2010

19-09-2010

Words

Axes
After whose stroke the wood rings,
And the echoes!
Echoes traveling
Off from the center like horses.

The sap
Wells like tears, like the
Water striving
To re-establish its mirror
Over the rock

That drops and turns,
A white skull,
Eaten by weedy greens.
Years later I
Encounter them on the road---

Words dry and riderless,
The indefatigable hoof-taps.
While
From the bottom of the pool, fixed stars
Govern a life.
—Sylvia Plath

08-10-2010

"Be of love a little more careful than of anything."
–E.E. Cummings

In The Desert
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said, "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter -- bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."
—Stephen Crane


Forgetfulness
Forgetfulness is like a song
That, freed from beat and measure, wanders.
Forgetfulness is like a bird whose wings are reconciled,
Outspread and motionless, --
A bird that coasts the wind unwearyingly.
Forgetfulness is rain at night,
Or an old house in a forest, -- or a child.
Forgetfulness is white, -- white as a blasted tree,
And it may stun the sybil into prophecy,
Or bury the Gods.
I can remember much forgetfulness.
-Hart Crane

13-10-2010

The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.
— Ted Hughes

17-10-2010


LAMENTATION OF THE BORDERGUARD

I do not want to be a borderguard, said the borderguard.
I don’t want to be a bodyguard.
I don’t want to be a guardian angel.
I don’t want to be a guide.
I want not to be a grinder.
I don’t want to be a garnet.
I don’t want to be a guerdon.
I don’t want to be a gaud.
But my own unwillingness is grinding and grounding me
and I’m standing on guard, in my own octagonal garden.
I don’t want to be a watchman, answered the watchman.
I don’t want to be a guardsman.
I don’t want to be a watchguard.
But my own unwillingnesss is watching over me,
standing alone, wavering in the wind.
I’m the door-keeper, observed the porter.
But nobody asked me
about my will.
—GALI-DANA SINGER
© Translation: Gali-Dana Singer and Ashraf Noor

31-10-2010

Mira a la derecha y a la izquierda del tiempo y que tu corazón aprenda a estar tranquilo.
—Federico García Lorca


Como no me he preocupado de nacer, no me preocupo de morir.
—Federico García Lorca

09-11-2010

The Waking
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
—Theodore Roethke


SONATA IN F MINOR, OPUS 6, BY SCRIABIN for Sabina Spielrein
The iridescent bones of your contained struggle remain, shards of landscapes you reduced to fit in your fragile left hand, flower of simplicity, ash of implosion. Dawn painted you slowly wandering under your private deluge, stopping every three or four steps to keep ideas from asphyxiating, to fix in your mind their resounding rhythm. Some of those who strolled sure of their umbrellas and plain purposes saw you as arrogant, impious, ungrateful. Their disdainful glances must have annoyed you, but obviously not enough to heed them, sacrifice your adventure, or taint the surliness of your pride. You washed your head and went out early to kill, erasing the movements that sought to name you and keep you from dreaming. You renounced paths, methods, all established and celebrated consolations. Did you end up dizzied by so much imperfection, austere tool, flight, by your complete freedom?
What difference is there between belonging in every place and belonging in none, or in just a few, in one lone face, house, homeland, hand, crevice, syllable, refrain, season, illness? We are separated by our inheritance of skin, topography, climate, cultural traditions, historical moments, upbringing, and perhaps by not wanting or being able to choose for ourselves. Can we attribute equal value to all points of view, to the ways of seeing and not seeing? What is not lost persists, and so does what is lost. Have I not incorporated something of yours in my own dreaming—the quality of your silences, the green that unites, the blue that opens my eyes, the red that crushes the truce of the final chord?
Even as I partially admire and identify with your contentiousness, I wonder if it was worth making such a fuss, wasting so much energy. Did you deprive yourself of music only you could have found? Did so much harm have to be done to those who loved you unconditionally? Is there remorse, nostalgia, did you push away an abundance of beautiful orphan melodies with your angry wind? It seems that you continued insisting that this was in fact your exact mess, the easiest music, the melody most yours, the precise and hermetic echo of your unchained intuition.
You come to sing in the night, waking me with your innocent voice, lying beside me as if for the first time, perhaps believing me to be another man, woman. The wind is no longer blowing, and we distinguish the whisper of waves perishing on the shore. You tell me that people prevent you from crossing the roads, that their voices distract you. I repeat without flourish your unmistakable cadence to see if you find it familiar. You correct me without anger, attentive as the delicate boy you still are, forgiving this clumsy tampering with your pure invention. Idleness is priceless, you say, being the seed of our solitude.
I don't know when the song ends. By and by I begin to realise that I am doing nothing, that I am seated alone in the kitchen, with cold fingers, cloaked in the shadow that occasionally is cut by the window's and the blonde piano's reflections of taxis keeping their promises down below. I taste the chill breeze that awakened me, savour the absence of longing and anxiety. Little by little the church and its trees appear, the bicycles and the lovers on the far side of the square. I believe I've heard you well, and have delighted once more in imagining your wingbeats and glides. As always I've been surprised by the daring of your composition, the impeccable pauses that underline the ephemeral quality of the tune, the resonance of each drop of inspiration.
—V.M.

Viggo hat die "Sonata ...." gepostet weil er "I am" (im Buch "Canciones de Invierno") in "I've been" geändert hat!

14-11-2010

A list of some observation...
A list of some observation. In a corner, it's warm.
A glance leaves an imprint on anything it's dwelt on.
Water is glass's most public form.
Man is more frightening than its skeleton.
A nowhere winter evening with wine. A black
porch resists an osier's stiff assaults.
Fixed on an elbow, the body bulks
like a glacier's debris, a moraine of sorts.
A millennium hence, they'll no doubt expose
a fossil bivalve propped behind this gauze
cloth, with the print of lips under the print of fringe, mumbling "Good night" to a window hinge.
—Joseph Brodsky

08-12-2010


Cuchara

Nace del verbo dar,
como si el corazón tuviera mango.
Está hecha de lo que le falta. Jamás
se guarda nada para sí.
Podría medir el mundo, acunarlo, transportar
su misterio, sus campanarios de agua de una orilla
a la otra.
Más humana que un perro.
Más a mano que Dios.
—Jorge Boccanera

18-12-2010

CANCION DONDE SE EXPLICA
(A Dámaso Alonso)
La palabra que decimos
viene de lejos,
y no tiene definición,
tiene argumento.
Cuando dices: nunca,
cuando dices: bueno,
estás contando tu historia
sin saberlo.
—Luis Rosales