DREAMSCAPES

 

At the center the Minotaur

waits for me

the winding maze is

my wandering mind

I lost the track of the thread

spun by Ariadne's 

ball of twine

*

A woman in a moon-glossed coif

pours blue milk

into a Dutch oven.

She smiles at me

still struggling at stool

to feed verses into

my tablet.

Suddenly the woman

 flew away

like a moth

*

'Non serviam'-said Satan

to God

'No serviam"-says the Muses

to me every morning

at stool        just about

to be inspired

to be poet

to be

*

At stool

I dreamt of Tizian 

painting you 

with his fingertips

using all the colour-hues

conjured up

 by my words

*

Strolling about the Heath

-as was my wont-

Star-addicted and mud-ridden

all coalesced 

in the pool of clarity

today

nothing is out

of kilter

of me

BLUE NOTES

 

'Under his feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli'

(Exodus 24:10)

'Dolce color d'oriental zaffiro'

(Dante Alighieri)

'At last he rose and twitched his mantle blue,

Tomorrow to fresh and pastures new'

(John Milton)

'Within the circuit of this plodding life

there enters moments of azure hue'

(Henry David Thoreau)

'Tell me how far the morning leaps,

Tell me what time the weaver sleeps

Who spun the breadths of blue!'

(Emily Dickinson)

'Oh never weep for love

that's dead,

since love is seldom true,

but changes his fashion

from blue to red

from brightest red to blue'

(Elizabeth Siddal)

'Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest-green,

Married to green in all the sweetest flowers,

Forget-me-not, the bluebell and, that queen

Of secrecy, the violet with strange powers.'

(John Keats)

'The tender azure of the unruffled deep'

(Lord Byron)

'Returning home, I mounted on horseback and galloped to the steppe.

I love to gallop on a fiery horse through the tall grass, in the face of the

desert wind; greedily I gulped down the fragant air and fixed my gaze

upon the blue distance.'

(Mikhail Lermontov)

'Moi, je trouvé ma tulipe noir et mon dahlia bleu'

(Charles Baudelaire)

'On nage dans l'air bleu, c'est effrayant'

(Claude Monet)

' Par le soirs bleus d'été j'irai dans les sentiers"

'L'azur sonneur'

(Arthur Rimbaud)

'Le Poète, l'amour du Beau, voilà sa foi,

L'azur, son étendard, et l'Ideal , sa loi!'

(Paul Verlaine)

'I find it harder and harder every day to live up to my blue china'

'The sky is blue like the inside of a cup of lapis lazuli"

(Oscar Wilde)

'The sky puts on the darkening blue coat

held for it by a row of ancient trees.'

(Rainer Maria Rilke)

'Sigh, O you little stars! O, sigh and shake

your blue apparel!

'And the flame of the blue star of twilight,

hung low on the rim of the sky"

(W. B. Yeats)

'A blue moment is nothing less than soul'

(Georg Trakl)

'Who walked between the violet and the violet

Who walked between

the various ranks of varied green

going in white and blue, in Mary's colour,

talking of trivial things.'

(T.S. Eliot)

'The Seine, old egotist,

meanders imperturbably towards the sea,

                 Ruminating on

            Weeds and rain...

If through his sluggish

watery sleep come dreams

      they are the blue ghosts

of king-fishers.'

(Hope Mirrlees)

'Come, let us climb once more

these stairs of starlight. This

midnight stream of cloud-flung blue!'

(Conrad Aiken)

'And the blue went out of the sea, and it rolled in waves of pure lemon

which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach.'

'And the blue flowers arise, all orderly."

'And rooks dropping cool cries from the high blue.'

'Why can't the summer last forever? and housemaids be forever blue and yellow.'

'My window completely filled with blue for a wonder."

'The sun blazes my skylight blue.'

'and yesterday had the great joy of smelling a dead horse in a field. No sooner smelt than 12 -no- 15 vultures descended from the azure and proceeded to pick it. They have blue bald necks like snakes.'

'I wish my dolphin were by my side, in a bath, bright blue, with her tail curled.'

'The autumn trees gleam in the yellow moonlight, in the light of harvest moons, the light which mellows the energy of labour, and smooths the stubble, and bring the wave lapping blue to the shore.'

'With a feather, a blue feather...flying mountain through the air...there to lose what binds us here...'

"He began following her from room to room and at last they came to a room where in a blue light, as if the reflection came from many china dishes, she talked somebody, he listen to her talking. She talked to a servant, saying simply whatever came into her head, "We shall need a big dish to-night, Where is it-the blue dish?"

"If that blue could stay forever"

'I had begun to doubt my own identity-and imagined I was part of a seagull, and dreamt at night of deep pools of blue water, full of eels.'

'(And it must be remembered that when bright colours like blue and yellow mix themselves in our eyes, some of it rubs off on our thoughts)'

'And, I add, Green and Blue and the heron were the wild outbursts of freedom"

"Well now for my blue knitting"

(Virginia Woolf)

'I shall remember you standing in your blue apron and waving. Oh damn it, Virginia. I wish I didn't love you so much.'

(Vita Sackville-West)

'On the blue flames of honey, waterdrops of sapphire,

the bluebells(the blue fires of deepest air)'

(Edith Sitwell)

'All the things are floating in my brain on a sea of blue Ripolin'

(Katherine Mansfield)

'Wrap me close, sheets of lavender. Pour your blue

and purple dreams into my ears...

Pale blue lavender, you are the colour of the sky

when it is fresh-washed and fair...

I smell the stars...they are like tulips and narcissus.'

(Amy Lowell)

'O give me burning blue'

(H.D.)

'There shall be swallows bringing back the spring

over the long blue meadows of the sea.'

(Sara Teasdale)

'Blue letters light the entrance to Paradise put together

from little electric bulbs. Their blue is close to violet. It is a blue

of blue pansies and of the first morning mist to wreath itself over a

plowed field. It is a blue of vivid dreams and of cigarette smoke.

It is not the blue of heaven or of the Mediterranean. You see how

hard is to describe a colour.'

(Joseph Roth)

'Can we have beds here?' inquired Mr Pickwick, summoning the waiter.

'Don't know, Sir' replied the man; 'afraid we're full, sir- I'll inquire, Sir.'

Away he went for that purpose, and presently returned, to ask whether

the gentleman were 'Blue'

'Oh, Mr Fledgeby, said Mrs Lammle, to desert me in that way! 

Oh, Mr Fledgeby, to abandon my pure injured rose and declare for blue!'

(Charles Dickens)

'If I call stones blue it is because blue is the precise word, believe me.'

(Gustave Flaubert)

'Why does one take quite some time to recognize a color but then

after the decisive bend of the understanding quickly become ever

more convinced of the color. When the light from the front hall and

the light from the kitchen affect the glass door from outside at the same

time, greenish or rather not to depreciate the certainty of the impression,

green light pours almost all the way down the panes. When the light

in the hall is turned off and only the kitchen light remains, the pane

closer to the kitchen turns deep blue, the other whitish blue so whitish

that the whole drawing on the frosted glass(stylised poppy heads, tendrils,

various four-sided figures and leaves) dissolves.'

(Franz Kafka)

'it was blue o'clock the morning after the night before'

'Now where the blue hell am I bringing her beyond the veil?'

'A husky fifenote blew.

Blew. Blue bloom is on the.

Goldpinnacled hair.'

'Bloom. Old Bloom. Blue bloom is on the rye.'

'The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in the Black Maria. The princess Selene, in moonblue robes, a silver crescent on her head, descends from a Sedan chair, borne by two giants. An outburst of cheers '

'She was wearing the blue for luck, hoping against hope, her own colour 

and lucky too for a bride to have a bit of blue somewhere on her because

the green she wore that day week brought grief'

'The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.'

(James Joyce)

'Hercule Poirot looked thoughtfully at his visitor.

He saw a pale face with a determined looking chin, eyes that were

more grey than blue, and hair that was of that real blue-black shade

so seldom seen-the hyacinthine locks of ancient Greece.'

'That's a funny thing on the ashtray. That's Egyptian, that is. It's a scarabee,

or some name like that. You know. Sounds like some kind of scratching disease

but it isn't. No, it's a sort of a beetle and it's made out of some stone. They call it

precious stone. Bright blue. A lazy-a lavis- a lazy lapin or something like that.

"Lapis lazuli," said Mrs Oliver.'

(Agatha Christie)

'Blurred with emotion, one's eyes turned toward a virgin dawn of divine colours,

towards a miraculous moistness of purest azure.'

'Oh, those blues that stop your breath with the pang of fear."

(Bruno Schulz)

'In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.'

(Francis Scott Fitzgerald)

'Blue is an idea about distance, or Literature ends in that particular blue,

or here are several subjunctive blues'

(Ben Lerner)

"Dios esta azul"

(Juan Ramon Jimenez)

'Eras azul como noche que acaba'

(Vicente Alexandre)

'If I haven't the red colour, I use the blue one'

(Pablo Picasso)

'Here is the flutter of the dreaming

Fast-living blue-eyed dragonflies'

'In a make-believe grove I have wandered

And into an azure cave delved.

Am I really real, I ponder,

And death will claim my true self?'

'I've learned you, blessed words, that man despises,

Ligeia, Seraphita, Straw, Lenore,

In giant bedroom heavy Nieva rises

And blue blood gushes from the granite floor.'

'Dragonflies weave paths across the blue'

(Ossip Mandelstam)

'If men at forty will be painting lakes

the ephemeral blues must merge for them in one.

The basic slate, the universal hue.

There is a substance in us that prevails'

'He brushed away the thunder, then the clouds,

then the colossal illusion of heaven. Yet still

the sky was blue. He wanted imperceptible air.

He wanted to see. He wanted the eye to see

and not be touched by the blue.'

(Wallace Stevens)

'Du rose, ils tombèrent dans le bleu.'

'le bleu pâle de Paris' 

'Il songea qu'il touchait le lieu saint des suicides, bleu comme le ciel, bleu comme la liberté'

'Les mots bleus dont nous nous grisons

cessent un jour de nous rendre ivres'

'Ouvrant sur l'être et le non-etre

le criminel azur d'un rêve de Crimée'

'Je n'ai pas d'autre azur que ma fidélité'

(Louis Aragon)

'Le bleu renaît du gris, comme la pulpe éjectée d'un raisin noir'

'Boue, si méprisée, je t'aime. Je t'aime à raison de mépris ou l'on te tient,

Tu es si belle, après l'orage qui te fonde, avec tes ailes bleues.'

(Francis Ponge)

'Le banlieue est bleue

quand passe le juge'

(Benjamin Péret)

'Les cygnes languissants

ont fui les requins bleus '

'Marcel Duchamp: Sur le chemin,

il y avait un bœuf bleu près d'un banc

blanc. Expliquez-moi la raison 

de gants blancs

maintenant?'

(Robert Desnos)

'Bleu des jacinthes,

Bleu des profondeurs,

Il vient d'un feu faiseur de rouge

Qui tourne au violet puis au bleu.

Il est dans la terre,

il nous cherche.

La mer

Peut l'ignorer.'

'L'azur est loin

Qui m'envahit.'

(Eugène Guillevic)

'Melancholy breakfast

blue overhead blue underneath' 

'But I still fear to mention the blue

flowers. They scared me most and I

prolong other talk. There were fields of

them around the place, all blue, all

innocent. The artificial is always innocent.'

'Here I am at my desk. The

light is bright enough 

to read by it is a warm

friendly day I am feeling 

assertive. I slip a few

poems into the pelican's 

bill and he is off! out

the window into the blue!'

'I'm going to die unless 

my love soon chases

the clouds away

and the azure smiles

and browns my strong

belief that love is.'

(Frank O'Hara)

'July 4, Paris... Met the Lady of the Blue Pyjamas going over the bridge of a little canal.'

"And I asked her the color of her soul: Noir.'

(Harry Crosby)

'the deep blue air, that shows nothing,

and is nowhere, and is endless.'

'And past the poppies bluish neutral distance

Ends the land suddenly beyond the beach

Of shapes and shingles.'

(Philip Larkin)

'All the singing grass

busy with crickets and blue butterflies'

'Like streams the little by-roads run

Through oats and barley round the hill

To where blue willows catch the sun

By some white weather-boarded mill.' 

(John Betjeman)

'La terre est bleue comme une orange'

(Paul Eluard)

Dusk hoods me in blue now, like a Mary.

O color of distance and forgetfulness.'

'I woke one day to see you, mother,

Floating above me in bluest air

On a green balloon bright with a million

Flowers and bluebirds that never were

Never, never, found anywhere.'

'By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.

I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet'

'The sparks are blue.

The blue sparks spill,

splitting like quartz into a million bits.'

'Over one bed in the ward, a small blue light

Announces a new soul. The bed is blue.

Tonight, for this person, blue is a beautiful color.'

'This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.

The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.'

'A great surgeon, now a tattooist,

tattooing over and over the same blue grievances '

'And in truth it is terrible,

Multiplied in the eyes of the flies.

They buzz like blue children

In nets of the infinite.'

(Sylvia Plath)

'In the pit of red

you hid from the bone-clinic whiteness

But the jewel you lost was blue'

(Ted Hughes)

'The sea was then a very tender blue, like the dress of the Virgin Mary'

(Jean Rhys)

'As if blue not only had a heart, but also a mind.'

(Maggie Nelson)

'Everything is blue.'

'Sparrows are now the

same shade of blue as the sky'

(Victoria Chang)

'Still, a little black bird

won't return from the sky

blue, either.

And we, too, aren't gods 

in miniature, that's clear.'

(Joseph Brodsky)

'Where is the grave

of Time? What would you picture for decay?

A horse's hoof, white bones, a lifeless tree,

cold hemispheres, dried moss, and a blue wave

breaking at noon on shores you will not see.'

(Weldon Kees)

'Ein dunkleres Blau wird zuteil deinem Haar, und ich rede von Liebe.'

'Die Sonnen des Halbschlaf sind blau wie dein Haar eine Stunde vor Morgen.'

'Im Blau 

spritcht sie schattenverheiBendes Baumwort

und deiner Liebe Namen

zahlt seine Silben hinzu.'

(Paul Celan)

'Shuttles of trains going

north, going south, drawing

threads of blue.'

(Louis MacNeice)

'But though you are lean and frozen

-think of the blue bulls of Babylon.'

'Lie there, blue city, mine at last'

'Among blue leaves

the apples green and red

upon one tree stand out

most enshrined.'

(William Carlos Williams)

'The light blue body of the mermaid.'

(Yorgos Seferis)

'Azure is a color that happily

promises great events'

(Adam Zagajewski)

'with an eyelid's double-beat

I consolidated the heavens

and with insane imagination

made them a shade of blue.'

(Zbigniew Hebert)

'Distances,

ecstatic motionlessness among the motion,

moments stilled in colour

pictures-

are we here or somewhere else?

The center is always light-blue.'

'And further on 

the light blue island  Iskia-

I'll place this as a sapphire on the ring'

'my azure mother 

boundless and borderless,

this azure mother who embraces

but never confines'

(Yannis Ritzos)

'The man who spends the whole day

In an open boat

moving over luminous bays

will fall asleep at last inside the shade

of his blue lamp

as the islands crawl like huge moths

over the globe.'

'A blue sheen

radiates from my clothes.

Midwinter.

Jangling tambourines of ices.

I close my eyes.

There is a soundless world

there is a crack

where dead people

are smuggled across the border.'

'I am a mummy at rest

in the blue coffin of the forests.'

'Laundry hung in blue air.'

'In among the copses there was a murmuring of words in 

a new language: the vowels were blue sky and the consonants

were black twigs...'

'Blue flowed past on the waters, flickering.'

'Ash-colored silence.

The blue giant passes by.

Cool breeze from the sea.'

(Tomas Transformer)

'The smooth stones you pick up and examine

under the moon's light have been blue

from the sea. Next morming

when you pull them from your trouser pocket,

they are still blue."

(Raymond Carver)

'We'd lie on benches and imagine how we would get to be a hundred years old, like turtles, and we'd still be together, in a house with light blue shutters, by the sea...'

'The men in dark blue suits were counting down the final seconds before the chain reaction of disintegration in Europe would be set off'

(Georgi Gospodinov)

"Suppose someone points to a vase and says 'Look at that marvellous blue-forget about the shape.

Or: 'Look at the marvellous shape-forget about the colour.' No doubt you'll do something different in each case."

(Ludwig Wittgenstein)

'On a mild sea afternoon of blue and gold

When the sky is a mild blue of a 

Chinese bowl'

(Carson McCullers)

'I want to be the largest animal that ever existed, the one blue mother.'

(Ada Limon)

'Dressed in the colours of a country day

(Grey-blue, blue grey, the 

white of seagulls' bodies)

Chardin's peasant woman'

(Eavan Boland)

'I was a hunter whose animal

Is that dark hour when 

the hemisphere moves

in the deep blue blaze of dews' 

'That hour when all the Earth

Is drinking the blue drop of thunder'

(Rosemary Tonks)

'On the great blue door,

where it hurts.'

(Kaveh Akbar)

'And blue-skinned gods

with magical flutes

seduce the virgins to dance.'

(Tishani Doshi)

'Pre-verbal is the place where the body was yet a green-blue energy

greening, greened and bluing the stone'

(Natalie Diaz)

'My world feels slightly askew, surreal and yet eerily normal -like one of those old sitcoms where characters turn off the lights at bedtimes, and suddenly everything glows blue.'

'Each autumn, when leaves begin to dream of gold, the night-tide at Derrynane shimmers neon blue.'

(Doireann Ni Ghriofa)

'We are in the north, and the bright sunshine cannot prenetrate the sea. Where the gentle water taps

the rocks there is still a surface skin of colour. The cloudless sky is very pale at the indigo horizon

which it lightly pencils in with silver. Its blue gains towards the zenith and vibrates there. But the sky

looks cold, even the sun looks cold.'

(Iris Murdoch)

'At the wake the night before, my grandfather became a spirit of blue flame. He flew out through the roof of the shrine, floated through the rooms of the nearby quarantine hospital, and left a disagreeable odour as he drifted through the village sky.'

(Yasunari Kawabata)

'A place where the seemingly ice-steeped sunlight streams in through stained-glass windows in various gradations of blue. A place where Christ hangs on the cross without the slightest trace of suffering'

'The morning hours when a blue-tinged light seeps from the bodies of all material things, penetrating your newly sleep-shorn eyes, miraculously.'

'Wandering into the living room at dawn, I felt as though all the furniture was wrapped in a blue cloth. A scene was playing out in which blue threads were being ceaseless spun out, filling the chilly air in front of me, and I would stand there in my long johns and stare at it, entranced. I had no idea that what seemed such a captivating hallucination was caused by my weakening eyesight.'

(Han Kang)

'It flows through me

like the blue wave.'

'The kingfisher rises out of the black wave

like a blue flower'

(Mary Oliver)

'The blue jay your neighbor

said was her mother'

(Hannah Sullivan)

'Blue jays spend every Friday with the devil, the old lady at the park told me.'

(Jenny Offill)

'If only all language

could be ululation in blue vests.'

(Chen Chen)

'Si tan solo las revoluciones fueran azules'

(Lleny Díaz)

'En la vigilia estoy siempre en el centro de una vaga neblina luminosa de tinte gris o azul; veo en los sueños o converso con muertos, sin que ninguna de esas cosas me asombre."

(Jorge Luis Borges)

"I only regret that there is no kindred soul,

To climb with me this ladder to the clouds in the blue.'

(Xie Lingyun)

'A monkey's leaped into the blue ripples of my mind!'

(Gido Shushin)

"Ah! The only thing that can sleep in this vast city night is the shadow of a single blue cat

The shadow of a cat that tells the sad history of humanity

The blue shade of happiness I long for."

(Hagiwara Sakutaro)

"Fantasy, depression and God are all, like blue, in the more mysterious reaches of our consciousness."

(Victoria Finlay)

'A boy accosted us asking for a coin. His face was dark blue like his clothes. He was mule driver and his appearance very similar to the "blue men" who dwell in the south of Atlas. The colour of their dress, we were told, shares the colour of their skin, so in this way, everyone, men and women, are blue. The only blue race.'

(Elías Canetti)

'Blue is a soothing colour for melancholy, it is neutral towards divinity.'

'L'azur vous invite au départ ; il est indiscret, il se mêle de votre vie, il réveille aussi en vous ce qu'il y a de morbide dans vos aspirations religieuses, le côté démoniaque de vos velléités mystiques.'

'Dix jours d'azur me mettent dans un état voisin de la folie.'

(Emil Cioran)

'The colour of nothing is blue'

(Charles Simic)

Music by Charles Mingus:

'Orange was the colour of her dress then blue silk'

     (Sung Pil-Chao, History of the Blue, 2020)

SECOND-HAND BOOKS

 

Strolling around the river gauche at Quai Voltaire I stopped over one of those bouquiniste stands by the Seine, took a quick glance on the bouquins since I haven't enough time and was strapped for money. But a thick volume in beautiful binding, rose vellum, gold embossed caught my eyes:

"The Correspondence between James Joyce and Clarissa Holloway(1928-1941)

Hogarth Press (so revealed the ex-libris)was the publishing house. Year of issue: 1953.

At first sight I thought it was a long-winded and pedantic essay about the metafictive connection between James Joyce and Virginia Woolf's styles. But when I started to flick through its yellowish pages there was no doubt: I was reading the crossed letters between a real person and a fictional character from a very famous novel. You don't say!, I thought smirking, I'm sure it's only a boutade contrived by some two-bit admirer of Georges Perec. However, I noticed the book was prefaced by Leonard Woolf himself who spent several years to compile the letters. I read some of them with the growing curiosity of a scholar and that really oozed the aroma of something pukka, not a bogus. Enthused with such a rare trove, I asked the bouquiniste(an old blue-eyed geezer with grey beret and Quebec's accent) about the book price. He dusted it off examined the first pages like an expert with a magnifying glass, at the same time he tipped the beret over one ear, then over the other like a madman. "40 euros"-suddenly he snapped without raising the eyes from the book. I was surprised, rather expecting a hefty price, maybe 100 euros, even more. Nevertheless, I only had 20 euros on me, so I nearly entreated the bouquiniste not to sell the book to anyone, that I'd be back in a jiffy with the fric. I nipped to the next ATM and withdrew 60 euros. When I hurried back I came across the same stand, the same books, but not the same bouquiniste: this time I met a young and strapping Senegalese with long and colourful dreadlocks. His dark shades mirrored back my face. A kind of piercing glinted on his lower lip. Sat down on a stool, slouchy, he seemed more interested in selling old postcards about Notre Dame de Paris. I asked him about the old man with grey beret and the book he had put me by. I flaunted my 60 euros. His dark shades reflected the sad and overcast sky of Paris as well. He only grinned and gave me the cold shoulder and after billowing out the smoke from an odorous spliff, he got up to attend a gaggle of Japanese tourists. Disappointed, I asked around all the stands, all the bouquinistes but nobody knew anything about the book, let alone about the blue-eyed old geezer with Quebec's accent.

FERROL-GIJON

estoy a bordo de un tren Ferrol-Gijón, 

voy a ver a un amigo enfermo que vive en Burelas. 

Gaviotas, cuervos que emergen 

de una niebla perfumada de eucaliptus

 disputándose unos cotos de claridad o azul. 

Un anciano de Ferrol me comenta:

 "cerca de aquí lincharon al marqués de Sargadelos 

durante la invasión napoleónica, por afrancesado".

 Pensé en mi amigo enfermo-también francófilo-

que me esperaba para leerle algunos fragmentos de

 Proust. Foz. Viveiro. Ortigueira... 

 El tren bordeando un mar que guarda 

en los cofres de la lluvia memorias de exilios, 

leyendas de pescadores que han visto la Atlántida,

 la cola del leviatán. veo acantilados oscuros 

que presagian el Finesterre. veo ninfas desnudas bajo la lluvia 

jugando con la verga de los caballos salvajes 

 gaviotas que limpian sus picos ensangrentados 

en la grasa de una ballena muerta.

MATSUO BASHO, EDO, 1694

The sound of water,

the whisper of water trickling

over the conical hat of Matsuo Basho,

over the glossy plantain leaves

under the moon.

He falls asleep. Even the incessant

blue pheasant wingbeats

cannot wake him up,

nor the lovestruck choir

of the frogs in the pond

"Furuike ya 

Kawazu tobikomu

Mizu no oto"

While kipping under the stars

He caresses in dream the purple eggplant

-first of the season-

a present from a Shinto temple's priest

to honour his most beautiful haiku...

While he sleeps al fresco his words 

turn into golden fireflies 

outshining the Mount Fuji.

The sound of water,

the buzz of a lovelorn wasp

embracing a triple-peony 

foreboding the springtime.

White peonies of gilded edges,

sometimes pink like the kimono

of some geisha onto his aching back

his virile member, numb.

The whisper of the water 

over the green-porcelain leaves,

over the massive straw hat...

He's dead asleep like a log.

Even the high-pitched call

from a crane hatching in the willows

cannot wake him up,

nor the nigh sob of a maiden

turned into amber of millenary pines

for being deflowered by a Yizo in the road.

The poet glimpses himself in reveries 

as a samurai lost in the mist,

in the nude, with his sword erected,

gleaming at sunrise.

"Mizu no oto"

The sound of water 

so smooth

like the hands of a youth

rubbing his painful feet

at sunset.

"And in the last minute of the journey 

he clearly glimpsed his soul

in the shape of a deer running away

into an emerald woods,

the eternal silence of Buddha"

    

ELEVEN VARIATIONS ON A HEADSTONE IN HIGHGATE

 

I

Teetering on the brink

of a blue poppy, a bee.

Melancholy over a mossy

headstone, a white cat.

II

One, two, three crows

space out on a headstone

like undertakers having a laugh

in a sun-kissed bench.

III

A madman sings " Vesti

la giubba" at a headstone.

The pouring rain on the grass

sings along  as well

the wind sighing through

the ash trees leaves.

IV

A lizzard slithered across

the tall grass in blue dew,

the yellow star thistles.

Then climbed upon a headstone

and stayed put for flies.

V

A Red Admiral has landed

suavely on a headstone...

or rather slipped into

the colourful dreams

of a fox sleeping by?

VI

In shade of mother-of-pearl

shimmers the sky.

A goblet of daffodils

yellowing up a headstone

rain-stained and green.

In an oval portrait in sepia

a Victorian girl smiles.

VII

From nearby a din

of chainsaw and rooks.

A red squirrel upon a headstone

plays with conkers.

The morning fog

with a will-o'-the-wisp.

VIII

Handfasted to the moonlight

an owl broods over a headstone.

Her lilting hoot hardly starts 

a mouse that nibbles on dead bones.

IX

From golden to ashen the moon

glosses a brushwood glade.

A couple of smoochy foxes read

the name of a poet who died young

chiselled into a headstone.

X

The pattering of hail

against a headstone

not even perturbed

the reveries of a ghost

illumined by lightnings.

XI

Overrun with greenery,

bluebirds and white buttercups,

a headstone is no longer

the hallmark of worms.

A BALMY DAY...

 

A balmy day     there is no match 

not a single soul   

I come to the football stadium

 to wind down

on the top side of the bleachers 

near the soothing sun:

it's definitely comforting to see

 the vacant pitch the stands

not a player not a single

football-chanter

not a dicky bird.

Only the bright and trimmed lawn 

where some pigeons coo and preen 

each other in the sunshine  a few tabby cats

taking a breather in the shade.

No match no loud insults

like thunderous tannoys

Only some pigeons 

some cats 

and meself nibbling

a sandwich of twilight 

and daydreams.

             ©Hiromu Kira, The Thinker, 1930

WILD HORSES IN THE PYRENEES

 

I am going to spend my last eternity 

 with the wild horses.

Up in the high mountains where

 the sea is only a dream of clouds.

I am going there to speak no more 

like a monk in a blue grotto

and water drops slumbering

 on fern leaves.

Wild horses that run away

from the horizon to heaven.

from heaven to my shadow

grazing in the wind-kissed grass.

(1996)

WEAVING ESPARTO GRASS

 

As solitary people weaving 

esparto grass by the moon

I weave this words by my self. 

Weave and weave into a basket

with no other aim but the beauty

 of words themselves

crafted together like the ropes

 in demijohns of wine.

I weave this words on and on.

 I am a basket case 

of wine still sipped by Sappho

 just about to embrace Phaon

near the Leucadian cliffs.

MY HORSE

 I had a horse who fed on jasmine sprigs.

A horse indeed: arabian, handsome, brisk.

When cantering   trotting   galloping 

he sweated rivers  golden rivers

and the sweat gave off a perfume

that made dizzy the whole air and sun.

He munched on any jasmine shrubs around,

This flowers for him were as delicious

as apples or sugar lumps.

The kids made fun of my horse'

scented neighs and withers.

His droppings freshened the breeze so good

that the mayor ordered never to clean up them.

All was running smoothly till one day my girlfriend

took a shine to my stallion. They fell in love.

They run away.

Six months after the elopement I received a postcard

from Glasgow. She appeared in the picture

dressed up as a  famous jokey riding my horse. She smiled.

I wept rivers when I saw him

eating jasmine petals out of her hands.

 

THE LAMENT OF HERACLES

 

Where is now my strength of yesteryears?

Omphale wants me to be dressed

with her yellowy silk tunic, hoop earings,

and blue-laced sandals...

Omphale nicked my lion's hide, my bow,

my long spear, all the sinew of my limbs

now smelling of scented resins and the cedar

perfume that give off  all the Lydian maids...

but Omphale rather smells now of sweaty warriors

tucking in their porridge bowls...

One morning, in the vineyards of Tmolos,

the god Pan blessed us:

I was bound to her like a slave

in the shadow of a golden parasol. we made love,

at the umbra of a massive crow, we made love...

Then she bid me to be a woman

while she took the man's clobbers.

Now all her maidens comb my tangled and long hair

and rub my skin with ointments of wild flowers,

now they put powder on my face into the pure

whiteness of a death mask.

Where is now my strength of yesteryears?

By means of which vigour, mettle, bow

I would kill the voracious Stymphalian birds?

I want to be no more at the spinning wheel

singing along the chorus of women in thrall.

I want to get up again with my furry hides

stinking of manure and bull entrails.

I want to culminate all the twelve tasks

that would make me an hero kissed by Hera,

the goddess who I will love forever,

even while burning like deadwood

in the freezing Hades.

(2006)

EL BALNEARIO, VIRGINIA WOOLF

 Como en todas las ciudades costeras se imponía el olor a pescado. Las tiendas de juguetes estaban repletas de conchas laqueadas, duras pero frágiles. Incluso los residentes tenían una apariencia conchesca, una frívola apariencia como si el auténtico animal hubiese sido extraído con la punta de un alfiler y solo quedase el caparazón.  Los ancianos desfilando eran conchas; sus polainas, sus pantalones de montar, sus prismáticos parecían convertirlos en juguetes. Ya no podrían haber sido marineros reales sino conchas incrustadas en los bordes de marcos y espejos que yacerian en lo mas profundo del mar. Las mujeres-con sus pantalones, sus zapatos de tacones altos, sus bolsos de rafia y sus collares de perlas-tambien parecian las conchas de mujeres reales que salen por la mañana hacia la tienda de víveres.

A la una, esta frágil y barnizada población-crustáceo se arracimaban en el restaurante. El restaurante olía a pescado, ese aroma de zumaca con sus redes llenas de arenques y espadines. El consumo de pescado en el comedor tuvo que ser enorme. El olor invadía incluso la habitación que indicaba "Señoras" en el primer piso. Solo una puerta dividía esta habitación en dos compartimientos. Uno para sastifacer las necesidades naturales, y el otro, con lavamanos y espejo, para disciplinar con arte la naturaleza. Tres chicas jóvenes ya habían alcanzado la segunda etapa de ese diario ritual, ejerciendo su derecho a mejorar la naturaleza, subyugarla con sus almohadillas de maquillaje y barras de labios. Mientras se maquillaban, hablaban, pero su conversación fue interrumpida por algo asi como el aluvión de la marea subiendo; luego la marea retrocedió y se escuchó una de sus voces:

"Nunca me importó esa tontita risueña...A Bert nunca le importaron las mujeres altas...¿Lo has visto desde que regresó?..Sus ojos...son tan azules...como estanques...Los de Gert también..Ambos tienen los mismos ojos...Ambos tienen los mismos dientes...El tiene unos dientes tan blancos y bonitos...Gert también, pero un poco torcidos...cuando sonríe..."

El agua borboteaba. La marea espumeaba y retrocedia. Y dejaba escuchar lo siguiente:

"Pero él debería ser mas cuidadoso. Si lo cogen haciendo eso, terminará en un consejo de guerra..."

Un gran chorro de agua surgió del otro compartimento. La marea en el balneario parecía eternamente subir y bajar. La marea desvela y enjuaga esos peces diminutos. Retrocede, y alli están los peces de nuevo con el fortísimo olor de algun extraño aroma que parece invadir todo el balneario.

Pero al caer la noche la ciudad luce tan etérea. Hay un blanco resplandor en el horizonte. Aros y coronas de flores en las calles. La ciudad se ha hundido en el agua. Y su estructura solo puede descubrirse por las guirnaldas luminosas.

(1941)

IN FACEBOOK

 

Today God accepted my friendship request

(one month later)

I blocked God

(one day later)

"Satan and you are now friends"

(one minute later)

Facebook blocked me.

DIVERTIMENTO

 The poet is brooding

about death:

"Enfold me, wings of doom,

fluttering along the night.

Enfold me, arms of gloom,

play suave, be bright."

And then the poet proceeds

 hopping up and down

in Pogo-stick.

ZEN POEM

 A Chinese gong resonated

and rippled into the sunrise.

The cats scampered away, the crows

in melancholy flight, the adder 

slinked inside the mossy well.

Even the Yizo statue always at rest

ran off to the golden paddies.

Only the butterflies with blue wings

stayed put sipping in the yellow roses.

VIA QUERINI, VENICE, 1972

 

He is about to kick the bucket,

his last breath nearly to become

a dense mist shrouding La Giudecca...

Ezra Pound wistful stares the little finger

of Olga Rudge, tiny little finger, colour de rose.

There she stands, as ever in the last ten years

near the carcass of the old poet who lies down in bed

by the window overlooking the canal side.

The mist of his breath also enshrouds the dusk 

The gondoliers' shadows sing loud Puccini arias,

the seagulls hover over the isle of San Michele,

the belfry of San Giorgio Maggiore

like birds of ill omen.

Ezra Pound suddenly kiss Olga Rudge's

little finger without respite. 

In ecstasy sucks it like a toddler

the wet nurse's teat. He begs for more...

But no one will never know 

how was that last gesture,

 his last breath

 colour de rose,

no one except that little finger

 blossoming in that lifeless mouth.

EARLY PEACHES

 The aroma of early peaches

weaving into the air

remembrances of you

(happenstances of love).

At the windowpane,

a wistful cat, his eyes

reflecting the murmuration

of starlings in the sky,

the gappy smile of a girl

running along the street.

At eventide I rush out

to the poisoned breeze

of downtown and canalsides:

people hop on the buses

like cattle ready to be put down

or living in blindfolded bliss...

...sitting on the stone ledge

in the portico of a church

like a beggar at sunset

I write sensual poems in dead leaves

falling from my mind

(happenstances of love,

remembrances of you).

A blackbird stays along with me,

a waxing moon, the aroma

of early peaches in March.

I NEVER LEFT...

 

I never left my wave-worn town

near a Caribbean din of seagulls, gannets

and ghost-ships in the horizon.

I never left the azurest blue I've ever seen,

even the black and most dehumanised hours

were embathed in that serene blue

of Novalis flower.

I never left. I still watch from a wooden pier

the sun up and down

like a sudden daffodil in bloom

yellowing clouds, the lighthouse, my reveries,

even the rotten smell of dead cats

floating in the slick.

I never left the scent of fallen mangos

dreaming of dewdrops

the tender glance of mongrels

sulking along the shores

or lapping up pools of rain.

I never left that full moon like dancing

over the sea, over the white oleanders

to the rhythm of African drums.

The first kiss as sour as tamarind juice.

The first love as brief as the moth flight

I never left my wave-hugged town

nestled in the doldrums of a Caribbean isle

where a sea goddess, a stella maris

(the bluest I've ever seen)

still blows me gentle a breezy smile.

THE PERSON FROM PORLOCK

The person on business from Porlock

 knocks on my door

and am I still ploughing on my best

poems ever to be.

Still moulding like a clay sculptor

the words to become the God's final words.

My cat snoozes over my red espadrilles,

he perhaps dreams about those poems: 

a dreamscape of moons plenty 

of goldfish and fireflies.

My red espadrilles might as well dream

 on toes with faces of egyptian cats.

The person on business from Porlock 

knocks on the buzzer like hell,

and I'm still plodding along to turn 

Venetian salizades, Parisian passages,

Sevillian callejas and English lanes

into the right path to the perfect elegy.

The crickets trill outside.

A breeze like the giggles of witches

prancing over bucking bulls.

My brindle cat now leaps 

onto a pile of books to be read...

The person on business from Porlock

knocks and knocks and knocks

at early morning.

 I don't want to open the door.

I don't want to sell my soul.

I only intend to keep blooming

 as ruderals in a landfill,

to keep toiling through the furrows of my brain

and digging into the last neuronal light,

my last elegy to come.

EL ACENTO DE MI PADRE (KAVEH AKBAR)

 Un muchacho, más bello que yo,

que me ama por mi vocabulario y

por mis píldoras anaranjadas,

una vez me pidió 

traducir el inglés 

de mi padre.

*

Este poema quiere también 

que yo lo traduzca.

Estupido poema, estupidas manos

que lo escriben:

un acento no es un sonido.

Solo aquellos a quienes

les parece extraño

pueden reducir un acento

a un sonido.

*

Mi poema creció aquí,

sentado en este silla

americana

contemplando la inerte

nieve de América.

Hierba negra marchitandose

por la nieve, el extenso rastro

de un conejo como un fantasma

sentado erguido

diciendo: "ah",

*

Incluso eso es mentira.

No hay rastro.

Solo hierba negra, nieve

azul.

No puedo escribir esto

sin tratar de hacerlo

hermoso. Sumisión,

resistencia, rendición.

*

En su primera

inspección a Adán 

el Diablo entró en sus labios.

Mirad: el Diablo entra

en los labios de Adán,

repta a través de su garganta,

en sus intestinos

para finalmente emerger

de su ano.

"Es todo oquedad"- sonríe 

con disimulo el Diablo.

Sabe que sera fácil su trabajo

de llenar una sola extensa y humana

desesperación.

*

La camiseta de mi padre 

se asoma en su cuello. La mano

de mi padre rebanando piel,

cartílago de la carcasa de un pollo

que firme sostengo

 sobre la tabla de cortar,

A veces se muerde 

el labio inferior para suprimir

lo que debe ser 

la ira. Debe ser la ira 

porque es insonora. Mi inmenso

terror a lo que no puedo oír,

a mi ignorancia

es intraducible.

Mi padre habla un inglés 

perfecto.

Kaveh Akbar

(Tomado de "Pilgrim Bell: Poems", Vintage Digital, 2022)

HIDE-AND-SEEK

 I was playing

hide-and-seek

with God

when I came across you

hidden

in the dewy eyes 

of God

himself

A WHITE POPPY...

 

A white poppy in a bridle path

(Once I glimpsed death: she had

the face of a white poppy by the sea).

A red carnation withering

among the pages of a Quasimodo's book 

flicked through by the breeze:

red carnation conjured up by my words.

A full moon and a wolf

Both drinking

fresh water in my hand.

The moon had your voice, 

Helen, your voice.

The wolf mine.

 

BETWEEN

 Between the asphodels and the fresh sea breeze

between the March rain and a sunny spot

of anglers in the river

between the stone bench by my front door

and the fishy stench in the market

between the hut for weathered hunters

and the pub for daydreaming poets

between a snowed bridge and tangerines in the basket

between the wild horses and the train tunnel

between my alleyway and Wall Street

between the summer and the coldest heart

between the landscape and my aquarelle box

between the birds and that sickle moon:

there is just the distance

from your hand to mine.

SUNFLOWERS

Notwithstanding the universe

will perish into frozenness 

you and I will die

in the shape of sunflowers

crestfallen but gleaming

like sea waves at dusk.

Two sunflowers

-one facing the other-

alone in a vast desert

or a city devastated

by plagues and famine.

Every year both tilting

getting closer and closer

until their Istrian yellow petals

touch each other at last

their pistils locked in

an everlasting hug

just in the moment

when they start to wilt.