The Solutrian myrtle leaf
Defined in flint your whole belief.
Zophar, Bildad, did you expect
The burning tiger’s architect,
Quaternion, stone-hearted men,
Never to wake his own again?
Entuthon Benython break out,
Light from the quick of carbon spout.
Let beryl Golgonooza burn,
Loom and furnace and man return
Within my bowels’ very life:
Jerusalem shall be his wife.
From selfish eyes that would not see,
O feet nailed downward to the tree
That smelled the waters of the world,
Atoma mundi have I hurled,
That jot against the tittle split,
Till proton anti-proton hit
And knock the iron world away.
Did not my Herakleitos say
Under the noon Cycladic sun
All is other and all is one?
Now finished time becomes a place.
Time, time was psyche unto space,
And space was time within my hand.
Move near. Like Zacharias stand
In ash of gold and mist of spice
As when he, tending sacrifice,
Upon that snail and tendril plinth
Burned amber gum of terebinth.
Now shall I, that your light abide,
Take mortality from your side.
And blare the trombones on a ground
Of diligent audacious sound
Both Persian dance and B flat prime
Presbyterian four four time,
Viola, harp, and Shaker hymn,
Te Deum from the Cherubim.
Gabriel’s shofar thunders out,
Dominions, thrones, and powers shout
Hosanna! Adoremus O
The silver C sharp trumpets blow.
POETRY IN TRANSLATION
Sappho
1
God’s stunning daughter deathless Aphródita,
A whittled perplexity your bright abstruse chair,
Don’t blunt my stubborn eye with breathlessness, lady,
To tame my heart.
But come down to me, as you came before,
For it ever I cried, and you heard and came,
Come now, of all times, leaving
Your father’s golden house
In that chariot pulled by sparrows reined and bitted,
Swift in their flying, a quick blur aquiver,
Beautiful, high. They drew you across steep air
Down to the black earth;
Fast they came, and you behind them, O
Hilarious heart, your face all laughter,
Asking, What troubles you this time, why again
Do you call me down?
Asking, In your wild heart, who now
Must you have? Who is she that persuasion
Fetch her, enlist her, and put her into bounden love?
Sappho, who does you wrong?
If she balks, I promise, soon she’ll chase,
If she’s turned from gifts, now she’ll give them.
And if she does not love you, she will love,
Helpless, she will love.
Come, then, loose me from cruelties.
Give my tethered heart its full desire.
Fulfill, and, come, lock your shield with mine
Throughout the siege.
15
Desire has shaken my mind
As wind in the mountain forests
Roars through trees.
20
He seems to be a god, that man
Facing you, who leans to be close,
Smiles, and, alert and glad, listens
To your mellow voice
And quickens in love at your laughter
That stings my breasts, jolts my heart
If I dare the shock of a glance.
I cannot speak,
My tongue sticks to my dry mouth,
Thin fire spreads beneath my skin,
My eyes cannot see and my aching ears
Roar in their labyrinths.
Chill sweat slides down my body,
I shake, I turn greener than grass.
I am neither living nor dead and cry
From the narrow between.
But endure, even this grief of love.
65
i
Percussion, salt and honey,
A quivering in the thighs;
He shakes me all over again,
Eros who cannot be thrown,
Who stalks on all fours
Like a beast.
ii
Eros makes me shiver again
Eros gall and honey,
Snake-sly, invincible.
78
Before my lying heart could speak for life
I longed for death. Misery the size of terror
Was in her tears when we unclasped forever.
Sappho! she cried.
That I could stay! Joy goes with you, I said,
Remember what has been, the rose-and-violet crowns
I wove into your hair when we stood so close together,
Heart against heart,
The garlands I plaited of flower with flower
Around your graceful neck, the oils of spices
As precious as for a queen [
[].
Deep in the cusions on that softest bed
Where, free in desire [
[] tender lovers
[].
None [] holy, and no [
There was, that we were apart from [
No sacred grove [
[].
80
I have neither the honey nor the bee.
102
i
Raise the ridge-pole higher, higher,
O marriage night O binding god
Carpenters! Make the roof-tree taller,
O marriage night O binding god
He comes, the husband, and walks like Ares,
O marriage night O binding god
He’s taller by far than a tall man,
O marriage night O binding god.
ii
Pitch the roof-beam higher, builders.
O hymn Hymen, high men, O!
Joiners! The roof is far too low.
O hymn Hymen high, men O!
He stands, the husband, as long as Ares,
O hymn high Hymen, men O!
And he can’t get it through the door.
108
You make me hot.
Anakreon
6
O deerslayer Artemis,
God’s bright-haired daughter,
Packmaster of animals
In the mountain forests,
I ask at your knees
That you come where
The Lethaios tumbles
To keep guard over us
In our city and be
Shepherdess as well
Of settled civil folk.
14
O lord playing with Eros the wrecker,
With blue-eyed mountain girls,
With Aphrodite robed in red
Along the highest ridges of the hills,
To you I go down on my knees.
Come, I beg you, kindly to me,
And make Kleoboulos willing, O Deunysos,
When I tell him that I love him.
17
Boy, because you do not know
You hold the reins that guide my heart,
My look so searching glances off
Your eyes as pretty as a girl’s.
33
I climb the white cliff again
To throw myself into the grey sea,
Drunk with love again.
54
Bring water and bring wine
And garlands of honeysuckle
And yourself alone, my bonny boy.
I must wrestle Ero
s down.
62
Boys will love me still
When I am gone.
In their ears my tongue
Will yet trill on.
My words, my music
Will survive
And be loved as I would be
Were I alive.
119
When the winejar goes around,
Silence the man whose gossip’s war,
Grief of fighting, ugly death.
With wine we want the talk to be
Of Aphrodite’s glancing eye
And supple dancers to the lyre.
Archilochos
2
My ash spear is my barley bread,
My ash spear is my Ismarian wine.
I lean on my spear and drink.
3
Let him go ahead.
Ares is a democrat.
There are no privileged people
On a battlefield.
53
Fields fattened
By corpses.
55
Until,
And,
Mountain tops.
81
Her hair was as simple
As flax, and I,
I am heavy with infamy.
89
Plums.
92
There is no land like this,
So longable for, so pretty,
So enjoyable,
Here on the banks of the Siris.
136
The good-natured need no cutlery
In their vocabulary.
191
Kindly pass the cup down the deck
And keep it coming from the barrel,
Good red wine, and don’t stir up the dregs,
And don’t think why we shouldn’t be,
More than any other, drunk on guard duty.
214
Tree t[runk]
]and comp[anion
]jawbone[
281
Birdnests
In myrtle.
282
I despise to see a tall,
Swaggering general
With a beard of curls.
Give me an officer
Who’s short and bow legged,
With his feet planted well apart.
Duino Elegy I
Rainer Maria Rilke
What eye among the rungs and hordes
of angelkind would turn and find
my long call through the storm of time?
And if one took me in his arms
I would be nothing in that light.
Sweet of beauty gathering in
is fear’s beginning: we love it
because our longing stands uncrushed
in the strength of its harmony.
An angel is a fearful thing.
I keep my loud call in my throat
and stop the deep dark of my grief.
Is there any to turn to then?
Neither angel nor brother, no,
and all the animals are wise
to our bewildered stumbling
in the dark of our signs and myths.
What do we have? The hillslope tree,
our walk in the afternoon,
our customary faithful
things remaining year after year.
And the night, there’s always the night
with its wind from across the stars
which we can close our eyes and drink.
She’s always there, the night, kind witch,
always, if your heart can love her.
Is she kinder then to couples?
They are hidden from each other.
Have you not learned that secret yet?
Unclasp your empty arms and throw
that nothing into breathless space
to quicken a bird’s pitch and dip
if your riddance traverse its flight.
Aprils needed you down the years,
and stars waited till you found them,
forgotten days have sought you out.
As you passed an open shutter
a fiddle under ravishment
was surrendering to delight.
Such was our animal faith.
Was your response in proportion?
Were you not worried with waiting,
thinking it prelude, ruining it
with expectations and designs?
Wanting rather someone to love?
What room had you for a lover
with so many overnight thoughts
arriving and leaving in droves?
Yearn, calling to sight those lovers
whose desire filled all their being,
whose power to feel strengthens us,
whom we would almost choose to be,
whose longing was denied ripeness.
Hymn their praise justly you cannot.
The Hero persists. The background
for his splendor was promise
that he would be seen there again.
Lovers, however, are returned
to nature, exiles home at last,
for good, so exquisite a force
released but once to lovers’ eyes
Have you taken in the meaning
of Gaspana Stampa enough
to understand that you must long,
like her, for a love that, lost, lasts?
Should not our oldest pains have borne
their harvest by this time? When will
we begin at last in our love
vibrant without our beloved,
be as an arrow to the string,
which breathless in its singing jump
is more than arrow, string, or bow?
To stand still is be nowhere.
Voices. Listen, heart, like a saint
raised into the air by voices,
still kneeling, voices lifting him,
so native to his ears the words.
We cannot stand to hear God speak.
Our ears can bear the aftersound,
the enriched silence full of Him.
A hush, as from those who died young.
Have churches in Rome and Naples
not told you all about themselves?
Inscriptions have made you read them.
Remember the lettered stone in
Santa Maria Formosa.
What do they want of me? Must I
then take the wronged look from my eyes
that obstructs their pure onwardness?
It will feel strange not to be here,
to leave our familiar world,
to leave the roses, their meaning,
things in which we’d placed so much hope,
strange no longer to be cared for
by the solicitude we’d known,
to abandon our given name
like an old toy. It will be strange
never again to feel a wish,
see all arduous knots drop loose.
All will seem random when we die,
hunting hard and gathering up
until we find some lasting sign.
The living draw their lines too sharp.
Angels, we hear, sometimes don’t know
the living from the dead. The wind
across eternity confounds
both realms and chimes in the voices
of each.
The early slain, what more
have they to do with us after
awhile? They have been weaned from things
earthly as from their mother’s breast.
But we need them, we for whom grief
is the spring of our best efforts,
we need the great secret to live.
Without the dead would we exist?
Is it an empty myth that once
in lamenting Linos with cries
which were the seed of all music,
weeping for a godlike young man,
we first filled death’s anguished hollow
&nbs
p; with the ringing sounds that help us,
that we must hear to understand?
LOGIA IN TRANSLATION
Herakleitos
1The Logos is eternal
but men have not heard it
and men have heard it and not understood.
Through the Logos all things are understood
yet men do not understand
as you shall see when you put acts and words to the test
I am going to propose:
One must talk about everything according to its nature,
how it comes to be and how it grows.
Men have talked about the world without paying attention
to the world or to their own minds,
as if they were asleep or absent-minded.
2Let us therefore notice that understanding is common to all men. Understanding is common to all, yet each man acts as if his intelligence were private and all his own.
3Men who wish to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.
4Men dig up and search through much earth to find gold.
5Our understanding of the greatest matters will never be complete.
6Knowledge is not intelligence.
7I have heard many men talk, but none who realized that understanding is distinct from all other knowledge.
8I have looked diligently at my own mind.
9It is natural for man to know his own mind and to be sane.
10Sanity is the highest excellence. The skillful mind speaks the truth, knowing how everything is separate in its own being.
11I honor what can be seen, what can be heard, what can be learned.
12Eyes are better informers than ears.
13Eyes and ears are poor informers to the barbarian mind.
14One ought not to talk or act as if he were asleep.
15We share a world when we are awake; each sleeper is in a world of his own.
16Awake, we see a dying world; asleep, dreams.
17Nature loves to hide. [Becoming is a secret process].
18The Lord who prophesies at Delphoi neither speaks clearly nor hides his meaning completely; he gives one symbols instead.
19In searching out the truth be ready for the unexpected, for it is difficult to find and puzzling when you find it.
20Everything flows; nothing remains. [Everything moves; nothing is still. Everything passes away; nothing lasts.]
21One cannot step twice into the same river, for the water into which you first stepped has flowed on.
22Cold things become hot; hot things, cold. Wet things, dry; dry things, wet.
23Change alone is unchanging.
24History is a child building a sand-castle by the sea, and that child is the whole majesty of man’s power in the world.
25War is the father of us all and our king. War discloses who is godlike and who is but a man, who is a slave and who is freeman.
26It must be seen clearly that war is the natural state of man. Justice is contention. Through contention all things come to be.