the spirit escapes - pierre reverdy

The Spirit Escapes
by Pierre Reverdy (tr. Michael Benedikt)


So many books; A temple, whose thick walls are built of books.  And inside, there where I had entered without quite knowing how, or without knowing where, I was suffocating; the ceilings were grey with dust.  Not a sound.  And all the great ideas moved no more; they slept, or were dead.  It was so hot, so dark in this sad palace.
   With my nails I scratched at the paneling and, bit by bit, I made a hole in the right-hand wall.  It became a window and the sun practically blinded me but could not prevent me from looking out through it.
   It was the street out there but now the palace had vanished.  Already I was confronting a different dust and other walls surrounding the sidewalk.


L'esprit sort

Que de livres ! Un temple dont les murs épais étaient bâtis en livres ! Et là-dedans, où j’étais entré on ne saura comment, je ne sais par où, j’étouffais ; le plafond étais gris de poussière. Pas un bruit. Et toutes ces idées si grandes ne bougent plus ; elles dorment, ou sont mortes. Il fait dans ce triste palais si chaud, si sombre !

De mes ongles j’ai griffé la paroi et, morceau à morceau, j’ai fait un trou dans le mur de droite. C’était une fenêtre et le soleil qui voulait m’aveugler n’a pas pu m’empêcher de regarder dehors.

C’était la rue mais le palais n’étais plus là. Je connaissais déjà une autre poussière et d’autres murs qui bordaient le trottoir.

from a journal - louise glück

From A Journal
by Louise Glück

I had a lover once,
I had a lover twice,
easily three times I loved.
And in between
my heart reconstructed itself perfectly
like a worm.
And my dreams also reconstructed themselves.

After a time, I realized I was living
a completely idiotic life.
Idiotic, wasted --
And sometime later, you and I
began to correspond, inventing
an entirely new form.

Deep intimacy over great distance!
Keats to Fanny Brawne, Dante to Beatrice --

One cannot invent
a new form in
an old character.  The letters I sent remained
immaculately ironic, aloof
yet forthright.  Meanwhile, I was writing
different letters in my head,
some of which became poems.

So much genuine feeling!
So many fierce declarations
of passionate longing!

I loved once, I loved twice,
and suddenly
the form collapsed:  I was
unable to sustain ignorance.

How sad to have lost you, to have lost
any chance of actually knowing you
or remembering you over time
as a real person, as someone I could have grown
deeply attached to, maybe
the brother I never had.

And how sad to think
of dying before finding out
anything.  And to realize
how ignorant we all are most of the time,
seeing things
only from the one vantage, like a sniper.

And there were so many things
I never got to tell you about myself,
things which might have swayed you.
And the photo I never sent, taken
the night I looked almost splendid.

I wanted you to fall in love.  But the arrow
kept hitting the mirror and coming back.
And the letters kept dividing themselves
with neither half totally true.

And sadly, you never figured out
any of this, though you always wrote back
so promptly, always the same elusive letter.

I loved once, I loved twice,
and even though in our case
things never got off the ground
it was a good thing to have tried.
And I still have the letters, of course.
Sometimes I will take a few years' worth
to reread in the garden,
with a glass of iced tea.

And I feel, sometimes, part of something
very great, wholly profound and sweeping.

I loved once, I loved twice,
easily three times I loved.

five minutes - dunya mikhail

Five Minutes
by Dunya Mikhail (tr. Elizabeth Winslow)

In five minutes, the world will end . . .
The owner of the shop next door
has just put up the "Closed" sign
and gone away
as if he knows there is no time left for work.
There are other stores open.
Their owners are still absorbed in work,
but the world will end in . . .
A group of lively boys
rushes by in the street;
following them, a dog
leading an old man.
The traffic light is red.
The bus driver makes a slight adjustment
to the rearview mirror.
There are still several scenes
that move across the mirror.
The driver pulls away now.
The traffic light is green.
It will keep changing, even after
five minutes!
A young man checks his watch
and waits for the next bus . . .
In the public park, a couple walks past the statues
and smiles under the sun.
The statues are carefree.
They stare firmly at nothing.
A tourist wanders full of curiosity
and takes pictures of what will soon be absent.
There, in the white hospital,
women bear new babies
too late.
The babies might leave the world
without names.
In one of the wards,
they will be left
forever in test tubes
while the wiggling lab mouse
performing a test
will be free at last
from the big eye that always watches.
The test is not difficult,
but time will run out
before the answer.
And it no longer matters
whether or not you knew.
Smell the roses and keep going.
The rose always knows
that the world will end in five minutes . . .
The blue shirt in the shop window
seems beautiful on the mannequin.
A young woman points it out to her friend
and they head toward the revolving door
to be swallowed by the towering building . . .
On the wall, glossy advertisements:
HUGE SALE!
NEW REMEDY FOR WRINKLES!
CIGARETTES DON'T HARM YOUR HEALTH!
but the world will end . . .
In his walled room
inside the walled palace
inside the walled city,
the tyrant is chewing on an apple
and watching himself on television.
Who would believe that in five minutes
he will relinquish his throne?
Another defendant receives a life sentence.
His attorney wants an appeal
but the world will . . .
Passengers push through the exit door
others come in through the entrance door.
A woman sets down her suitcase
and waves her hand
(it is not me).
A man waves to her from behind the airport glass
(it is not you).
I don't know if they met
or if the time . . .
That university student
prefers to travel by train.
It doesn't make much difference now.
He has agreed with a friend
to go on a picnic.
I don't know if the picnic ended before the world
or the world before the picnic!
As for me, I am writing a letter.
I don't think it will be finished
within five minutes.

the new year - dunya mikhail

The New Year
by Dunya Mikhail (tr. Elizabeth Winslow)


1
There is a knock at the door.
How disappointing . . .
It is the New Year and not you.

2
I don't know how to add your absence to my life.
I don't know how to subtract myself from it.
I don't know how to divide it
among the laboratory flasks.

3
Time stopped at twelve o'clock
and confused the watchmaker.
There were no flaws with the watch.
It was just a matter of the hands
which embraced and forgot the world.

the miracle is the shortest time - charles bukowski

the miracle is the shortest time
by Charles Bukowski

you know
it was very good
it was
better than
anything

it was like
something
we could
pick up
hold
look at
and then laugh
about.

we were on the
moon
we were in the
god damned moon,
we had it

we were in the garden
we were in the
endless pit

never such a place
as that

it was deep
and
it was light
and
it was high

it got so near
to insanity
we laughed so
hard

your laughter
and
mine

I remember when
your eyes
said love
loudly

now
as these walls
so quietly
shift.

have you anything to say in your defense? - césar vallejo

Have You Anything To Say In Your Defense?
by César Vallejo

Well, on the day I was born,
God was sick.

They all know that I'm alive,
that I'm vicious ; and they don't know
The December that follows from that January.
Well, on the day I was born,
God was sick.

There is an empty place
in my metaphysical shape
that no one can reach :
a cloister of silence
that spoke with the fire of its voice muffled.

On the day I was born,
God was sick.

Brother, listen to me, Listen . . .
Oh, all right.  Don't worry, I won't leave
without taking my Decembers along,
without leaving my Januaries behind.
Well, on the day I was born,
God was sick.

They all know that I'm alive,
that I chew my food . . . and they don't know
why harsh winds whistle in my poems,
the narrow uneasiness of a coffin,
winds untangled from the Sphinx
who holds the desert for routine questioning.

Yes, they all know . . . Well, they don't know
that the light gets skinny
and the darkness gets bloated . . .
and they don't know that the Mystery joins things
     together . . .
that he is the hunchback
musical and sad who stands a little way off and foretells
the dazzling progression from the limits to the Limits.

On the day I was born,
God was sick,
gravely.

televison - roald dahl

Television
by Roald Dahl

The most important thing we've learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set --
Or better still, just don't install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we've been,
We've watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone's place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnotised by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don't climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink --
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES!
'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'What used the darling ones to do?
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching 'round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be?
Good gracious, it's Penelope.)
The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and-
Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,
There's Mr. Rate and Mr. Mole-
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks-
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They'll now begin to feel the need
Of having something to read.
And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen
They'll wonder what they'd ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did.

in a library - emily dickinson

In A Library
by Emily Dickinson

A precious, mouldering pleasure 't is
To meet an antique book,
In just the dress his century wore;
A privilege, I think,

His venerable hand to take,
And warming in our own,
A passage back, or two, to make
To times when he was young.

His quaint opinions to inspect,
His knowledge to unfold
On what concerns our mutual mind,
The literature of old;

What interested scholars most,
What competitions ran
When Plato was a certainty.
And Sophocles a man;

When Sappho was a living girl,
And Beatrice wore
The gown that Dante deified.
Facts, centuries before,

He traverses familiar,
As one should come to town
And tell you all your dreams were true;
He lived where dreams were sown.

His presence is enchantment,
You beg him not to go;
Old volumes shake their vellum heads
And tantalize, just so.

'why am I thinking...' - sam shepard

'Why am i thinking...'
by Sam Shephard

Why am I thinking

"This guy is totally crazy"

Sitting in a country cafe

Dressed in a black velvet three-piece suit

Smelling like a 14th Street Pimp

Horizontally twitching brown eyes

With no pupil to speak of

Why am I thinking

"This guy is a maniac"

When he asks if it's ever snowed in San Francisco

If Herb Alpert plays classical music

Why am I thinking

"This man is nuts"

When he tells me he's a man of many talents

But he doesn't have time to develop any one of them

Why am I thinking

"This guy is bananas"

When he picks up the cream pitcher

And calls it a "Cute Cow"

I know why it is

It's because he's not concealing

His desperate estrangement from people

a where without a who - octavio paz

A Where Without A Who
by Octavio Paz (tr. Eliot Weinberger)

There's not
a soul among these trees
And I
don't know where I've gone

in a candy store - ye hui

In A Candy Store
by Ye Hui (tr. Joshua Beckman & Zhao Xia)

Once I wrote a line of poetry on the counter
in a candy store, but
I was not writing about the candy store
or that woman weighing the candy
I was thinking of other things:  a horse or a man
In strange places,
the drama of an entire life unfolds
the farewell and the coming together
A country of tears and letters
I lay in the warm current of imagination
and I don't want to become any of these people around me
Like on a little hill
Growing a weed, which should only grow in an abandoned court yard

burning my manuscripts - yi kyubo

Burning My Manuscripts
by Yi Kyubo

In my youth I used to write songs.
When the brush moved down the page,
I wrote with unimpeded flow.
My poems, I thought, were as beautiful as jade;
who dared talk about flaws?
Afterwards, I studied them again:
there wasn't a fine word in one of them.
To retain them would be to soil my writing box:
unbearable thought, so I burned them in the kitchen fire.
If I look next year at this year's poems,
they will all be the same; I'll scrap them too.
Perhaps that's why Minister Kao of old
first composed when he was fifty.

interval of joy - nikos karouzos

Interval Of Joy
by Nikos Karouzos (tr. Kimon Friar)

just as I was saying I would stop writing about love and lust

and write something instead about the unhappiness of my

   neighbor

I met you and fell into complete confusion

and all my resolutions went up in air

now see where i sit and write songs again

burning for your somewhat green eyes

thirsting for your saliva

recollecting our one love-walk in the country

when the mosquitoes bit us in confused bewilderment

at this incomparable devotion of ours

and the thorns pierced into our bodies

astonished at the extent of our indifference

it was an interval of joy

may the unhappy forgive me for it

I have not yet suffered enough

for the pain of my neighbor to touch me

eterneity - eugène guillevic

Eternity
by Eugène Guillevic (tr. Denise Levertov)

Eternity

never was lost.

What we did not know

was how to translate it into days,

skies, landscapes,

into words for others,

authentic gestures.

But holding on to it for ourselves,

that was not difficult,

and there were moments

when it seemed clear to us

we ourselves were eternity.

song v - tristan tzara

Song V
by Tristan Tzara (tr. Michael Benedikt)

if words were nothing but signs

postage stamps for all things

what would be the outcome of everything

dust

empty gestures

time wasted

neither agony nor joy would remain

in that odd world

an epitaph - simonides

An Epitaph
by Simonides (tr. Burton Raffel)

I, Brotachos of Crete, lie in this ground,
Where I came not to die but to buy and sell.

a song out of tune - octavio paz

A Song Out Of Tune
by Octavio Paz (tr. Eliot Weinberger



non visto color de buen verdigay

nin trobo discor ni fago deslay

          Juan Alfonso de Baena

The day is short,
                          the hour long
Motionless I retrace its steps,
climbing its minor calvaries,
I descend on stairs made of air,
and am lost in transparent galleries
--but I don't find me,
                                and I don't see you.

The day is short,                                

                          the hour long.
I see my stubborn hand that writes
its circular words on the page,
I see my shadow on the page, I see 

myself falling through the hour's blank center
--but I don't find you,
                                 and I don't see me.

The day is short,
                          the hour long.
Time drags on, hides, and peeks,
time is buried, clods of air,
time sprouts up, a column of air,
it bashes my forehead, scrapes my lids
--but I don't find me,
                                and I don't see you.

The day is short,
                          the hour long.
I walk through lots and corridors and echoes,
my hands touch you and you suddenly vanish,
I look in your eyes and suddenly vanish,
the hour traces, erases, invents its reflections
--but I don't find you,
                                 and I don't see me.

The day is short,
                          the hour long.
There is a seed asleep in time,
that explodes in the air with a burst of syllables,
it is a word, and it speaks without speaking
the names of time, yours and mine,
--but I don't find me,
                                and I don't see you.

Names are fruit that ripen and fall;
the hours immense, inside itself it falls.

the suicide - jorge luis borges

The Suicide
by Jorge Luis Borges (tr. Alastair Reid)

Not a single star will be left in the night.

The night will not be left.

I will die and, with me,

the weight of the intolerable universe.

I shall erase the pyramids, the medallions,

the continents and faces.

I shall erase the accumulated past.

I shall make dust of history, dust of dust.

Now I am looking on the final sunset.

I am hearing the last bird.

I bequeath nothingness to no one.

my mother is not dead - leonard cohen

My Mother Is Not Dead
by Leonard Cohen


My mother isn't really dead.

Neither is yours.

I'm so happy for you.

You thought your mother was dead,

And now she isn't.

What about your father?

Is he well?

Don't worry about any of your relatives.

Do you see the insects?

One of them was once your dog.

But do not try to pat the at.

It will be destroyed by your awkward affection.

The tree is trying to touch me.

It used to be an afternoon.

Mother, mother,

I don't have to miss you any more.

Rover, Rover, Rex, Spot,

Here is the bone of my heart.

who's who - w.h. auden

Who's Who
by W.H. Auden

A shilling life will give you all the facts:

How father beat him, how he ran away,

What were the struggles of his youth, what acts

Made him the greatest figure of his day:

Of how he fought, fished, hunted, worked all night,

Though giddy, climbed new mountains; named a sea:

Some of the last researchers even write

Love made him weep his pints like you and me.

With all his honours on, he sighed for one

Who, say astonished critics, lived at home;

Did little jobs about the house with skill

And nothing else; could whistle; would sit still

Or potter round the garden; answered some

Of his long marvellous letters but kept none.

you take the first street - robert desnos

You Take The First Street
by Robert Desnos

You take the first street on the right

You go along the quai

You cross the bridge

You knock at the door of the house.

The sun shines

The river flows

At a window a geranium pot trembles

An auto goes by on the other bank.

You turn around to the cheerful landscape

Without seeing that the door has opened behind you

The woman stands on the threshold

The house if full of darkness.

But on the table you see the reflection

The reflection of daylight on a piece of fruit and a bottle

On an earthen-ware plate and on some furniture

And you stay there on the threshold between the

World full of people like you

And on your droning solitude

Of the entire world.

the watcher - jorge luis borges

The Watcher
by Jorge Luis Borges (tr. Alastair Reid)


The light enters and I remember who I am; he is there.

He begins by telling me his name which (it should now be

      clear) is mine.

I revert to the servitude which has lasted more than seven

     times ten years.

He saddles me with his rememberings.

He saddles me with the miseries of every day, the human

     condition.

I am his old nurse; he requires me to wash his feet.

He spies on me in mirrors, in mahogany, in shop windows.

One or another woman has rejected him, and I must share

     his anguish.

He dictates to me now this poem, which I do not like.

He insists I apprentice myself tentatively to the stubborn

     Anglo-Saxon.

He has won me over to the hero worship of dead soldiers,

     people with whom I could scarcely exchange a single

     word.

On the last flight of stairs, I feel him at my side.

He is in my footsteps, in my voice.

Down to the last detail, I abhor him.

I am gratified to remark that he can hardly see.

I am in a circular cell and the infinite wall is closing in.

Neither of the two deceives the other, but we both lie.

We know each other too well, inseparable brother.

You drink the water from my cup and you wolf down my

     bread.

The door to suicide is open, but theologians assert that, in the

     subsequent shadows of the other kingdom, there will I

     be, waiting for myself.

the face behind the face - yevgeny yevtushenko

The Face Behind The Face
by Yevgeny Yevtushenko (tr. Boyars & Franklin)

Where does it live, the face behind the face?

Everyone ought

To know all that there is

About the face that is his.

People often haven't a clue

About their very own I.

Each of us makes his own

Best defence counsel.

Nero, apparently, thought

He was a poet,

Hitler thought that he

Would redeem the world from woe!

The mean man thinks:  "I am so generous".

The shallow man:  "I am profound".

Sometimes God will sigh:  "I am a worm".

The worm hisses:  "I am God!"

The worms climb arrogantly upwards.

The coward rejoices to be in the clouds.

Only the free man

Thinks:

                "I am a slave".

the indifferent - john dunne

The Indifferent
by John Dunne

I can love both fair and brown,

Her whom abundance melts, and her whom want betrays,

Her who loves loneness best, and her who masques and plays,

Her whom believes, and her who tries,

Her who still weeps with spongy eyes,

And her who is dry cork and never cries;

I can lover her and her, and you and you;

I can love any, so she be not true.

Will no other vice content you?

Will it not serve your turn to do as did your mothers?

Have you old vices spent, and now would find out others?

Or doth a fear that men are true torment you?

Oh we are not, be not you so,

Let me, and do you, twenty know.

Rob me, but bind me not, and let me go.

Must I, who came to travel through you,

Grow your fixed subject because you are true?

Venus heard me sigh this song,

And by love's sweetest part, variety, she swore

She heard not this till now; it should be so no more.

She went, examined, and returned ere long,

And said, 'Alas, some two or three

Poor heretics in love there be,

Which think to stablish dangerous constancy.

But I have told them, "Since you will be true,

You shall be true to them, who're false to you.'"

i brought to art - c.p. cavafy

I Brought To Art
by C.P. Cavafy (tr. Rae Dalven)

I sit and meditate.     I brought to art

desires and feelings--     some things half seen,

faces or lines;     some indistinct memories

of unfulfilled loves.     Let me rely on her.

She knows how to fashion     a Figure of Beauty;

almost imperceptibly     rounding out life,

combining impressions,     combining the days.

'a girl is going to enter your brain...' - jean-pierre rosnay

'A girl is going to enter your brain...'
by Jean Pierre Rosnay (tr. J Kates)


            A girl is going to enter your brain.  Pay attention all of you because you
will be given no information about her, except for this: she is eleven years old
on an autumn day in 1908. Her father does this, her mother does that. Of course
they are both alive at the time we are speaking of. The girl laughs, something
girls often do. You may note that her parents are French. Later she will come to
France. You come across this girl in Vienna, in an Austria still delightful at the
time we are speaking of. She is wearing black patent leather shoes; not for one
instant does she suspect what her fate will be. She is eleven years old, I’ve already written that. Some thirty years from now, with her husband, she will fight in the Resistance and be deported to Ravensbruck.

            For this one instant, for all eternity, she is laughing. She is eleven years old.

            After you have read or listened to this poem, you will be able, if you
close your eyes, to see her clearly, to hear her laughing. Nothing will escape
you, not the color of her eyes, of her hair, of her pretty little dress, of her white
stockings.

            But I have written too much about this. I leave you and go back to the
streets of Vienna where flares of music float along as in a movie.

            And the girl is smiling at me, she who does not know, innocent as she is,
that she has died, as have I.

            Reader how are you doing? How do you fit into this existence?

since i was thrown inside - deniz pernin

Since I Was Thrown Inside
by Nazim Hikmet (tr. Deniz Pernin)

Since I was thrown inside,

                       the earth has orbited the sun ten times.

If you ask it:

            "Not even worth mentioning,

                       a microscopic time."

If you ask me:

           "Ten years of my life."

I had a pencil

            the year I was thrown inside.

I used it all up in a week.

If you ask it:

           "A whole life."

If you ask me:

           "Come on now, just one week."

Since I was thrown inside,

                      Osman, doing time for murder,

                                  finished his seven and a half years and left,

                                  drifted around for a while,

                                  was thrown back inside for smuggling,

                                  did six months and was rereleased,

                                  his letter came yesterday, he's married,

                                  his child will be born in the spring.

They're ten years old now,

            the children who were conceived

                  the year I was thrown inside.

And that year's trembling, long-legged colts

             have long turned into confident, wide-rumped mares.

But the olive seeds are still olive seeds,

                           they're still children.

New squares have cropped up in my faraway city

                                   since I was thrown inside.

And my loved ones

            are living on a street I don't know

                                    in a home I've never seen

Bread was white, fluffy as cotton

                       the year I was thrown inside.

Then it was rationed

and here, inside, the people beat each other

           for a pitch-black, fist-size piece.

Now it flows freely again,

but dark and tasteless.

The year I was thrown inside,

             the second war hadn't started yet,

the ovens at Dachau weren't lit,

the atom bomb hadn't dropped on Hiroshima.

Time flowed like the blood of a child whose throat's been slit.

Then that chapter officially ended,

and now the U.S. dollar speaks of a third.

Yet, in spite of everything, the days have shone

                      since I was thrown inside,

and from the edges of darkness,

          the people, pressing their heavy hands to the pavement,

                               have begun to rise.

Since I was thrown inside

              the earth has orbited the sun ten times

and just as passionately I repeat

                         what I wrote

                                     the year I was thrown inside:

"The people, who are plentiful as ants on the ground

                                  as fish in the sea

                                           as birds in the sky,

who are cowardly, courageous,

                        ignorant, supreme

                                                  and childlike,

it is they who crush

             and create,

it is but their exploits sung in songs."

                       And as for the rest,

                                 my ten-year incarceration, for instance,

                                                        it's all meaningless words.

'i walked with the ships...' - leah goldberg

'I walked with the ships...'
by Leah Goldberg (tr. Annie Kantar)

I walked with the ships and stood with the bridges,

I was cast across the street

with the elm's falling leaves.

I had autumns, a cloud glowing

near a black chimney,

and a strange name

no one could guess.

'i would like my love to die...' - samuel beckett

'I would like my love to die...'
by Samuel Beckett

I would like my love to die

and the rain to be raining on the graveyard

and on me walking the streets

mourning her who thought she loved me

grace - jeffrey mcdaniel

Grace
by Jeffrey McDaniel

Glance at a woman on a train platform.

Suddenly we've been married for years.

I know all the delicate nuances

in her nine dialects of silence.

Can pick her from a thousand others

just with a sniff of her neck.

We sit next to each other, as we always have.

Our elbows touch, like the tips of matches.

Exactly the way I remember.

When she says excuse me, this is my stop,

there is nothing awkward about it.

how could speech exhaust the meaning of speech? - nikos stangos

How Could Speech Exhaust The Meaning Of Speech?
by Nikos Stangos




The platitudes of truth --

That was the beginning.

Now we can only turn back to

Deceiving words, the first ones,

Their acts and objects

pacts of symbolic exchange,

The most commonplace facts

That lucid writers glorified.

Certainty was constantly

Renewing itself, feeding on

The only knowledge:

That that was the way.

A most transparent truth

Its domination over the real

Capable of annihilating it

Like him, born of pain.

Ah, the deceiving spirit

Suddenly like him, born of light,

The fact that merely dazzles

And takes its place out of necessity.

You sat smiling

Spoken to rather than speaking

Turned against the good, 

A false renunciation.

And where is truth,

The meaning which goes unrecognized?

A closed circuit locked in

Ceremonial lies, obsessions at night.

Parent speech -- the monologue that activates the actor:

The birth of truth is speech

Neither true nor false

Imaginary nor real.

Tonight's disclosure is

A recitation in high voice

Produced before an audience --

Mass inertia.

It is made up history

And it is like an indirect quotation:

The chorus on the stage and the spectators'

Language emulate the truth of revelation,

Promises of a future, of reality,

Questions of recollection

Against promises of the future:

The proof, the turning point, the theorem

Through which we guide our steps

From month to month,

The hidden objects,

This act then is an act of history, or

Falsehood, a sacred lie,

What has been written down.

I do not know which history, or

What meaning is reestablished,

Common wisdom proclaimed that ever age

Had found its own philosopher.

Our recent past has revealed

This to be more speculation, without dignity.

Your words bear witness now,

This turning aside from reason

In the domain of pure language,

Submitting to ambiguities.

What is this place?

Here imagination is in the monarch

In his brilliant robes,

Rules of marble spaces

Where what appears is false

And what is false is truth,

The light changing direction

As usual revealing and concealing.

Your hero is a retarded child,

The master of relations,

Who studies his gloomy space

Future catastrophes, decaying words.

This place is empty.

What is going on?

We want the meaning that eludes

In such heroic impersonations.

Come close, come close.

Unwillingly we run away.

Night gathers, gathers,

Icy winds, whirl, whirl.

A large body is cut in fragments, freshly butchered

Is floating horizontally towards us,

Its wounds dripping deep red

Denials, fresh flesh food.  

"There, there, thousands

Of infants, in their swaddling clothes

Float by, a knife plunged deeply

In each infant bosom."

This is, you say, how language functions.

Can we convince ourselves of the necessity

For such spiritual catastrophe?

We are the prisoners of a closed circuit.

Back to the function of words:

The void which speaks words

When finally the day of destruction 

Will arrive, glorious in its conceit,

An instrument of healing or

Of search in words uttered as words

Within ourselves and giving speech to void

In suspect words when silence fails --

This is the ritual of murder,

An appeal to truth

Through which other appeals

Will find -- or think they find -- a faltering expression.

Hopeless mirages, fantasies, deceptions,

The silence spoken by the void which speaks

In tongues and borrowed words.

The artifice complete.

Such gifts which are condemned to fiction,

Narrations of sleepwalkers, moments

Which look like secretive encounters

Are the birth of what we think is truth expressed in words.

The testimony of reality is heard

Invoking past ambitions, making choices

Which charter the domain

Of false and glittering transactions.

Inscriptions are deciphered, traces read,

Their meanings growing out of longings

For love, closeness, forgiveness,

Only symbolic isolations will remain, as memories.  

The structure of a sentence

In our sight, a dark, fleeting reality

And also an obsession

With meanings which resist all change.

Regression, repetition, rhetoric,

Seductive metaphors sought in a dream,

The object of desire with single phrase

Which will contain all meanings.

What we were taught were double meanings,

Unstructured texts of deep symbolic lineage,

Symptoms of language with split figures,

Ambiguous numbers which conceal the real.

Secrets then glean in their masked words

When deceit dazzles with its forgeries,

The lucid writers hiding their laws,

Authors of phantom books of random choices.

And we in our innocence, curiously to learn,

Murmuring syllables we think reveal bright actions,

Crave for a language that belongs alone to the language to language,

Speech that enunciates such longings but does not replace them.

We think we've forged symbolic pacts with language,

Creators of a world of words taken for things,

Legible structures of incestuous marriages

Of images in words, of the one truth.