26. The gap in agape.
27. “Rob sees red when Laura goes blond.”
28. The savage wilderness of the desert.
29. All problems of language are problems of translation.
30. “Running on empty.”
31. Arakawa / Gins: “Forming Blank” (tube / twisted tube / )
31. Fill in the blank: , ,
31. Blanched but not bowed.
31. Waldrop’s paradox: The only one who can judge the translation knows both languages and so can’t judge it.
31. “DU CALME:
Poetry makes nothing happen”
(Rogélio Lopez Cuenca)
31. Poetry fakes nothing actually.
31.
31.
YOU SAY INSIPID, I SAY INSCRIPSIT
for Peter Quartermain
Oh, bring me some mentastrum
Mentastrum for my cold
A long cool draft in the morning
By night the goose is gold
Caipirinha, caipirinha all the day long
Till shadow ensnares the turtledove
& all the children bend their way alone
[“TO EMPTY EARTH FALLING UNWILLED”]
To empty earth falling unwilled,
With sweet uneven gait, she goes,
Just barely keeping ahead
Of a quick girl and young brother.
She is propelled by the stifled freedom
Of inspiring deficiency;
And, perhaps, a lucent conjecture
Delaying in her gait:
About how spring’s weather
Is, for us, mother to the tomb,
And this, eternal, ever begins.
4 May 1937
Osip Mandelstam
translated with Kevin Platt
A LONG TIME ’TIL YESTERDAY
In starts and flits
We dart and flip
With quirks and fits
Mirroring mist
JOINT DARK ENERGY MISSION
plunges & remains submerged
plunges & expires
plunges & resurfaces
plunges & liquidates
plunges & flips
plunges & fails to accelerate
plunges & separates
plunges & returns
plunges & transmogrifies
plunges & tilts
plunges & disintegrates
plunges & beckons
plunges & bellows
plunges & cracks
plunges & disappears
plunges & aborts
plunges & splinters
plunges & disarms probe
plunges & tears
plunges & spins
plunges & sputters
plunges & sinks
plunges & diffuses
plunges & depixilates
plunges & melts
plunges & transmigrates
plunges & powers off
plunges & combusts
plunges & hits bottom
plunges & drifts
plunges & mimes
plunges & militates
plunges & mutates
plunges & remains
plunges & ascends
plunges & despairs
plunges & pirouettes
plunges & regrets
plunges & gets scared
plunges & allures
plunges & detours
plunges & descends
plunges & makes amends
plunges & distorts
plunges & reports
plunges & repeats
plunges & spirals
plunges & sweats
plunges & tires
plunges & warps
plunges & accelerates
plunges & explodes
plunges & demagnetizes
plunges & dematerializes
plunges & weeps
plunges & reperfuses
plunges & turns blue
plunges & detonates
plunges & detoxifies
plunges & festers
plunges & bends
plunges & bifurcates
plunges & bewilders
plunges & sways
plunges & swells
plunges & bursts
plunges & hurts
plunges & deflates
plunges & replicates
plunges & rips
plunges & multiplies
plunges & remains submerged
TO A BEGGING REDHEAD
Palish girl with reddish hair
You whose dress’s holes
Expose poverty
And beauty,
For me, weak poet,
Your meek body, speckled
Is completely sweet
You wear with more charm
Than queens in yarns
Your velvet boots,
Such heavy brutes;
Instead of a shoddy rag’s mess
You’d have a super party dress
With noisy pleats that trail
All the way to your heels
Instead of stocking holes
On your legs: daggers of gold
To blind the suaves
Whose gazes enslave
As a bad knot open lies
Disclosing for our sinning sighs
Two beautiful breasts, radiant
As your eyes;
So that for you to undress
Your arms are pressed to pray
To chase away treacherous play
Of lecher’s fingers
Pearls from the most beautiful waters
Sonnets from the master’s coffers
From your gallants in iron chains
Who make incessant offers
Valets of rime
Dedicating to you their prime
And contemplating your shoes
On a sunset cruise
Many a page caged by chance
Many a haute rage of France
Would vie to deduce
If your price is reduced!
You will count in your bed
More kisses than threads
And will lure under your laws
More than a Louis Quatorze
—In the meantime, you go scrounging
Whatever old debris falls
Outside the door of some
Not so grand Véfour;
You go eyeing, desiring
Some gems worth maybe 29 cents
That still I can’t—forgive me!—
Give you;
Go then, without ornament—
Perfume, pearls, diamond—
Other than your bare nudity,
O, my beauty!
Charles Baudelaire, “À une Mendiante Rousse” (1857)
THE MOMENT IS YOU
You know you’re old when the people who look old to you are younger than you are.
You know you’re old when the crank case works better than the crank.
You know you’re old when the nights are longer and the sleep shorter.
You know you’re old when tarpaulin covers the boiler plate.
You know you’re old when screams are seen but not heard.
You know you’re old when the gray sky holds promise.
You know you’re old when silken erasures haunt the morning light.
You know you’re old when dust settles on dust.
You know you’re old when laughter mocks its own reprise.
You know you’re old when loss precedes purpose.
You know you’re old when lilacs languish in lard.
You know you’re old when maybe means never.
You know you’re old when tessellation embroiders larceny.
You know you’re old when the blue is greener and the dew evaporated.
You know you’re old when the old battles seem inevitable.
You know you’re old when the next step is harsher than the last.
You know you’re
old when the wail of regret cripples the harp of inscrutability.
You know you’re old when the avalanche of inconsequence evaporates in fields of empty promise.
You know you’re old when all that is fated rises up before your eyes like steam from a man hole.
You know you’re old when each hour awaits and days are fugitive.
You know you’re old when manners replace methods.
You know you’re old when dreams remind you of summer reruns.
You know you’re old when time past becomes the days ahead.
You know you’re old when you think that the handprints of Pech-Merle and Lascaux were made by your children.
You know you’re old when you feel you need to highlight your hair with gray so you will look more distinguished.
You know you’re old when you can read these words.
You know you’re old when your knowledge separates itself from your experience.
You know you’re old when the tyranny of the present obscures the masquerade.
You know you’re old when indelible marks melt like icicles.
You know you’re old when everything new seems retrofitted and the established monuments hang like discarded shoes on an electrical wire.
You know you’re old when the moments are precious but the hours leaden.
You know you’re old when innocence is shrouded in experience.
You know you’re old when you can see yourself in the mirror but yourself cannot see you.
You know you’re old when the long-time haunts seemed changed for the worse.
You know you’re old when light is useless against dark and winter refuses to cede its hold.
You know you’re old when time served is a life sentence.
You know you’re old when even the limelight is dim.
You know you’re old when limits define you.
You know you’re old when sentiment is ambient and ambience intoxicates.
You know you’re old when memento eclipses memory.
You know you’re old when the bright light of history blinds you.
You know you’re old when your accomplishments are like morning dew.
You know you’re old when you see sun and thank shadows.
THIS POEM IS IN FINNISH
Translate it by toggling here
While I remain in English, either stranded
Or as one drunken and wheeled to a paddy
Wagon. There was a time I drank blueberry
Wine but that was long ago and my powers
Of recollection are still too strong to forget.
As one overcome by waves of wanton flash-
Backs, acid dreams of moments all too real,
Finds himself mirrored by the mind of a very
Little boy trapped in the body of an old man.
BREATHTAILS
a song cycle in 13 breaths for Anne LeBaron
· · · 1 · · ·
My breath
had already settled
on the windows
of eternity
I go on but
only in flits
and stops
to hear myself
unsettling
as I
settled in
as I go on
pressed against
the windowpane
when even
as I stop
the pane presses
against me.
· · · 2 · · ·
The world passed
or I passed it
as I live and breathe
no one saw it
coming
no one coming saw it
as I breathed I lived
the world passes by
or I passed it by
the world I passed by
passed by me
· · · 3 · · ·
Breath is the door
from life to death
on the border of
hearing I hear not hearing
on the border of
death and life
hear not hearing
· · · 4 · · ·
In breathless anticipation
I catch my breath
then fall under
the spell of
respiratory arrest
trial by
rhythmic disturbance
I lose my breath
in anticipation of
spell of
arrest, trial by
disturbance
catch my breathless
anticipation
under
arrest
· · · 5 · · ·
I am breathing in long
(he trains himself)
or breathing out long
(she discerns)
or breathing in short
(she trains herself)
or breathing out short
(he discerns)
I will breathe inconstantly
(he demurs)
mindless of time and space
(she protests)
I will breathe in without hope
(mindlessly)
I will breathe out in despair
(mindfully)
I will breathe out in despair
(mindfully)
I will breathe in without hope
(mindlessly)
mindless of time and space
(she protests)
I will breathe inconstantly
(he demurs)
or breathing out short
(he discerns)
or breathing in short
(she trains herself)
or breathing out long
(she discerns)
I am breathing in long
(he trains himself)
· · · 6 · · ·
strident, berserk, & artless
putting aside need & care
(with reference to the work)
artless, berserk, and strident
neither here nor there
(with reference to the work)
ardent, alert, and mindful
putting aside grief and tare
(with reference to the work)
· · · 7 · · ·
breath
settled
on
eternity
but
only
stops
only
to
unsettling
as
as
in
pressed
the
the
when
as
the
the
· · · 8 · · ·
eth
ettle
on
etern
ut
nly
ops
o
tling
as
sss
ess
whe
as
th
th
as
whe
ess
sss
as
· · · 9 · · ·
tling
o
ops
nly
tu
etern
ut
gnilt
ettle
eth
hte
ettle
etern
eltte
ut
nly
tu
ops
o
tling
spo
· · · 10 · · ·
shivering in August
shouting at the rain
sleepy at noon
pummeled, frayed
no fences to guide me
neither to the nays
sense don’t hide me
flushed in haze
hopes at half mast
fear rumples waves
catch a glimpse of heat
her
cut it out before it blows away
· · · 11 · · ·
1 is the ameliorative co-opt
2 is get even fast
3 is the liberal’s nostalgia
4 is sufficient unto the day but on sale every night
5 or more has 20 percent service added automatically
6 is the smallest perfect number
7 is the loneliest number & cries itself to sleep each night
8 fibs even when sincerity is easier
9’s the end of the line
10’s too cool to be cool
11 runs like rivers under the night
12 is all over before it started
13 is beloved of all incongruous saints
14 is for flat tax
15 likes compote with apricots
16 is sweetly silent on 17
17 won’t say
18’s twice the sum of its digits
19 is still too young to die
20 is Uncle Max’s favorite
21 is the smallest distance from here to there
· · · 12 · · ·
shivering August
shouting frayed
fences hide
flushed haze
hopes masked
fear’s waves
glimpse heather
blows away
masked fences
frayed glimpse
August hopes
hide haze
flushed fear
masked waves
heather fences
shivering fray
fear’s way
shivering rays
slows flush
low August
asked lush
· · · 13 · · ·
Everything we are
the air, the
sky that falls
into our mouths
the passing of
day into sobs
of night belies
the fact in
the name of
substance, motion, rhythmic
erasure, as if
the food we
eat replaces the
fools we are
the air, the
everything we take
as fake, as
real, gains substance
in its absence
the air the
relocates rhythmic erasure
into mouths passing
falls, fooled as
we are by
the care we
are, or will
become, in the
name of sky
that falls as
if name of
night sobs in
its absence, the
fool belies, or
will become, the
name of, sobs.
THE JEW
for Jerome Rothenberg at 80
The town is in a terrible commotion and the mayor and his counselors are in despair. They ask the Jew for advice. “This commotion is a sign that your town is doing better than the town to the north and the town to the east. Give a banquet to honor those who have done the most to bring about this state of affairs.”
The Jew comes upon a couple in violent argument. “Stop! You are both wrong.”