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The sun sets in the cold without friends
Without reproaches after all it has done for us
It goes down believing in nothing
When it is gone I hear the stream running after it
It has brought its fllute it is a long way.
(W.S. Merwin - New York, 30 September 1927)
"I was lucky to have a Bible with me.
When the space aliens abducted me...".
America, I shouted at the radio,
Even at 2 A.M. you are a loony bin!
No, I take it back!
You are a stone angel in the cemetery
Listening to the geese in the sky
Your eyes blinded by the snow.
(Charles Simic, Belgrade, 9 May 1938)
Ich glaub nicht an den Himmel,
Wovon das Pfäfflein spricht;
Ich glaub nur an dein Auge,
Das ist mein Himmelslicht.
Ich glaub nicht an den Herrgott,
Wovon das Pfäfflein spricht;
Ich glaub nur an dein Herze,
'nen andern Gott hab ich nicht.
Ich glaub nicht an den Bösen,
An Höll und Höllenschmerz;
Ich glaub nur an dein Auge,
Und an dein böses Herz.
(Heinrich Heine, Düsseldorf, 13 December 1797 - Paris, 17th February 1856)
I don't believe in Heaven,
of which the little priest speaks;
I only believe in your eyes,
they are my heavenly light.
I don't believe in the Lord God,
of whom the little priest speaks;
I only believe in your heart,
I have no other god.
I don't believe in the Evil One,
in Hell and the torments of Hell;
I only believe in your eyes,
and in your wicked heart.
The Pont Neuf is where the fair is. Women's make-up, tomatoes, radishes, peonies, everything is in red, except for eggs and cheeses. Acrobats are flying on trapezes and for a moment they hide the sun.
(Peinture.
C'est sur le Pont Neuf que se tient la foire. Fard des femmes, tomates, radis, pivoines, tout est en rouge, sauf des oeufs, des fromages. Sur des trapèzes volent les acrobates qui cachent un instant le soleil.)
Max Jacob, Quimper, 12 July 1876 - 5 March 1944
The pennycandystore beyond the El
is where I first
fell in love
with unreality
Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom
of that september afternoon
A cat upon the counter moved among
the licorice sticks
and tootsie rolls
and Oh Boy Gum
Outside the leaves were falling as they died
A wind had blown away the sun
A girl ran
in
Her hair was rainy
Her breasts were breathless in the little room
Outside the
leaves were falling
and they cried
Too soon! too soon!
(Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Yonkers, New York, 24 March 1919)
Two Rivulets side by side,
Two blended, parallel, strolling tides,
Companions, travelers, gossiping as they journey.
For the Eternal Ocean bound,
These ripples, passing surges, streams of Death and Life,
Object and Subject hurrying, whirling by,
The Real and Ideal,
Alternate ebb and flow the Days and Nights,
(Strands of a Trio twining, Present, Future, Past.)
In You, whoe’er you are, my book perusing,
In I myself—in all the World—these ripples flow,
All, all, toward the mystic Ocean tending.
(O yearnful waves! the kisses of your lips!
Your breast so broad, with open arms, O firm, expanded shore!)
(Walt Whitman, West Hills, New York 31 May 1819 - Camden, New Jersey 26 March 1892)
Ordinary people are peculiar too:
Watch the vagrant in their eyes
Who sneaks away while they are talking with you
Into some black wood behind the skull,
Following un-, or other, realities,
Fishing for shadows in a pool.
But sometimes the vagrant comes the other way
Out of their eyes and into yours
Having mistaken you perhaps for yesterday
Or for tomorrow night, a wood in which
He may pick up among the pine-needles and burrs
The lost purse, the dropped stitch.
Vagrancy however is forbidden; ordinary men
Soon come back to normal, look you straight
In the eyes as if to say 'It will not happen again',
Put up a barrage of common sense to baulk
Intimacy but by mistake interpolate
Swear-words like roses in their talk.
(Louis MacNeice, Belfast, 12 September 1907 - 3 September 1963)
The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us,
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.
In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.
To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children;
stay together
learn the flowers
go light
(Gary Snyder, San Francisco, 8 May 1930)
Dieses Baums Blatt, der von Osten
Meinem Garten anvertraut,
Gibt geheimen Sinn zu kosten,
Wie's den Wissenden erbaut.
Ist es Ein lebendig Wesen,
Das sich in sich selbst getrennt?
Sind es zwei, die sich erlesen,
Dass man sie als eines kennt.
Solche Frage zu erwidern,
Fand ich wohl den rechten Sinn.
Fühlst du nicht in meinen Liedern,
Dass ich Eins und doppelt bin.
(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Frankfurt am Main, 28 August 1749 - 22 March 1832)
To my garden here translated,
Foliage of this eastern tree
Nourishes the initiated
With its meaning's mystery.
In its leaf one self divided,
Forked into a shape of strife?
Or have two of them decided
On a symbiotic life ?
This I answer without trouble
And am qualified to know:
I am single, I am double,
And my poems tell you so.
(translated by David Luke, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Selected Poetry)
La surface du pain est merveilleuse d'abord à cause de cette impression quasi panoramique qu'elle donne : comme si l'on avait à sa disposition sous la main les Alpes, le Taurus ou la Cordillère des Andes. Ainsi donc une masse amorphe en train d'éructer fut glissée pour nous dans le four stellaire, où durcissant elle s'est façonnée en vallées, crêtes, ondulations, crevasses… Et tous ces plans dès lors si nettement articulés, ces dalles minces où la lumière avec application couche ses feux, - sans un regard pour la mollesse ignoble sous-jacente. Ce lâche et froid sous-sol que l'on nomme la mie a son tissu pareil à celui des éponges : feuilles ou fleurs y sont comme des sœurs siamoises soudées par tous les coudes à la fois. Lorsque le pain rassit ces fleurs fanent et se rétrécissent : elles se détachent alors les unes des autres, et la masse en devient friable… Mais brisons-la : car le pain doit être dans notre bouche moins objet de respect que de consommation.
(Francis Ponge, Montpellier, 27 March 1899 - 6 August 1988)
The crust on a loaf of French bread is a marvel, first off, because of the almost panoramic impression it gives, as although one had the Alps, the Taurus range, or even the Andean Cordillera right in the palm of the hand.
In that light, an amorphous belching mass was slipped into the stellar oven on our behalf, and there while hardening, it molded into valleys, ridges, foothills, rifts...And from then on, all those clearly articulated planes, all the wafer-thin slabs where light takes care to bank its rays - without a thought for the disgraceful mush beneath the surface.
That cold soggy substratum, the doughy innards, consists of a sponge-like tissue; there flowers, leaves are fused together at every bend like Siamese twins. When the bread grows stale, the flowes wither and shrink, they come apart from one another and the whole thing goes to crumbs.
But let's cut short here. For bread should be mouthed less as an object of respect than of consumption.
(Translated by Lee Fahnestock, The Nature of Things, Red Dust Inc.)
