founded in 1912 by harriet monroe March 2012 translation FOUNDED IN 1912 BY HARRIET MONROE volume cxcix t number 6 CONTENTS March 2012 POEMS gottfried benn 487 Asters Express Train Caryatid Evenings of Certain Lives Divergences Left the House Fragments 1953 Translated by Michael Hofmann geoffrey brock 502 Alteration Finds paolo febbraro 506 Fable and Moral Translated by Geo≠rey Brock edith södergran 508 A Life Now it is fall Strange Sea Translated by Averill Curdy eugene dubnov 512 Lips Translated by Anne Stevenson and Eugene Dubnov john matthias 514 After Quevedo After “Las Formas Puras,” After Lorca alain borer 519 Sleep Log Translated by Mark Irwin and Alain Borer a.e. housman 524 To my Comrade, Moses J. Jackson, Sco≠er at this Scholarship Translated by A.E. Stallings marina tsvetaeva 528 Bound for Hell Translated by Stephen Edgar roberto sosa 530 The Poor Translated by Spencer Reece paul claudel 532 The Day of Gifts Translated by Jonathan Monroe Geltner jorge luis borges 535 To the One Who is Reading Me Music Box Translated by Tony Barnstone antonio porchia 538 From “Voices” Translated by Gonzalo Melchor said 542 Psalms Translated by Mark S. Burrows MARINA TSV ETAEVA : EIG HT POEMS marina tsvetaeva 552 From “Poems for Moscow” “Where does such tenderness come from?” From “Poems for Blok” “I am happy living simply” From “An Attempt at Jealousy” “A kiss on the forehead” From “The Desk” From “Poems to Czechoslovakia” Translated by Ilya Kaminsky and Jean Valentine THE POETRY OF KABALLAH peter cole 573 Introduction anonymous 576 Each Day From Those Whose Beauty the Depths Are Lit yehudah halevi 578 Where Will I Find You anonymous 580 Release, Please ya’akov hakohen 581 Prayers for the Protection and Opening of the Heart yosef gikatilla 582 The Nut Garden anonymous 583 Incantation Against Lilith yitzhak luria 584 Hymn for the Third Meal anonymous 586 Peace Be Upon You contributors 590 back page 605 Editor christian wiman Senior Editor don share Associate Editor fred sasaki Managing Editor valerie jean johnson Editorial Assistant lindsay garbutt Reader christina pugh Art Direction winterhouse studio cover art by michael bierut “100 Dot Pegasus,” 2011 POETRYMAGAZINE.ORG a publication of the POETRY FOUNDATION printed by cadmus professional communications, us Poetry t March 2012 t Volume 199 t Number 6 Poetry (issn: 0032-2032) is published monthly, except bimonthly July / August, by the Poetry Foundation. 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POEMS gottfried benn Asters Asters — sweltering days old adjuration / curse, the gods hold the balance for an uncertain hour. Once more the golden flocks of heaven, the light, the trim — what is the ancient process hatching under its dying wings? Once more the yearned-for, the intoxication, the rose of you — summer leaned in the doorway watching the swallows — one more presentiment where certainty is not hard to come by: wing tips brush the face of the waters, swallows sip speed and night. GOTTFRIED BENN 487 Express Train Brown. Brandy-brown. Leaf-brown. Russet. Malayan yellow. Express train Berlin-Trelleborg and the Baltic resorts. Flesh that went naked. Tanned unto the mouth by the sea. Deeply ripened for Grecian joys. How far along the summer, in sickle-submissiveness! Penultimate day of the ninth month! Parched with stubble and the last corn-shocks. Unfurlings, blood, fatigue, deranged by dahlia-nearness. Man-brown jumps on woman-brown. A woman is something for a night. And if you enjoyed it, then the next one too! O! And then the return to one’s own care. The not-speaking! The urges! A woman is something with a smell. Ine≠able! To die for! Mignonette. Shepherd, sea, and South. On every declivity a bliss. Woman-brown drapes itself on man-brown: Hold me! I’m falling! My neck is so weary. Oh, the sweet last fevered scent from the gardens. 488 POETRY Caryatid Renege on the rock! Smash the oppressor cave! Sashay out onto the floor! Scorn the cornices — see, from the beard of drunk Silenus from the unique uproar of his blood the wine dribble into his genitals! Spit on the obsession with pillars: ancient rheumatic hands quake toward gray skies. Bring down the temple by the yearning of your knees twitching with dance. Spill, spread, unpetal, bleed your soft flowers through great wounds. Dove-hauled Venus girds her loins with roses — see the summer’s last pu≠ of blue drift on seas of asters to distant pine-brown coasts; see this final hour of our mendacious southern happiness held aloft. GOTTFRIED BENN 489 Evenings of Certain Lives i You don’t need always to be scrubbing the tiles, Hendrickje, my eye drinks itself, drinks itself to death — but other drink is in short supply — the little Buddha there, Chinese grove god in exchange for a ladleful of Hulstkamp, please! Never painted anything in frost-white or ice-skater blue or that Irish green in which the purple shimmers through — always my own monotone, my compulsion to shadows — not pleasant to pursue that path so clearly. Greatness — where? I pick up the slate-pencil and certain things appear on paper or canvas or whatever the heck else — result: Buddha bronze hocked for booze — but I draw the line at homage under ornamental plants, banquet of the painters’ guild — something for the boardroom! ... Creaking, little sheep squeaking, chromotypes Flemish, Rubensish — for the grandchildren (same idiots!) Ah — Hulstkamp, 490 POETRY hits the spot, midpoint of colors, my shadow brown, stubble aura around heart and eye — GOTTFRIED BENN 491 ii The blocked chimney smokes — the Swan of Avon blows his nose — the tree stumps are wet, clammy night, emptiness mingled with draft — enough characters, the world is overpopulated as it is, plentiful peach-fall, four rosebuds per annum — asperged, set to tread the boards by this hand, grown wrinkled and with sluggish veins! All the Juliets and Ophelias, wreathed, silvered, sometimes murderous — all the soft mouths, the sighs I extracted from them — the original actresses long since turned to smoke, rust, leeched dry, rats’ pudding — Ariel too, away with the elements. The age takes o≠ its frockcoat. These lousy skulls of lords, their trains of thought that I pushed into extremes — my lords makers of history all of them crowned and sceptered illiterates, great powers of the cosmos — yes, like so many bats or kites! 492 POETRY Sir Goon wrote to me lately: “the rest is silence” — I think that’s one of mine, could only be mine, Dante dead — lacuna of centuries to my logomachic quotes — what if they didn’t exist, the booty never brought to light, the booths, the sca≠olds, the cymbals never clashed — gaps? Gap teeth maybe, but the great monkey jaws would grind on emptiness, mingled with draft — the tree stumps are wet and the butler snores in porter dreams. GOTTFRIED BENN 493 Divergences One says: please no inner life, manners by all means, but nothing a≠ective, that’s no compensation for the insu≠erable di∞culties of outward-directed expression — those cerebralized city-Styxes when my little prince pokes his chubby little legs through the bars of his cot it melts my heart, it was like that with Otto Ernst, and it’s no di≠erent now the contraries are not easy to reconcile but when you survey the provinces the inner life has it by a neck. 494 POETRY Left the House i Left the house shattered, it hurt so bad, so many years as a man, compromise, in spite of partial success in intellectual tussle he was never anyone of Olympian allure. He walked slowly through the dreamscape of the late autumn day, barely distinguishable from early spring, with young willows and a patch of waste ground where blue jays screamed. Dreamy exposure to phenomena that to nature in its administration of various cycles — young and old alike — are inseparably part of a single order — : so he drank his gin and accepted a dish of sausage soup, free on Thursdays with a beverage and so found the Olympian balance of sorrow and pleasure.