves
to inhale every three seconds
those big, frosty angels.
........................................
Between the sky and the earth.
Creaking of rocks. As
the sun's clear ores
into themselves almost, stone into metal, as
a creature steps on in his claws smoke,
and up above the escarpment
ribbons of burning hoof,
then night in the desert, night as
quenching and reaching
its stony core, night below zero, and as
the tendons, joints, plaques
split and tear, as
they are strained in endless
splitting ecstasy
by routine dumb lightning
in black and white--
Between the day and the night.
Aches and stabbings,
visions, voiceless aqueducts,
inarticulate risings,
unbearable tension
of verticals between up and down.
Climates. Conditions.
Between. Stone. Tanktraces.
A strip of black reed rimming the plain
written in two lines, in the lake, the sky,
two black plaques of signsystem,
diacritic on the stars--
Between the sky and the sky.
{translated from the Hungarian by Hugh Maxton, excerpt}
TO GIOVANNI DA PISTOIA WHEN THE AUTHOR WAS PAINTING THE VAULT OF THE SISTINE CHAPEL
—1509
I’ve already grown a goiter from this torture,
swollen up here like a cat from Lombardy
(or anywhere where the stagnant water’s poison).
My stomach’s squashed under my chin, my beard's
pointing at heaven, my brain’s crushed in a casket,
my breast twists like a harpy’s. My brush,
above me all the time, dribbles the paint
so my face makes a fine floor for droppings!
.................................................. ...........
And because I’m like this, my thoughts
are crazy perfidious tripe:
anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe.
My painting is dead.
Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor.
I am not in the right place—I am not a painter.
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, and poet, painted the Sistine Chapel from 1508-1512. (1998)
Gail Mazur is Writer in Residence in the Graduate Writing Program at Emerson College. She is founding director of the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge. Her third book, The Common, was published by the University of Chicago press in 1995, and she has recently completed her fourth, They Can't Take That Away from Me. (1998)
{ http://www.bu.edu/agni/poetry/print/...uonarroti.html - excerpt}
OUTER SPACE
If you could turn the moon
on a lathe, you would
because you are curious.
And that would explain
why the moon slivers,
but explain it stupidly
by not taking care
to ask how the moon rounds.
And so we go, stupid ideas
for feet. The better to wander
with, retort the feet,
and what can you say,
you who shaved those taut
spirals from the moon,
kinks of tightening light
that fell away from your attention
to your work growing smaller
the better you did it?
Threads on a screw, the worm
of a corkscrew, the circular
staircase to sleep....
Soon the moon is gone
as far as it can go and still come back.
{excerpt}
{Greece, 1911-1996}
AEGEAN MELANCHOLY
What linking of soul to the halcyons of the afternoon!
What calm in the voices of the distant shore!
The cuckoo in the trees' mantilla,
And the mystic hour of the fishermen's supper,
And the sea playing on its concertina
The long lament of the woman,
The lovely woman who bared her breasts
When memory found the cradles
And lilac sprinkled the sunset with fire!
With caique and the Virgin's sails
Sped by the winds they are gone,
Lovers of the lilies' exile;
But how night here attends on sleep
With murmuring hair on shining throats
Or on the great white shores;
And how with Orion's gold sword
Is scattered and spilled aloft
Dust from the dreams of girls
Scented with mint and basil!
At the crossroad where the ancient sorceress stood
Burning the winds with dry rhyme, there,
Lightly, holding a pitcher full with the waters of silence,
Easily, as though they were entering Paradise,
Supple shadows stepped. . . . .
And from the crickets' prayer that fermented the fields
Lovely girls with the moon's skin have risen
To dance on the midnight threshing floor. . . .
..........................................
O green gem-- what storm-prophet saw you
Halting the light at the birth of day,
The light at the birth of the tow eyes of the world!
{translated from the Greek by Edmund Keeley and Phillip Sherrard, excerpt}
{Greece, 1911-1996}
from THE AXION ESTI
Praised be the wooden table
the blond wine with the sun's stain
the water doodling across the ceiling
the philodendron on duty in the corner
........................................
The sixteen deckhands hauling the net
the restless seagull slowly cruising
stray voices out of the wilderness
a shadow's crossing through the wall
The islands with all their minimum and lampblack
the islands with the vertebrae of some Zeus
the islands with their boat yards so deserted
the islands with their drinkable blue volcanoes
Facing the meltemi with jib close-hauled
Riding the southwester on a reach
the full length of them covered with foam
with dark blue pebbles and heliotropes
Sifnos, Amorgos, Alonnisos
Thasos, Ithaka, Santorini
Kos, Ios, Sikinos
Praised be Myrto standing
on the stone parapet facing the sea
like a beautiful eight or a clay pitcher
holding a straw hat in her hand
The white and porous middle of day
the down off sleep lightly ascending
the faded gold inside the arcades
and the red horse breaking free
Hera of the tree's ancient trunk
the vast laurel grove, the light-devouring
a house like an anchor down in the depths
and Kyra-Penelope twisting her spindle
The straits for birds from the opposite shore
a citron from which the sky spilled out
the blue hearing half under the sea
the long-shadowed whispering of nymphs and maples
Praised be, on the remembrance day
of the holy martyrs Cyricus and Julitta,
a miracle burning threshing floors in the heavens
priests and birds chanting the AVE:
Hail you who walk and the footprints vanish
Hail you who wake and the miracles are born
Hail O Wild One of the depths' paradise
Hail O Holy One of the islands' wilderness
Hail Mother of Dreams, Girl of the Open Seas
Hail O Anchor-bearer, Girl of the Five Stars
Hail you of the flowing hair, gilding the wind
Hail you of the lovely voice, tamer of demons
Hail you who ordain the Monthly Ritual of the Gardens
Hail you who fasten the Serpent's belt of stars.
Hail O Girl of the just and modest sword
Hail O Girl prophetic and daedalic
{translated from the Greek by Edmund Keeley and George Savidis, excerpt}
DO NOT!
Do not despair of man, and do not scold him,
Who are you that you should so lightly hold him?
Are you not also a man, and in your heart
Are there not warlike thoughts and fear and smart?
Are you not also afraid and in fear cruel,
Do you not think of yourself as usual,
Faint for ambition, desire to be loved,
Prick at a virtuous thought by beauty moved?
You love your wife, you hold your children dear,
Then say not that Man is vile, but say they are.
But they are not. So is your judgement shown ...
{excerpt}
{Russia, 1940-1996}
ROMAN ELEGIES
I. The captive mahogany of a private Roman
flat. In the ceiling, a dust-covered crystal island.
At sunset, the windowpanes pan a common
ground for the nebulous and the ironed.
Setting a naked foot on the rosy marble,
the body steps toward its future to its attire.
If somebody shouted "Freeze!" I'd perform that marvel
as this city happily did in its childhood hour.
The world's made of nakedness and of foldings.
Still, the latter's richer with love than a face, that's certain.
Thus an opera tenor's so sweet to follow
since he yields invariably to a curtain.
By nightfall, a blue eye employs a tear,
cleansing, to a needless shine, the iris;
and the moon overhead apes an emptied square
with no fountain in it. But of rock as porous.
II. The month of stalled pendulums. Only a fly in August
in a dry carafe's throat is droning its busy hymn.
The numerals on the clock face crisscross like earnest
anti-aircraft searchlights probing for seraphim.
The month of drawn blinds, of furniture wrapped in cotton
shrouds, of the sweating double in the mirror above the cupboard,
of bees that forget the topography of their hives and coated
with suntan honey, keep staggering seaward.
Get busy then, faucet, over the now-white, sagging
muscle, tousle the tufts of thin gray singes!
To a homeless torso and its idle, grabby
mitts, there's nothing as dear as the sight of ruins.
And they, in their turn, see themselves in the broken Jewish
r no less gladly: for the pieces fallen
so apart, saliva's the only solution they wish
for, as time's barbarous corneas scan the Forum.
{2 of 12 parts translated by the author}
To Elsie
The pure products of America
go crazy—
mountain folk from Kentucky
or the ribbed north end of
Jersey
with its isolate lakes and
valleys, its deaf-mutes, thieves
old names
and promiscuity between
devil-may-care men who have taken
to railroading
out of sheer lust of adventure—
and young slatterns, bathed
in filth
from Monday to Saturday
to be tricked out that night
with gauds
from imaginations which have no
peasant traditions to give them
character
but flutter and flaunt
sheer rags—succumbing without
emotion
save numbed terror
under some hedge of choke-cherry
or viburnum—
which they cannot express—
Unless it be that marriage
perhaps
with a dash of Indian blood ...
{excerpt}
THE SINGERS CHANGE, THE MUSIC GOES ON
No one really dies in the myths.
No world is lost in the stories.
Everything is lost in the retelling,
in being wondered at. We grow up
and grow old in our land of grass
and blood moons, birth and goneness.
A place of absolutes. Of returning.
We live our myth in the recurrence,
pretending we will return another day.
Like the morning coming every morning.
The truth is we come back as a choir. ... {excerpt}
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/bo...tml?ref=review --- NYT... "On Poetry" piece by David Orr... July 10, 2009