[Sven2]

We All Return to the Place We Were Born

What remains of my childhood
are the fragmentary visions
of large patios
extending
like an oceanic green mist over the afternoon.
Then, crickets would forge in the wind
their deep music of centuries
and the purple fragrances of Grandmother
always would receive without questions
our return home.
The hammock shivering in the breeze
like the trembling voice of light at dusk,
the unforeseeable future
that would never exist without Mother,
the Tall tales that filled
with their most engaging lunar weight our days
—all those unchangeable things—
were the morning constellations
that we would recognize daily without sadness.
In the tropical days we had no intuition of the winter
nor of autumn, that often returns with pain
in the shadows of this new territory
—like the cold moving through our shivering hands—
that I have learned to accept
in the same way you welcome
the uncertainty of a false and cordial smile.
Those were the days of the solstice
when the wind pushed the smoke from the clay ovens
through the zinc kitchens
and the ancient stone stoves
clearly spoke
of the secrets of our barefooted and wise Indian ancestors.
The beautiful, unformed rocks in our hands
that served as detailed toys
seemed to give us the illusion
of fantastic events
that invaded our joyful chants
with infinite color.
It was a life without seasonal pains,
a life without unredeemable time
a life without the somber dark shadows
that have intently translated my life
that slowly move today through my soul.

--Oscar Gonzales

[Sven2]

Excerpt from Solitude                   


                II


I have been walking a while

on the frozen Swedish fields

and I have seen no one.


In other parts of the world

people are born, live, and die

in a constant human crash.


To be visible all the time - to live

in a swarm of eyes -

surely that leaves its mark on the face.

Features overlaid with clay.



The low voices rise and fall

as they divide up

heaven, shadows, grain of sand.



I have to be by myself

ten minutes every morning,

ten minutes every night,

- and nothing to be done!



We all line up to ask each other for help.



Millions.



One.



--Tomas Transtromer

Translated by Robert Bly

[Sven2]

Try To Praise The Mutilated World

Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June's long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You've seen the refugees going nowhere,
you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the gray feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.

-- Adam Zagajewski
translated by Clare Cavanagh

[Sven2]

Carmel Point

The extraordinary patience of things!
This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses --
How beautiful when we first beheld it --
Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;
No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,
Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rocksheads --
Now the spoiler has come: does it care?
Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide
That swells and in time will ebb, and all
Their works dissolve. Meanwhile, the image of the pristine beauty
Lives in the very grain of the granite,
Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff. -- As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean we were made from.

--Robinson Jeffers

[Sven2]

          *   *   * 

  We are the children calling to their Mother
not knowing in this hour if she is the same
and will answer to the name we call her,
or if shot through with flames and metal
her limbs called Sicily, Flanders,
Normandy, Campagna, are all ablaze.

  A handful or two of grass and air
is enough for prayer and compassion.
Put away the loaf, the wine, the fruit,
until the day of rejoicing and dancing
and arms wildly waving branches.
On this night, no table
bright with Falernian wine and poppies;
and no weeping; and no sleep.

--Gabriela Mistral
translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

[Sven2]

   *   *   *

Sometimes I sit quietly,
Listening to the sound of falling leaves.
Peaceful indeed is the life of a monk,
Cut off from all worldly matters.
Then why do I shed these tears?

I am so aware
That it's all unreal:
One by one, the things
Of this world pass on.
But why do I still grieve?

--Ryokan
Translated by John Stevens

[Sven2]

To The Tune Of "A Lotus Leaf Cup"

I remember that year under the flowers
at midnight
when I first spent time with Miss Xie
in the pond chamber with a painted curtain hang on
           the west side,
And I held her hand and we made secret vows

till we felt grief of morning orioles and a left-over
moon,
but after she departed --
not one word,
and now like traveling strangers
there is no chance we will meet again.

--Wei Zhuang (c.836-910)
Translated by Geoffrey Waters

[Sven2]

Drought

Mid-August, and the hanging petunias are finally dead. Only the vines survive, wiry and sick, and soon they will die too, hopefully. Perhaps then it will be safe.

For a long time I brought them water from my bath, so if the neighbors called the police, I could speak into the truth machine and prove I had not broken any laws. But then someone did call, perhaps Mrs. Bressen, a patriot, who is such a nice old lady. My snapdragons opened their buds each morning for weeks afterward.

I had a café table in the southeast corner of the terrace, facing the lake, which was once as blue a cornflower, and two lemon-colored garden chairs, begonias overhead. I was lucky they let me go; in another neighborhood it might have been different. Hard times need hard measures.

My flowering lace. My red bee balm. My exuberant orange marigolds. My sprightly purple zinnias. My impatiens, my lobelia, my prim rose. My poor snapdragons, what summoned your strength each morning for one more push, one last burst of trust?

--Alpay Ulku

 

[Sven2]

Fable

We had, each of us, a set of wishes.

The number changed. And what we wished --

that changed also. Because

we had, all of us, such different dreams.


The wishes were all different, the hopes all different.

And the disasters and the catastrophes, always different.


In great waves they left the earth,

even the one that is always wasted.


Waves of despair, waves of hopeless longing and heartache.

Waves of mysterious wild hungers of youth, the dreams of childhood.

Detailed, urgent; once in a while, selfless.


All different, except of course

the wish to go back. Inevitably

last or first, repeated

over and over --


So the echo lingered. And the wish

held us and tormented us

though we knew in our own bodies

it was never granted.



We knew, and on dark nights, we acknowledged this.

How sweet the night became then,

once the wish released us,

how utterly silent.



--Louise Gluck

[Sven2]

Syros


In Syros' harbor abandoned merchant ships lay iddle.

Stem by stem by stem. Moored for many years:

CAPE RION, Monrovia.

KRITOS, Andros.

SCOTIA, Panama.



Dark paintings on the water, they have been hung aside.


Like playthings from our childhood, grown gigantic,

that remind us

of what we never became.


XELATROS, Piraeus.

CASSIOPEIA, Monrovia.

The ocean scans them no more.


But when we first came to Syros, it was at night,

we saw stem by stem by stem in moonlight and thought:

what a powerful fleet, what splendid connections!


--Tomas Transtromer

translated by May Swenson and Leif Sjoberg


Posted by svengali2 at 6:56 PM No com

[Sven2]

Sorrow Is Not My Name

—after Gwendolyn Brooks

No matter the pull toward brink. No
matter the florid, deep sleep awaits.
There is a time for everything. Look,
just this morning a vulture
nodded his red, grizzled head at me,
and I looked at him, admiring
the sickle of his beak.

Then the wind kicked up, and,
after arranging that good suit of feathers
he up and took off.
Just like that. And to boot,
there are, on this planet alone, something like two
million naturally occurring sweet things,
some with names so generous as to kick
the steel from my knees: agave, persimmon,
stick ball, the purple okra I bought for two bucks
at the market. Think of that. The long night,
the skeleton in the mirror, the man behind me
on the bus taking notes, yeah, yeah.
But look; my niece is running through a field
calling my name. My neighbor sings like an angel
and at the end of my block is a basketball court.
I remember. My color's green. I'm spring.

      —for Walter Aikens

--Ross Gay

[Sven2]

The New Decade

I keep thinking there's a piano nearby.
I keep thinking it's my favorite song. It's my favorite song!

Below the marquee, I arrange the marquee:
Happy New Year, buddy. Happy 'nother one, sweetheart.

Out of ways to call you dead, I decide to call you busy,
call you at midnight from West Oakland.

These days I raise a glass to make sure it's empty.
Even when I was a drunk, I thought champagne was pointless.

In my two-story civility, I stick my head out
each window & scream. S'cuse me, s'cuse me,

I'm trying to remember a story about gold,
about a giant falling from the sky.

Someone once asked who I prayed to.
I said a boy with a missing front tooth.

In this order, I ask, first, for water,
which might mean mercy,

which might mean swing by in an hour
& I'll tell you the rest.

If you were here we'd dance, I think.
If you were here, you'd know what to do

what to do with all this time


--Hieu Minh Nguyen

[Sven2]

Thank You


If you find yourself half naked
and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,
again, the earth's great, sonorous moan that says
you are the air of the now and gone, that says
all you love will turn to dust,
and will meet you there, do not
raise your fist. Do not raise
your small voice against it. And do not
take cover. Instead, curl your toes
into the grass, watch the cloud
ascending from your lips. Walk
through the garden's dormant splendor.
Say only, thank you.
Thank you.

--Ross Gay

[Sven2]

Hearing an Oriole at the Palace


In spring trees shrouding palace windows,

a spring oriole sings dawn light into song.


It sets out to startle the world, stops short,

flutters here, there. Return impossibly far,


it hides deep among dew-drenched leaves,

darts into blossoms and out, never settled.


We wander life, never back. Even a simple

birdcall starts us dreaming of home again.


--Wang Wei (701-761 CE)

translated by David Hinton

[Sven2]

 Nothing Wants to Suffer

                    after Linda Hogan

Nothing wants to suffer. Not the wind
as it scrapes itself against the cliff. Not the cliff

being eaten, slowly, by the sea. The earth does not want
to suffer the rough tread of those who do not notice it.

The trees do not want to suffer the axe, nor see
their sisters felled by root rot, mildew, rust.

The coyote in its den. The puma stalking its prey.
These, too, want ease and a tender animal in the mouth

to take their hunger. An offering, one hopes,
made quickly, and without much suffering.

The chair mourns an angry sitter. The lamp, a scalded moth.
A table, the weight of years of argument.

We know this, though we forget.

Not the shark nor the tiger, fanged as they are.
Nor the worm, content in its windowless world

of soil and stone. Not the stone, resting in its riverbed.
The riverbed, gazing up at the stars.

Least of all, the stars, ensconced in their canopy,
looking down at all of us— their offspring—

scattered so far beyond reach.


--Danusha Lameris