If it’s true that when I go
I needn’t go alone,
that you’ll come too, riding on your horse beside me,
its coat shining earth in the moonlight
(half-earth itself, half-wind)
if it’s true what you promised, if
you’ll ride to the gate – it’s a gate of mist
(the gale’s dropped, the grass isn’t bending) –
I want to go now,
I want you now.
—
Jos on totta, että kun lähden
minun ei tarvitse lähteä yksin,
että tulet mukaan, ajat toista hevosta,
sitä jonka karva kiiltää kuun valossa maan värinen
(itsekin puoleksi maata, tuulta puolet)
jos on totta mitä lupasit, jos
ajat veräjälle: se on sumua
(ruoho ei taivu, tuulen pyörre ei palaa)
Untitled
–Stephen Crane (US)
A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
A White City
-James Schuyler
My thoughts turn south
a white city
we will wake in one another’s arms.
I wake
and hear the steampipe knock
like a metal heart
and find it has snowed.
“Feathers” – disposable, melting feathers – is the only word I can conjure to describe the perplexing, disappointing late-April Swedish weather. It’s not all bad, locked away in semi-seclusion with books and warmth and soup.
Find yourself a reliable soup-maker, people, and this will imbue your life with great satisfaction and nourishment. And when I say “soup-maker” here I am referring to a person who makes soup, not some device that will whip up soup for you. I remember being in Russian class many years ago, and all of the students believed that the word defined as “dishwasher” (посудомойка) in our textbook referred to a dishwashing machine. When a Russian lecturer came to take over our class on a Fulbright fellowship, she laughed and disabused us of this radically foolish notion. Would Russians circa 1992 have had dishwashers (посудомоечная машина) in their homes? How silly we were, she laughed.
There is much beauty in simplicity – and in ironing out the misunderstandings.
Snow, soup, and loud New Order, not unlike a rare snow day in Seattle in my youth – staying awake all night hoping school would be cancelled.
Epigram
–Tomas Tranströmer (Sweden)
The buildings of the capital, the hives of the killer bees, honey for the few.
He served there. But in a dark tunnel he unfolded his wings
and flew when no one was looking. He had to live his life again.
—–
(the original Swedish read by the Nobel laureate himself)
Kapitalets byggnader, mördarbinas kupor, honung för de få.
Där tjänade han. Men i en mörk tunnel vecklade han ut sina vingar
och flög när ingen såg. Han måste leva om sitt liv.
Another of those times we (or at least I) must accept the lie and limitations of translation. I can look at the Polish original and glean what I think the meaning and ultimate English-language translation should be, but ultimately it could go so many ways. I fed this infernal despair and frustration with translation years ago by immersing myself in language study so that I could create reasonable simulacra of translations. Never ended up particularly happy with these seeming facsimiles or even with comparative studies of existing translations.
Yet, at the same time, I want people to see and read these works, even in translation, because there are so many works in the world that just scream out to be read!
Gratitude(links to a different translation, which might be useful for comparison’s sake)
–Wisława Szymborska
I owe a great deal
to those I do not love.
The relief with which I accept
they are dearer to someone else.
The joy that it is not I
who am wolf to their sheep
Peace unto me with them,
and freedom with them unto me,
and that is something that love cannot give
or contrive to take away.
I do not wait for them
from window to door.
patient
almost like a sundial,
I understand
what love does not understand,
I forgive
what love would never forgive.
From meeting to letter
passes not an eternity
but merely a few days or weeks.
Travels with them are always a success,
concerts heard,
cathedrals visited,
landscapes in sharp focus.
And when we are separated
by seven mountains and rivers
they are mountains and rivers
well known from the map.
It is thanks to them
that I live in three dimensions
in a space non-lyrical and non-rhetorical,
with a horizon real because movable.
They themselves do not know
how much they bring in empty hands –
“I owe them nothing,”
love would say
on this open question.
Here’s the original if you’d like to put your skills to work deciphering its code and interpreting its meaning and unveiling it in English as well.
All those wounding words we can’t – and others can’t – take back: misfired words.
from TO MY FATHER/TO MY FUTURE SON
-Ocean Vuong The stars are not hereditary. —Emily Dickinson
Turn back & find the book I left
for us, filled
with all the colors of the sky
forgotten by gravediggers.
Use it.
Use it to prove how the stars
were always what we knew
they were: the exit wounds
of every
misfired word.
Selecting poems to share as National Poetry Month starts to wind down, I also came across a note from a phantom from the past – someone who was startlingly insensitive in the ‘heyday’ of our acquaintance but occasionally comes up with something both sweet and thought-provoking now.
On relationships/sharing space and time with someone: “I think it’s more about understanding the necessity of being able to share and sustain the vital moment-to-moment microbial details with someone, which has nothing to do with the legendary impacts of romantic impressions that soon become questionable – perhaps not finding this in someone is where your ‘incapable’ lies presently. After all, your details are lovely – slow, patient and kind – whether you recognise it or not. One of those sayings that has given me access to a different perspective has been floating over me lately, ‘Above all else, know thyself’.”
And who will guide us back to friendship with and knowing of ourselves? …
Happy moments tempered by the certainty that they are ephemeral and temporary. But should they be tempered or embraced? Pain and monotony are as much a part of life and learning to live it as happiness, despite what the self-help industry wants you to believe.
Thanks to J.
The Sunlight on the Garden
–Louis MacNeice
The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold,
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.
Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.
The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying
And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden.
L’ignorant
–Philippe Jaccottet
Plus je vieillis et plus je croîs en ignorance,
plus j’ai vécu, moins je possède et moins je règne.
Tout ce que j’ai, c’est un espace tour à tour
enneigé ou brillant, mais jamais habité.
Où est le donateur, le guide, le gardien ?
Je me tiens dans ma chambre et d’abord je me tais
(le silence entre en serviteur mettre un peu d’ordre),
et j’attends qu’un à un les mensonges s’écartent :
que reste-t-il ? que reste-t-il à ce mourant
qui l’empêche si bien de mourir ?
Quelle force
le fait encor parler entre ses quatre murs ?
Pourrais-je le savoir, moi l’ignare et l’inquiet ?
Mais je l’entends vraiment qui parle, et sa parole
pénètre avec le jour, encore que bien vague :
«Comme le feu, l’amour n’établit sa clarté
que sur la faute et la beauté des bois en cendres… »
Oh, I love this reading…
The more I read, the more ignorant I am. That is, the more aware of my ignorance I become. This awareness, which I have always had but gave little thought to, becomes daunting but challenging as I learn more each and every day. But it also makes me angrier about uninformed, willfully/proudly ignorant people who have strong opinions that they insist are valid or equal to facts, even though their opinions have no basis in fact at all. Like a merit badge, they loudly state these “alternative facts”.
I can only keep gorging my mind from the broadest of intellectual and multidisciplinary buffets, but what good will that do if so much of the rest of the world rests comfortably in, at best, mediocrity, blindness and anti-intellectualism? Probably none – not if, for example, climate deniers rule the day. But hell, maybe we won’t reach that point of destruction if the world continues on its current destructive trajectory (politically). Maybe we can all be wiped out much sooner. Or just be subjected to dubious leadership from people who are, as Mr Firewall put it, “a roll of tinfoil away from making a helmet”.
I am desperately and actively trying to seek new learning, new paths, new sources, new fields, new conversations, new debates, new perspectives, new disciplines, new ways to develop the mind and expand my thinking. I don’t mind being contradicted – or presented with other ideas – if they can be backed up with something.
I know and see how creativity dies, and in my case, how everything I do and write comes out completely flat when life’s path and focus narrows too much. I would like to believe, and have managed to bamboozle myself for some time, that I haven’t fallen into this trap. But I have. I might do spontaneous, random stuff with a fair amount of frequency, and stuff my brain with information and stimuli, but am I ever really stepping out of my comfort zone?
I was recently confronted by this reality – more than usual – not because anyone accused me of anything to the contrary, but because someone, in casually telling me bits about himself, unveiled glimpses of a selfless and grueling – but rewarding – set of quests and travails that make up the topography of his life. And as I marveled, unresponsive and awed, I eventually thought, ‘Wow. I’m a complete fucking wuss and only become more of one every day.’
