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Here's a good poem: The northeast blows, my favorite among winds, since it promises fiery spirit and a good voyage to mariners. But go now, and greet the lovely Garonne, and the gardens of Bordeaux, where the path runs beside the steep bank, and the brook runs into the deep stream, and a noble pair of oak and silver poplars look down from above. I remember well how the crowns of the elm trees lean over the mill, and a fig tree grows in the courtyard. On holidays dark-skinned women walk upon the soft earth, and in March, when night and day are equal: cradling breezes waft across the gentle pathways, heavy with golden dreams. But someone hand me the fragrant cup, full of dark light, that I may rest. It would be sweet to sleep among the shadows. It isn't good to stay mindless with human thoughts. On the other hand, conversation is also good: to speak the thoughts of the heart, and to hear much of days of love, and of deeds that occur. But where are our friends — Bellarmin and his companion? Many are afraid to go to the source, since treasure is first found in the sea. Like painters, they gather up earth's beauty, and they don't scorn winged war, or to live alone for years beneath the bare mast — where the city's festivities don't flash through the night, or the sound of strings and native dancing. But now the men have left for India... from the windy peaks and vine-covered hills where the Dardogne comes down with the great Garonne; wide as an ocean the river flows outward. But the sea takes and gives memory, and love fixes the eye diligently, and poets establish that which endures.
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Nov 2, 2014 06:54
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 06:45 |
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A while back, if I remember right, my life was one long party where all hearts were open wide, where all wines kept flowing. One night, I sat Beauty down on my lap.—And I found her galling.—And I roughed her up. I armed myself against justice. I ran away. O witches, O misery, O hatred, my treasure’s been turned over to you! I managed to make every trace of human hope vanish from my mind. I pounced on every joy like a ferocious animal eager to strangle it. I called for executioners so that, while dying, I could bite the butts of their rifles. I called for plagues to choke me with sand, with blood. Bad luck was my god. I stretched out in the muck. I dried myself in the air of crime. And I played tricks on insanity. And Spring brought me the frightening laugh of the idiot. So, just recently, when I found myself on the brink of the final squawk! it dawned on me to look again for the key to that ancient party where I might find my appetite once more. Charity is that key.—This inspiration proves I was dreaming! “You’ll always be a hyena etc. . . ," yells the devil, who’d crowned me with such pretty poppies. “Deserve death with all your appetites, your selfishness, and all the capital sins!” Ah! I’ve been through too much:-But, sweet Satan, I beg of you, a less blazing eye! and while waiting for the new little cowardly gestures yet to come, since you like an absence of descriptive or didactic skills in a writer, let me rip out these few ghastly pages from my notebook of the damned.
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Nov 2, 2014 07:05
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I have dead ones, and I have let them go, and was astonished to see them so peaceful, so quickly at home in being dead, so just, so other than their reputation. Only you, you turn back: you brush against me, and go by, you try to knock against something, so that it resounds and betrays you. O don’t take from me what I am slowly learning. I’m sure you err when you deign to be homesick at all for any Thing. We change them round: they are not present, we reflect them here out of our being, as soon as we see them. I thought you were much further on. It disturbs me that you especially err and return, who have changed more than any other woman. That we were frightened when you died, no, that your harsh death broke in on us darkly, tearing the until-then from the since-that: it concerns us: that it become a unique order is the task we must always be about. But that even you were frightened, and now too are in terror, where terror is no longer valid: that you lose a little of your eternity, my friend, and that you appear here, where nothing yet is: that you, scattered for the first time, scattered and split in the universe, that you did not grasp the rise of events, as here you grasped every Thing: that from the cycle that has already received you the silent gravity of some unrest pulls you down to measured time – this often wakes me at night like a thief breaking in. And if only I might say that you deign to come out of magnanimity, out of over-fullness, because so certain, so within yourself, that you wander about like a child, not anxious in the face of anything one might do – but no: you are asking. This enters so into my bones, and cuts like a saw. A reproach, which you might offer me, as a ghost, impose on me, when I withdraw at night, into my lungs, into the innards, into the last poor chamber of my heart – such a reproach would not be as cruel as this asking is. What do you ask? Say, shall I travel? Have you left some Thing behind somewhere, that torments itself and yearns for you? Shall I enter a land you never saw, though it was close to you like the other side of your senses? I will travel its rivers: go ashore and ask about its ancient customs: speak to women in their doorways and watch when they call their children. I’ll note how they wrap the landscape round them, going about their ancient work in meadow and field: I’ll demand to be led before their king, and I’ll win their priests with bribes to place me in front of their most powerful statues, and leave, and close the temple gates. Only then when I know enough, will I simply look at creatures, so that something of their manner will glide over my limbs: and I will possess a limited being in their eyes, which hold me and slowly release me, calmly, without judgment. I’ll let the gardeners recite many flowers to me, so that I might bring back in the fragments of their lovely names a remnant of their hundred perfumes. And I’ll buy fruits, fruits in which that land exists once more, as far as the heavens. That is what you understood: the ripe fruits. You placed them in bowls there in front of you and weighed out their heaviness with pigments. And so you saw women as fruits too, and saw the children likewise, driven from inside into the forms of their being. And you saw yourself in the end as a fruit, removed yourself from your clothes, brought yourself in front of the mirror, allowed yourself within, as far as your gaze that stayed huge outside and did not say: ‘I am that’: no, rather: ‘this is.’ So your gaze was finally free of curiosity and so un-possessive, of such real poverty, it no longer desired self: was sacred. So I’ll remember you, as you placed yourself within the mirror, deep within and far from all. Why do you appear otherwise? What do you countermand in yourself? Why do you want me to believe that in the amber beads at your throat there was still some heaviness of that heaviness that never exists in the other-side calm of paintings: why do you show me an evil presentiment in your stance: what do the contours of your body mean, laid out like the lines on a hand, so that I no longer see them except as fate? Come here, to the candlelight. I’m not afraid to look on the dead. When they come they too have the right to hold themselves out to our gaze, like other Things. Come here: we’ll be still for a while. See this rose, close by on my desk: isn’t the light around it precisely as hesitant as that over you: it too shouldn’t be here. Outside in the garden, unmixed with me, it should have remained or passed – now it lives, so: what is my consciousness to it? Don’t be afraid if I understand now, ah, it climbs in me: I can do no other, I must understand, even if I die of it. Understand, that you are here. I understand. Just as a blind man understands a Thing, I feel your fate and do not know its name Let us grieve together that someone drew you out of your mirror. Can you still weep? You cannot. You turned the force and pressure of your tears into your ripe gaze, and every juice in you besides you added into a heavy reality, that climbed and spun in balance blindly. Then chance tore at you, a final chance tore you back from your furthest advance, back into a world where juices have will. Not tearing you wholly: tore only a piece at first, but when around this piece, day after day reality grew, so that it became heavy, you needed your whole self: you went and broke yourself, in pieces, out of its control, painfully, out, because you needed yourself. Then you lifted yourself out, and dug the still green seeds out of the night-warmed earth of your heart, from which your death would rise: yours, your own death for your own life. And ate them, the kernels of your death, like all the others, ate the kernels, and found an aftertaste of sweetness you did not expect, found sweetness on the lips, you: who were already sweet within your senses. O let us grieve. Do you know how your blood hesitated in its unequalled gyre, and reluctantly returned, when you called it back? How confused it was to take up once more the body’s narrow circulation: how full of mistrust and amazement, entering into the placenta, and suddenly tired by the long way back. You drove it on: you pushed it along, you dragged it to the fireplace, as one drags a herd-animal to the sacrifice: and still wished that it would be happy too. And you finally forced it: it was happy and ran over to you and gave itself up. You thought because you’d grown used to other rules, it was only for a while: but now you were within Time, and Time is long. And Time runs on, and Time takes away, and Time is like a relapse in a lengthy illness. How short your life was, if you compare it with those hours where you sat and bent the varied powers of your varied future silently into the bud of the child, that was fate once more. O painful task. O task beyond all strength. You did it from day to day, you dragged yourself to it, and drew the lovely weft through the loom, and used up all the threads in another way. And finally you still had courage to celebrate. When it was done, you wanted to be rewarded, like a child when it has drunk the bittersweet tea that might perhaps make it well. So you rewarded yourself: you were still so far from other people, even then: no one was able to think through, what gift would please you. You knew. You sat up in childbed, and in front of you stood a mirror, that returned the whole thing to you. This everything was you, and wholly before, and within was only illusion, the sweet illusion of every woman, who gladly takes up her jewelry, and combs, and alters her hair. So you died, as women used to die, you died, in the old-fashioned way, in the warm house, the death of women who have given birth, who wish to shut themselves again and no longer can, because that darkness, that they have borne, returns once more, and thrusts, and enters. Still, shouldn’t a wailing of women have been raised? Where women would have lamented, for gold, and one could pay for them to howl through the night, when all becomes silent. A custom once! We have too few customs. They all vanish and become disowned. So you had to come, in death, and, here with me, retrieve the lament. Can you hear that I lament? I wish that my voice were a cloth thrown down over the broken fragments of your death and pulled about until it were torn to pieces, and all that I say would have to walk around, ragged, in that voice, and shiver: what remains belongs to lament. But now I lament, not the man who pulled you back out of yourself, (I don’t discover him: he’s like everyone) but I lament all in him: mankind. When, somewhere, from deep within me, a sense of having been a child rises, which I still don’t understand, perhaps the pure being-a-child of my childhood: I don’t wish to understand. I wish to form an angel from it, without addition, and wish to hurl him into the front rank of the screaming angels who remind God. Because this suffering’s lasted far too long, and no one can bear it: it’s too heavy for us, this confused suffering of false love, that builds on limitation, like a custom, calls itself right and makes profit out of wrong. Where is the man who has the right of possession? Who can possess what cannot hold its own self, what only from time to time catches itself happily, and throws itself down again, as a child does a ball. No more than the captain of the ship can grasp the Nike jutting outwards from the prow when the secret lightness of her divinity lifts her suddenly into the bright ocean-wind: no more can one of us call back the woman who walks on, no longer seeing us, along a small strip of her being as if by a miracle, without disaster: unless his desire and trade is in crime. For this is a crime, if anything’s a crime: not to increase the freedom of a Love with all the freedom we can summon in ourselves. We have, indeed, when we love, only this one thing: to loose one another: because holding on to ourselves comes easily to us, and does not first have to be learned. Are you still there? Are you in some corner? – You understood all of this so well and used it so well, as you passed through open to everything, like the dawn of a day. Women do suffer: love means being alone, and artists sometimes suspect in their work that they must transform where they love. You began both: both are in that which now fame disfigures, and takes from you. Oh you were far beyond any fame. You were barely apparent: you’d withdrawn your beauty as a man takes down a flag on the grey morning of a working day, and wished for nothing, except the long work – which is unfinished: and yet is not finished. If you are still here, if in this darkness there is still a place where your sensitive spirit resonates on the shallow waves of a voice, isolated in the night, vibrating in the high room’s current: then hear me: help me. See, we can slip back so unknowingly, out of our forward stride, into something we didn’t intend: find that we’re trapped there as if in dream and we die there, without waking. No one is far from it. Anyone who has fired their blood through work that endures, may find that they can no longer sustain it and that it falls according to its weight, worthless. For somewhere there is an ancient enmity between life and the great work. Help me, so that I might see it and know it. Come no more. If you can bear it so, be dead among the dead. The dead are occupied. But help me like this, so you are not scattered, as the furthest things sometimes help me: within.
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Nov 2, 2014 07:08
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“Ah, William! art thou false or dead?” Cried Leonora from her bed. “I dreamt thou’dst ne’er return.” William had fought in Frederick’s host At Prague—and what his fate—if lost Or false, she could not learn. Hungaria’s queen and Prussia’s king, Wearied, at length with bickering, Resolv’d to end the strife; And homewards, then, their separate routs The armies took, with songs and shouts, With cymbals, drum and fife. As deck’d with boughs they march’d along, From every door, the old and young Rush’d forth the troops to greet. “Thank God,” each child and parent cry’d, And “welcome, welcome,” many a bride, As friends long parted meet. They joy’d, poor Leonora griev’d: No kiss she gave, no kiss receiv’d; Of William none could tell; She rung her hands, and tore her hair; Till left alone in deep despair, Bereft of sense, she fell. Swift to her aid her mother came, “Ah! say,” cried she, “in mercy’s name, “What means this frantic grief?” “Mother ’tis past—all hopes are fled, “God hath no mercy, William’s dead, “My woe is past relief.” “Pardon, O pardon, Lord above! “My child, with pray’rs invoke his love, “The Almighty never errs?” “O, mother! mother! idle prate, “Can he be anxious for my fate, “Who never heard my prayers?” “Be patient child, in God believe, “The good he can, and will relieve, “To trust his power endeavour.” “O, mother! mother! all is vain, “What trust can bring to life again? “The past, is past for ever.” “Who knows, but that he yet survives; “Perchance, far off from hence he lives, “And thinks no more of you. “Forget, forget, the faithless youth, “Away with grief, your sorrow soothe, “Since William proves untrue.” “Mother, all hope has fled my mind, “The past, is past, our God’s unkind; “Why did he give me breath? “Oh that this hated loathsome light “Would fade for ever from my sight, “Come, death, come, welcome death!” “Indulgent Father, spare my child, “Her agony hath made her wild, “She knows not what she does. “Daughter, forget thy earthly love, “Look up to him who reigns above, “Where joys succeed to woes.” “Mother what now are joys to me? “With William, Hell a Heaven could be, “Without him, Heaven a Hell. “Fade, fade away, thou hated light, “Death bear me hence to endless night, “With love all hope farewell.” Thus rashly, Leonora strove To doubt the truth of heavenly love. She wept, and beat her breast; She pray’d for death, until the moon With all the stars with silence shone, And sooth’d the world to rest. When, hark! without, what sudden sound! She hears a trampling o’er the ground, Some horseman must be near! He stops, he rings, Hark! as the noise Dies soft away, a well-known voice Thus greets her list’ning ear. “Wake, Leonora;—dost thou sleep, “Or thoughtless laugh, or constant weep, “Is William welcome home?” “Dear William, you!—return’d, and well! “I’ve wak’d and wept—but why, ah! tell, “So late—at night you come?” “At midnight only dare we roam, “For thee from Prague, though late, I come.” “For me!—stay here and rest; “The wild winds whistle o’er the waste, “Ah, dear William! why such haste? “First warm thee in my breast.” “Let the winds whistle o’er the waste, “My duty bids me be in haste; “Quick, mount upon my steed: “Let the winds whistle far and wide, “Ere morn, two hundred leagues we’ll ride, “To reach our marriage bed.” “What, William! for a bridal room, “Travel to night so far from home?” “Leonora, ’tis decreed. “Look round thee, love, the moon shines clear, “The dead ride swiftly; never fear, “We’ll reach our marriage bed.” “Ah, William! whither would’st thou speed, “What! where! this distant marriage bed?” “Leonora, no delay. “‘Tis far from hence; still—cold—and small: “Six planks, no more, compose it all; “Our guests await, away!” She lightly on the courser sprung, And her white arms round William flung, Like to a lily wreath. In swiftest gallop off they go, The stones and sparks around them throw, And pant the way for breath. The objects fly on every side, The bridges thunder as they ride; “Art thou my love afraid? “Death swiftly rides, the moon shines clear, “The dead doth Leonora fear?” “Ah, no! why name the dead?” Hark! as their rapid course they urge, A passing bell, a solemn dirge; Hoarse ravens join the strain. They see a coffin on a bier, A priest and mourners too appear, Slow moving o’er the plain. And sad was heard the funeral lay; “What the Lord gives, he takes away; “Life’s but a fleeting shade. “A tale that’s told,—a flower that falls; “Death, when the least expected, calls, “And bears us to his bed.” “Forbear;”—imperious William cry’d “I carry home, a beauteous bride, “Come, to our marriage feast; “Mourners, away, we want your song; “And as we swiftly haste along, “Give us your blessing, priest. “Sing on, that life is like a shade; “A tale that’s told, or flowers which fade: “Such strains will yield delight. “And, when we to our chamber go, “Bury your dead, with wail and woe; “The service suits the night.” While William speaks, they silent stand, Then run obedient to command, But, on with furious bound, The foaming courser forward flew, Fire and stones his heels pursue, Like whirlwinds dash’d around. On right and left, on left and right, Trees, hills, and towns flew past their sight, As on they breathless prest; “With the bright moon, like death we speed, “Doth Leonora fear the dead?” “Ah! leave the dead at rest.” Behold, where in the moon’s pale beam, As wheels and gibbets faintly gleam, Join’d hand in hand, a crowd Of imps and spectres hover nigh, Or round a wasted wretch they fly, When William calls aloud: “Hither, ye airy rabble, come, “And follow till I reach my home; “We want a marriage dance.” As when the leaves on wither’d trees, Are rustled by an edying breeze, The muttering sprites advance. But, soon with hurried steps, the crew Rush’d prattling on, for William flew, Clasp’d by the frighted fair: Swifter than shafts, or than the wind, While struck from earth fire flash’d behind, Like lightnings through the air. Not only flew the landscape by, The clouds and stars appear’d to fly. “Thus over hills and heath “We ride like death; say, lovely maid, “By moon-light dost thou fear the dead?” “Ah! speak no more of death.” “The cock hath crow’d—Away! away! “The sand ebbs out: I scent the day. “On! on! away from here! “Soon must our destin’d course be run, “The dead ride swift,—hurrah! ’tis done, “The marriage bed is near.” High grated iron doors, in vain Barr’d their way.—With loosened rein Whil’st William urg’d the steed, He struck the bolts;—they open flew, A churchyard drear appear’d in view; Their path was o’er the dead. As now, half veil’d by clouds, the moon With feebler ray, o’er objects shone, Where tombstones faint appear, A grave new dug arrests the pair, Cry’d William, and embrac’d the fair, “Our marriage bed is here.” Scarce had he spoke, when, dire to tell, His flesh like touchwood from him fell, His eyes forsook his head. A skull, and naked bones alone, Supply the place of William gone, ‘Twas Death that clasp’d the maid. Wild, snorting fire, the courser rear’d, As wrapp’d in smoke he disappear’d, Poor Leonora fell; The hideous spectres hover round, Deep groans she hears from under ground, And fiends ascend from hell. They dance, and say, in dreadful howl, “She asks no mercy for her soul; “Her earthly course is done. “When mortals, rash and impious! dare “Contend with God, and court despair, “We claim them as our own.” “Yet,” thus was heard, in milder strains, “Call on the Lord, while life remains, “Unite your heart to his; “When man repents and is resign’d, “God loves to soothe his suff’ring mind, “And grant him future bliss.” “We claim as ours, who impious dare “Contend with God, and court despair;” Again the spectres cry’d. “Fate threats in vain, when man’s resign’d, “God loves to soothe the suff’ring mind,” The gentler voice reply’d. Leonora, e’er her sense was gone, Thus faint exclaim’d,—”thy Will be done, “Lord, let thy anger cease.” Soft on the wind was borne the pray’r; The spectres vanish’d into air, And all was hush’d in peace. Now redd’ning tints the skies adorn, And streaks of gold, proclaim the morn; The night is chas’d away. The sun ascends, new warmth he gives, New hope, new joy; all nature lives, And hails the glorious day. No more are dreadful fantoms near; Love and his smiling train, appear; They cull each sweetest flow’r, To scatter o’er the path of youth, To deck the bridal bed, when Truth And Beauty own their pow’r. Ah,—could your pow’r avert the blast Which threatens Bliss!—could passion last! Ye dear enchanters tell; What purer joy could Heaven bestow, Than when with shar’d affection’s glow Our panting bosoms swell? Sweet spirits wave the airy wand, Two faithful hearts your care demand; Lo! bounding o’er the plain, Led by your charm, a youth returns; With hope, his breast impatient burns; Hope is not always vain. “Wake, Leonora!—wake to Love! For thee, his choicest wreath he wove;” Death vainly aim’d his Dart. The Past was all a dream; she woke— He lives;—’twas William’s self who spoke, And clasp’d her to his Heart.
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Nov 2, 2014 07:17
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Never until the mankind making Bird beast and flower Fathering and all humbling darkness Tells with silence the last light breaking And the still hour Is come of the sea tumbling in harness And I must enter again the round Zion of the water bead And the synagogue of the ear of corn Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound Or sow my salt seed In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn The majesty and burning of the child’s death. I shall not murder The mankind of her going with a grave truth Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath With any further Elegy of innocence and youth. Deep with the first dead lies London’s daughter, Robed in the long friends, The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother, Secret by the unmourning water Of the riding Thames. After the first death, there is no other.
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Nov 2, 2014 07:21
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 06:45 |
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Why do I stay silent, conceal for too long What clearly is and has been Practiced in war games, at the end of which we as survivors Are at best footnotes. It is the alleged right to first strike That could annihilate the Iranian people-- Enslaved by a loud-mouth And guided to organized jubilation-- Because in their territory, It is suspected, a bomb is being built. Yet why do I forbid myself To name that other country In which, for years, even if secretly, There has been a growing nuclear potential at hand But beyond control, because no inspection is available? The universal concealment of these facts, To which my silence subordinated itself, I sense as incriminating lies And force--the punishment is promised As soon as it is ignored; The verdict of "anti-Semitism" is familiar. Now, though, because in my country Which from time to time has sought and confronted Its very own crime That is without compare In turn on a purely commercial basis, if also With nimble lips calling it a reparation, declares A further U-boat should be delivered to Israel, Whose specialty consists of guiding all-destroying warheads to where the existence Of a single atomic bomb is unproven, But as a fear wishes to be conclusive, I say what must be said. Why though have I stayed silent until now? Because I thought my origin, Afflicted by a stain never to be expunged Kept the state of Israel, to which I am bound And wish to stay bound, From accepting this fact as pronounced truth. Why do I say only now, Aged and with my last ink, That the nuclear power of Israel endangers The already fragile world peace? Because it must be said What even tomorrow may be too late to say; Also because we--as Germans burdened enough-- Could be the suppliers to a crime That is foreseeable, wherefore our complicity Could not be redeemed through any of the usual excuses. And granted: I am silent no longer Because I am tired of the hypocrisy Of the West; in addition to which it is to be hoped That this will free many from silence, That they may prompt the perpetrator of the recognized danger To renounce violence and Likewise insist That an unhindered and permanent control Of the Israeli nuclear potential And the Iranian nuclear sites Be authorized through an international agency By the governments of both countries. Only this way are all, the Israelis and Palestinians, Even more, all people, that in this Region occupied by mania Live cheek by jowl among enemies, And also us, to be helped.
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Nov 2, 2014 07:22
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