Futility
–Ante Popovski
Words are not life, and therefore they are eternal.
Surely there must have been a serious reason
Why among all the languages of the world
Only the Gypsy language
Has no word for “to have”.
I make a note of that. But this is futile.
You can’t write on your soul using a pen.
Psalm 2
–Ante Popovski
studying medical sciences I am
excited by the fact
that man has in his bloodexactly the amount of iron
that would be needed
to forge sufficient nailsfor one crucifixion. I wonder:
who will unravel Sanskrit
while we are journeying to the stars?Each one of us, I think, is some future Christ
because with his own blood he can sign
his disappearance.
Photo 2013 Bernard Spragg NZ
I posted the poem “Futility” from Macedonian Ante Popovski before. It springs to mind now because I was thinking about pens. But, as Popovski notes, “you cannot write on your soul with a pen…”
While I could not immediately conjure up another poem specifically referencing a pen/pens, I could, of course, count on Adam Zagajewski to supply one filled with “small objects” and citing “illegible script”. We can imagine the pen and its ink, intimate, singular and aged.
Small Objects
-Adam Zagajewski
My contemporaries like small objects,
dried starfish that have forgotten the sea,
melancholy stopped clocks, postcards
sent from vanished cities,
and blackened with illegible script,
in which they discern words
like “yearning,” “illness,” or “the end.”
They marvel at dormant volcanoes.
They don’t desire light.
“Words are not life, and therefore they are eternal.
Surely there must have been a serious reason
Why among all the languages of the world
Only the Gypsy language
Has no word for “to have”.
I make a note of that. But this is futile.
You can’t write on your soul using a pen.”
-Ante Popovski (Macedonia)
“They heard me singing and they told me to stop/Quit these pretentious things and just punch the clock…” – Arcade Fire
I was driving along through the chilly November evening pondering the transitory, ephemeral nature of the written word. Now more than ever … perhaps something it is written somewhere, on paper, in the digital ether, but the writer eventually dies. So few will be remembered and so few will really be read. Especially now, there is such a glut of writing – good, bad – overwhelming either way.
However, I am struck by how bits and pieces do stick in the brain, creating an indelible impression. A line of poetry or a lyric from a song weaves its way into almost every moment, circumstance, event – meaning that a poem or a song represent something more than just what they are, carrying my interpreted meaning as well as the original meaning of the writer.
More than ever I am thinking about health, well-being and how my current situation is pushing me further and further from this. I admire people who cannot shut out the creative and artistic passions that force them to pursue such activities. I might be a bit too realistic for that.