MUNDUS ARTIUM
A Journal of International Literature and the Arts MUNDUS ARTIUM
A Journal of International Literature and the Arts Volume XIV, Number 2, 1984 STAFF
EDITOR IN CHIEF, Rainer Schulte ASSOCIATE EDITORS, Thomas J. Hoeksema, Roma A. King, Jr. CONTRIBUTING EDITOR. Samuel Hazo ASSISTANT EDITOR. Sheryl St. Germain COPY EDITORS, Sandra Smith, Stephanie Stearns
Mundus Artium, A Journal of International Literature and the Arts, publishes two issues per volume. Subscription rates per volume are $8.00 for individuals, $10.00 for institutions; single copies $4.50.
The Editors MUNDUS ARTIUM University of Texas at Dallas Box 830688 Richardson, Texas 75083-0688 U.S.A.
Mundus Artium is a journal of translations and interdisciplinary studies. It will consider for publication contemporary poetry, fiction, short drama, essays on literature and the arts, photography, and photographic reproductions of paintings and sculpture.
The editors of Mundus Artium gratefully acknowledge support from the National Endowment for the Arts which made the publication of this issue possible.
Copyright. 1984, Rainer Schulte
3 CONTENTS
LEOPOLDOCHARIARSE-trs.MiriamandGerdJoel 8 End of Autumn Eternal Walls GEVORG EMIN-tr. Diana Der Hovanessian 12 Why Has This Ache Clever Lamb MARTIN ROBBINS ...... 13 Notes/Maker of Death Masks Passacaglia JAIME HAGEL-tr. Pam Carmell 15 Abraxas HUGO LINDO-tr. Elizabeth Gamble Miller 20 Winter of the Race ANGHEL DUMBHAVEANU-trs.AdamSorkinandlrinaGrigorescu ... 26 Heralds Horses of Time The Masks At Night on the Shore RODICA S. JACKSON 32 Caltrop C SUSANA THENON-tr. Renata Treitel 33 Excerpts from Distances EUGENIO DE ANDRADE-tr. Alexis Levitin 38 Inhabited Body Crystallizations Silence Since Dawn Inhabited Heart LIN.DA BERMAN 46 Excerpts from Interview
5 MARIA T. JACKETT! 48 Speaking Three Languages Inside My Lover's Mouth Soccer Field Optimism Meteor Slices JANE SPENCER _ 50 My Black Wool Coat Meanings The Dark Summer in New York ROBERT GREGORY , 52 Sheet & Sleeping Woman Only This Window WOLFGANG BACHLER: A PORTRAIT AND POEMS- tr. Rainer Schulte ...... 53 Roads My Boundaries The Dead On the Train Behind the Shutters JORGE DEBRA VO-tr. Michael Johnson 60 A Hymn for the Eye Psalm to the Animal Earth of Your Abdomen ANGELA BALL 64 What Tower GLEN DOWNIE 66 I Am the Light of the World HINA FAISAL IMAM 67 Creation She Difference R.M. CHUCKOVICH 69 Overdose ALAIN BOSQUET-tr. GeorgeBog in 80 Four Poems
6 SAUL YURKIEVICH-tr. Cola Franzen 86 Why Bother to Read It The Door Rounds SOPHIA DE MELLO BREYNER ANDRESEN-tr. LisaSapinkopf .. 92 Seven Poems PINA PIPINO 96 Weak Threads FRANK JAEGER-tr.Frank Hugus 98 One Summer
7 Leopoldo Chariarse AL FINAL DEL OTONO l Ad6nde llegaras, otofio, con tus tardes, con tus glorietas tristes, con tu voz? i Ad6nde con tu amargo silencio, con tus mananas frias y rotas? Doblandote, tropezando, golpeandote contra las casas y arboles. Como un nino escondido entre los pinos, tiemblas, huyes a tus rincones sordos, tras la sombra de paredes y huertos, o a los dias dados a mala muerte, con la lluvia, con los vocablos subitos, con todo lo que el reflejo triste de un cielo retuviera. Y comprendes, persistes y te miras llegar, cuan torpemente, cuan desolado y turbio entre los veraneantes. l Como llorar, c6mo salirte afuera y gritarlo? Si tu, como un insecto en un vaso te debates, bebes lo que no es tuyo, en silencio, y a la brisa das tu mirada honda de amor mal avenido. Quedate en calma, no prosigas con tus cuatro paredes de espanto en todas partes. Cede. deja al olvido cuanto supiste dia de sol, claro quebranto y enseflanza de amor, en tu costado.
8 Translators Miriam and Gerd Joel Leopoldo Chariarse END OF AUTUMN
Where will you end, autumn, with your afternoons, your sad pavillions, your voice? Where will you end with your bitter silence, your cold and broken mornings? Twisting, stumbling, beating yourself against houses and trees. Like a child hiding behind pine trees, you tremble, you flee into your soundless alleys, behind the shadow of walls and orchards, or into days haunted by misery, with rain, with sudden outcries, with everything which the sad reflection of the sky might retain. And you understand, persist and watch yourself arrive awkward, desolate, dismal, among the summer guests. How can I cry out, how can I defy you, shout at you? When you struggle like an insect in a cup, drink in silence what is not meant for you, and give the breeze your deep look of reluctant love. Be quiet, do not go on with your four walls of terror everywhere. Give in, forget the days of sunshine you have known the pure grief, the gifts of love now distant.
9 Leopoldo Chariarse
En el fondo de un suefio estamos solos y tu me estas mirando, todavia a traves de los humedos ojos del alba. No me preguntas nada, no me reprochas ni uno tan solo de los instantes perdidos, de las palabras perdidas.
Encima de nosotros la noche alza sus brazos lobregos, sus paredes rocosas. Ciudades de silencio y hojas muertas, estaciones de sombra, oquedades de los muros eternos. Bajo la yedra todavia unas frases de lluvia, unas manos entrelazadas, todavia un manana para mirarnos despiertos.
10 Leopoldo Chariarse ETERNAL WALLS
In the depth of a dream we are alone and you are still looking at me through the humid eyes of dawn. Ask me nothing, reproach me not for even one last moment, one last word. Above us the night raises its dark arms, its stony walls. City of silence and dead leaves, places of shadow, cracks between eternal walls. Under the ivy still some sounds of rain, some interlaced hands, still one tomorrow to see each other awake.
11 Translator Diana Der Hovanessian Gevorg Emin WHY HAS THIS ACHE
Why has this ache returned, the pain that's more than one man's share?
There's no love left but still it hurts as if still there.
What is this punishment that banished-love leaves, as unfair as revenge?
I wake up in the night as the old soldier does with pain in that amputated arm he no longer has.
Gevorg Emin CLEVER LAMB
The clever lamb sucks on two mothers. Proverb
Why bother maneuvering back and forth between two?
It will only hasten your journey into lamb stew.
12 Martin Robbins NOTES/MAKER OF DEATH MASKS
The look of life preserved by my touch, I closed Beethoven's eyes, disdaining Mourners who shuffled on Black Spaniard Street.
They took off hats to an emperor Whose music they ignored. Unbuttoned Laughter through tears seldom concerned them. While he couldn't hear fame's cheap whispers, They cheered for the ease of Rossini, Deaf to his soul's victories, answering "It must be" for himself.
Some hand-spans later I took impressions with a white wind, My fingers blurring spectacles perched On Isaac Babel's nose as it smelled out Lies-and the truths of Siberia. The death certificate rattled from That file which muffles evil: "It was His time to die."
But I saw his trunkful Of stories spilled into snow that sealed His last words: "Not permitted to finish."
13 Martin Robbins PASSACAGLIA
Knees driving, back hunched, my fingers Holding the Great C's diapason Against prophets of dissonance, I pump Music from this little fortress.
The line Wavers, I pull out another stop And fire tracers as thin as sunlight Filtered through the rain forest at Lambarene-> And jungle birds swell the descant:
Holy, holy, bones of fingers, Bones of wings, hosts of order Encircling figures bent to praise.
Punching "trumpet," with an F sharp, I slip The attack of sorcerer-devils, dark cults; At this console I build ladders of bright chords, And from the dominant's stronghold I flame The leading tone to "C," breathe in An "ah," return to the root, "men."
14 Translator Pam Carmell Jaime Hagel ABRAXAS
Juan: I found him in a kind of cave. A black beard covered his face; his hair hung down to his shoulders. He looked at me with shining eyes, half amused, half friendly, gesturing to me in a likable way with his eyebrows. A campfire burned between four rocks; over them rested a black, soot• covered tin pot where something was boiling. Dirty sacks were spread out on the ground. He didn't say a word to me (he must have been mute), but he talked to me with his eyes and movements of his eyebrows that were very agile. After that I went to the hill every day. My mom was still living, and being alive was wonderful. I didn't tell anyone about my find. I always took him small presents-bread with butter, pieces of layer cake, old magazines, and even a pair of clodhoppers my dad wasn't wearing anymore. The day my dad was discussing religion with his guests, he talked about Abraxas, a god of who knows what; right then, I baptized him with that name. I did the same for Abraxas as my mom did sometimes when she placed candles in front of the statue of the Virgin at church. He would look at me through his enormous, dancing eyebrows with those friendly dog eyes.
Dad: I casually met Sibylle at the home of a very sociable neighbor. As soon as I looked at her to shake hands, she became frightened. I only had that impersonal look on my face you use to greet someone being introduced, but her features changed; she had the look of a defenseless, terrified animal. The general conversation distracted us. The host, fat and exuberant, was talking excitedly about the electronic games he could hook up to the TV, tank battles, planes, and boats-you could drive the tank straight ahead, you aim, you fire, and everything goes red .... Pretending to be distracted, I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye. She tried to smile at me. Since many people at the party were meeting for the first time, each one managed to slip information about himself into the conversation. She lived alone in an apartment full of records and cassettes of all kinds of music. She was a medical technician.
15 Juan: I told him about my toys. About everything I could do with the erector set, my favorite drawings of stunt airplanes, and besides, I am a marbles champ; I like "aggies" best, and I also have a red top. He would look at me enthusiastically, inviting me with his eyes and wiggling eyebrows to continue. He opened up the cigarettes I brought him, splitting the paper end to end with his long nail, sharp as a knife; he popped the tobacco into his mouth and began to chew it, but then he would look at me again so that I would go on talking to him. After a while, he would spit a chocolatey ball, splatting it against the same rock every time. That always startled me in the middle of my soliloquy and made me laugh. Dad: I went to see her at six in the afternoon. My neighbor had told me that she was at home then. It wasn't one of those elegant buildings, but it was all right. I rang the bell. She opened the door, recognized me, and took two steps backwards, alarmed. I closed the door behind me. I said "hi" softly and drew closer as if to greet her with the conventional kiss on the cheek, which I did, but I didn't take my mouth from her cheek ....
Sibylle: ... then, with one hand, he grabbed me by the face, but not roughly, and felt for my mouth. He pushed his tongue into me until I got turned on and pressed my whole body against his, my mouth open like a yawn.
Dad: When I pulled my lips away, she looked at me with more desire than fear; I took her by the shoulders ...
Sibylle: ... and shoved me by the face up to the door. He embraced me from behind, brushing his lips over my hair. With one hand he lifted my hair up to the crown of my head so he could rub his mouth over the nape of my neck while he pressed me against the wall with his hips until I began to pant and squirm.
Juan: Mom got sick. She went straight to bed without complaining. She never complains but is so lifeless and has such a fever that I don't get anything out of going into her room. I made her lemonade; if there had been lemons, I would have made you some; my mom likes it a lot and gives me a kiss when I take her some, but she can't always drink it because she is so sick. I brought you more cigarettes and a slice of cake and Dad's red sweater. He took the sweater and wound it around his right knee and didn't take it off. When I would tell him something like instructions or advice, he'd laugh with his eyes. He knew everything and understood things better than we do. I'm sure he invented cigarettes, and I, the fool, was trying to teach him.
16 Sibylle: He knew I liked it when they abused me, so he did it. I would pose and suggest things which later he acted like he forced me to do. After• wards we lay apart, sleeping, sated, on the red quilt.
Dad: Then I knew I couldn't be away from her, so I took her to live at my house under the pretext that she was a kind of nurse and could look after my wife.
Sibylle: She was a quiet, sick woman. She didn't want to get well. I think she wanted to die. Each of us knows what she's doing. The house was huge; it even had a basement, a dark, humid place crammed with bottles, broken• down furniture, old toys, and mildewed tools. I didn't like it one bit. A red lightbulb hung from the ceiling. The little boy just laughed. He said that it was his favorite floor. For me, shitty brats simply don't exist.
Juan: Now she is the one who runs the house. The jelly ran out, and she didn't buy any more. She brought squash candy that made me throw up. She doesn't give me any toast either, except cold, at breakfast, and I have to butter it myself. But on the other hand, she doesn't check my fingernails.
Mom: Oh God, what will become of my little boy?
Juan: When the first May rains fell, I had the first argument. It was cold. I asked her where my gloves and red scarf were. She stood very still for a few seconds and then changed into an electric woman, shouting, stamp• ing her feet, all the while trying to talk and not zettinz a word out. I went to the hill without gloves. I found Abraxas sipping delicately - from his pot, eyes fixed on the soup. Then it occurred to me to take him to my house, to the basement. There he wouldn't get wet, and I would have him closer at hand to tell him my ideas. At six in the evening, my mother, who hardly spoke at all now, was alone in the house. We arrived with our load of sacks, two jars, pots, old magazines, and some rocks. He didn't even look at the room. With an enigmatic grunt, he spread his sacks out in a corner and sat down. I begged him not to make a fire; I'd bring him something to eat. I plugged in an old electric heater whose coils slowly began to grow red after some sparks.
Dad: She filled my mind and my glands. During work I yearned for the night time, imagining myself with her, half-naked, her guilty face betrayed by her sensuousness.
17 Neighbor Woman: Have you seen the little boy next door lately? He looks like some wild street kid, a shoeshine boy. Look at that hair.
Sibylle: I waited for him dressed in a blouse with nothing underneath, except for a leather belt bound at my waist; its ends hung over my belly partially covering my sex. I conquered him immediately. He came upstairs, slowly stripped off his jacket, and kneeled. He fell on his knees before me and began to kiss the belt. While I laughed and moaned, he kept on kissing me. I spread my legs wide and put my hands on my hips as if I were a goddess, until I fell defeated begging and pleading.
Juan: Abraxas, old man, she doesn't cook like Mom, but food is food. That is lamb stew with peas. Yesterday I didn't have breakfast. Dad asked me why. I told him that it was bad, that the milk was watered down and didn't have any sugar in it, and besides it was cold. Then Sibylle suddenly cackled at me. She got up turning her cup round and round and began to shout like that German in the war, shuddering and waving her arms. My dad was scared and left for work without a coat. And as I watched her, she tried to get some words out clearly, in between her "shi y id og amit ucker." At this point, I was so broken up that I had to laugh. I laughed like when I saw Laurel and Hardy doing all those crazy things. She squealed, her eyes popping out of her head like pigs' do when they're being slaughtered, picked up the coffee pot, raised it up, splashing herself with coffee, and threw it at me or tried-it landed short by three feet. Meanwhile I crouched and began my retreat; she bombarded me with everything on the table: spoons, pate, butter, plates, missing me by a mile, and letting things crash. I ran for the patio; she went on shouting in the dining room and throwing things against the wall, the door, the ceiling just to see them shatter.
Dad: Work was going better than ever. My colleagues at the office re• sponded to my show of enthusiastic friendship by inviting me along to play dominoes at a nearby joint. Those games of dominoes were well lubricated with red wine and overflowing sandwiches with hot peppers and mustard, livened up with man talk.
Mom: I don't know what's going on. Sibylle is so forgetful. She didn't bring me a pitcher of water. I'm so thirsty. I asked my boy for something to drink.
Juan: I started to make some great lemonade for Mom. I had cut four lemons when Sibylle came in. "What are you doing?" she barked. I said to her, "Watch and see." With one swipe of her hand, she hurled the lemons
18 to the ground; with the other hand, she gave me a poke in the eye and made me see stars. As I was covering up my eye with hands, she got the broom and began to swat me on the head until I fell down, half-dazed. While I was down, she kicked me, panting, until she nearly lost her balance. I lay sprawled in a corner of the kitchen, not moving. My head hurt all over. She swept the floor, scraping me with the broom. She turned the radio on full blast and began to fix lunch. She slammed the pantry doors shut with a kick. Anything that fell got a kick. When I could get up, I vomited. Roaring like a monster from the swamp, she pushed me toward the patio, where she whacked me on my skull so hard I fell down. She closed the door with a slam, leaving me alone on the ground. The lawn was white with frost. I slowly collected myself, rubbing my head. I went down to the basement. Abraxas' eyes lit up when he saw me; if he had had a tail, he would have wagged it. This time I didn't smile. A coil in the heater had burned out, but the other one was red hot. He was stretched out over his sacks and magazines, chewing tobacco, a heap of stale bread beside him. "Abraxas," I said to him slowly, "I want you to do something for me." His eyebrows stopped. He was listening.
19 Hugo Lindo EL INVIERNO DE LA RAZA
Bajando hacia el trasfondo de los suefios yo te vi, sangre pura, emerger de las grietas, deslizarte por meandros subterraneos, dibujar la serpiente, el ala sonadora, por los canales hondos de la raza.
Te vi surgir, joya de los colores, catarata de ardientes pitahayas, para ir tallando el gesto decidido del hombre y la tierna mirada que acompafia su soledad madura.
Bajo los suelos blancos que amasara la mano de los siglos y el sol tostara en sus talleres de oro - i sangre de los valientes, sangre purificada de las virgenes !• te he visto fluir por rojos laberintos y ascender, lentamente, de barro en barro, de suspiro en lucha, hasta los ojos ciegos de nuestros duros idolos.
Si horadamos el mundo, si buscamos la roca que yace ocultamente bajo la roca, y otra que esta bajo esa roca, si vamos desnudando toda la geologia,
20 Translator Elizabeth Gamble Miller Hugo Lindo WINTER OF THE RACE
Traveling toward the underlining of dreams I watched you, pure blood, emerge from the fissures, glide through subterranean windings, to profile the serpent and the wing while dreaming, along the deep channels of the race.
I watched you surge forth, jewel of the colors, cataract of ardent pitahaya fruit, so as to carve the determined grimace of man and the tender glance accompanying his mature solitude.
Beside the whitened soils kneaded by the hand of the centuries scorched by the sun in its golden studios -blood of the valiant purified blood of the virgins!- I have watched you flowing through red labyrinths to ascend, slowly, from clay to clay, from sigh to struggle, up to the blind eyes of our hard idols.
If we burrow into the world, if we search for the rock that lies hiding beneath the rock, and another beneath that rock, if we denude all the geology,
21 quitandole sus asperos guipiles de basalto, perforando volcanes hasta donde palpitan los jades del comienzo, hallaremos el rio milenario, el rubi de la fiebre que da sustancia al hombre frente al aire.
Y alli tarnbien el mito. Los dioses que existian antes que la palabra. Los dioses que inventamos. Los dioses que vendran en los hombros de! tiempo.
Alli el esbozo claro de los p6mulos, el proyecto preciso de! paso y la mirada, la fuerza toda y su crueldad, el llanto, la fe como una espiga de maiz colorado, j todo lo que vivimos, todo lo que nos forma sobre el llano del dia, todo lo que en el giro de los cielos, sangramos!
Un diluvio, en los dias que olvidaron los libros, una lluvia incesante, manch6 de rojo vivo las escamas de! viento, repic6 sobre el lomo de la tierra dormida y empap6 sus entrafias. Se apoz6 en su silencio.
j Ah, que invierno de sangre, lluvia de brasas liquidas!
Acaso fue la vena de los mitos abierta en los teocallis invisibles de! cielo.
Acaso un dios que amaba la futura presencia del hombre, dio su arteria sacandose del pecho la rosa de la sangre.
22 Removing its coarse guipil skirts of basalt, drilling volcanoes down to the pulsing jades of the beginning, we will find the millennial river, the ruby of the fever that affords man substance to face the air.
And there also the myth. The gods that existed before the word. The gods that we invent. The gods that will come on the shoulders of time.
There the light fuzz of the cheeks, the precise project of the step and the glance, all the strength and its cruelty, the tearful lament, the faith of a full ear of red corn, all that we live all that forms us upon the plains of day, all that in the turning of the heavens, we bleed!
A flood, in the days forgotten by the books, an incessant rain stained vibrant red the scales of the wind, spattered the back of the sleeping earth, and soaked its bowels. It welled up in its silence.
Oh, what a winter of blood, a rain of liquid embers!
Perhaps it was the vein of the myths, opened in invisible teocallis of the heavens.
Perhaps a god, enamored of the future presence of man, offered his artery by pulling from his chest the rose of the blood.
23 Y ese invierno, hecho rlo, corre bajo las piedras. Grita por la garganta seca de los volcanes. Da razon a las milpas, a la verde inocencia del izote que eleva sus numerosas lamparas, Ese invierno es la sangre del mundo, de sus yerbas, del insecto y el pajaro, del pez, de la leyenda.
24 And that winter, become a river, runs beneath the stones. It screams through the dry throat of volcanoes. It grants cause to the cornfields, to the green innocence of the izote yucca with its lamps uplifted. That winter is the blood of the world, with its grasses, with the insect and the bird, with the fish, with the legend.
25 Anghel Dumbraveanu VESTITOARELE
Inselatoare stnt calmele zile Ale lui septembrie. Lumina E un tipat de spaima atunci, Sau de durere. Ca o virsta incerta, Cu presimtiri in care nu poti crede. Dar de la tine i§i Intoarsera fata V estitoarele vremii, ce miroseau a mesteacan Si-aveau glas de ape lunecfnd prin paduri. Dedulcit la treburi carturaresti Se spune c-ai fi, aceasta-nsemnind Deopotriva respect si malitie. Inselatoare Sint calmele zile ale lui septembrie.
Anghel Dumbraveanu
CAII DE TIMP
in ziua mea lumineaza surisul tau bun. Locuiesc cu pietrele in anotimpul tacerii. Seara vine pasarea si ma tntreaba Unde-am lasat peisajul in care odata Ma intilnise cu tine. Dar nu mai stiu limba In care demult vorbeam cu stelele. Pietrele imi aratara un drum ~i un cer. In fiecare noapte vin caii de timp, La fereastra tnchisa, A fost odata un riu Pe care am dus corabii spre mare. Seara vine pasarea ~i ma tntreaba ceva Ce nu tnteleg,
26 Translators Adam Sorkin and Irina Grigorescu Anghel Dumbraveanu HERALDS
Treacherous are September's Calm days. Then the light Is a scream of terror Or of pain. Like an uncertain age, Filled with premonitions you cannot trust. But the messengers have turned their faces away from you, The nymphs of time who smelled of birch leaves And had the voices of water trickling through forests. You have a sweet tooth for books, So they say, and that is a sign Equally of respect and wickedness. Treacherous Are September's calm days.
Anghel Dumbraveanu HORSES OF TIME
My day is lit by your kind smile. I dwell with the stones in the season of silence. In the evening the bird comes and asks me For the landscape where once She met us together. But I no longer know the language In which I used to speak to the stars ages ago. The stones showed me a road and a sky. Every night the horses of time come To the closed window. Once there was a river On which I piloted ships bound for the sea. In the evening the bird comes and asks me something I don't understand.
27 Anghel Dumbraveanu MAS TILE
V eti trimite copaci Sa ma readuca-ntre voi Veti intreba cine e diavolul
Daca privesti fara mils Peretele sters de stele Mal?tile vor minca norul ~i se va putea dormi lntr-un riu
Parca ~ mirosi iarba La radacinii ~i m-as uita la dumnezeu Cum i~i freacii nimbul coclit
Cind rideam ploua peste gradini Cind beam ploi venea femeia in zbor Daca acum te-as saruta Ar cinta tot neamul piidurilor
Veti intreba cine e diavolul Insii el crapa tencuiala si se uita la mine Se face cal cu atributii de pasare ~i mai ales se face ca nu ma vede ~i mai ales se face ca nu ma vede
Si-mi tot suge singele visului ~i nu ma invie decit arareori Ca sa ma transfere In alta iluzie.
28 Anghel Dumbraveanu THE MASKS
You will send trees To bring me back among you You will ask who the devil is
If you take a cold look At the wall scrubbed clean of stars The masks will eat the cloud And it will be possible to sleep in the river
It is as though I smelled the grass At the root And I stared at God As he scoured his tarnished glory
When I laughed, the rain would drench the gardens When I drank the raindrops, the woman would come flying If I kissed you right now The whole tribe of forests would sing
You will ask who the devil is But he cracks the plaster and bulges his eyes at me He turns into a horse with the features of a bird And above all he pretends not to see me Above all he pretends not to see me
And he sucks dry the blood of my dream And very seldom does he resurrect me To carry me To another illusion.
29 Anghel Dumbraveanu NOAPTEA PE TARM
Noaptea, vin singur pe iarm sa m-ascult, Noaptea cind totul se retrage in umbra Si insasi marea e un nesfirsit intuneric Din care vin elementele ca-ntr-o alta geneza, Imi spun: aceasta e o jertfa zadarnica, Un spectacol bizar, o risipa de forte, Dar totul suna epuizant de frumos Si din vrajba senora va rezulta impacarea. Prea multe zboruri lasa marea pe tarrn, Prea multe ginduri cheltuiesc cautlndu-te. 0, dacii te-as lovi de-a pururi cu visul, Te-as preface-n nisip-de aceea rarnin Atit de departe, atit de statornic taeut.
30 Anghel Durnbravaanu AT NIGHT ON THE SHORE
At night, alone, I come to the shore to listen to myself, At night, when everything withdraws in shadow And the sea itself is an endless darkness From which the elements arise as in another genesis. I say to myself: all this is useless sacrifice, A bizarre performance, a waste of strength. But the discord only exhausts me with its beauty, And out of resounding strife peacefulness is born. Too many flights does the sea abandon on the shore, Too many thoughts do I spend looking for you. 0, if I were to strike at you with my dream forever, I would turn you into sand-that is why I keep So far away, so constant and still.
31 Rodica S. Jackson CALTROP
Snatch a star chop off its too many arms keep just the minimum four stop all reverberations of light kill the movement as fast as you can (Don't wait too long, stars escape ... ) Now take the arm projecting upwards and puncture my veins with it. Now pick up this thistle falling from my forehead and kiss it for a long time ... Schimmelreiter.
Or else your horse will die.
Rodica S. Jackson C
I am the son of my father without a phallus
I am the prince regent of my father without a prince regent son
I am the wife of my father without my mother's body
I am the longing of my father without a name to know it
I am his minus I am his curse without a vowel.
32 Susana Thenon DISTANCES Susana Thenon is an Argentine poet belonging to the generation of Latin American writers born after 1940 and just now coming into their own. Susan Thenon's predecessor is Alejandra Pizarnik; however, Ms. Thenon is breaking new ground in poetry. Her language is always at the fringe of meaning and demands the greatest attention on the part of the reader. The poems that follow are taken from her latest collection, distancias (Torres Aguero Editor, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1984). Other published works by Ms. Thenon are Edad sin tregua (1958),Habitante de la nada (1960), de lugares eztromo« (1967).Ms. Thenon has several unpublished collections to her credit and is working at a new one. Within the context of Susana Thenon's canon, distancias is a sharp departure in terms of language and form and marks this writer as an innovator. The epigraph to distancias ("Watch: I Barren of melody and of meaning I the words seek refuge in the night./ Still damp and pregnant with sleep I they roll in a difficult river and transform themselves into contempt.") taken from the Brazilian writer Carlos Drummond de Andrade, prepares the reader for this collection of 39 poems in which the first poem and the last are the same. To translate Susana Thenon is to live in a state of discovery. On a first reading, distancias appears to be an inaccessible work because of the many transgressions of language, of syntax, of form, of imagery. However, famil• iarity with this work reveals that these transgressions become the vehicle through which we experience Susana Thenon's vision of the world. "I must represent chaos with chaos," she once wrote to this translator. So she creates a chaotic form but a form nonetheless. Reality and language suffer loss of cohesion. The poems are broken and the elements scattered across the page so that the poems incorporate space as one more formal element while creating the many silences through which meanings are born. Freed from conventional imperatives (i.e., syntax, form, etc.), the reading of many of the poems in distancias can proceed horizontally or vertically; the dimen• sions of the work multiply and so do the possibilities of interpretation. distancias communicates in the measure that the reader is willing to share in the act of discovery, thus creating his or her own world. The translations that follow are the result of a close collaboration between author and translator. The queries and answers over a period of five years are now being used by Argentine critics to assist them in matters of interpretation. Renata Treitel
33 Susana Thenon
4 hay un pais (pero no el mio) donde la noche es solo por la tarde (pero no el nuestro) y asi canta una estrella su tiempo libre toda la muerte pensar« ya que morir no es mio y aun alumbro con sangre deslumbrada (hay un pais) el sueiio de caida (hay un pais) y yo conmigo (y siempre) de amor inm6viles
Susana Thenon
5 el rayo en la cabeza de oro nacido para jugar desembocada- mente al pajaro mental oh moira OH MOIRA came de viento en la mirada oh tu alegria de fingir muerte a lo que amas hello animal desgracia posado en lo indecible
34 Translator Renata Treitel Susana Thenon
4
there's a country (but not mine) where night is only in the afternoon (but not ours) and thus sings a star its free time
throughout death i will think since dying is not mine and I still shine with dazzled blood (there's a country) the dream of falling (there's a country) and i with myself (and always) with lone unmoued
Susana Thenon
5
ray in the head born of gold to play inordinate- ly mental bird
o moira 0 MOIRA flesh of wind in the glance o you joy of feigning death to what you love beautiful animal-misfortune perched on the unutterable
35 Susana Thenon
15 no quedaban tabernas hubo entonces que dormirse loco a secas limpiamente violin y hermano memorioso de David Bach y como el inexistente de sol a sol sin dar el paso a que (pero sin duda oscuro) cementerios de nieve igual a noches
Susana Thenon
35 condenados a un signo a un vestido sin brazos tambien los caminos se niegan nombres de algo extinguido afloran formas de nada se adhieren a la que huye nosotros nuestras algas de humo en el morirse ejecutado minucioso quiza de una bebida para siempre ante aquella boca y en el cielo de quebrarse y en el cielo de arder su oscuridad perdida en ropas de nieve canta
36 Susana Thenon
15
no bars left so one had to sleep crazy dry cleanly violin and memorized brother of David Bach and like him inexistent from sun to sun without taking the step to whatever (dark no doubt) cemeteries of snow just like nights
Susana Thenon
35 condemned to a sign to a dress without arms even the roads say no names of something dead surface shapes of nothing cling to her who runs away we our seaweeds of smoke in the perpetrated death meticulous perhaps of a drink forever before that mouth and in the breaking sky in the burning sky her lost darkness sings in clothes of snow
37 Eugenio de Andrade CORPO HABITADO
Corpo num horizonte de agua, corpo aberto a lenta embriaguez dos dedos, corpo defendido pelo fulgor das macas, rendido de colina em colina, corpo amorosamente humedecido pelo sol d6cil da lingua.
Corpo com gosto a erva rasa de secreto jardim, corpo onde entro em casa, corpo onde me deito para sugar O silencio, ouvir o rumor das espigas, respirar a doeura escurissima das silvas.
Corpo de mil bocas, e todas fulvas de alegria, todas para sorver, todas para morder ate que um grito irrompa das entranhas, e suba as torres, e suplique um punhal. Corpo para entregar as lagrimas. Corpo para morrer.
Corpo para beber ate ao fim• meu oceano breve e branco, minha secreta embarcacao, meu vento favoravel, minha varia, sempre incerta navegacao.
38 Translator Alexis Levitin Eugenio de Andrade INHABITED BODY
Body on a horizon of water, body open to the slow intoxication of fingers, body defended by the splendor of apples, surrendered hill by hill, body lovingly made moist by the tongue's pliant sun.
Body with the taste of cropped grass in a secret garden, body where I am at home, body where I lie down, to suck up silence, to hear the murmur of blades of grain, to breathe the deep dark sweetness of the bramble bush.
Body of a thousand mouths, all tawny with joy, all ready to sip, ready to bite till a scream bursts from the bowels, and mounts to the towers, and pleads for a dagger. Body for surrendering to tears. Body ripe for death.
Body for imbibing to the end• my ocean, brief and white, my secret vessel, my propitious wind, my errant, unknown, endless navigation.
39 Eugenio de Andrade CRISTALIZAyOES
1 Com palavras amo.
2 Inclina-te como a rosa so quando o vento passe.
3 Despe-te como o orvalho na concha da manhii.
4 Arna como o rio sobe os ultimos degraus ao encontro do seu leito.
5 Como podemos florir ao peso de tanta luz?
6 Estou de passagem: amo o efernero.
7 Onde espero morrer sera manha ainda?
40 Eugenio de Andrade CRYSTALLIZATIONS
1 I love with words.
2 Like the rose bends only when the wind blows.
3 Disrobe like the dew in the curved shell of the morning.
4 Love as the river climbs the last steps to find its bed.
5 How can we blossom under the weight of so much light?
6 I am passing through: I love the ephemeral.
7 Where I hope to die will it still be morning?
41 Eugenio de Andrade 0 SILENCIO
Quando a ternura parece ja do seu oficio fatigada, e o sono, a mais incerta barca, anda demora, quando azuis irrompem os teus olhos e procuram nos meus navegacao segura, e que eu te falo das palavras desamparadas e desertas, pelo silencio fascinadas.
Eugenio de Andrade DESDE A AURORA
Como um sol de polpa escura para levar a boca, eis as maos: procuram-te desde o chao, entre os veios do sono e da mem6ria procuram-te: a vertigem do ar abrem as portas.
42 Eugenio de Andrade SILENCE
When tenderness seems tired at last of its offices
and sleep, that most uncertain vessel, still delays,
when blue bursts from your eyes
and searches mine for steady seamanship,
it is then I speak to you of words desolate, derelict, transfixed by silence.
Eugenio de Andrade SINCE DAWN
Like a sun of dark pulp to be lifted to one's mouth, look, my hands: from the ground they search for you, between the veins of sleep and memory they search for you: they open doors to the reeling of the air:
43 vai entrar o vento ou o violento aroma de uma candeia, e subitamente a ferida recorneca a sangrar: e tempo de colher: a noite iluminou-se bago a bago: vais surgir para beber de um trago como um grito contra o muro.
Sou eu, desde a aurora, eu-a terra-que te procuro.
Eugenio de Andrade CORAQAO HABITADO
Aqui estao as maos. Sao os mais belos sinais da terra. Os anjos nascem aqui: frescos, matinais, quase de orvalho, de coracao alegre e povoado.
Ponho nelas a minha boca, respiro o sangue, o seu rumor branco, aqueco-as por dentro, abandonadas nas minhas, as pequenas mlios do mundo.
Alguns pensam que sao as maos de deus -eu sei que sao as maos de um homem, trernulas barcaeas onde a agua, a tristeza e as quatro estaeoes penetram, indiferentemente.
Nao ihes toquem: sao amor e bondade. Mais ainda: cheiram a madressilva. Sao o primeiro homem, a primeira mulher. E amanhece.
44 in comes the wind or the wild smell of an oil lamp, and suddenly the wound begins to bleed afresh:
it is time for harvesting: the night brightens grape by grape: and you emerge to swallow it at a gulp like a cry against the wall.
It is I, since dawn,· I-the earth-in search of you.
Eugenio de Andrade INHABITED HEART
Here are the hands. They are the most beautiful signs of earth. Angels are born here: fresh, of the dawn, almost of dew, with joyful, peopled hearts.
I place my mouth on them, breathe their blood, a white murmur, warm them from within, surrendered in mine, the little hands of the world.
Some think they are the hands of god -I know they are the hands of a man, tremulous hulks where water, sadness and the four seasons, indifferent, filter in.
Don't touch them: they are love and goodness. Even more: they smell of honeysuckle. They are the first man, the first woman And now the dawn.
45 Linda Berman
You were the writer we were the page now we gather ourselves together an opus of sorts a mistake to get the real story we will have to write our way out in red from the inside as usual
* * *
At Neiman-Marcus, French Fortnight, I saw a sculpture exhibition by Rodin. My husband stayed home with/the baby. I didn't know about art. I walked from one black shape to the next- I was surprised to see The Thinker so small. Then I slowed down. I looked at each piece closely. I backed away. I didn't want to look but I had to. I came home and went to bed. The series was from The Gates of Hell-I found their pictures in the library. I recognized The Thinker, of course, and there was one called Despair, but it was a woman and not the same. I couldn't find Desperation. I searched for those wrinkles in book after book, the closed eyes, the bared teeth, the head slung back, his body stretched taut but like a fist. I even looked in Paris. It's my most vivid memory, I still remember it exactly, and they say it doesn't exist.
***
I was talking to my mother. She said when Iwasa child, up until the age of three, all she'd known was French. That, I realized, had been our problem all along: language. Hers was foreign, and I didn't have one.
* * *
I was in a car with the top down. The car was yellow and I had a phone with me in the back seat, the cord stretched out for miles. I looked in my hands and saw I had the box with the dial on it, but the receiver and its cord were missing. I am talking to my mother, I said, staring at the box.
46 Linda Berman
I looked in the mirror: pale eyes and skin, colorless hair licked back. I took off my face to get a better look, I laid it on a chair. She had almond eyes, dark hair with curls, a full mouth. I was thinking how I'd never noticed she was black when she began to grow legs and feet and then a body, she was dressed in red. I have to show my husband, I said, and went to look for him. He was in the next room with my family-my mother, father, an aunt, some cousins. Come on, I said, you have to see my face. The group began to move, taking tiny steps like one body, away from me. I grabbed his arm and took him with me. I picked it up, held it to the light. Look at her, I said, smiling. What do you mean? he asked. Her face was distorted, like in a funhouse mirror. I moved it this way and that, tried to get it straight. Bored, he left. Her face came back, again grew legs and a body, then walked across the room to stand with the dancers. They were tall and blonde and dressed in white. I watched as they did ballet while she did sit-ups. It was quite a juxtaposition, that white and red.
* * *
Someone introduced me to him. They said he was a veteran of the war. I shook his hand and noticed he was missing an ear. I smiled, he kept my hand in his. You must touch my face, he said. I drew back: there were wounds and weeping sores. No, I said, but he said yes and pressed my hand to his face. You must feel inside, he said. I said no, I was sorry for him, but there are limits, I said. He said yes, so I moved my fingers a little and felt around, he let go of my hand. I closed my eyes, passed my hand from wound to wound, stepped closer to feel deep. It seemed the only thing to do.
* * *
I was making love to a woman. I pressed my mouth to hers, nothing was deep. I ran my hands over her back, down to her thighs, up across her stomach to her ribs which I could feel, took her small breasts in my hands. She melted towards me like a child softened with sleep. The woman was me.
47 Maria T. J acketti SPEAKING THREE LANGUAGES
Spanish• somebody's tickling my tongue
*** French• I'm eating silk
*** Russian- a train is crashing through my teeth
Maria T. J acketti
Inside my lover's mouth forbidden sweet honeydew flesh
Maria T. J acketti
Soccer field sinking mire of defeat
48 Maria T. J acketti OPTIMISM
Hibiscus pink sky of dreams
Maria T. J acketti
Meteor slices hot buttered midnight
49 Jane Spencer MY BLACK WOOL COAT
When I used to wear my black wool coat the sky was a storm cloud grey with roadmaps that led to nowhere above me.
And I'd look up (me and the pigeons) from the concrete below and wonder, "Should I go visit my friends? Spend hours talking about me-or them?" And walking out, I'd look at the sky again and wonder at the emptiness and try to know it within my own hand: numb and cold blood veins throbbing but nothing there.
My black wool coat hangs in my closet. It belonged to a dead girl who was afraid of emptiness. And rather fascinated by it. It belonged to a child walking down streets to kindergarten whose heart was dark and kicking the autumn colors around.
Jane Spencer MEANINGS
Between the minutes my breaths were saying words that meant something. Where did they go? The clock struck nine and I can't remember a thing.
50 Jane Spencer THE DARK
Cleaning women escaping time down dark hallways with silver pails: silver like moons where witches fly. Silver like tears. They keep the halls dry with brooms and sponges as windows open and paint flakes fly.
And all the silver, the water, the time it trickles past cleaning women before they can think. It trickles down steps for darkling pigeons to drink.
Jane Spencer SUMMER IN NEW YORK
Cut across the mainstream: the smoky honked-out roads silver like a frying pan and hard and without taste.
I hear the thump of drum machines, the inside of a pin-ball machine looks like my neighborhood.
Electricity is in my nervous system and it's hot and it stings like dry ice.
51 Robert Gregory SHEET & SLEEPING WOMAN
Surface not broken yet this river sweeps along this raft awash, deserted
Animals and birds in forest on the banks cry out in their languages hunt and elude each other
Robert Gregory ONLY THIS WINDOW
Through it tonight only the tree and the streetlight light where it should not be some father showing other men his son
52 WOLFGANG BACHLER: A PORTRAIT
Introduction and translations by Rainer Schulte
Wolfgang Bachler, a German poet in his late fifties, has received very ljttle attention in the English-speaking world. None of his books has been translated into English, and he is not even included in Michael Hamburger's anthology German Poetry: 1910-1975, published in 1977. Yet Bachler has continued to develop his own poetic voice, untouched by the poetic gimmicks of the sixties, a voice that reflects intensity and a deepening internalization of the poet's relationship with his perceptual re-creation of the objects he encounters in the world around him. Sensitive to the magnetic field of each word, Bachler recognizes that words, as well as objects, impart new insights if they are placed into a new environment by the imaginative power of the poet. Bachler surprises the reader by offering vistas of words and objects that go beyond any normal semantic connotation that a reader would find in the dictionary. He places the words in totally new semantic environments and thereby creates directions of meaning for these words that no one thought could be hidden in them. There is not one line in Bachler's poetry that does not find the poet inside the possibilities of each word. Bachler uses language not to describe objects, but to reflect the dynamics of the interaction that he establishes between himself and an object. He places us as readers into situations that imbalance logical expectations and force us to engage in associations that reorder our perception of reality and create a sense of surprise and even magic. Bachler's involvement with the world is a meta• phorical one, asking us to understand and experience a situation in terms of another. Bachler does not speak of great political or social events that splash onto television screens or can be heard over radio waves. He explores the more private areas of himself and others, how they project their insights into the world through the relationships they establish with the objects of the world around them. No image or metaphor can ever be reduced to state• ments of meaning. Explanations can approach and approximate metaphors, but they can never fully explain them. Metaphors provide us with the opportunity to experience a situation, to live inside its aesthetic boundaries for a short while. And even though we can never fully explain these images and metaphors, we derive from them a direction of feeling and thinking that places us inside a poet's vision of the world. Bachler clearly indicates the direction of that vision: anxiety, emptiness, confusion, self-destruction, and lethargy on the one hand, explosion of word energy and metaphorical thinking on the other.
53 If his message is indeed doubt and hesitation about the present and future state of humanity, then that message emerges in a context where words regain their power through the innovative relationships that the poet establishes between two words or two objects. Bachler always sees beyond the regularly accepted boundaries of words to project a reality that is more intimate, more convincing than their surface appearances. Bachler has often been called a nature poet, a term applied to Wordsworth and other nineteenth-century poets. But Bachler is not interested in nature per se. He wants to use objects in nature to reflect and express subtle internal processes. He perceives natural objects as tools to enact a transferral from himself into a situation that illuminates an inner state of perception or feeling. He is interested in nature only to the extent that the objects found in nature can assist him in making his own emotional state transparent in the relationship he sets up between himself and that object. To describe a leaf, a stone, or a plant as an integral part of the image of nature is of little interest to the poet; instead he establishes perceptual relationships with objects so that the quality of how the objects are consti• tuted forms the building material for his poetic images. A leaf suggests qualitatively different things from a stone. Throwing a leaf into a lake causes a different reaction than throwing a stone into a lake does. In that sense, Bachler fits quite well into the aesthetic thinking of twentieth-century poets and writers in general. Proust understood that a detailed description of leaves moving in the wind could reflect quite accurately the emotional state of one of his characters. Like so many twentieth-century poets, Bachler lives inside the world as it comes to stand for an object that is not present but is explored by the poet in terms of what it suggests and what associations emanate from it. The word represents the object, but it also interacts with the object, and the word renews itself through that relationship which leads to the creation of new insights and images. It is a perceptual logic that Bachler recreates in his poetry. He extends the actions of words and carries them into unusual image• situations: "The bells frighten the sky," "Faces dissolve in the smoke," "Death lurks in the clock," "Rain sews sky and earth together." These images pre• suppose a keen transformational power of perception on the poet's part. He destroys the comfort of established ways of seeing to find in the destruction the seeds of a re-ordering of the world. This reconstruction can happen only in the re-creative moments of a silence that has been emptied by the poet: "I have nothing to say to those who do not accept my silence." Bachler strives toward transformation of the common into the uncommon, of the usual into the unusual, of the possible into the impossible, in order to create a reality that frightens and fascinates us at the same time: "The impossible has always attracted me."
54 Bachler pursues an aesthetic of ever-enlarging boundaries. No boundary will ever suffice to encompass our desires and visions, our per• ceptions and insights. The poetic process-like the life process-must be seen as a never-ending chain of breaking from one boundary into another. Breaking away from the word fences from the sentence chains from the period systems from the parentheses ...
And the question arises: Where do all these escapes from boundaries end? Bachler offers a simple answer totally in tune with his poetic vision: "Outbreaks into the freedom of silence." The circle from Mallarrne's "musician of silence" to Bachler's "freedom of silence" seems to have been closed.
Permission to reprint the Bachler poems was granted by F. Fischer Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, Copyright 1982.
55 Wolfgang Bachler WEGE
Ich habe die Richtung verloren. Es gibt zuviel Wege.
Vielleicht muss ich die Augen schliessen und auf dem Kopf gehen?
Vielleicht findet mich das Ziel?
Wolfgang Bachler MEINE GRENZEN
Meine Grenzen sind nicht markiert von Zaunen, Mauern, Stacheldraht. Nur mein eigener Scheinwerfer tastet sie ab.
Manchmal gelingt das Uberschreiten. Doch die fliessenden Grenzen holen mich ein und zuruck.
Wolfgang Bachler DIE TOTEN
Die Toten verstellen mir den Weg kreisen mich ein, schauen mich an mit Sternenaugen. In ihnen spiegelt sich meine Schuld.
56 Wolfgang Bachler ROADS
I have lost my way. There are too many roads.
Perhaps I need to close My eyes And walk upside down?
Perhaps my goal will reach me?
Wolfgang Bachler MY BOUNDARIES
My limits are not marked By fences, walls, barbed wire. Only my own headlights Probe their perimeters.
At times I exceed them. But the moving boundaries Catch up with me and take me back.
Wolfgang Bachler THE DEAD
The dead are standing in my way, They encircle me, They stare at me with starry eyes And my guilt is reflected in them.
57 Doch sie richten mich nicht, gehen zuruck zu den Steinen, lassen mich wieder allein, den Lebenden ausgeliefert.
Wolfgang Bachler IMZUG
Oft habe ich Angst, im falschen Zug zu sitzen.
Ich frage den Schaffner, ob ich nicht umsteigen muss. Er verneint es.
Ich bin unzufrieden.
Wolfgang Bachler
HINTER DEN FENSTERL.A.DEN
Lange starre ich auf die Fenster laden, um zu ergrunden wer dahinter steht.
Doch nichts bewegt sich, niemand i:iffnet sie, niemand macht Licht. Es bleibt schwarz hinter den Fenster laden.
58 Yet, they don't judge me, They return to the stones, They leave me alone again At the mercy of the living.
Wolfgang Bachler ON THE TRAIN
Frequently I worry That I might be on the wrong train.
I ask the conductor Whether I need to change trains. He says no.
I am not satisfied.
Wolf gang Bachler
BEHIND THE SHUTTERS
I keep staring at the shutters In order to discern Who is behind them.
But nothing moves, No one opens them, No one turns on the lights. Only darkness Hovers behind the shutters.
59 Jorge Debravo UN HIMNO PARA EL OJO
Yo digo que si el alma tiene un sitio, ese sitio es el ojo. El ojo que sustenta nuestro amor y nuestro gozo.
El hombre mismo, el hombre todo fuego y asombro, no podria ser hombre sin el ojo.
La vida, el mar, el cielo, todo era un vago escombro, hasta que un dia el ojo reuni6 todo lo vivo y lo acerc6 a los rostros.
Todo la eternidad qued6 justificada el dia que Io mas vivo de la vida se hizo pozo de asombros en el ojo.
Jorge De bravo SALMO A LA TIERRA ANIMAL DE TU VIENTRE
Tierra caliente y dulce para sembrar la fruta de! deseo mas hondo; tierra para llegar a la vida absoluta y seguir hasta el fondo;
60 Translator Michael Johnson Jorge Debravo A HYMN FOR THE EYE
I say if the soul has a place, that place is the eye. The eye that sustains our love and our joy.
Man himself, man all fire and amazement, could not be man without the eye.
Life, the sea, the sky, all was a vague rubble, till one day the eye united everything alive and brought it close to faces.
All eternity was justified the day the most living thing in life became a spring of amazements in the eye.
Jorge Debravo PSALM TO THE ANIMAL EARTH OF YOUR ABDOMEN
Earth warm and sweet for sowing the fruit of deepest desire; earth for attaining life that is absolute and following to its core;
61 tierra pequefia y triste debajo del vestido como lecho guardado; tierra para pensarla cuando el viento hace frto sobre el cuerpo asustado; tierra nueva, sedosa, ancha y desconocida como una madriguera, donde Bega la mano, bajo la ropa hundida, con temblores de fiera; tierra larga, violenta, misteriosa, lo mismo que las tumbas cerradas; tierra que se adivina como un inmenso abismo de rocas desgarradas.
Tierra de rlos, mares, volcanes, terremotos, donde el mundo se anuda, cuando surge entre fibras y entre vestidos rotos, rebosante y desnuda; tierra desorbitada, brutal tierra de eras donde todo es semilla y el deseo se tuerce buscando sementeras cuando llego a su orilla y me hallo todo un mundo de frutas, de barrancos, de vientos, de matices, y me encuentro a Dios mismo arraigado en sus flancos, con violentas raices.
62 earth small and sad beneath its clothes like a guarded bed;
earth for thinking of her when cold wind blows over the body made afraid;
earth new, silken, unknown and spacious as a burrowed nest,
where my hand reaches, under her crushed dress, with the tremors of a beast;
earth long, violent, mysterious as closed tombs;
earth that is divined like an immense abyss with jagged climbs.
Earth of seas, volcanos, earthquakes, rivers, where the world is knotted, when it surges amid torn clothing and fibers, overflowing and naked; earth out of orbit, savage earth of an age in which everything is seeds and desire writhes, when I reach its edge, seeking tilled fields, and I am a whole world of colors, of ravines, of winds, of fruits, and feel I am God Himself embedded in her loins, with violent roots.
63 Angela Ball WHAT
1
We were the rain that strides into the corners of a town.
The phantom mayor who lost his sight and followed it away.
Spice from the garden of the insane.
The plague, the small leaden crosses scarring the graves.
The cinders outside a path.
Juice the color of pearls.
The oak that points in every direction, death.
The wind smelling of mint to prepare for snakes.
The star holding the center of a tent.
Bluish circles of smoke.
2
Our bed a gentle crossroads.
A lake churned into foam.
Part of the time sun, part of the time shade.
64 People getting milk at a white farmhouse.
A morning coming and coming to a hill until it's with us: light.
Angela Ball TOWER
From high windows in a part of the sky left standing, there is lots I can't see-the blue swig of ocean just above the road line, the one angle of late afternoon when the leaves flare, their green for a moment beyond them. But I have a drink-floating the distance• which I raise to what are almost clouds, to your brief appearance as a particle of the street, to the long horizon of vertigo just coming clear.
65 Glen Downie I AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD
Reading late-
My lamp gathers frail tiny creatures whose lives are briefer than summer whose voices are lost
A crane fly zealously pings his thin dance against the metal shade and a moth betrays the clean white page with the dusty kiss of his wings
In search of the light they are drawn to me knowing the book is open They spread the word And every night brings more
Alone against the darkness I am haloed and adored In celebration the faithful feed on my body
66 Hina Faisal Imam CREATION
Creation• in a word, the universe. The soul, a question. Paradox, eats, drinks, rapes me. Why cigarette me to sleep? Drop the lid and let my fate return.
Rina Faisal Imam SHE
Love dunes are fragile homes of fairy tales conquered by pin-pricks. Tissue clips and lead discs- brief receptions of seasonal infamy. Where should a mad woman go? She is outlawed by society for being herself.
67 Hina Faisal Imam DIFFERENCE
Friends came and talked about you as if there is nothing else. I wear my solitude- the peace of knowing you. It is romantic to think I have no regrets. You expected me to be shy. When I could not hide myself, you left, and I wondered if you remember the willow and the stream.
68 R. M. CHUCKOVICH OVERDOSE
Glistening silver needle, pierce my skin-precious potion flow through my vessels, and mingle crimson with clouds and blue skies etched with rainbows and new colors ... spawns, duds, whirls, visions-floods that drown the reality I find intolerable .... Enter wastelands, gardens, flowers, weeds• enter the kingdom of rampant and random thought patterns, arcs of elec• tricity bolting jagged through my mind as if it were merely a stormy sky seeking still and clear air .... Enter open doors that promise escape from stench but lead to cesspools that harbor the odors I flee .... Enter the world of nightmare merged with exponential questions and all too few answers . . . . Enter a highway without reason or logic .... Enter the menial, enter the magnificent-provoke, and couple negatives and positives .... Punctuate unfinished sentences, leaving all meanings enigmas-lose time for always• lose me forever, for when I find myself, I cannot bear the product .... Drug of ecstasy, blot out the plague of the living and summon the dreams of a junkie .... Line the path I travel upon with obscurity-make nothing of this trail-make black this path-make certain my brain kindles invisibility for my eyes to see .... I have seen far too much already, and seek only blissful coma-tranquil dark is my quest, flight from all realms of life, my destina• tion-I hurt, I grieve, I cannot confront. ... I fear .... I run, and run, and run .... The enemy is ghostly, vague, horrendous-a malignant villain that pursues with a vengeance, invincible, awesome, evilly toying with my sanity, laughingly taunting my flight with a pointing finger and a putrid grin The Cullion crushes, maims, violates, rapes all purity from my soul. And thus, I evolve, an addict, seeking refuge, seeking an impossible sanctity in a nonexistent space-seeking relief from what I have known in conscious times .... The drug, the haze, provide solace, and simultaneously, torture, and the very images I seek to escape room with my fantasies, and flicker behind my eyes, crystal clear .... From my perspective, the trip had, as always, promised freedom, but, as always, nothing erases my truth-nothing deletes my agony Scars soar through my body like vines, strangling the possibility of relief My insides are consumed by knots .... Fruitless tangles constrict upon my guts, painting portraits on torn canvas of what I have known and seen .... And again, my irrational, nonsequential dreams pour forth like a tidal wave, gushing insanely through my cerebral eye .... Even here, the enemy has caught me, and I know I must flounder helplessly this night, wrestling with the hallucinations of an overdose ....
69 Headtrips Fog Reality Mirage
I stroke my skin; it is a dream I think, impaled in a reality on a spot amongst the stars. Such a strange cage-a restriction of protoplasm with no escape. Blinders dim the vision, hobbles cripple the gait .... The audience cheers, the audience cries .... We all caress oblivion in silence. And somewhere beneath the realm of nowhere, the Deity laughs at the joke within the prayer-and a lone heartbeat drowns the roar of infinity. Traces of agony wilt beneath the flame of youth, drying the tears of the aged forever. And I tremble, chilled to the marrow of my core, frigid cold with fear• for try as I might, I interpret no relevance, and believe perhaps I am correct; it is a dream.
Distances reach for lost moons, stars dance, and along with the suns, destroy themselves .... And the eternal pursuits of life and dreams continue to flicker. like lighted matches in the midnight rain.
We were two birds. And the courting took some time. It was a fragile, delicate affair which began with an audibly caressing "woo" and then progressed with ultimate honesty to a culmination of purest love. A place was selected with extreme care and then the tedious task of nest-building ensued. Twigs, strings, leaves, our own precious feathers were particularly gathered and carefully arranged into a woven cradle. Others intervened but were always discouraged by us with protective ferocity. At times these battles were lengthy and bloody. Once, an eye was lost. She laid but one egg and this being the case, it was rightfully one of special meaning. We shared the "sitting," but the hours were still long and hard. It was a strenuous endeavor which substantially sapped our strength, but we persevered through all the difficulties with loyalty and devotion. We
70 were faithful parents and carried out our duty as such. At times there was illness. Once, I almost died. The precious squab hatched. It was small, yellow, helpless. We fed it, cleaned it, pampered it. We cherished it tenderly with adoring love. It grew and feathers sprouted. It made singing sounds to our delight. It flapped its wings in "test." It was almost ready, and we smiled over our child proudly, as we continued the demanding chores of parenthood. At times, food was scarce. Once, our own starvation was necessary for the preservation of the young one. And then, as the day of our child's maturation was almost upon us, a hand reached into our nest and snatched our offspring away. The struggle was vicious, yet brief, terminating with the loud crack of our young bird's neck bone. We are still haunted by that sound. The man who came to dinner wasn't really hungry anyway. And the steel teeth of the garbage disposal shredded love.
ashen wool family roles a lamb under the knife of love mundane realities slash at the soul blood gushes from the heart of the spirit the rivers of roses drown the light in a red sea mediocrity reigns dully in blind security its smile spreads toothless and foul the wailing cry falls on deaf ears family roles ashen wool paper silence
Destiny bends backwards and with charred fingers, clutches me to the bosom of inevitability with the force of the invincible.
Ice cubes of blood, a frozen heart-salt water everywhere, from oceans, from eyes-cataracts-lost ....
71 Scratches on a piece of paper-silent noise shaped in ink-strange little doodles, called letters, on a page, that, when strung together, spell out what is left of me .... And I wish I couldn't read ....
The party .... A place I didn't want to be-hazy conversations, hanging echoes in the air-a smoke-filled room, splashing wine-my mind treading water in a sea of strange faces-a crowd of loneliness-a mannequin on the party's couch .... When did I stop crying? I can't remember.
You could have loved me. I could have been something special. But my mind is etched with infidelity. My heart is just another inmate in the philo• sophical cell of modern priority. I have shamefully yielded to my environment. A "hundred-thousand-a-year-man" is my criterion. A new vehicle, bigger and faster than my neighbor's, is of monumental importance. Plastic grass grows in my backyard, freshly mowed by the machine created for limited longevity. My future is a puffy lounge chair, a can of amber alcoholic beverage and an infantile boxed tube that bounces colors in my direction which I cannot really see. I bask in apparent contentment, oblivious to the potentials I once possessed. My passiveness disgusts you. My resignation is the ultimate criminal act. You scream your discontent, yet I effectively evade your feelings with cleverly conceived plots of menial grandeur. You live only in the shadows of my mind, isolated as if in quarantine, a potential threat, a budding fatal disease in my limited vision. You reside in my "leper colony" and your confinement is my decadence. Damn, why do I not tap you?! Why do I not see beyond the mirrors that surround me? Why do I not at least attempt a unique reflection? Why is this mechanized image, cast from the dye of computerized peers, the path to my seeking of serenity? You beg me to understand. You say it is not uhat I could have become. You throw no importance on the actual product. Genetics is a limitation. Family trees are a mathematical constant. Their pregnancy bears only the fruit ingeniously designed by the inconceivable "Creator." Achievements are constrictively relegated to the forms of the unknown framework. Accom• plishments must not stray from the house of destiny. It is only that I settled for less. It is only that I sped into the realm of negative conformity with ease. I did not battle-I accepted. I did not question; I joined freely with the herd of "programmed" clones. I dove into the second-rate sea of sell-out and swam
72 as if I belonged in the tide. I slaughtered the gifts I was given-murdered them-in exchange for a plot of comfort on some lowly rung of the ladder. Lined trash cans placed strategically in front of my plaster palace disclose my position. The wall that surrounds my artificial mansion does not hide me. Though I have used all methods and manipulations to block you, you see me. You know what I am. But, I go ahead. I continue to maim you. I take my evasive course. I ignore your existence. You say I won't succeed. You say you are eternal. You will remain. You can neither be destroyed, nor pacified. You will never submit. You are the drop of water on the rock of my mind. Eternally persistent, you drip into my consciousness. Slowly, slowly, patiently-you seep what is me into my soul. There is no escape. And there will come a time when I will know this. There will be a trial and you will consume me, for I have lived concealed in the cloak of falsehood. My debt will be paid. You will ultimately reign. For you are truth. You cannot be denied. .You say perhaps I will find consolation in the fact that when all is re• vealed, the tears that tumble down my cheeks will be interspersed with yours. You shall cry with me. For you swear you could have loved me; I could have been something special.
If we were of the same face-if noses, mouths; chins and ears were not the deciding factor .... How well could we know each other ... ?
It is said that I bled on the carpet once. I do recall being severely scolded for it. I remember hurting, and looking for the wound, but it wasn't there. I couldn't understand how someone could get so angered over something that didn't exist. The rug was red, but another's nose was too, and the dog was licking his foot. However, the blame was insistently placed, and a bandage was applied-I kept it on for some time, and eventually, the cut that wasn't, healed. But, it left a scar.
I am anonymous, but I might be a hero, and the cloth that I wear could be iron. I wear a mask, but it might be my face, if I could believe what I wish. I hold the cards, but the deck might be stacked, for I could slip a queen up my sleeve.
73 Suddenly, I am the genius beast, and I have loved ... This drug takes me everywhere, through all forms and positions ... What wonder, What torment ...
The storm was violent and the huge, crushing waves pounded the ship into submission. It splintered, shattered, sank in flesh-accompanied frag• ments. Last screams knifed through the turbulent air, silencing even the lashing wind with the fear and agony of the dying. Of the forty aboard, but three survived-myself, the Old Man and the Woman. Our "selection" still remains an enigma to me-a mystery, a baffling riddle without discernible cause or effect. The visions in my mind still define us as a ridiculous, un• explainable, random assortment clinging to a dubious gift from some powerful, unknown benefactor. The vivid image of our floundering, helpless forms clustering in the raging sea is still locked fresh in my mind. We were grasping bodies, groping wildly in the furious, liquid darkness. I cannot recall who first spied the raft. It seems, in memory, that we all turned at once and the large, drifting remnant of the ship was sighted simultaneously by our six insane-crazed eyes. I can recount that we flailed toward it separately, clawing aboard its perilous refuge, its frail offering of safety, with individual effort; at no time did one hand reach out for another. I can still hear our salt-infested lungs gasping, quaking, hungering for precious breath, heaving spasmodically against the onslaught of the end. The monstrous waves continued their swelling nightmare, enveloping, consuming, with a fury beyond comprehension. The rain pelted downward and the clouds hovered ominously, appearing as smokey malignancies, gray versions of Typhon's hundred heads, tumors which had permanently turned out the light of the mooon and stars. Our three desperate, isolated figures were as silent, paralyzed shadows, chiseled entities of porcelain etched with fatality-flimsy, black shells, cracked-glass statues of expectant death in the night. Somehow, the reigning madness subsided. The sea calmed and the raft swayed serenely like a cradle rocked by the soft touch of a parental hand. The sun rose, warming the frigid past with the light of day; yellow-orange rays danced lightly across the eternal blue-green terrain, frolicking to some unknown melody. Lolling, lazy ripples slapped at the sides of the raft lending
74 rhythm to the mystical music. The ghostly visions of past darkness receded to vaulted corners of our thoughts, and our minds basked in the necessity of ironic tranquility. This peaceful glaze lasted for some time; then our eyes turned inward and wandered in silent search of lost strengths. The warmth of the sun turned hot as the morning passed, parching our throats, scorching our flesh with a sadistic, torturing, yet toying pleasure. Simultaneously, a futile discussion of survival approach transpired. It seems to me, in recollection, that the Old Man wanted control; he stood majestically on the most stately and enviable position of the raft. I remember his weathered, leathery face reeking of command and composure in those moments. I wanted that power-I wanted the Woman's thankful looks of security and admiration. What right did he have to lay claim to that power? What right did he have to place himself in a position of monopoly? What right did he have to place himself in a position above mine? We had no water, no food-nothing of sustenance, and the sun's glisten• ing fingers continued their bombardment upon our yielding skin like whips lashing cellophane. Our tongues swelled, became pulpy lumps in our throats; swallowing became difficult, if not impossible, and our saliva which once was textured like smooth glue, now stuck to the insides of our mouths like bubbled cotton. I was the first to gulp the saltwater; the Woman quickly followed, and lastly, the Old Man yielded to the hope of some relief. Belching nausea was the result, and then came futile rantings and panic. Our fear terrorized us into weeping submissions. At no time did we tangibly relate during this emotional outburst, yet we were tightly bound in mutual frenzy. Then frustrated anger replaced the tears and flurried tempers dominated. Our screaming voices condemned our fate, condemned the injustice. The Woman was the first to laugh. It began as a low, throaty giggle and rose to a lofty, high-pitched, laughing hysteria. The Old Man and I joined her. Before long our eyes were again tear-stained, but this time with dubious joviality. My ears still listen to that laughter and I long on this day for its "sane" release. It was two days later when the sharks came. I was feigning sanity with a clumsily improvised fishing pole when the first slicing fin appeared. The Woman was talking with the Old Man of Faith (which she was always doing at that time, to my disturbance and distress). That worthless voice still haunts me-her foolish words of "The Rescue Ship" still echo inside my head. She even gave our "savior" vessel a name, and was able to describe it in minute detail. The Old Man seemed pleased and satisfied with her illusion. I found it repulsive-a ridiculous attempt at consolation-a foolish, mythical fantasy. I ridiculed them, castigated them for their absurdity; and then I clarified our position with the reality of the sharks. Endless rows of gleaming white teeth were sporadically visible as the finned executioners aggressively
75 rammed the raft with intense, hungry ferocity. It rocked violently and we clung in desperation to splintery ridges until our fingers bled. The sharks continued their attack, appearing like aquatic vultures on a watery desert about to devour their prey. I can't remember how the Old Man fell over the side. I know I was near him at the moment, holding on as best I could. I deny that I pushed him while fighting for my own preservation; but I would have if it had been necessary. After all, this was no righteous venture-it was a question of survival. The Old Man's screams drowned in the gushing flood of his shredded body. The Woman's tears of sympathetic agony poured forth in convulsive sobs. I felt nothing but pangs of hunger and thirst. I almost recall the thought of attempting to retrieve the remains of the Old Man's vanquished flesh: And I most certainly remember that I made mental note that the raft was one-third lighter. We poisoned ourselves with the consumption of our own urine, and I honestly don't know what kept us alive for the next few days. For me, delirium prevailed; I felt as if I were floating in some strange limbo and my thoughts wandered constantly in uncharted places. By day the raft seemed like the center of a furnace burning on a bed of toxic temptation-by night, with the moonglow twinkling on the sea like stars, it seemed like a dying planet floundering in the infinite realm of the universe. Hallucination brought images of the earth as an aimless atom in a piece of driftwood. And once I imagined myself as Prometheus, bound with brass fetters to a wooden replica of Caucasus. There was even an instant when I found silence deafening. The Woman's constant harping about the "Rescue Ship" and the intricate details of her descriptions of it became more and more intolerable. Cursed, blind, foolish Faith! It angered me beyond the dimensions of fury. I verbally assaulted her on many occasions in those times. I elaborated on her ignorance and condemned her refusal to accept the certainty. She returned my belittle• ment with a face of serenity. Her eyes shone with calm and her manner was positive-she was so sure that "Ship" would arrive, so adamant that its existence was fact. Fiction! Her nonsense strained me to the limits! There is one conflict I have not been able to resolve; I've never understood how she managed to look so lovely, so vibrant, when the reflection that gazed back at me from the ocean's mirror was that of a withered old man. I admit to raping her, but I still insist that the momentary lapse from our suffering warranted the act. She would not have yielded so easily if she had truly not desired the refreshment of escape. The picture of this bizarre episode remains quite vivid. I still see our two starving, naked bodies locked in fornication. Even then she mumbled in eerie passion of the "Savior Ship." She swore she saw it near; but I did not turn back to look. I struck her with a hate unprecedented, for her ravings had muted my solace. Blood flowed from a gash in her face as I "resumed" with a kiss. Her red liquid spilled into
76 my mouth. Suddenly, my fists began pummelling her as if by themselves• they seemed like detached bludgeons hammering on a mound of mortal clay. It took only a moment and she was dead. I stepped back and as I stood gazing at the silent, bloody mask that was once her face, incomprehensibly, I saw no regret. It was then that the saliva suddenly dampened the inside walls of my cheeks; I moved closer and stooped to examine the prey-its body glistened with crimson nourishment. I decided to start with a leg, while it was still fresh and warm. And I was right all along, you know-no "Savior Ship" has ever come.
I drift aimlessly as a dead star through a lifeless sky, in a world that lies between. Euthanasia .... This vacuum of blankness corrals me, binds my now infinite potential in a live burial of nothingness. I yearn to breathe free, to reach out and kiss the blossom of eternity, but there is only blackness and the hollow echo of my own thoughts ricocheting off the blinding barriers that constrict, surround, imprison me in this wretched, barren cave .... The splendid futurity of sequential existence-the network of tomorrow, rips at my soul with a force beyond comprehension, but I am unable to take the glorious step-prevented by a medley of mortal gods-a potpourri of pompous dupes, consumed with their self-idolized stature-monopolized with blind respect and false adulation from a selection of ruminants. It is my progeny who worship these ignorant plebeians of the past. Their feeble goal is to pull me back, but I cannot return; I do not wish to return. Thus, I remain locked, trapped, a shuddering non-entity in this ghostly, treeless forest, where reaching backward is an unwanted impossibility, and projecting forward is the ultimate, yet unattainable desire. The web of fog is thick that encircles me-blocks me with a power invincible, invulnerable, impenetrable. I reside lost, alone in this dense, misty cage of agony-crusted in fusty silence. If only their minds could understand! If only I were able to tell them! Their persistence is not only a foolish waste, but the cause of the unbearable pain I now suffer. How dare they judge what must be done! How dare they make that decision! They have not the right to tamper with the Natural Progression! They have not the right to enslave me in this frigid, naked dungeon of fatality! They have not the right to restrain me from the ecstasy of the bountiful future that is within my grasp! Oh, creatures of before, do not let my begging plea fall upon deaf ears! The cord that is knotted to my ankle falls far below and is attached to a mechanistic fungicide created by my last race-my now adversaries. This device is the poisonous pump, the tube-inducted generator, the insane, taunting toy which chains me to this breathless glob of skin and bones• shackles me to my useless, vacated form. It is propelled by electrical energy.
77 The system is crude, yet effective. My crippled, immobilized hands cannot stop it. They lie as frozen claws at the sides of a human icicle .... My historic, stalactite form of cartilage and flesh is helpless. The machine is viewed by those who designed it as a savior, and by myself, as a pointless, pain-inflicting procrastination-a whirring blob of plastic, steel and circuits which barri• cades me from my beloved and rightful ascension. Strange are perspectives. Stranger that I now find myself laughing at the simplicity of this predicament. Pull one rubber plug and I am free! Incredible! Ludicrous! Ironic! One hand, pulling one plug-such a simple operation! Tears again! Oh, please! Is there no one who can understand? Is there not one single human being with the eyes to see and the mind to comprehend my suffering? Is there no one with the vision to terminate this madness? I scream it! Turn off this tormenting machine-this imbecilic creation of the infantile plane! Release me! In-Medias is the torture of tortures!
Astral-projection, I think-or perhaps, a crystal reverie .... We swim in the pool of marine predators, but their teeth only toy with our bodies and tickle them. It is as if the liquid has remodeled us into an amphibious kindred. We hunt, eat only that which is without roots-dust, brightly colored rocks, and clay. These edibles are not so easy to find, yet we know there is enough for all things, for always. The road we travel is endless, and there never ceases to be something new to behold and become part of for a time. The world is a constant changing of realities which offer their own forms of satisfaction. But, for the core, it constantly goes back to us. We experience, we touch, we feel, we see, as one, but we are two. It is a bi-existence. We kiss with the sensations of the past and the future within us. We make love in slow-motion, elongating the moment-allowing youth's erotic flame to blend splendidly with the maturity of love's entire conception. Our insides swell with richness as we float in the domain of this exponential amour. My thoughts ask: "Will it always be thus?" And she replies with no sounds, and the energy of the stars: "It was never meant to change for the worse. Look around you and know that if we ever alter our love, it can only be for the better. In this place, feelings can never decline; they can only enhance." I smile without movement of my lips: "I find that difficult to believe possible," I say.
78 "Well, that won't change things," she replies, "but, I'm sorry that belief isn't easy for you." A fleeting sadness in her eyes suddenly penetrates my senses, but I cannot translate its cause or meaning. However, before I can question her with my thoughts, she is answering me. "I wasn't aware that you are lingering," she says. "Lingering?" I ask. "Never mind," she replies, with a mysterious intonation in her soundless response. "It is nothing," she adds, "and besides, there is not one thing to be done about it." Dreadful pain suddenly pierces me-her pain. I am bewildered and grief-stricken that she should hurt like this. And I don't know why it is so. Tears splash from my soul as I run after her through an open field of wild• flowers. The petals are pastel in color and the stems and leaves are the deepest green I have ever beheld. I cannot catch her but I continue the chase until she disappears in the distance. I stop, and as I gaze around me, I see only a meadow of weeds. I savour the fragments of my brief encounter, and then like the life of a candle, they flicker with light and melt away. Swiftly, all is black .... The reflection of myself in my mother's eyes tells me that I am alive. I can faintly hear someone whispering of her overwhelming sadness, but I can't remember who she is. The doctor smiles proudly, and says I shall soon be healed. I cannot comprehend why there is so much emptiness within me; however, I try to be joyous for I know I should be happy. But all I can hear is the sound of broken glass echoing a Requiem for a soul-mate that had no choice, but to slip away.
I awaken in an alley, and find myself lying amongst trash cans, garbage and debris. The rum-soaked tramp sitting nearby, turns from his bottle and swears I'm lucky to be alive; he says, from his vantage point, it appeared quite certain that I wouldn't survive whatever it was I had injected into my vein. I am too tired to dispute-too weary to make the negative case for my luck that I feel is more than justified. I struggle to my feet, ignoring my newfound friend the bum, and his invitation for a sip. I stagger out of the alley without looking back and merge with the night fog. And the only thing in my consciousness is the fact that my syringe is empty-and I know this junkie must somehow make another connection• and soon.... For here, I find it impossible to survive, if I'm "clean."
79 Alain Bosquet
Je fuyais le reel; j'avais le souffle court: il m'a rejoint. Nous sommes devenus de hons amis. En son honneur, je recite: "La pomme est une pomme, et la sardine un poisson bref, et la femme une fleur qui chante." Content de moi, il jette un de contre le mur pour me mettre a l'epreuve. Je reprends: "Le caillou est un caillou, l'azur une partie du ciel, et l'horloge une montre immense." S'il en etait capable, il me dirait: "11 ne faut pas exagerer." Done, je recite: "La pomme est un oiseau, et la sardine une pierre precieuse." Je crains que le reel soit mecontent de moi.
Alain Bosquet
En Nouvelle Guinee lorsqu'un homme estimable vient a mourir, on lui coupe la tete, on la vide avec soin et on la pose sur la plus haute branche d'un arbre venere: ainsi le mort a-t-il pour charge de veiller sur le peuple. Mais quand meurt un autre homme, on se venge aussitot de ce crane perjure que l'on jette aux requins. Le nouveau mort,
80 Translator George Bogin Alain Bosquet
I was running away from reality, becoming short of breath. It caught up with me. We became good friends. In its honor I recite: "Apple is an apple, sardine a brief fish, and woman a flower that sings." Pleased with me it throws a die against the wall to test me. I resume: "Pebble is a pebble, azure a part of the sky, and clock an immense watch." If it were capable it would say to me, "There's no reason to exaggerate." So I recite: "Apple is a bird and sardine a precious stone." I'm afraid that reality may be dissatisfied with me.
Alain Bosquet
In New Guinea when a respected man is about to die they cut off his head, empty it with care and place it on the highest branch of a venerated tree; thus the dead man has the responsibility of watching over the people. But when another man dies they revenge themselves at once upon this faithless skull and throw it to the sharks. The new dead man,
81 molaires et canines, prend sa place sur l'arbre. Amis lointains, quand a son tour il vous aura trahis, prenez done ma machoire, mon front et mes orbites: il en emane, vous verrez, des chants si beaux que plus personne jamais ne mourra chez vous.
Alain Bosquet
Mon ami le plus cher, l'iguane du Jardin des Plantes, est decede. J'ai pris l'avion de Mexico. Je connais un endroit ou les gamins vous font cadeau de pamplemousses plus gros qu'eux; Jes vautours s'y ennuient; les feuilles de sisal aiguisent leurs couteaux. C'est la qu'au coeur de Yucatan j'ai trouve sa famille. Ils etaient bien vingt-cinq. rouge, turquoise, emeraude, acajou, sous l'oeil des dieux qui sans cesse ricanent. J'ai fait part de la triste nouvelle et presente ma sympathie la plus emue. Me voici de retour. Le Vivarium s'est procure un autre iguane. Il n'est ni vert ni bleu, peut-etre un peu narquois. Je l'epie, je !'observe. Jene suis pas certain qu'il veuille de moi pour ami.
82 molars and canines, takes his place on the tree. Distant friends, when your turn comes to be betrayed take my jawbone, my frontal bone and my eye sockets: Such beautiful songs will emanate from them (you'll see) that no one will ever die again in your home.
Alain Bosquet
My dearest friend, the iguana at the Botanical Gardens, passed away. I flew to Mexico. I know a place where the kids give you grapefruits bigger than themselves; vultures are bored there; sisal leaves sharpen their knives. There, in the heart of the Yucatan, I found his family. There were twenty-five of them, red, turquoise, emerald, mahogany, under the eyes of the gods who snigger ceaselessly. I announced the sad news and offered my deepest sympathy. Now I'm back. The Vivarium has procured another iguana. He is neither green nor blue and is perhaps a little sardonic. I spy on him, I observe him. I'm not sure that he wants me for a friend.
83 Alain Bosquet
J'ai toujours eu deux cranes: un grand pour la tristesse, un tout petit pour la gaite, J'ai eu de meme deux memoires: qu'il est beau l'autrefois dans la premiere; dans la seconde on trouve si peu de chose, un vieil oubli. J'ai toujours eu deux coeurs: l'un pour aimer, et l'autre pour l'indifference, Quant a mes vies, je ne les compte plus: souvent je crois en avoir des centaines peuplees de fleurs, d'oiseaux, de monument plus doux que des levres de femmes, et quelquefois j'ai peur de n'en avoir aucune. J'ai toujours eu deux ombres: l'une pour m'applaudir, l'autre pour me gronder. Logique avec moi-meme, bien sur j'aurai deux morts: l'une pour rire, et l'autre malgre tout pour m'amuser.
84 Alain Bosquet
I have always had two skulls• a big one for sadness, · a very little one for cheerfulness. I have even had two memories; how lovely it was long ago in the first; in the second I find so little, an old forgetfulness. I have always had two hearts• one for loving and the other for indifference. As for my lives, I no longer count them; often I think I've had a hundred peopled with flowers, with birds, with monuments sweeter than the lips of women, and sometimes I'm afraid of having none. I have always had two shadows- one to applaud me, the other to scold me. Logically with me, of course, I'll have two deaths- one just to pretend and the other in spite of everything to amuse myself.
85 Saul Yurkievich PARA QUE LEERLO
Quien esta penetrado por su obra presiente desde las primeras palabras la proximidad, sabe el momento en que la pendiente del poema lo llevara fatalmente a esos colores-celeste palido, violeta, azufre, rosa pulmonar, ceniciento, blanco lechoso-o a ciertos objetos=sabanas, unas, frascos, oceanos, gomas, parpados, paredes, escobas, espejos, abejas, cuerpos-; sabe que resonaran gritos ahuecados, rasguidos, estruendosas risotadas, que habra tormentas de arena, goteras incesantes, resquebrajaduras y congela• mientos y que finalmente todo se arnasijara o que flotaran en el vacio cabe• lleras, cabezas cornudas, ojos hinchados, papeles, trapos, resaca. En el uni• verso, en ese viscoso revoltijo de despedazamientos nada sera lo que fue y nada habra reconocible. Lo se: desde el comienzo se hacia donde me arrastra,
Saul Yurkievich LA PUERTA lejos algo relumbra debe ser la salida unapuerta oscura el picaporte destella lo empuno gira da a una sala con sillas alrededor y otra puerta sin picaporte cerrada empujo nada aguardo nada
86 Translator Cola Franzen Saul Yurkievich WHY BOTHER TO READ IT
From the very first words anyone caught up by his work has a fore• boding for what comes next, knows the moment when the gradient of the poem will carry him inevitably to these colors-pale blue, violet, sulphur, lung rose, ash, milky white-or to certain objects-sheets, fingernails, flasks, oceans, erasers, eyelids, walls, brooms, mirrors, bees, bodies-thunderous guffaws, that there will be sandstorms, incessant drips, cracks and freezes and that finally everything will be one big hodgepodge or there will go floating off into emptiness heads of hair, horned heads, bulging eyes, papers, rags, bills. In the universe, in this viscous jumble of fragmented bits nothing will be what it was and nothing will be recognizable. I know: from the be• ginning I have known where I am being dragged.
Saul Yurkievich THE DOOR far off something sparkles it should be the exit a dark door the doorknob glitters I grasp it it turns opens into a room with chairs all around and another door without doorknob closed I push nothing wait nothing
87 ocupo la silla contigua silencio la quietud aletarga me levanto pruebo cede paso la galeria de nuevo alla lejos el brillo una puerta el picaporte destella Saul Yurkievich RONDA bebo un cafe en un bar con marrnoles verdeados la patrona monta fiera guardia detras de la caja muchachosjuegan a la guerra electr6nica bebo un cafe en el estaflo de un bar con espejos me miro mirar la taza esta manchada prehistorias los parroquianos vociferan
I bebo un cafe en un bar con vitrales empaiiados las botellas guardan el elixir del olvido una vieja me habla de su perro comparten sus vidas
88 sit down in the nearest chair silence the quietness makes me drowsy I get up try it cedes I go through the corridor again there far off the gleam and another door without doorknob Saul Yurkievich ROUNDS
I drink a cup of coffee at a bar of greenish marble the landlady mounts fierce guard behind the cash register boys play at electronic war
I drink a cup of coffee at the counter of a bar with mirrors I look at myself looking the cup is stained prehistories the regulars are boisterous
I drink a cup of coffee in a bar with grimy windows the bottles hold the elixir of forgetting an old woman tells me about her dog they share their lives
89 bebo un cafe en un bar galante la concurrencia rumorea damas en traje sastre cruzan sus bellas piernas todos me desdefian bebo un cafe en un bar que se esfuma mueve los labios el amigo muerto algo resuena me observa mira c6mo me he ajado
90 I drink a cup of coffee in a fashionable bar the clientele gossip women in tailored suits cross their beautiful legs they all scorn me
I drink a cup of coffee in a bar that vanishes the lips of my dead friend are moving something resounds observes me sees how I have withered
91 Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
Nas praias que sao o rosto branco das amadas mortas Deixarei que o teu nome se perca repetido
Mas esper-me: Pois por mais longos que sejam os caminhos Eu regresso.
Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
Luminosos os dias abolidos Quando o meio-dia iriclinava a sombra das colunas E o azul do ceu tomava em si a terra Apaziguada no murrnurio Das folhagens e dos deuses.
Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
Dai-me o Sol das aguas azuis e das esferas Quando o mundo esta cheio de novas esculturas E as ondas inclinando o colo marram Como unic6rnios brancos.
Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
Poema de geometria e de silencio Angulos agudos e lisos Entre duas linhas vive o branco
92 Translator Lisa Sapinkopf Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
On the beaches, which are the white faces of dead fleets, I will let your name be lost, again and again
But wait for me: For as long as the paths may be I will return.
Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
Luminous the abolished days When noon bent the columns' shadows And the blue of the sky was drinking up the earth Grown calm in the murmur Of the foliage and the gods.
Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
Give me the sun of the blue waters, of the spheres When the world is filled with new sculptures And the waves, necks arched, toss their heads Like white unicorns.
Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
Poem of geometry and silence Angles sharp and smooth Between two lines the whiteness lives
93 Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
Mandei para o largo o barco atras do vento Sem saber se era eu o que partia. Humilhei-me e exaltei-me contra o vento Mas nao houve terror nem sofrimento Que a praia nao trouxesse Morto o vento.
Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
E s6 entao sai das minhas trevas: Abri as minhas maos como folhagens, Intacta a luz brotava das paisagens, Mas na docura fantastica das coisas As minhas maos queimavam-me e morriam.
Dia perfeito, inteiro e luminoso. Dia presente como a morte, luz Trespassando os meus olhos de cegueira. Cada vos, cada gesto, cada imagem Na exaltacao do sol se consumiam.
Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
Os nossos dedos abriram maos fechadas Cheias de perfume Partimos a aventura atraves de vozes e de gestos Pressentimos paixoes como paisagens E cada corpo era um caminho Mas um se ergueu tomando tudo E escorreram asas dos seus braces.
Florestas, pantanos e rios. Viaiamos im6veis debrucados, Enquanto o ceu brilhava nas janelas.
E a cidade partiu como um navio Atraves da noite.
94 Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
I sent the boat out after the wind Not knowing if it was I that was leaving. I humbled, exalted myself against the wind Yet felt no terror nor suffering That the wind would bring me back Dead, to the beach.
Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
Only then did I leave my darkness: I opened my hands like leaves, The light, intact, was budding in the countryside, But in the fantastic sweetness of things My hands were burning me and dying.
Perfect day, luminous and whole. Day present like death, light That trespassed on my eyes with its blindness. Each voice, each gesture, each image Was consumed in the sun's exaltation.
Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen
Our fingers opened closed hands Filled with perfume We set out for adventure across gestures and voices We foresaw passions like landscapes And each body was a path But one rose up and took everything in And wings emerged from its arms.
Forests, swamps, rivers. We traveled immobile, bent down, While the sun shone in the windows.
And the city set out like a boat Across the night.
95 Pina Pipino WEAK THREADS
They were getting ready to go to a dinner party. She made sure all the seams in her body were tightly sewn, and put body lotion over them, specially over the ones which showed signs of weakening. Fortunately, her hair covered the seams on her scalp; there the tension in the threads was more obvious. She wondered if she was gaining weight and worried, because when she was first put together, she had been told that the threads in her seams were guaranteed for a life-time performance, providing she kept her weight under control. It wouldn't be advisable for me to gain weight, she thought; I truly want my seams to last. He was also worried, because although the initial price he had paid for her was ludicrous, lately, her maintenance had become more and more ex• pensive. He had begun to wonder if she was worth it; after all, his friends didn't spend as much as he did in their wives' seams. Yet, their threads were holding much better. Why.... In some cases, he could hardly see any seams at all. And some of them looked so perfect, it was as if they were made of one single piece. But there was not much time to wonder about it now; dinner was waiting and this was an important occasion. He wanted to check for himself if every• thing was in order with her. He didn't want any unpleasant surprises. "Let me see," he said. "Your hair looks fine. Seems to me it was silkier not long ago, but, oh well, it will do for now. You must be using the wrong kind of body lotion! I can see some dry spots and wrinkles. And heavens! Your arms are sagging like empty sacks!" There's nothing I can do about that, she thought with anguish. She remembered that only the seams were guaranteed, not the skin they held together. "Do you have to wear those ugly eye-glasses?" he asked, annoyed. She promptly ran to the optometrist, acquired contact lenses, and ran back, happy she had pleased him and yet could still see. "You're getting fat," he said. "Look at your belly. It looks as if you were pregnant!" He touched her stomach and his expression showed disappoint• ment. She ran to Jack LaLane and exercised; she went on a diet and lost a lot of pounds; she quickly returned proud and thin. "Now, that's better!" he pronounced, and stared at the seams in her hands .... She quickly put on her gloves. But the inspection was not finished. "Are you wearing the diamond ring I gave you? Hmm, there's a spot on your pink shoes. Let me brush your coat, it has a hair clinging to it." He went on, and on....
96 After he made sure that all her visible seams looked soft and that her performance would not embarrass him, he checked his own seams and attire once more. And off they went. During their drive, they re-examined the list of things she could say, and the ones she must not mention. The people who would be offended by this, and the ones who would be offended by that. Finally, they arrived at the party. Everybody was very pleased to see them; their seams were hardly noticeable. Just when everything was going well and she had managed to have some fun, she saw with horror that blood was trickling from the seams in her hands. She felt warm blood dripping from her eyes and from her mouth. One by one her seams were splitting open. Starting with the ones in her scalp, they spread wide, letting out a torrent of putrid brittle bones, fetid coagulated blood, and decayed organs, which spread over the white tablecloth, running among the forks, knives, bread plates and the wine glasses. Everyone jumped out of their chairs. The women were squealing. The men were outraged. And the music kept playing loudly, a popular tune. Pale, he checked to see if his seams were intact. He was relieved. The shock had actually caused all his seams to tighten. He was now perfect; his skin didn't show any seams at all. He was welcomed into the disgusted group; they consoled him for his disgrace. Soon, they all went away together.
When her disintegrated body was lying on the floor, the rats came in from the streets and began to eat the spread, and the scattered pieces of flesh. A spectator, who at a distance had observed everything, noticed the woman's heart. It was still beating. She took the heart in her hands, inspected it, and saw that it was not decayed. Even though she didn't know what use it might have, she thought this heart might be worth keeping. And she saved it.
97 Translator Frank Hugus Frank Jaeger ONE SUMMER
As a boy I spent a number of summers with my aunt and uncle in Gurre. They owned a small country estate up there with grounds that grew more boundless and trackless the farther you went from the tiled, two-storied main building. I had complete freedom there, I who was kept on a rather tight rein at my parents' home in the city. They knew in Gurre that my conscience had developed so satisfactorily that I wouldn't dare think of doing anything really wrong. I wasn't known as an ordinarily well-behaved boy in a sailor suit and white knee stockings, but people thought that my imagination was underdeveloped and that this fact, in conjunction with my modest physical strength, would prevent me from acting boldly, rashly, or merely somewhat impudently. I spent many hours with my nose in a book. I took long walks across the fields and in the woods. But most of all I used large portions of my day observing a farmhand who was working on a farm down by Nyrup Hegn. He was tall and broad, with muscles like twisted rope wrapped around his skeleton. And I would sit somewhere nearby watching him; I saw him lift heavy objects and handle big horses as if they were mice. When he wanted them to move backwards, he didn't just pull on the lines like other men and call, "back, back," he touched them and moved them; it was a feast for the eyes. Perhaps he had noticed my admiration, even though I had never dared to address a word to him; perhaps my enthusiasm for his immense surplus of strength flashed from my eyes like fire and storm; perhaps he made a special effort when, out of the corner of his eye, he spied my frail form on a fence or in a tree or behind a bush. He was strong. And I looked at him as one looks at an impressive edifice, a circus lady who has been sawed in half, a thunderstorm. With shivering pleasure. It sends chills down your spine; and if you are fortunate enough to be able to repeat your shivering delight without restraint, it is the last thing you think about before you go to sleep at night and the first thing that wells up in you when you wake up in the morning. I had my own room in the attic, a big, spacious room with an enormous bed, a gable window which was always open and had mosquito netting across it, and a couple of small rooms under the eaves which were so low that even I couldn't stand straight up in them. They were used as junk rooms. Every once in a while I would go lie down in them. They had small windows, and it got oppressively hot when I closed the narrow jib door behind me. I looked down into the farmyard, out onto the road, across a wonderfully big
98 field down to the lake and the ruin. It was dusty inside; it smelled of old things, of dry rot, wood dust, and oblivion. I stood it as long as I could, and then crawled back. And perhaps I went to bed; I remember how my ex• cursions under the eaves often ended in bed. My aunt and uncle didn't force me to go to bed at one fixed, health-promoting time in the evening. They didn't chase me out into the raw and naked morning either and, for that matter, didn't reproach me if I felt the need to sleep in the middle of the day. I had complete freedom and only had to be on time for meals if I wanted anything to eat. But in the late summer the garden was full of berries and fruit anyway. Before I went to sleep at night, I ate a little bit from a small plate which my aunt had brought up for me. A piece of sweet dessert, some cookies, a little jam or chocolate. Then I read and slept. If it was still light outside, I lay there and listened to the swallows dart around the roof. If it had gotten dark-as dark as it could get at that time of the year-I filled the darkness with everything I admired. Out in the darkness I saw my strong farmhand from Nyrup Hegn or the silhouettes of my other heroes and heroines. That summer I was reading Johnson's The Thieves, the only one of his novels which is set in the area of his childhood, the English county of Kent. Its people-and I refuse to use the word "characters" on purpose-its people are baronets and priests and their ladies and servants, and all are the happy possessors of one defect or another, be it mental or physical. If they don't have a vice-and to my satisfaction all vices were represented-they have a physical defect. 'One is merely bald, another has a harelip, a third is hunch• backed, others nurse loathsome, incurable sores, and others conceal places on their bodies with incipient leprosy or have secret openings into the depths of their bodies. This repulsive world lived within me, not merely in my dreams, but in the bright light of everyday life. In order to make my strong farmhand complete, I forced myself to ignore the fact that he had two arms, and well developed ones at that. I refused to see his left arm; I would not recognize its existence; I let it wither away. When he lifted a sack and threw it onto the wagon, when he moved a stack of firewood, when he worked with horses or lugged milk cans, all of these things he executed with his right hand alone, a terrible, inhumanly strong right hand. And the rest of my daily acquaintances were outfitted with defects in the same manner. I let my aunt be blind and secretly admired the certainty with which she steered her way through the house and yard without once running into anything. I looked on devotedly as she sure-handedly poured beer into our glasses and cut slices of bread. And I was filled with tenderness for her, a tenderness which manifested itself in practical helpfulness and attentiveness, and one which surprised her at first but which afterwards was a source of great pleasure to her. She probably missed it during later summer vacations when I read books other than The Thieves. And my kind uncle-who for a businessman had shown the unusual shrewdness and
99 strength of character to retire from a large and solid firm in the capital at such an early age that he could certainly count on spending almost half of his life on this good earth in a reasonably comfortable state of freedom from care-my kind uncle's nose I let slowly and thoroughly be eaten away by an unknown tropical disease. Every morning I noted with satisfaction how a few more millimeters of his beak had been gnawed away by the disease's terrible microbes during the course of the night. But while my aunt's blindness gave rise to an intense feeling of kindness on my part, my uncle's nose disease filled me with a well-founded feeling of discomfort and scorn. The fact that he could sit there so calmly with his unappetizing nose was ridiculous. But the fact that he could get up every morning and tidy him• self up and put on his fine, white clothes and brush his hair and comb his beard when his entire appearance was ruined to such a great extent by his horrifying nose, that was more than ridiculous; it revealed him in my eyes as a cynic who didn't care about showing any consideration to his surround• ings. I went so far one day as to draw my aunt aside and ask her whether it really wasn't about time for my uncle to eat his meals in the kitchen. And when she asked in great amazement why my poor uncle shouldn't eat at the table, I began cruelly, "But his nose," but kept the rest to myself because I remembered my aunt's blindness. My God, she really had no idea how things were with my uncle. And I wasn't going to be guilty of destroying this remarkably harmonious marriage; so it was better just to keep my malaise to myself and try not to pay attention to the steadily spreading sores which were festering more and more. In any case I must have stared at him too persistently and too often, because once he looked at me sternly-as sternly as he could find it in his heart to do-and pointed out to me that it was improper for me to stare at his nose like that all the time. It made him nervous, he said wearily. And I begged his forgiveness at once with a con• spiratorial gleam in my eyes. Into this paradise of mine a young girl stepped one afternoon. My aunt had prepared me for the fact that I would be getting company; a niece who lived far away would be spending a couple of weeks of her vacation with my aunt and uncle in Gurre. "So you'll have a little playmate," they said, "a lovely little girl. You really do spend so much time alone." And the girl arrived. I returned home one day from a routine outing down to my strong, one-armed farmhand and found my aunt and uncle in the garden room together with the girl. She was a year older than I. I said hello without enthusiasm. She was lovely. She was perfectly lovely. In a blue dress and with suntanned arms that had little blond hairs on them. She smiled at me while I contemplated her coldly.That evening, when the girl had gone to bed, my aunt praised her to the skies, her looks in particular, which made me smile ruefully. My uncle nodded and rubbed what remained of his nose. I kept my peace and went upstairs early.
100 We were together every day, the girl and I; her name was Sille. We took walks in the woods and fields. She was fun and modest and wonderful, but I couldn't reconcile myself to her perfection. And I attempted stubbornly and with the best of intentions to attach a good defect to her, but everything glanced off. Sille couldn't wear a hump, I ascertained after several vain attempts; her back remained unalterably lissom and girlish. Her right foot refused to be a clubfoot; her left declined to let itself be removed or to wither away. These feet which confused me by their slenderness and shapeliness, because she enjoyed taking off her shoes and socks and walking barefoot at the side of the road. Her exquisite arms stayed where the creator had put them. Her blond hair did not fall before the cruel shears of my imagination. Her eyes looked straight at me, radiant and seeing. Her pretty nose would not let itself be gnawed away like my uncle's. She was lovely and unbearable. One rainy evening I took some time off from her and ran around outside alone for a few hours, as I had done so often before she arrived. I let myself be afraid of sudden noises, I permitted my heart to pound violently from fear when a horse stuck its unexpected head out over a hedge and snorted after me. I enjoyed a couple of good, wet evening hours of fear and delight. I did not reach home until after the entire household had gone to bed. I stole up to my room, crept into bed, lit the lamp and lay down to read while I sampled the chocolate which my aunt had brought up. Then the door opened, and Sille came in. At first I was very frightened until I saw who it was. Then I merely marvelled over the fact that she could be even more wonderful and perfect than in the light of day with a dress on. She had a short, white shawl over herself; her long, suntanned legs could be seen in all their charm; her lovely feet walked across my rug; her eyes had filled with tears. She whispered apologetically that she had been so frightened for me. Had I hurt myself? Had anything happened to me? And I managed to squeeze my voice up through a lump in my throat and said no, I'd only been outside for a while; I did that quite frequently. She stood in the soft lamplight, and something occurred to me in my mild intoxication and irritation. I cleared my brain and my voice and offered her a piece of chocolate, which she accepted, with a smile. Then I asked her matter-of-factly whether she didn't have a disease someplace or other on her body. She wrinkled her brow and shook her head, but I continued deliberately and insatiably. "A little in• flammation, a boil or something." And she stood a bit looking at me and looking through me and then let her white shawl fall to the floor and stood there with her lovely shoulders and developing breasts and her tummy as smooth as silk. Then she turned and walked out of my door like a princess. And I was on the verge of fainting, was able to put out the rattling lamp and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. I didn't know then that what had happened before my eyes and deep within my heart and slightly beneath the surface of my skin was the de-
101 cisive upheaval, which Luther called "that terrible thing," and Gabriel Barez in his apologia "that joyous thing." Its display of power is as great and superfluous as that of a capsizing iceberg. I do not think-and this truthful and pitiless picture of my immaturity at that time should support me in this supposition-that life's greatest miracle could already have happened to me then. The only thing that happened was that my enthusiasm• and that is not too strong a word to use-turned from male symbols and objects to female ones. I didn't know it that evening or night, but I learned it the next day. I had not previously felt the urge to show off my favorite farmhand, I suppose because I had an idea that Sille, by sharing him, would make my possession of him and my knowledge of him more complex and thereby Jess valuable for me. But as soon as I saw her the next morning, I knew that I was indebted to her, that I was so fervently her debtor that my whole body grew heavy from the fact, and I lost my appetite. And to lighten my burden a bit, I decided to let her take part in my joy over the farmhand. Right after breakfast I invited her for a walk in Nyrup Hegn and led her on a roundabout way out to the edge of the woods right by a fallow field where I knew that the farmhand was busy those days digging deep trenches, drainage ditches I think, even though the season was wrong. We had advanced so far into summer; it was during those rare days which precede the first harvest; the farmers have not yet begun serious preparation for their big task. It is as if they are getting charged up for what lies ahead. But this farmhand had gone out to dig ditches. He didn't need any additional charging; every minute of every day he was a dynamo, purely and simply a dynamo. I found him, and Sille and I sat down and watched him. I wanted to fill myself with his strength, but he disappointed me; I had to force out my old interest and admiration, and that was tiring. After the preceding day's downpour, the weather had become hot. He stood naked from the waist up; you could see his powerful muscles move when he threw earth up from the trench. Every once in a while I looked out of the corner of my eye at Sille to see whether she was enjoying him as intensely as I usually did. But each time, I met her eyes; she wasn't looking at the farmhand at all, she was looking at me. It made my whole body limp and listless. And it made me furious the way you can easily get very angry when you've discovered some• thing strange and beautiful in a book, in a landscape or in a person and you show it to somebody, but your gift is not received with anything other than indifference. But I let her be as unreceptive as she wanted to be, and in defiance I tried to enjoy the sight of his gigantic, working body. I imagined that it delighted me whenever he got an especially huge shovelful of dirt over the edge of the trench or whenever he wrestled a large rock up onto the field. I imagined that it delighted me, as it delights a music Jover to hear a difficult passage performed with superior skill and sublime intuition.
102 And during one of these passages, I stepped forward-to give added ex• pression to my false enthusiasm-from the edge of the woods. He turned his face toward us at the same time and caught sight of us. Or rather of Sille; he had seen me so often before without being distracted, of course. But now he stopped his work, jumped up out of the trench and came over to us without first taking the trouble of putting on his shirt. That offended me. I felt, more than saw, how Sille recoiled as if she wanted to run. But the fact that I stood my ground also chained her to the spot. And to my horror the joy that I had expected to feel in getting as close to my hero as I now was did not materialize. He came over to us and he spoke to us. Neither of us answered him with a single word. He devoured Sille, not only, as one so inadequately phrases it, with his eyes, but with his entire being. Perspiration was steaming from him. He asked us who we were, and Sille answered for both of us. I could hear that her answer was like a whip, which was meant to tame the animal there in front of us. He looked around and asked her for a kiss. I grew troubled and excited; his voice resounded in my auditory canals. Had I heard right? Yes, I had, a kiss. And I heard myself say that he certainly could, of course, he could kiss her. She sat crouching beside me. It was like blowing a fly into a spider's web. Then he put his arm around her. I saw that it was his left arm. I shouted, "No, not that one, not the left one; you don't even have it." And taken by surprise he pulled it back un• certainly. Sille jumped up and was gone into the hedge. When you frighten a kingfisher, and it takes flight, all you see is its blue-striped back. That's the way it was with her. The farmhand's face contorted in rage; he gave me a hard blow to the face with his left hand, turned around and left. I stood there completely bewildered, then I ran after the girl. My head rumbled and roared after the blow, but I told myself tearfully that it was impossible. The blow couldn't exist; his left hand didn't exist. Then I cried again some more because the inside of my head hurt. The girl had reached home long before me. She was up in her room packing. She was going home. I went up to my own room and laid my swollen head on my pillow. I slept away the entire day and the whole night. I didn't wake up until so late that when I came downstairs she had gone to the station. My uncle said that he was to say good-bye to me from her. "I think she liked you," he said, laughing good-naturedly. I looked with contempt at his gnawed-off nose and went down to the lake.
103 Contributors
EUGENIO DE ANDRADE is Portugal's most popular and best-known living poet. He has published twenty-three books of poetry, has translated Yannis Ritsos and Garcia Lorca into Portuguese, and has, himself, been translated into over twenty foreign languages. SOPHIA DE MELLO BREYNER ANDRESEN is a contemporary Portuguese poet. WOLFGANG BACHLER was born in Augsburg, Germany, in 1925. He studied German literature, Romance languages, art history and theatre. He became a member of the Group 47. From 1956to 1966he lived in France and then returned to Munich. He acted in some of Fassbinder's and Schlondorff's movies and has also been active as a literary translator. Among his best known books of poems are: Die Zisterne (1950);L ichtwechsel. Neue Gedichte (1955 and 1960); Ticren aus Rauch (1963); and Ausbrechen. Gedichte aus 30 Jahren (1976). The poems in this issue are from his latest book,Nachtleben (1982). ANGELA BALL currently teaches in the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. She is Assistant Editor of Mississippi Review, and has published widely in national and international journals. LINDA BERMAN is a poet, writer and teacher who lives in Dallas with her two children. The selections of her work included here are from a work-in• progress called Interview. GEORGE BOGIN'S translation, Selected Poems and Reflections on the Art of Poetry by Jules Supervielle, is forthcoming from Sun Press, New York. His collection of poetry, In a Surf of Strangers, was published in 1981 by the University Presses of Florida. His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Paris Review, The Nation, Ploughshares, Chicago Revieu·, Massachusetts Review, and many other magazines. He lives in Great Neck, New York. ALAIN BOSQUET was born in Russia in 1919, spent his early years in Bulgaria and Belgium, and has lived in Paris since 1951. He has had a long and distinguished career as poet, novelist, translator, editor, and teacher. His latest collection of poetry is Un jour o.pre« la vie, Gallimard 1984. His most important previous collections, all published by Gallimard, are Poemes, un (1945-1967), Poemes, deux (1970-1974), Sonnets pour une Jin de siecle. and Le livre du doute et de la grace. His noetry has been trans• lated into many languages and he himself is the translator of 35 jeunes poetes omericains, Gallimard 1960. PAM CARMELL received an MFA in Translation from the University of Arkansas. Her translations of work by Delikis Cuza Male and Raquel Jodorowsky have appeared in Nimrod, Intro 14, The International Poetry Review, and Alcatraz 3. LEOPOLDO CHARIARSE was born in Lima around 1940. He is a poet who has been living in Germany since 1960. R.M. CHUCKOVICH has had several short stories published as well as a screen play produced. He has just completed the first draft of his first novel. JORGE DEBRA VO is a Costa Rican poet whose work is well known in his own country but hardly read at all in the United States, largely because he has been untranslated. DIANA DERHOV ANESSIAN has had work in American Poetry Review, American Scholar, Paris Review and Nation, among others. She has pub• lished several translations, and is translator and co-editor of Sacred Wrath: selected poems ofTekeyan, Ashod Press, and The Arc, Poems-of Shen-Mah, St. Vartan Press. GLEN DOWNIE has had poetry and prose published in numerous Canadian journals, including Canadian Literature, Waves, and Descant. ANGHEL DUMBRAVEANU is a Romanian lyric poet associated with an important group of writers who reestablished the contact of Romanian poetry with its pre-World War II roots and opened Romanian poetic tradi• tion to a belated influence of Western European modernism. GEVORG EMIN is considered the leading contemporary Armenian poet. He was born in 1919 and lives in Yerevan. He studied at the Gorky Institute of Literature in Moscow. Boris Pasternak translated various of his works into Russian. COLA FRANZEN translates the work of Marjorie Agosin and Juan Cameron, both Chileans, in addition to the work of Saul Yurkievich. Her translations of Yurkievich appear in current issues of 0.ARS and Spectacular Diseases. Others are forthcoming in The Chicago Review and Sulfur, among others. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ROBERT GREGORY has recent work appearing in Modern Poetry Studies, Aura, Manhattan Poetry and Gargoyle. IRINA GRIGORESCU is a translator, poet and novelist as well as a member of the faculty of the University of Bucharest. JAIME fJAGEL, born in Santiago, Chile in 1933, is a professor of literature and assistant director of the Instituto de Letras at the U niversidad Cat6lica. He is also director of the journal Taller de Letras, published by that university. FRANK HUGUS was born in 1941 in Pennsylvania. He earned a Ph.D. in Germanic languages and literatures from the University of Chicago. Since 1970 he has taught both Scandinavian and German at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. He has published articles on medieval Icelandic sagas as well as on modern Danish literature. MARIA JACKETT! is a young poet who has recent work appearing in Poetry Review, Voices International and Muse's Brew. RODICA S. JACKSON is a poet who lives in Tempe, Arizona. She studied Germanic languages at the University of Bucharest and comparative literature at Arizona State University. This is her first publication. FRANK JAEGER was born in Denmark in 1926, and has earned his living as an author and translator. His artistic debut came with the collection Dydige Digte (Virtuous Poems) in 1948, which was quickly followed by the poems of Morgenens Trompet (The Trumpet of Morning) in 1949 and De 5 Aarstider (The 5 Seasons) in 1950. He has continued to write poetry throughout his career but has devoted an increasing amount of his energies to prose fiction and essays. MIRIAM JOEL is a translator who has published widely in literary journals, and is now living in California. She published a book on West African tradi• tions in Latin America and is at present working on a book of Quechua Indian poetry. MICHAEL JOHNSON is a translator whose work has appeared in numerous journals. He is a Professor of English at Kansas University. HINA FAISAL IMAM is Pakistan's only woman poet writing in English. She has been published widely in journals, and her first book of illustrated poems, Wet Sun, was published last year. ALEXIS LEVITIN is a translator whose translations have appeared in numerous national and international journals. He is currently teaching at SUNY Plattsburgh in the Department of English. His translations of Eugenio de Andrade will be published in book form by Perivale Press in 1985. HUGO LINDO is El Salvador's best-known living poet. He has received inter• national recognition for his poetry, short stories, and novels. ELIZABETH GAMBLE MILLER is Associate Professor of Spanish Lan• guage and Literature at Southern Methodist University. She is the American translator of Hugo Lindo's poetry. Her translations of his work have appeared in The New Orleans Review and other journals. PINA PIPINO is an American citizen native of Argentina, currently pur• suing a Master of Arts Program in Fine Arts at Montclair College. She has works appearing in El Diario: La Prensa. "Weak Threads" is her first publication in English. MARTIN ROBBINS is a poet living in Roxbury, Massachusetts. LISA SAPINKOPF is a student at the University of Ohio in the Translation Program. She currently works as translator and editor for the university's international writing program. ADAM J. SORKIN worked on his translations of Anghel Dumbraveanu while an American Fulbright lecturer at the University of Bucharest in 1980-81. JANE SPENCER graduated from the University of Texas at Dallas in 1980 with a B.A. in Theatre. She has since moved to Manhattan to pursue a career in acting and writing. She has published poems in several literary journals. SUSANA THENON is an Argentinian poet whose work has appeared in literary journals here and abroad. She has published three books of poetry and is currently preparing artistic photographs for her collection distancias. RENATA TREITEL is a teacher, poet, and translator educated in Italy, Argentina and the United States. She has published poetry and trans• lations in many journals and has been the Romance Language editor of Nimrod for more than ten years. SAUL YURKIEVICH, Argentinian poet, literary critic, and professor of Latin American literature at the University of Paris, has published eight books of poems and seven books of literary criticism. A new collection of poems is nearing completion. He has been awarded a 1984 Pushcart Prize for his poem Tenebrae published in English translation in O.ARS/3. He is an editor of the literary journal Change.