2011

09-01-2011

Forced March
You're crazy. You fall down, stand up and walk again,
your ankles and your knees move pain that wanders around,
but you start again as if you had wings.
The ditch calls you, but it's no use you're afraid to stay,
and if someone asks why, maybe you turn around and say
that a woman and a sane death a better death wait for you.
But you're crazy. For a long time now
only the burned wind spins above the houses at home,
Walls lie on their backs, plum trees are broken
and the angry night is thick with fear.
Oh, if I could believe that everything valuable
is not only inside me now that there's still home to go back to.
If only there were! And just as before bees drone peacefully
on the cool veranda, plum preserves turn cold
and over sleepy gardens quietly, the end of summer bathes in the sun.
Among the leaves the fruit swing naked
and in front of the rust-brown hedge blond Fanny waits for me,
the morning writes slow shadows—
All this could happen! The moon is so round today!
Don't walk past me, friend. Yell, and I'll stand up again!
September 15, 1944
—Miklós Radnóti
(from Clouded Sky, a collection of Radnóti's work translated by Steven Polgar, Stephen Berg, and S. J. Marks -- published in New York by Harper & Row, 1972.)

12-01-2011

Without commas, one line touching the other
I write poems the way I live, in darkness,
blind, crossing the paper like a worm.
Flashlights, books - the guards took everything.
There's no mail, only fog drifts over the barracks.
—Miklós Radnóti
(from 'Eclogue VII,' trans. by Steven Polgár)

15-01-2011

BORROWED TONGUE

Maybe I'm a fool
holding two threads,
one black, one white,
waiting for dawn
to tell them apart.
But I'm only practicing
my religion which
I neither borrowed
nor stole.
Maybe I'm a fool
thinking of a better answer
than the transplant patient
who said I'm sorry
someone had to die.
No, I haven't outgrown
my tongue. It's a coat
your mother gives you,
crimson or cobalt blue,
satin inside, the collar
wide enough to cover
your whole neck.
All winter you wear it
then spring comes
but never goes.
That's Arabic to me.
I wear a white shirt now--
thin gray stripes,
top button gone--
and it fits.
—Khaled Mattawa

23-01-2011

Ayer Vendrá
La tarde va a morir; en los caminos
se ciega triste o se detiene un aire
bajo y sin luz; entre las ramas altas,
mortal, casi vibrante,
queda el último sol; la tierra huele,
empieza a oler; las aves
van rompiendo un espejo con su vuelo;
la sombra es el silencio de la tarde.
Te he sentido llorar: no sé a quién lloras.
Hay un humo distante,
un tren, que acaso vuelve, mientras dices:
Soy tu propio dolor, déjame amarte.
—Luis Rosa

24-01-2011

in spite of everything
which breathes and moves, since Doom
(with white longest hands
neatening each crease)
will smooth entirely our minds

-before leaving my room
i turn, and(stooping
through the morning) kiss
this pillow, dear
where our heads lived and were.
—e.e. cummings

30-01-2011

Body

The body of a bird in your mouth
breathing songs.
Raw light spills from your eyes,
utterly naked.
You must breach the horizon, once,
in order to wake up.
You must open window after window.
You must support the walls.

I let alphabets cling to me
as I climb the thread of language
between myself and the world.
I muster crowds in my mouth:
suspended between language and the world,
between the world and the alphabets.
I let my head
listen to the myth,
to all sides praising each other.
And I shout at the winds from the top of a mountain.

Why does my tongue tell me to climb this far?
What is the distance between my voice and my longing?
What is there?
A body transcending my body.
A body exiled by desire.
A body sheltered by the wind.
—Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi
(The literal translation of this poem was made by Atef Alshaer.
The final translated version of the poem is by The Poetry Translation Workshop)



Den, som har levet

Den, som har levet en Dag i Sorg
og atter fundet sin Glæde,
smykker sit Hus og finder med Fryd,
at det var herligt at græde.

Den, som har levet et Aar i Kval
og sent Befrielsen vejrer,
smiler ad Dagens Regn og Rusk
og drømmer, at Lykken sejrer.

Den, som fik bygget sit hele Liv,
af triste, nagende Dage,
ham falder Graaden som letkøbt Smil
og Smilet som bitterlig Klage.

Aldrig skabtes en Lykke fuldt
og aldrig en skyggeløs Morgen,
fuldbaarne lister i Verden om
alene Savnet og Sorgen.
—Viggo Stuckenberg


SkaldIs aus dem Works hat das letzte Gedicht übersetzt:

He who has lived

He who has lived one day in mourning
and again found his joy,
decorates his house and discovers with joy,
it was good to cry.

He who has survived a year of agony
and late feels the Liberation,
smiles at today's rain and mist
and dreams that happiness is victories

He who lived his whole life,
in sad and grudging Days
to him tears are as a cheap Smile
and the smile a bitter Lament.

There was never complete happiness
and never a shadowless morning
Full-borne slips in the world alone,
the Missing and the Sorrow

02-02-2011

Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.
—Theodore Roethke


The Lost Leader
I.
Just for a handful of silver he left us,
Just for a riband to stick in his coat---
Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote;
They, with the gold to give, doled him out silver,
So much was theirs who so little allowed:
How all our copper had gone for his service!
Rags---were they purple, his heart had been proud!
We that had loved him so, followed him, honoured him,
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye,
Learned his great language, caught his clear accents,
Made him our pattern to live and to die!
Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us,
Burns, Shelley, were with us,---they watch from their graves!
He alone breaks from the van and the free-men,
He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves!
II.
We shall march prospering,---not thro' his presence;
Songs may inspirit us,---not from his lyre;
Deeds will be done,---while he boasts his quiescence,
Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade aspire:
Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more,
One task more declined, one more foot-path untrod,
One more devils'-triumph and sorrow for angels,
One wrong more to man, one more insult to God!
Life's night begins: let him never come back to us!
There would be doubt, hesitation and pain,
Forced praise on our part---the glimmer of twilight,
Never glad confident morning again!
Best fight on well, for we taught him---strike gallantly,
Menace our heart ere we master his own;
Then let him receive the new knowledge and wait us,
Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne!
—Robert Browning

06-02-2011

Peace in Guatemala is not a myth, neither is it a myth for Central America, or for the people of this continent or other continents. Rather, it is a process which requires effort and consciousness-raising around the world, especially among those in governments and in large organizations who have the power to make important decisions.
—Rigoberta Menchu Tum


Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.
—Thomas Merton

07-02-2011


Farewell Ungrateful Traitor

Farewell ungrateful traitor,
Farewell my perjured swain,
Let never injured creature
Believe a man again.
The pleasure of possessing
Surpasses all expressing,
But 'tis too short a blessing,
And love too long a pain.

'Tis easy to deceive us
In pity of your pain,
But when we love you leave us
To rail at you in vain.
Before we have descried it,
There is no bliss beside it,
But she that once has tried it
Will never love again.

The passion you pretended
Was only to obtain,
But when the charm is ended
The charmer you disdain.
Your love by ours we measure
Till we have lost our treasure,
But dying is a pleasure,
When living is a pain.
—John Henry Dryden

09-02-2011

Quand on a pas d'imagination, mourir c'est peu dechoses, quand on en a, mourir c'est trop.
—Céline


"No se puede vivir cerca de un titiritero de sombras, de un domador de polillas."
—Julio Cortázar

ollie aus dem Works hat eine Übersetzung angefertigt:

You cannot live close to a shadow puppeteer, to a moth tamer.

14-02-2011

Dieses Poem wurde bereits am 15-05-2010 auf PP gepostet.


The Far Field
I
I dream of journeys repeatedly:
Of flying like a bat deep into a narrowing tunnel
Of driving alone, without luggage, out a long peninsula,
The road lined with snow-laden second growth,
A fine dry snow ticking the windshield,
Alternate snow and sleet, no on-coming traffic,
And no lights behind, in the blurred side-mirror,
The road changing from glazed tarface to a rubble of stone,
Ending at last in a hopeless sand-rut,
Where the car stalls,
Churning in a snowdrift
Until the headlights darken.
II

At the field's end, in the corner missed by the mower,
Where the turf drops off into a grass-hidden culvert,
Haunt of the cat-bird, nesting-place of the field-mouse,
Not too far away from the ever-changing flower-dump,
Among the tin cans, tires, rusted pipes, broken machinery, --
One learned of the eternal;
And in the shrunken face of a dead rat, eaten by rain and ground-beetles
(I found in lying among the rubble of an old coal bin)
And the tom-cat, caught near the pheasant-run,
Its entrails strewn over the half-grown flowers,
Blasted to death by the night watchman.
I suffered for young birds, for young rabbits caught in the mower,
My grief was not excessive.
For to come upon warblers in early May
Was to forget time and death:
How they filled the oriole's elm, a twittering restless cloud, all one morning,
And I watched and watched till my eyes blurred from the bird shapes, --
Cape May, Blackburnian, Cerulean, --
Moving, elusive as fish, fearless,
Hanging, bunched like young fruit, bending the end branches,
Still for a moment,
Then pitching away in half-flight,
Lighter than finches,
While the wrens bickered and sang in the half-green hedgerows,
And the flicker drummed from his dead tree in the chicken-yard.
-- Or to lie naked in sand,
In the silted shallows of a slow river,
Fingering a shell,
Thinking:
Once I was something like this, mindless,
Or perhaps with another mind, less peculiar;
Or to sink down to the hips in a mossy quagmire;
Or, with skinny knees, to sit astride a wet log,
Believing:
I'll return again,
As a snake or a raucous bird,
Or, with luck, as a lion.
I learned not to fear infinity,
The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,
The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,
The wheel turning away from itself,
The sprawl of the wave,
The on-coming water.

III
The river turns on itself,
The tree retreats into its own shadow.
I feel a weightless change, a moving forward
As of water quickening before a narrowing channel
When banks converge, and the wide river whitens;
Or when two rivers combine, the blue glacial torrent
And the yellowish-green from the mountainy upland, --
At first a swift rippling between rocks,
Then a long running over flat stones
Before descending to the alluvial plane,
To the clay banks, and the wild grapes hanging from the elmtrees.
The slightly trembling water
Dropping a fine yellow silt where the sun stays;
And the crabs bask near the edge,
The weedy edge, alive with small snakes and bloodsuckers, --
I have come to a still, but not a deep center,
A point outside the glittering current;
My eyes stare at the bottom of a river,
At the irregular stones, iridescent sandgrains,
My mind moves in more than one place,
In a country half-land, half-water.
I am renewed by death, thought of my death,
The dry scent of a dying garden in September,
The wind fanning the ash of a low fire.
What I love is near at hand,
Always, in earth and air.

IV
The lost self changes,
Turning toward the sea,
A sea-shape turning around, --
An old man with his feet before the fire,
In robes of green, in garments of adieu.
A man faced with his own immensity
Wakes all the waves, all their loose wandering fire.
The murmur of the absolute, the why
Of being born falls on his naked ears.
His spirit moves like monumental wind
That gentles on a sunny blue plateau.
He is the end of things, the final man.
All finite things reveal infinitude:
The mountain with its singular bright shade
Like the blue shine on freshly frozen snow,
The after-light upon ice-burdened pines;
Odor of basswood on a mountain-slope,
A scent beloved of bees;
Silence of water above a sunken tree :
The pure serene of memory in one man, --
A ripple widening from a single stone
Winding around the waters of the world.

—Theodore Roethke

24-02-2011



For No Clear Reason

I dreamt last night
the fright was over, that
the dust came, and then water,
and women and men, together
again, and all was quiet
in the dim moon's light.
A paean of such patience—
laughing, laughing at me,
and the days extend over
the earth's great cover,
grass, trees, and flower-
ing season, for no clear reason.
—Robert Creeley

02-03-2011

"Yo creo que desde muy pequeño mi desdicha y mi dicha al mismo tiempo fue el no aceptar las cosas como dadas. A mí no me bastaba con que me dijeran que eso era una mesa, o que la palabra "madre" era la palabra "madre" y ahí se acaba todo. Al contrario, en el objeto mesa y en la palabra madre empezaba para mi un itinerario misterioso que a veces llegaba a franquear y en el que a veces me estrellaba."

"En suma, desde pequeño, mi relación con las palabras, con la escritura, no se diferencia de mi relación con el mundo en general. Yo parezco haber nacido para no aceptar las cosas tal como me son dadas."

—Julio Cortázar



Übersetzung von ollie-VW:
“I think that since I was very young my misfortune and my joy at the same time was not to take things as given. It was not enough for me that they said that was a table, or that the word “mother” was the word “mother” and that´s the end of it. On the contrary, with the object table, and the word mother, a mysterious itinerary started for me that sometimes I traversed and on which I sometimes crashed.”

“In short, since I was very young, my relationships to words, to writing, is no different than my relationship to the world in general. I seem to have been born not to take things as given.”

05-03-2011

Sin llaves y a oscuras
Era uno de esos días en que todo sale bien.
Había limpiado la casa y escrito
dos o tres poemas que me gustaban.
No pedía más.
Entonces salí al pasillo para tirar la basura
y detrás de mí, por una correntada,
la puerta se cerró.
Quedé sin llaves y a oscuras
sintiendo las voces de mis vecinos
a través de sus puertas.
Es transitorio, me dije;
pero así también podría ser la muerte:
un pasillo oscuro,
una puerta cerrada con la llave adentro
la basura en la mano.
—Fabián Casas


Englische Google-Übersetzung:

Without keys, and in the dark

It was one of those days when everything goes well.
He had cleared the House and written
two or three poems that I liked.
It did not request more.
Then I went out to the hallway to throw out the garbage
and behind me, by a current,
the door was closed.
I was without keys and in the dark
feeling the voices of my neighbors
through its doors.
It is transitional, I said;
but so it could also be the death:
a dark corridor,
a camera with the key inside
the garbage in the hand.

06-03-2011


Many workmen
Built a huge ball of masonry
Upon a mountain-top.
Then they went to the valley below,
And turned to behold their work.
"It is grand," they said;
They loved the thing.

Of a sudden, it moved:
It came upon them swiftly;
It crushed them all to blood.
But some had opportunity to squeal.
—Stephen Crane

09-03-2011

Find A Better Job


Now

That

All your worry

Has proved such an

Unlucrative

Business,

Why

Not

Find a better

Job.

—Hafiz (translated by daniel ladinsky)

10-03-2011

El ultimo poema de Víctor Jara
(Estadio Chile, Septiembre 1973)
El día 11 de septiembre de 1973, cuando el golpe militar comandado por el
dictador Augusto Pinochet derrumbó del poder de Salvador Allende, el
compositor y cantor Víctor Jara fue detenido con otros 600 estudiantes en la
Universidad donde trabajaba. Llevado al Estadio Nacional en Santiago, ese
mismo día fue torturado y asesinado por militares. Días después, su mujer,
Joan Jara, identificó el cuerpo del poeta, fusilado y con las manos
amputadas. En el estadio, escribió su último poema.
Introducción de Joan Jara: "...Cuando más adelante me trajeron el texto del
último poema de Víctor, supe que él quería dejar su testimonio, su único
medio de resistir ahora al fascismo, de luchar por los derechos de los seres
humanos y por la paz."
Somos cinco mil
en esta pequeña parte de la ciudad.
Somos cinco mil.
¿Cuántos seremos en total
en las ciudades y en todo el país?
Solo aquí,
diez mil manos siembran
y hacen andar las fábricas.
¡Cuánta humanidad
con hambre, frío, pánico, dolor,
presión moral, terror y locura!
Seis de los nuestros se perdieron
en el espacio de las estrellas.
Un muerto, un golpeado como jamás creí
se podría golpear a un ser humano.
Los otros cuatro quisieron quitarse todos los temores,
uno saltó al vacío,
otro golpeándose la cabeza contra el muro,
pero todos con la mirada fija de la muerte.
¡Qué espanto causa el rostro del fascismo!
Llevan a cabo sus planes con precisión artera
Sin importarles nada.
La sangre para ellos son medallas.
La matanza es acto de heroísmo
¿Es este el mundo que creaste, dios mío?
¿Para esto tus siete días de asombro y trabajo?
En estas cuatro murallas solo existe un número
que no progresa,
que lentamente querrá más muerte.
Pero de pronto me golpea la conciencia
y veo esta marea sin latido,
pero con el pulso de las máquinas
y los militares mostrando su rostro de matrona
llena de dulzura.
¿Y México, Cuba y el mundo?
¡Que griten esta ignominia!
Somos diez mil manos menos
que no producen.
¿Cuántos somos en toda la Patria?
La sangre del compañero Presidente
golpea más fuerte que bombas y metrallas
Así golpeará nuestro puño nuevamente
¡Canto que mal me sales
cuando tengo que cantar espanto!
Espanto como el que vivo
como el que muero, espanto.
De verme entre tanto y tantos
momentos del infinito
en que el silencio y el grito
son las metas de este canto.
Lo que veo nunca vi,
lo que he sentido y que siento
hará brotar el momento...



Übersetzung von ollie-VW:

Victor Jara´s last poem
(Estadio Chile, September 1993)

On the day of September 11 1973. when the military coup commanded by dictator Augusto Pinochet brought down the power of Salvador Allende, the singer and composer Victor Jara was arrested with other 600 students at the University where he was working. Taken to the Estadio Nacional de Santiago, that same day he was tortured and murdered by the military. Days later, his wife, Joan Jara, identified the body of the poet, executed by firing squad and with his hands amputated. In the stadium, he wrote his last poem.

Introduction by Joan Jara ” When later the text of his last poem was brought to me, I knew that Victor wanted to leave his testimony, his only means now of resisting fascism, of fighting for the rights of human beings and for peace”.

There are five thousand of us here
in this small part of the city.
We are five thousand.
I wonder how many we are in all
in the cities and in the whole country?
Here alone
are ten thousand hands which plant seeds
and make the factories run.
How much humanity
exposed to hunger, cold, panic, pain,
moral pressure, terror and insanity?
Six of us were lost
as if into starry space.
One dead, another beaten as I could never have believed
a human being could be beaten.
The other four wanted to end their terror
one jumping into nothingness,
another beating his head against a wall,
but all with the fixed stare of death.
What horror the face of fascism creates!
They carry out their plans with knife-like precision.
Nothing matters to them.
To them, blood equals medals,
slaughter is an act of heroism.
Oh God, is this the world that you created,
for this your seven days of wonder and work?
Within these four walls only a number exists
which does not progress,
which slowly will wish more and more for death.
But suddenly my conscience awakes
and I see that this tide has no heartbeat,
only the pulse of machines
and the military showing their midwives' faces
full of sweetness.
Let Mexico, Cuba and the world
cry out against this atrocity!
We are ten thousand hands
which can produce nothing.
How many of us in the whole country?
The blood of our President, our compañero,
will strike with more strength than bombs and machine guns!
So will our fist strike again!

How hard it is to sing
when I must sing of horror.
Horror which I am living,
horror which I am dying.
To see myself among so much
and so many moments of infinity
in which silence and screams
are the end of my song.
What I see, I have never seen
What I have felt and what I feel
Will give birth to the moment…

18-03-2011

SHAME

Unfamiliar with the blue of the sky,
Unfamiliar with the shining green
of the earth,
Unfamiliar with the history
of man's covering his body,
I am standing
Inside a circle of ice,
Surrounded by sorrow and anxiety;
And naked, ancient and alone,
I carry on my shoulders
the thousand-year-old burden
of shame,
of coveredness,
of modesty.
O mothers of sleep
Whose bones
Are the ancient hiding place
of the dead instincts,
Look how my bare, ancient roots,
Slowly but with resolution,
Penetrate the ice.
— by Zhila Mosa'ed, born in Tehran (1948), lives in Sweden.
(translated by Mahmud Kianush)

21-03-2011

Detrás de toda acción hay una protesta, porque todo hacer significa salir de
para llegar a, o mover algo para que esté aquí y no allá, …
la continua evidencia de la falta, de la merma, de la parvedad del presente.
—Julio Cotázar (Rayuela)

Übersetzung von ollie-VW:
Behind every action there’s a protest, because everything we do means starting from to arrive to, or moving something so it is here and not there,…
the continuous evidence of the lack of, the decrease, the smallness of the present.

07-04-2011


"I notice how it takes a lazy man, a man that hates moving, to get set on moving once he does get started off, the same as when he was set on staying still, like it ain't the moving he hates so much as the starting and the stopping."
—William Faulkner (As I Lay Dying)

22-04-2011

Yo nunca me he quedado sin patria. Mi patria es el idioma.
—María Zambrano


Übersetzung von ollie-VW:
I have never been left without a homeland. My homeland is the language.

24-04-2011

Libertad es búsqueda de libertad. Nunca la alcanzaremos completamente. La muerte nos advertirá que hay límites a toda historia personal. La historia, que perecen y se transforman las instituciones que en un momento dado definen la libertad. Pero entre la vida y la muerte, entre la belleza y el horror del mundo, la búsqueda de libertad nos hace, en toda circunstancia, libres.
—Carlos Fuentes


Übersetzung ollie-VW:
Freedom is quest for freedom. We will never reach it completely. Death will warn us there are limits to every personal history. History, that the institutions that at one given moment define freedom, they perish and transform themselves. But between life and death, between beauty and the horror of the world, the quest for freedom makes us, in every circumstance, free.

06-05-2011

Los mitos son como los mocos: no cesan de nacer y a veces vienen con pelitos.
—v.m.





When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend.
—William Blake

A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.
—William Blake


A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour.
—Jonathan Swift

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
—Jonathan Swift

09-05-2011


EL HOMBRE NO REPOSA . . .
El hombre no reposa: quien reposa es su traje
cuando, colgado, mece su soledad con viento.
Mas, una vida incógnita como un vago tatuaje
mueve bajo las ropas dejadas un aliento.
El corazón ya cesa de ser flor de oleaje.
La frente ya no rige su potro, el firmamento.
Por más que el cuerpo, ahondando por la quietud, trabaje,
en el central reposo se cierne el movimiento.
No hay muertos. Todo vive: todo late y avanza.
Todo es un soplo extático de actividad moviente.
Piel inferior del hombre, su traje no ha expirado.
Visiblemente inmóvil, el corazón se lanza
a conmover al mundo que recorrió la frente.
Y el universo gira como un pecho pausado.
—Miguel Hernández





La cantidad de mundos
que con los ojos abres,
que cierras con los brazos.
La cantidad de mundos
que con los ojos cierras,
que con los brazos abres.
—Miguel Hernández


Übersetzung von ollie-VW:
The quantity of worlds
that with the eyes you open,
that with the arms you close.

The quantity of worlds
that with the eyes you close,
that with the arms you open.

12-05-2011


Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever.
—Karen Blixen


I have read true piety defined as: loving one's destiny unconditionally – and there is something in it. That is to say: I think that in a way this sort of "religiousness" is the condition for real happiness.
—Karen Blixen (Letters from Africa, 1914-1931)