10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008
jueves, diciembre 25, 2008
lunes, diciembre 08, 2008
Three Poems From Ayn Frances dela Cruz
Highway
At the what I look at
That becomes
The space between strands
Of hair
O the never-ending fungus
Between my toes
Stand clear
I on an island
You on a highway
Roads out
All stars melancholy
As that sweet eyelash
Failing to fall on pupils.
I guess at the distance between stars,
Between Holy Ghosts,
Imagining blackness to be
A blank space
The nothing
That was nothing before
Which is now your heart
Beating
On this far-out space
This interstellar road
That calls all stars
Out with a mere wink,
Forget the bypasses,
I am the hand
That forges fingerprints
That smudges
That never lets go
That never ends
Pyramus and Thisbe
Sweet wall that runs the length of this house, you
Hide my love from me, show me only parts.
One hand at a time, one eye at a time.
How does my kiss translate from my lips to
His, how soft the wall seems sometimes, from wall
To lips, I breathe in moss and moisture in
The space of one breath, one finger at a
Time, I touch those lips, that insipid breath.
One word at a time you whisper a word
One breath at a time you watch me breathing
This wall is your cheek I press mine against
I love the wall with my own fierce loving
Surrender myself to its cold, hard, touch
You, on the other side, look for a door.
Territory
Every inch of skin that belongs to me
Now also belongs to you.
Burning, I, Incense-bearer worship whose God?
With what Heart, with whose hands do we leave nirvana?
How many times must a hand be reborn as air?
Then am I only kissing winds?
Ayn Frances dela Cruz, 23, is a teacher at Mapúa Institute of Technology. This is her third year in the graduate program of Comparative Literature at the University of the Philippines. She attended the 7th University of Santo Tomas National Writers Workshop as a fellow for English poetry. Some of her work has been published in Philippine Graphic, Paliparan, The Argotist Online, The Flask Review, Kritya and previously in Zone.
jueves, noviembre 13, 2008
Three Poems From Enrique Molina
Drifters
We never had house patience a blank slate
But a little farther nearer nothing
The lanterns
Tremble softly
Yellow always broken neck hotels
And your crude china for suicide or melancholy
–Oh the errant squawking from the gambrel!
We slept at random with mountains huts
Below the high destruction of heaven soon to burn with untenable fire
Joined to the passing tree gone farther
Often leaning out of ruined windows
Of balconies in flames or ashes
In those country beds
The rain is equal to kisses you undressed
Turning sweetly in the darkness with the rotation of the earth
Unpunished beauty beauty senseless
But only once once only
Love rolls its fate's thief's dice
If you lose you can savor the pride
Of contemplating your future in a fistful of sand.
So many abandoned faces!
So many doors of travel opening its cry!
So many girls the light drowns
Let loose their hair from the indelible region kissed by the wind
With immobile birds perched forever in their gaze
With the whistle of the train slowly pulling up its iron roots
With the battle of total abandon and total hope
With great markets teeming with numbers insults vegetables and souls
closed above their black sacks of seeds
And the platforms dissolved into an iron foam
–Rambled time and consummation–
Tomb of decrepit days
Pretty as desire in earthly veins
Their fire is nostalgia
The tropics' lattice behind which are spiders tattered curtains and an
old Victrola with the same unending song
But the lovers demand torments and frustrations
More subtle dangers:
Their past is incomprehensible and is lost like the beggar
Left behind at the last stormy stop
Amantes Vagabundos
Nunca tuvimos casa ni paciencia ni olvido
Pero un poco más lejos hacia nada
Están las lámparas de viaje
Temblando suavemente
Los hoteles de garganta amarilla siempre rota
Y sus toscas vajillas para el suicidio o la melancolía
-¡Oh el errante graznido sobre la cumbrera!
Dormíamos al azar con montañas o chozas
Bajo las altas destrucciones del cielo prontas a arder con un fuego inasible
Junto al árbol de paso que se aleja
A menudo asomados a ventanas en ruinas
A balcones en llamas o cenizas
En esos lechos de comarca
La lluvia es igual a los besos te desnudabas
Girando dulcemente en la oscuridad con la rotación de la tierra
Belleza impune belleza insensata
Pero sólo una vez sólo una vez
Juega el amor sus dados de ladrón del destino:
Si pierdes puedes saborear el orgullo
De contemplar tu porvenir en un puñado de arena.
¡Cuántos rostros abandonados!
¡Cuántas puertas de viaje entreabriendo su llanto!
Cuantas mujeres que la luz ahoga
Sueltan sus cabelleras de región indeleble besada por el viento
Con aves inmóviles posadas para siempre en su mirada
Con el silvo de un tren que arranca lentamente sus raíces de hierro
Con la lucha de todo abandono y de toda esperanza
Con los grande mercados donde pululan cifras injurias legumbres y almas
cerradas sobre sus negros sacos de semillas
Y los andenes disueltos en una espuma férrea
—Desvarío tiempo y consumación—
Tumba de viejos días
Bella como el deseo en la venas terrestres
Su fuego es la nostalgia
La celosía del trópico tras la cual hay arañas cortinas en jirones y
una vieja victrola con la misma canción inacabable
Pero los amantes exigen frustraciones tormentos
Peligros más sutiles:
Su pasado es incomprensible y se pierde como el mendigo
Dejado atrás en el paradero borrascoso
Secret Hotels
The nomad shining of the world
like the soul's ember a jewel of time
opens itself in solitude to the passing of certain storming deeds
swept by the current
to the stairs cut by the sea
in certain dens of lechery with shadowed rims
peopled with statues of kings
barely recognizable in the scintillation of the torches whose light
is ivy covering the walls
Oh proud proud heart!
surrender to the phantom stationed in the door
Now that I know you so well
with no other thirst than your memory
melancholy creature touching my soul from afar
invoke in bedrooms the ecstasy and terror
the slow indomitable language of the passion for hell
and the venom of adventure with its crimes
Oh invoke once more the gusts of yesteryear
in these stone rooms entwined around your lover
wrapped together in the canvas of lost days like a corpse in the sea
they rapidly vanish in instantaneous pyres
above beds of mysterious metal that shines in the darkness beneath clawed
candelabras
and the choir of lascivious birds furiously turning in the room sealed
with the iron of other nights
Such solemn dens covered with carnivorous flowers
with marbles rotting in the shadow of opulent women
they balance carvings pompously from the gate to the cupola
like the ship anchored above the abyss
slowly shifting its mirrors to put the girl to sleep
she's nude between hangmen burning the heart of the night
and the warren where rain is crossed by frustration
the comrades with faces rotted by the stink of flowers
accumulated in infinite corridors
the sound of suffocated sighs
kisses woven in saddest mother-of-pearl
the nameless herb in which its guests are sinking
repeating once more in the shadows
the legend of love that never dies
Los Hoteles Secretos
El brillo nómade del mundo
como un ascua en el alma una joya del tiempo
se abre tan sólo al paso de ciertos hechos tormentosos
arrastrados por la corriente
hasta las escaleras cortadas por el mar
en ciertos antros de lujuria de bordes sombríos
poblados por estatuas de reyes
casi irreconocibles entre el reverberar de las antorchas cuya luz
es la hiedra que cubre los muros
¡Oh corazón corazón orgulloso!
entrégate al fantasma apostado en la puerta
Ahora que tan bien te conozco
sin otra sed que tu memoria
criatura melancólica que tocas mi alma de tan lejos
invoca en las alcobas el éxtasis y el terror
el lento idioma indomable de la pasión por el infierno
y el veneno de la aventura con sus crímenes
¡Oh! invoca una vez más el gran soplo de antaño
en estas cámaras de piedra enlazada a tu amante
y ambos envueltos en la lona de los días perdidos como el muerto en el mar
y prontos a deshacerse en las hogueras instantáneas
sobre lechos de un metal misterioso que brilla en las tinieblas bajo la
zarpa de los candelabros
y el coro de pájaros lascivos girando con furia en las habitaciones
selladas por el hierro de otras noches
Pues tales antros solemnes cubiertos de flores carnívoras
con mánnoles que se pudren a la sombra de cabelleras opulentas
se balancean labrados pomposamente desde el portal hasta la cúpula
como la nave anclada sobre el abismo
agitando con lentitud sus espejos para adormecer a la mujer
desnuda entre los verdugos que incineran el corazón de la noche
y el zaguán donde se cruzan la lluvia y la frustración
los camareros con el rostro podrido por el tufo de las flores
acumuladas en los pasillos infinitos
el rumor de los suspiros sofocados
los besos entretejidos en nácar tristísimo
la hierba sin nombre en que se hunden sus huéspedes
repiten una vez más entre la sombra
la leyenda del amor que nunca muere
Poetic Works
The distant braying of the night whose green shell opens like a fish
The infancy of rain with errant greenhouse cheeks pledged by the vapor
of plants
The loosened bonds that leave invisible scars
The music of bodies chosen by love for statues of fire raised on an
infinite plain
Or in the harbor's shadow chased by a silver claw
With nails illuminated like the windows of distant homes in which one sees
a poor girl preparing a meal for the beasts of her dreams
The palmettos' red candelabras where exile is whistling
The needles of live blood the birds to the end the clouds the suits of
sequined sailors
And the heavy footsteps on the strange planet called Earth
Make us taste the days' lichen
The insatiable patience of men
Winter's drowning coughed up on the coast by the wind
Now I see the country of great wings
Limited tear by tear by all that which will never return
Crossed by the migration of souls towing their heavy buckets of blood and
tools of passion and anger
Rooms invaded by giant ferns in which waits the fierce gray air of
forgotten girls
Clutching a smile in their silken paws
But the loner caresses the lady from the distance covered in shining
feathers and shuddering at the horror of nothingness
In the reverberation of singing and streetlights at dawn in the unknown
station tortured by travelers
Streetlights that shine with a venomous charm
Like the serpent of eternal longing whose shadowy cage
Exhales an odor of butterflies decomposing inside a box of mysterious
velvet covered in flames
An attic of ashes
A man advancing with his phantasm against the gust of dreams
Against these whirlwinds of feathers set in certain dead bird's rings
Oh the old days!
The earthy liquor:
A little cold meat on bread after a sip of soup
Spring's mummy in its coffin of gilded ice
A scorpion beside the key of light in a tropical hotel
The wooden chalice and idleness offered to the monkeys by a little
vapor on a tropical stream
In these braids loosened on the breasts of love in the indescribable
birds seen from the height of a caress
Oh the clanging of strange plates on which certain very sad girls ate
pierced by a groan or a novel's breath
And nude still under the navy's curse
Oh the old days!
Passions misery and pride
An antique store looted by the bird of prey and scattered in the sun
And in which only time's pallid money is ever good
With tiny dirty gods rustling beneath your leaves
Until the instant they surprise those sleepless dives where apparitions hide
With nights in whose depths one sees girls in flames
Or the nurse sitting under the light of the banana tree
Covered in plaster and dark magnolias on her high cruel throne that carved
the shattering
But more beautiful than all spring and all the world's victory
The great wing of immortal feathers born in everything destined to die!
Clothes and faces and alleys undressed by a same whisper of desperate
goodbye
The never again amazes you
An embrace a throat a woman's sob that doesn't allude to these buried pyres
Reclaiming the same shadowed jewels for the same splendor:
The great halo of the far
And these enigmas of age dragging the heavy insoluble shards of a false and
mysterious existence
With those whose eternal heartbeat pulses in the darkness
Unattainable as every human happiness
And transformed into the gleaming of things that once brushed against
possessed or dreamed
In flesh and blood
Between the blazing of the earth
Los Trabajos de la Poesía
El lejano bramido de una noche cuya verde coraza se abre como un pescado
La infancia de la lluvia con mejillas de invernáculo errante empeñado por el
vapor de las plantas
Las ligaduras sueltas que dejan cicatrices invisibles
La música de dos cuerpos escogidos por el amor para estatuas del fuego
levantadas en una llanura infinita
O en la sombra de un puerto perseguida por una garra de plata
Con las uñas iluminadas como ventanas de hogares distantes en los que
se ve a una pobre muchacha preparando el alimento para las bestias
del sueño
Los rojos candelabros de palmeras donde silba el exilio
Las agujas de sangre viva los pájaros hacia el fin las nubes los trajes de
lentejuelas marinas
Y el golpe de las pisadas en el extraño planeta llamado Tierra
Hacen el gusto a liquen de los días
La paciencia insaciable de los hombres
La ahogada del invierno arrojada a otra costa por el viento
Ahora veo el país de grandes alas
Limitado lágrima a lágrima por todo aquello que no vuelve jamás
Atravesado por la emigración de las almas arrastrando sus pesados cubos de
sangre y sus utensilios de pasión y de cólera
Habitaciones invadidas por helechos gigantescos en las que acecha la fiera
de aire gris de las mujeres olvidadas
Posando sus zarpas de seda en una sonrisa
Pero el solitario acaricia la cabellera de la distancia cubierta de plumas
centelleantes y estremecida por el horror al vacío
En un reverbero de canciones y faroles en el amanecer de una estación
desconocida torturada por los viajeros
Faroles que brillan con un hechizo venenoso
Como la serpiente de las añoranzas eternas cuyo estuche sombrío
Exhala un olor a mariposas descompuestas dentro de una caja de terciopelo
misterioso envuelta en llamas
Un desván de cenizas
Un hombre avanzando con su fantasma contra la bocanada del sueño
Contra esos torbellinos de plumas engastados en ciertos anillos de pájaro
muerto
¡Oh son los antiguos días!
Los alcoholes terrestres:
Un poco de alimentos fríos en un pan tras un trago de sopa
La momia primaveral en su ataúd de hielo dorado
Un escorpión junto a la llave de la luz en un hotel del trópico
El cáliz de madera y ocio ofrecido a los monos por un pequeño vapor en un
río del trópico
Y esas trenzas abiertas sobre los senos del amor en los parajes indescriptibles
vistos desde lo alto de una caricia
O el tañido de platos extranjeros de los cuales se alimentan algunas mujeres
muy tristes atravesadas por un gemido o un soplo de novela
Y aún desnudas bajo la maldición marina
¡Oh son los antiguos días!
Pasiones miseria y orgullo
Una tienda de antigüedades saqueada por el pájaro de presa y esparcida
al sol
Y en la que sólo vale el oro lívido del tiempo
Con diosecillos tenebrosos crujiendo bajo tus plantas
Hasta el instante de sorprender esos antros de insomnio donde se guardan las apariciones
Con noches en cuyo fondo se ven niñas en llamas
O la enferma sentada bajo la luz del plátano
Cubierta de yeso y de magnolias sombrías sobre su alto trono de tortura que
ha labrado el fracaso
Pero más bella que toda primavera y que toda victoria sobre el mundo
¡La gran ala de plumas inmortales que nace en todo aquello destinado
a la muerte!
Vestidos y rostros y callejuelas anudadas por un mismo suspiro de adiós
desesperado
Para que nunca más te maraville
Un abrazo una garganta o un sollozo de mujer que no aluda a esas hogueras
enterradas
Reclamando las mismas joyas tenebrosas para el mismo esplendor:
La gran aureola de la lejanía
Y esos enigmas de la edad arrastrando pesados trozos insolubles de una
existencia falsa y misteriosa
Con personajes de pulso eterno que laten en la oscuridad
Inalcanzables como toda dicha humana
Y convertidos en el resplandor de las cosas que rozaron poseyeron
o soñaron alguna vez
En carne y hueso
Entre la llamarada de la tierra
Translated by Andrew Haley
Enrique Molina, born in Buenos Aires, November 2, 1910, traveled extensively in Europe and the Caribbean as a merchant marine before his first book of poetry Las Cosas y El Delirio (Things and Delirium) appeared in 1941. The author of nine books of poetry and one novel, Una Sombra Donde Suena Camila O'Gorman (A Shadow Where Camila O'Gorman Dreams), Molina co-founded the surrealist journal A Partir de Cero (Starting From Zero) with poet Aldo Pellegrini in Buenos Aires in 1952. A painter as well as man of letters, he died November 13, 1997 in Buenos Aires.
Enrique Molina, nacido en Buenos Aires el 2 de noviembre de 1910, viajó al Caribe y a Europa como tripulante de barcos mercantiles antes de que su primero libro de poesía Las Cosas y El Delirio fue publicado en 1941. Autor de nueve libros de poesía y la novela Una Sombra Donde Suena Camila O'Gorman, en 1952 Molina fundó junto con el poeta Aldo Pellegrini la revista surrealista A Partir de Cero en Buenos Aires. Pintor y hombre de letras, falleció en Buenos Aires el 13 de noviembre de 1997.
We never had house patience a blank slate
But a little farther nearer nothing
The lanterns
Tremble softly
Yellow always broken neck hotels
And your crude china for suicide or melancholy
–Oh the errant squawking from the gambrel!
We slept at random with mountains huts
Below the high destruction of heaven soon to burn with untenable fire
Joined to the passing tree gone farther
Often leaning out of ruined windows
Of balconies in flames or ashes
In those country beds
The rain is equal to kisses you undressed
Turning sweetly in the darkness with the rotation of the earth
Unpunished beauty beauty senseless
But only once once only
Love rolls its fate's thief's dice
If you lose you can savor the pride
Of contemplating your future in a fistful of sand.
So many abandoned faces!
So many doors of travel opening its cry!
So many girls the light drowns
Let loose their hair from the indelible region kissed by the wind
With immobile birds perched forever in their gaze
With the whistle of the train slowly pulling up its iron roots
With the battle of total abandon and total hope
With great markets teeming with numbers insults vegetables and souls
closed above their black sacks of seeds
And the platforms dissolved into an iron foam
–Rambled time and consummation–
Tomb of decrepit days
Pretty as desire in earthly veins
Their fire is nostalgia
The tropics' lattice behind which are spiders tattered curtains and an
old Victrola with the same unending song
But the lovers demand torments and frustrations
More subtle dangers:
Their past is incomprehensible and is lost like the beggar
Left behind at the last stormy stop
Amantes Vagabundos
Nunca tuvimos casa ni paciencia ni olvido
Pero un poco más lejos hacia nada
Están las lámparas de viaje
Temblando suavemente
Los hoteles de garganta amarilla siempre rota
Y sus toscas vajillas para el suicidio o la melancolía
-¡Oh el errante graznido sobre la cumbrera!
Dormíamos al azar con montañas o chozas
Bajo las altas destrucciones del cielo prontas a arder con un fuego inasible
Junto al árbol de paso que se aleja
A menudo asomados a ventanas en ruinas
A balcones en llamas o cenizas
En esos lechos de comarca
La lluvia es igual a los besos te desnudabas
Girando dulcemente en la oscuridad con la rotación de la tierra
Belleza impune belleza insensata
Pero sólo una vez sólo una vez
Juega el amor sus dados de ladrón del destino:
Si pierdes puedes saborear el orgullo
De contemplar tu porvenir en un puñado de arena.
¡Cuántos rostros abandonados!
¡Cuántas puertas de viaje entreabriendo su llanto!
Cuantas mujeres que la luz ahoga
Sueltan sus cabelleras de región indeleble besada por el viento
Con aves inmóviles posadas para siempre en su mirada
Con el silvo de un tren que arranca lentamente sus raíces de hierro
Con la lucha de todo abandono y de toda esperanza
Con los grande mercados donde pululan cifras injurias legumbres y almas
cerradas sobre sus negros sacos de semillas
Y los andenes disueltos en una espuma férrea
—Desvarío tiempo y consumación—
Tumba de viejos días
Bella como el deseo en la venas terrestres
Su fuego es la nostalgia
La celosía del trópico tras la cual hay arañas cortinas en jirones y
una vieja victrola con la misma canción inacabable
Pero los amantes exigen frustraciones tormentos
Peligros más sutiles:
Su pasado es incomprensible y se pierde como el mendigo
Dejado atrás en el paradero borrascoso
Secret Hotels
The nomad shining of the world
like the soul's ember a jewel of time
opens itself in solitude to the passing of certain storming deeds
swept by the current
to the stairs cut by the sea
in certain dens of lechery with shadowed rims
peopled with statues of kings
barely recognizable in the scintillation of the torches whose light
is ivy covering the walls
Oh proud proud heart!
surrender to the phantom stationed in the door
Now that I know you so well
with no other thirst than your memory
melancholy creature touching my soul from afar
invoke in bedrooms the ecstasy and terror
the slow indomitable language of the passion for hell
and the venom of adventure with its crimes
Oh invoke once more the gusts of yesteryear
in these stone rooms entwined around your lover
wrapped together in the canvas of lost days like a corpse in the sea
they rapidly vanish in instantaneous pyres
above beds of mysterious metal that shines in the darkness beneath clawed
candelabras
and the choir of lascivious birds furiously turning in the room sealed
with the iron of other nights
Such solemn dens covered with carnivorous flowers
with marbles rotting in the shadow of opulent women
they balance carvings pompously from the gate to the cupola
like the ship anchored above the abyss
slowly shifting its mirrors to put the girl to sleep
she's nude between hangmen burning the heart of the night
and the warren where rain is crossed by frustration
the comrades with faces rotted by the stink of flowers
accumulated in infinite corridors
the sound of suffocated sighs
kisses woven in saddest mother-of-pearl
the nameless herb in which its guests are sinking
repeating once more in the shadows
the legend of love that never dies
Los Hoteles Secretos
El brillo nómade del mundo
como un ascua en el alma una joya del tiempo
se abre tan sólo al paso de ciertos hechos tormentosos
arrastrados por la corriente
hasta las escaleras cortadas por el mar
en ciertos antros de lujuria de bordes sombríos
poblados por estatuas de reyes
casi irreconocibles entre el reverberar de las antorchas cuya luz
es la hiedra que cubre los muros
¡Oh corazón corazón orgulloso!
entrégate al fantasma apostado en la puerta
Ahora que tan bien te conozco
sin otra sed que tu memoria
criatura melancólica que tocas mi alma de tan lejos
invoca en las alcobas el éxtasis y el terror
el lento idioma indomable de la pasión por el infierno
y el veneno de la aventura con sus crímenes
¡Oh! invoca una vez más el gran soplo de antaño
en estas cámaras de piedra enlazada a tu amante
y ambos envueltos en la lona de los días perdidos como el muerto en el mar
y prontos a deshacerse en las hogueras instantáneas
sobre lechos de un metal misterioso que brilla en las tinieblas bajo la
zarpa de los candelabros
y el coro de pájaros lascivos girando con furia en las habitaciones
selladas por el hierro de otras noches
Pues tales antros solemnes cubiertos de flores carnívoras
con mánnoles que se pudren a la sombra de cabelleras opulentas
se balancean labrados pomposamente desde el portal hasta la cúpula
como la nave anclada sobre el abismo
agitando con lentitud sus espejos para adormecer a la mujer
desnuda entre los verdugos que incineran el corazón de la noche
y el zaguán donde se cruzan la lluvia y la frustración
los camareros con el rostro podrido por el tufo de las flores
acumuladas en los pasillos infinitos
el rumor de los suspiros sofocados
los besos entretejidos en nácar tristísimo
la hierba sin nombre en que se hunden sus huéspedes
repiten una vez más entre la sombra
la leyenda del amor que nunca muere
Poetic Works
The distant braying of the night whose green shell opens like a fish
The infancy of rain with errant greenhouse cheeks pledged by the vapor
of plants
The loosened bonds that leave invisible scars
The music of bodies chosen by love for statues of fire raised on an
infinite plain
Or in the harbor's shadow chased by a silver claw
With nails illuminated like the windows of distant homes in which one sees
a poor girl preparing a meal for the beasts of her dreams
The palmettos' red candelabras where exile is whistling
The needles of live blood the birds to the end the clouds the suits of
sequined sailors
And the heavy footsteps on the strange planet called Earth
Make us taste the days' lichen
The insatiable patience of men
Winter's drowning coughed up on the coast by the wind
Now I see the country of great wings
Limited tear by tear by all that which will never return
Crossed by the migration of souls towing their heavy buckets of blood and
tools of passion and anger
Rooms invaded by giant ferns in which waits the fierce gray air of
forgotten girls
Clutching a smile in their silken paws
But the loner caresses the lady from the distance covered in shining
feathers and shuddering at the horror of nothingness
In the reverberation of singing and streetlights at dawn in the unknown
station tortured by travelers
Streetlights that shine with a venomous charm
Like the serpent of eternal longing whose shadowy cage
Exhales an odor of butterflies decomposing inside a box of mysterious
velvet covered in flames
An attic of ashes
A man advancing with his phantasm against the gust of dreams
Against these whirlwinds of feathers set in certain dead bird's rings
Oh the old days!
The earthy liquor:
A little cold meat on bread after a sip of soup
Spring's mummy in its coffin of gilded ice
A scorpion beside the key of light in a tropical hotel
The wooden chalice and idleness offered to the monkeys by a little
vapor on a tropical stream
In these braids loosened on the breasts of love in the indescribable
birds seen from the height of a caress
Oh the clanging of strange plates on which certain very sad girls ate
pierced by a groan or a novel's breath
And nude still under the navy's curse
Oh the old days!
Passions misery and pride
An antique store looted by the bird of prey and scattered in the sun
And in which only time's pallid money is ever good
With tiny dirty gods rustling beneath your leaves
Until the instant they surprise those sleepless dives where apparitions hide
With nights in whose depths one sees girls in flames
Or the nurse sitting under the light of the banana tree
Covered in plaster and dark magnolias on her high cruel throne that carved
the shattering
But more beautiful than all spring and all the world's victory
The great wing of immortal feathers born in everything destined to die!
Clothes and faces and alleys undressed by a same whisper of desperate
goodbye
The never again amazes you
An embrace a throat a woman's sob that doesn't allude to these buried pyres
Reclaiming the same shadowed jewels for the same splendor:
The great halo of the far
And these enigmas of age dragging the heavy insoluble shards of a false and
mysterious existence
With those whose eternal heartbeat pulses in the darkness
Unattainable as every human happiness
And transformed into the gleaming of things that once brushed against
possessed or dreamed
In flesh and blood
Between the blazing of the earth
Los Trabajos de la Poesía
El lejano bramido de una noche cuya verde coraza se abre como un pescado
La infancia de la lluvia con mejillas de invernáculo errante empeñado por el
vapor de las plantas
Las ligaduras sueltas que dejan cicatrices invisibles
La música de dos cuerpos escogidos por el amor para estatuas del fuego
levantadas en una llanura infinita
O en la sombra de un puerto perseguida por una garra de plata
Con las uñas iluminadas como ventanas de hogares distantes en los que
se ve a una pobre muchacha preparando el alimento para las bestias
del sueño
Los rojos candelabros de palmeras donde silba el exilio
Las agujas de sangre viva los pájaros hacia el fin las nubes los trajes de
lentejuelas marinas
Y el golpe de las pisadas en el extraño planeta llamado Tierra
Hacen el gusto a liquen de los días
La paciencia insaciable de los hombres
La ahogada del invierno arrojada a otra costa por el viento
Ahora veo el país de grandes alas
Limitado lágrima a lágrima por todo aquello que no vuelve jamás
Atravesado por la emigración de las almas arrastrando sus pesados cubos de
sangre y sus utensilios de pasión y de cólera
Habitaciones invadidas por helechos gigantescos en las que acecha la fiera
de aire gris de las mujeres olvidadas
Posando sus zarpas de seda en una sonrisa
Pero el solitario acaricia la cabellera de la distancia cubierta de plumas
centelleantes y estremecida por el horror al vacío
En un reverbero de canciones y faroles en el amanecer de una estación
desconocida torturada por los viajeros
Faroles que brillan con un hechizo venenoso
Como la serpiente de las añoranzas eternas cuyo estuche sombrío
Exhala un olor a mariposas descompuestas dentro de una caja de terciopelo
misterioso envuelta en llamas
Un desván de cenizas
Un hombre avanzando con su fantasma contra la bocanada del sueño
Contra esos torbellinos de plumas engastados en ciertos anillos de pájaro
muerto
¡Oh son los antiguos días!
Los alcoholes terrestres:
Un poco de alimentos fríos en un pan tras un trago de sopa
La momia primaveral en su ataúd de hielo dorado
Un escorpión junto a la llave de la luz en un hotel del trópico
El cáliz de madera y ocio ofrecido a los monos por un pequeño vapor en un
río del trópico
Y esas trenzas abiertas sobre los senos del amor en los parajes indescriptibles
vistos desde lo alto de una caricia
O el tañido de platos extranjeros de los cuales se alimentan algunas mujeres
muy tristes atravesadas por un gemido o un soplo de novela
Y aún desnudas bajo la maldición marina
¡Oh son los antiguos días!
Pasiones miseria y orgullo
Una tienda de antigüedades saqueada por el pájaro de presa y esparcida
al sol
Y en la que sólo vale el oro lívido del tiempo
Con diosecillos tenebrosos crujiendo bajo tus plantas
Hasta el instante de sorprender esos antros de insomnio donde se guardan las apariciones
Con noches en cuyo fondo se ven niñas en llamas
O la enferma sentada bajo la luz del plátano
Cubierta de yeso y de magnolias sombrías sobre su alto trono de tortura que
ha labrado el fracaso
Pero más bella que toda primavera y que toda victoria sobre el mundo
¡La gran ala de plumas inmortales que nace en todo aquello destinado
a la muerte!
Vestidos y rostros y callejuelas anudadas por un mismo suspiro de adiós
desesperado
Para que nunca más te maraville
Un abrazo una garganta o un sollozo de mujer que no aluda a esas hogueras
enterradas
Reclamando las mismas joyas tenebrosas para el mismo esplendor:
La gran aureola de la lejanía
Y esos enigmas de la edad arrastrando pesados trozos insolubles de una
existencia falsa y misteriosa
Con personajes de pulso eterno que laten en la oscuridad
Inalcanzables como toda dicha humana
Y convertidos en el resplandor de las cosas que rozaron poseyeron
o soñaron alguna vez
En carne y hueso
Entre la llamarada de la tierra
Translated by Andrew Haley
Enrique Molina, born in Buenos Aires, November 2, 1910, traveled extensively in Europe and the Caribbean as a merchant marine before his first book of poetry Las Cosas y El Delirio (Things and Delirium) appeared in 1941. The author of nine books of poetry and one novel, Una Sombra Donde Suena Camila O'Gorman (A Shadow Where Camila O'Gorman Dreams), Molina co-founded the surrealist journal A Partir de Cero (Starting From Zero) with poet Aldo Pellegrini in Buenos Aires in 1952. A painter as well as man of letters, he died November 13, 1997 in Buenos Aires.
Enrique Molina, nacido en Buenos Aires el 2 de noviembre de 1910, viajó al Caribe y a Europa como tripulante de barcos mercantiles antes de que su primero libro de poesía Las Cosas y El Delirio fue publicado en 1941. Autor de nueve libros de poesía y la novela Una Sombra Donde Suena Camila O'Gorman, en 1952 Molina fundó junto con el poeta Aldo Pellegrini la revista surrealista A Partir de Cero en Buenos Aires. Pintor y hombre de letras, falleció en Buenos Aires el 13 de noviembre de 1997.
miércoles, octubre 01, 2008
New Poetry From c.a. leibow
Machina Ad Hominem
“What do I see? Hats and coats that cover ghosts or simulated human beings which move by springs.”
(i.)
“…by its very nature clockwork is the antithesis of our mortal
selves. " Jaquet-Droz
The Watchmaker Machines time.
Dentist of brass teeth. Revolutions. Masticated movements.
(Mapping the linear_____ geography of a Flat
Earth.)
Mechanical Cockcrow sequencing.
The interpreter of flesh clocks.
An object unto itself. Out of time.
A counter of Ether - measuring Zero
Cyclopeds chase one another in the figure eight cyclodrome dome of heaven.
The gods lost to history cheer with Click(s)
The customer wants (“the minutes
the watch has lost?”) because of the leak the gold case.
the red ink spent .
Bent over. Eye glass. The Watchmaker
is a Trapper tightening springs.
Hour by hour.
(ii.)
“Without Vaucanson’s shitting duck, there would be nothing to remind us of the glory of France.” Voltaire
Immodest marriage of science and art.
Gold plated copper. Articulation of wing
fulfilling each their Office
{Of Omoplat, Scapula, Cubitius, Humerus & Ginglymus}.
Tendons of wound wire
spring movement of ball bearing and socket.
Just imitation of duck.
Throat.
Stomach.
Circumvolution of pipes.
Inefficiency of efficiency. Projection. Identification.
Muddling water.
Quack, Rise, Gulp. Consumes.
Artifice. Delineation of life.
Interloper into divine prerogative.
Metal duck. Golem.
Inculcation of man as machine.
From meandering pipes to
the lowly anus.
Golden creature.
One act play- Title: Uncertainty ?
Final Scene:
Out of golden tail- efflux of excrement.
[ A standing (Ovation).]
(iii.)
Exquisite machine: Silver tongue hypothesis.
Who stole the statue sculpted by Coysevox?
TELEGRAM-------{URGENT}----------------------------------TELEGRAM
To: The Inquisition Re: Automaton Flute Player
“In room 11 (STOP), Be advised (STOP)…….bothersome breathing..(STOP).”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Wood fingers cannot play a metal flute the way a man or woman can..”
Journal Entry, Vaucanson. Aug, 17th 1737
(See Fig.1,2 &3)
____________________________________________________________________
fig 1., Apply skin to wood. (Credit of Corpses ).
____________________________________________________________________
fig 2., Side View: Screws, Pivots, Barrels, Bars, Heart; connected to gates of heaven.
____________________________________________________________________
fig 3. Exploded View: Nine bellows, three pipes under the garden into the Temple of Music.
Trachea. Six pulleys. Four levers to modify wind. {The Four Winds of The Apocalypse}.
“I found a metronome in the chest of a Starling .”
Journal Entry., Vaucanson. Jan, 23rd 1736
All the women (Paris Februarys 11th 1738 ) would gather in their complicated dresses.
A repertoire of twelve {Apostles, Tribes, Constellations.} Flute Numbers.
Their parasols twirling. Flywheel, Windmill, Crank & Counterweight.
Inquisitors on tip toes try to see
through dark windows that face the alley. {of Hotel De Albertus Magnus and the Cathedral of Aquinas .}
(iv.)
“Shall not one be cast down by the sight of him? None is so fierce that that dare stir him up.” Job 42:9-10
Mechanical leviathans built by
royal Clockmakers.
run on tracks at the edge
of a flat earth.
Prefabricated elucidation
of the artisan’s pencil- charcoal detritus from
fire to fire. Wayward sailors
pray {recurring nightmares of flailing }.
The lone wake signifies dismay
Stygian darkness of fathoms, split bone terrors.
Supplicating saints and gods and superstitions.
Two men stoke the fires.
Pneumatic obligation of steam.
Of concentration, direction
and release. Transmission of energy to purpose.
The mad dash of sail.
Indentured men dream of falling
where the cartographer sketches
gaping mouths.
(v.)
“ What a shame the mechanician stopped so soon, when he could have gone ahead and given his machine a soul!” Condorcet
Oh daughter,
daughter flesh of my frenzied longing.
Work of my hands clank and whir of my affections.
The blasphemy of my want. Iron ram caught in the thicket
I lay you on the altar {of the sea floor.} My imprudence.
In darkness - rocking on tides.
Pendulum.
Pendulum.
Pendulum.
Oh pendulum.
(vi.)
“Man is a self-winding machine, a living representation of perpetual motion.” La Mettrie
Innocent machines. Faithful objects. Geared mythologies.
In which mechanical archangels grant dispensations from time -
Theirs is an eschatology of revolutions.
Inherent: The Circle.
c.a. leibow's poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Interim, Juked.com, Poetry Motel, Stray Dog Review and other journals. He graduated from Antioch with a Masters Degree in Poetry. To fund his poetry, leibow has worked as a dishwasher, a shoes salesman, a driver, a security guard, a bouncer, a mental institution orderly, a file clerk, a shipping clerk, and corporate trainer.
“What do I see? Hats and coats that cover ghosts or simulated human beings which move by springs.”
Descartes
(i.)
“…by its very nature clockwork is the antithesis of our mortal
selves. " Jaquet-Droz
The Watchmaker Machines time.
Dentist of brass teeth. Revolutions. Masticated movements.
(Mapping the linear_____ geography of a Flat
Earth.)
Mechanical Cockcrow sequencing.
The interpreter of flesh clocks.
An object unto itself. Out of time.
A counter of Ether - measuring Zero
Cyclopeds chase one another in the figure eight cyclodrome dome of heaven.
The gods lost to history cheer with Click(s)
The customer wants (“the minutes
the watch has lost?”) because of the leak the gold case.
the red ink spent .
Bent over. Eye glass. The Watchmaker
is a Trapper tightening springs.
Hour by hour.
(ii.)
“Without Vaucanson’s shitting duck, there would be nothing to remind us of the glory of France.” Voltaire
Immodest marriage of science and art.
Gold plated copper. Articulation of wing
fulfilling each their Office
{Of Omoplat, Scapula, Cubitius, Humerus & Ginglymus}.
Tendons of wound wire
spring movement of ball bearing and socket.
Just imitation of duck.
Throat.
Stomach.
Circumvolution of pipes.
Inefficiency of efficiency. Projection. Identification.
Muddling water.
Quack, Rise, Gulp. Consumes.
Artifice. Delineation of life.
Interloper into divine prerogative.
Metal duck. Golem.
Inculcation of man as machine.
From meandering pipes to
the lowly anus.
Golden creature.
One act play- Title: Uncertainty ?
Final Scene:
Out of golden tail- efflux of excrement.
[ A standing (Ovation).]
(iii.)
Exquisite machine: Silver tongue hypothesis.
Who stole the statue sculpted by Coysevox?
TELEGRAM-------{URGENT}----------------------------------TELEGRAM
To: The Inquisition Re: Automaton Flute Player
“In room 11 (STOP), Be advised (STOP)…….bothersome breathing..(STOP).”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Wood fingers cannot play a metal flute the way a man or woman can..”
Journal Entry, Vaucanson. Aug, 17th 1737
(See Fig.1,2 &3)
____________________________________________________________________
fig 1., Apply skin to wood. (Credit of Corpses ).
____________________________________________________________________
fig 2., Side View: Screws, Pivots, Barrels, Bars, Heart; connected to gates of heaven.
____________________________________________________________________
fig 3. Exploded View: Nine bellows, three pipes under the garden into the Temple of Music.
Trachea. Six pulleys. Four levers to modify wind. {The Four Winds of The Apocalypse}.
“I found a metronome in the chest of a Starling .”
Journal Entry., Vaucanson. Jan, 23rd 1736
All the women (Paris Februarys 11th 1738 ) would gather in their complicated dresses.
A repertoire of twelve {Apostles, Tribes, Constellations.} Flute Numbers.
Their parasols twirling. Flywheel, Windmill, Crank & Counterweight.
Inquisitors on tip toes try to see
through dark windows that face the alley. {of Hotel De Albertus Magnus and the Cathedral of Aquinas .}
(iv.)
“Shall not one be cast down by the sight of him? None is so fierce that that dare stir him up.” Job 42:9-10
Mechanical leviathans built by
royal Clockmakers.
run on tracks at the edge
of a flat earth.
Prefabricated elucidation
of the artisan’s pencil- charcoal detritus from
fire to fire. Wayward sailors
pray {recurring nightmares of flailing }.
The lone wake signifies dismay
Stygian darkness of fathoms, split bone terrors.
Supplicating saints and gods and superstitions.
Two men stoke the fires.
Pneumatic obligation of steam.
Of concentration, direction
and release. Transmission of energy to purpose.
The mad dash of sail.
Indentured men dream of falling
where the cartographer sketches
gaping mouths.
(v.)
“ What a shame the mechanician stopped so soon, when he could have gone ahead and given his machine a soul!” Condorcet
Oh daughter,
daughter flesh of my frenzied longing.
Work of my hands clank and whir of my affections.
The blasphemy of my want. Iron ram caught in the thicket
I lay you on the altar {of the sea floor.} My imprudence.
In darkness - rocking on tides.
Pendulum.
Pendulum.
Pendulum.
Oh pendulum.
(vi.)
“Man is a self-winding machine, a living representation of perpetual motion.” La Mettrie
Innocent machines. Faithful objects. Geared mythologies.
In which mechanical archangels grant dispensations from time -
Theirs is an eschatology of revolutions.
Inherent: The Circle.
c.a. leibow's poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Interim, Juked.com, Poetry Motel, Stray Dog Review and other journals. He graduated from Antioch with a Masters Degree in Poetry. To fund his poetry, leibow has worked as a dishwasher, a shoes salesman, a driver, a security guard, a bouncer, a mental institution orderly, a file clerk, a shipping clerk, and corporate trainer.
lunes, septiembre 29, 2008
viernes, septiembre 12, 2008
martes, agosto 12, 2008
Four Poems From Clint Frakes
A Moving Life
I give myself permission to lull the savage flower
like a phoneme from the infamous waves.
Today I saw a calyx atop every roof –
pollens, inverted hyacinths,
stunted euphorias at the mini-mart:
fluttering glassy wrappers in the Trade Winds—
like how the old poetess crept beneath the myth
in her wrinkled skirt & shrugged
loose from the pavement
a radical new altar of sound.
The chorus ejaculated in antistrophe:
The earth has a taste!
The problem is you’ve been dialing the wrong deity,
cigarettes burning on the table—
& you forgot how to use them.
A Brief History of Summer
for Harry Smith
After the longest day of the year
independence was only fitting.
Some ruffians blew up the sky;
the Romans let the dogs out,
forsaking 13 moons & the innermost
juice of memory.
We gained only the dim
profile of an inbred king.
Then the chokecherries ripened
in the unfolding corolla of
long northern light,
filling our freshly opened eyes.
We ate dog,
rubbed its fat on our heads.
The elders say it cures all.
Desire #4
What is Thanksgiving to a born-again-Lakota-Celt from Detroit
alone in Polynesia?
An excuse to hit the titty bar--
& gratitude is elusive as Maverick does the splits in a pink felt hat;
Chastity works her lollipop,
dropping her Catholic skirt;
then comes Eclipse, hugging a beach ball
painted like the globe.
Her booty shorts say Total.
What are the chances a Pine Ridge
girl would glide on stage 2400 miles from Turtle Island?
The zealous MC introduces her with incongruent hype:
“Come and see Wi!”
Wi means woman.
A dream catcher burned to her sacrum with the four sacred colors:
red north of lowest lumbar
white disappearing south at the cleft of coccyx
yellow & black along the impossible axis
of pelvic east/west
its promise of the Seventh Generation.
She’s surprised for the first time all week when I
greet her in her grandparents’ tongue—
“Toniktuka hwo?”
She stumbles slightly at her spinning pole
garter drawn almost inelegantly for a bill.
“Lakota?” she asks, bending toward me.
Her tongue has a silver bolt through it.
She spills buckets of hair across my face
cooler than midnight water &
from under this tent I remember
sage prairie, buffalo and wasna
wild turnip & wojapi,
black chokecherries.
I tuck an Andrew Jackson in the
ankle strap of her shiny stiletto:
the biggest Indian killer of all time,
his face long and freakish in the glint
of rhinestones & strobelight.
But we should sing in sage beds under cottonwood
& morning star, skinny-dip in the shallow
limey creeks at Grass Mountain
lollop in the Paha Sapa--
its primrose elk trails
on citrine-belted hillsides,
eating raspberries & rosehips,
passing secrets mouth to mouth,
belly to belly.
But her belly has a bolt through it too:
Custer just a tumbleweed in a wintercount there;
Crazy Horse himself a faint, curious melody;
calendars of Jehovah wan & forgotten
amid the roar of the Wind Cave,
the song of all our beginning.
No, the lolloping won’t happen;
but I am her favorite at the bar,
getting twice the shine as the suits
from whom she plucks bills perfunctorily
& eases back my way in some esoteric reward
for a few words brought across the ocean from her native plain
where I carried the Living Tree with ninety warriors
to the Sun Dance grounds,
laid red earth
on the half moon altar
believing there was a center to everything.
Desire #28
a Valentine, 2004, Honolulu
Dear Sonya, It’s 1:51 a.m. & I’m drunk,
rebuking the ruse of St.Valentine,
glued to yellowing books on a balmy night
like a raft on the Danube,
bristling calm, eying an opulent shore.
It isn’t easy to meet Orion’s gaze:
his bullets & arrows
sheening over my tininess.
Then a final sip of whiskey on the koa stump,
thinking of old chums I thought would never forsake me.
I turn pages of Arthur Sze & find a lottery ticket
my long-gone wife played in ’92.
Wabi-sabi floods the evening & I hope
she probed the Arizona Republic
for numbers the next day, expected
a miracle one autumn,
even if our egg was fried.
No patience for entropy these days,
nor joy in the curve of the moon--
on this, Edgar Poe’s birthday!
Nouns gang up on me at Foodland
among the walking dead (now 3 a.m.) --
the machinery of lips & Whitmanic glances
studying varieties of relish.
I think of your Betty Page bangs & how you made
cigarettes taste like chocolate the night
I slid into second base on the abandoned diamond
by Anna Banana’s, sure I’d never do this again.
One must be sick before one is brave
& the palms bow softly & for good reason.
Clint Frakes currently lives in Sedona, AZ. He has recently received the James Vaughan Award for Poetry and the Peggy Ferris Memorial Award for Poetry. He is a graduate of the Jack Kerouac School at the Naropa Institute and Northern Arizona University writing programs and received his doctorate with emphasis in Creative Writing from the University of Hawaii in 2006. He is currently working on his second full book of poetry, entitled Citizen Poems. He has work forthcoming in Decanto, Orange Room Review, Otoliths, Horse Less and Best Poem. He is the former chief editor of Hawaii Review and Big Rain and currently works as a free lance writer and editor.
martes, julio 29, 2008
Four Poems From Ray Succre
Cornerstone Telecast
Polarity jogs the signal a-twitch,
reds and greens and spectrum disturbances,
the feed scrambled.
No soppings of worry scramble me; I am seven,
alone, with sandwich and remote.
There it is. The channel. Reds and greens.
She begs but it's just her job.
She is sealed in jittery frame, breasts electrical,
face contorted, back-humped and a-twitch.
Disturbances approach her from the corners.
I decode the jolts. I raise volume to seven.
I am a spectrum. I am voltaic.
She is filtered in chatty cohorts, detergent men.
They switch and corral, clutch and shudder,
crashing the watts from her, dimmer, dimmer.
She thanks them but it's just pretend.
I finish my sandwich watching them complete
theirs, and then flip to the melees of superheroes.
One Into the Sidewalk
The red, alarm, ruckus of skin
bridges a stream from low-sky,
this cell water, air water, the red,
alarm, down the arm in strands
twine-shot, with horse-necked
espiances making a sport of advice—
“Dangerous activities need gear.”
“You’ve no helmet; what of your
brain and eyes?”
“Bleeding arm! Bleeding arm!”
This thin dirt coughs up for drops
like gasping ovate mouths—
“And where are padded elbows?”
Craned arm in twisted frame
carrying gore, trotting home,
rear wheel waving rotation,
and the blood, the itch,
another instant red, alarm,
make a sport, make a matter,
make another instant red;
spanked and spat down,
the wrecks are preferred.
Skin of the Bookcase
The air is imparticled.
Hunched in gorilla posture,
lifting a feathery monster
and gingerly dusting the sod
of a little blackened tomb,
dusting sees a shady grove:
The effect of your breathing,
carbeuration, pushing
spitbreath down the strangle
into milk, and the books
can not but in a furnace
be more dead; the ends
are chipped, roughed, scored.
That any solve of dust
by a sweep cleans the dead
from these things is absurd.
Open a masterpiece
at the middle, find a nervous
system frigid and hailed on.
Strangle. Languish as they
have done on shelves.
The bookmites hide
in the spine as you
cleverly turn the page.
Tom's Palace of Coins
She gives him the small coin or ant or boar,
during new-transformed, day-out's drive,
a haughty, fat-assed rape or adventurous sty.
"Here's some money for a candy, Tom."
Much in threats roving his grandmother most,
a bare passion glancing mere resemblance,
her loose change given slow as
once so perfect poison downward raids
to sensual, digestive bits of awe.
Before, by course of age, he sleeps
with the errands of his intribunal era,
he'll wear little insignias and ebbing emblems,
stack the ants and coins in a blink of walls,
building a small palace out of the useless,
tiny flecks of currency.
Look what he enspheres:
Palace people. Palace depth.
Ray Succre lives on the southern Oregon coast with his wife and baby son. His poems have appeared in Aesthetica, BlazeVOX, and Pank, as well as in numerous other journals across as many countries. His novel Tatterdemalion was recently published by Cauliay Publishing. Mr Succre maintains the blog: http://raysuccre.blogspot.com.
lunes, junio 16, 2008
New Poems From William Bain
A plant summer
Gap of night, brain through
the wire. Bright
forward-run uncolor
glistens beneath root sheath.
Vein-yellow halt-star
surges red before crept leaf,
sap expanses vibrating summer.
In-white glancing
Space, open. There vectors in prism’d morning
still traffic, gull cries, child’s slide, a milk-white
skate. I went down to the car, saw
the black oily sea up, colors
previously unregistered... sequence surround(s).... Back
into the book office; mountain
viole(n)t figures, into the purest air,
life, surprisingly, a train and rail
screech, slowed, skidded, stopped.
Taking hands, the avenues walk us around
the most remote and intricate.
Stems merge every color, bright
cup, carpet, parquet ship—
Flower white negative....
Harpist
Fingertips poised these thousands of years, adjusting
flutter of a gull’s wing over roof, or under chandelier.
The apparently effortless rays burgeon, strings now not
of the instrument, not exactly, but of deep-sea fishes
bellying fin up, fin down, fin over. Love position after regard
trails eye. The charcoal baton, somehow, as if the drawing
implement were the drawn itself, prehistoric strings
vibrating in a way imprecise to me now.
Aorist.... Tying or otherwise fastening gut to bow
is arguably more in our direction than the harpist’s.
Dream charcoals come, adjusting gaps, positioning
notes or modes. The musician’s tapping left hand, a finger
in the symbolic brain, waves directionally, icon
after the geometry of the feather.
William Bain’s poems have appeared in various magazines, recently in RedRiverReview and previously in Zone. His collages and paintings have been shown in collective exhibitions in Barcelona (Julia Karp Gallery, 2005; Arnau Gallery, 2007/8).
miércoles, junio 04, 2008
Sarojini Sahoo's The Dark Abode
THE DARK ABODE
Chapter One
“You are a fairy without wings.”
The very first sentence of the e-mail made Kuki blush. Getting soothing e-mails embellished with romantic poems had become routine for her; the e-mails seemed to mark the exchange of feelings between two teenaged lovebirds separated by distance. He had written, “You are a fairy without wings. But that does not deter you from trying to break free of all your shackles. If somebody were to give you wings, would you come and join me here?”
Kuki would read the e-mail umpteen times to discover and rediscover the sense of every single word and try to experience them with the imagination of a poet, blushing shyly all the while. It was as if she had become a dreamy and bubbly teenager in these last few days. Her outlook seemed to have become pure and fresh and she seemed to have returned to her sensational sweet sixteen again.
Kuki had never been into writing poetry; nor was he, really. Yet each of his letters was poetic and tasteful. While writing poetry, he would often slip into the realm of prose and vice-versa with remarkable spontaneity.
Kuki’s heart had initially been reluctant to heed the invitation and she remembered the first letter she had written, “My body is too frail for its moods. My ageing flesh follows the demands and dictates of family life. My weary senses return to my courtyard seeking warmth among my kids. Now my wings no longer have their old charisma that I will fly in response to your call. There is no longer that endless, expansive, azure sky for me, nor its grand brilliance that would absorb me inside its bosom. But you shot the cupid’s arrow and a thrill rippled through my body, mesmerizing me; and the music of the unforgotten years sounded once again in my soul.”
"Why are you so lonely? Perhaps you do not know. It was when you entered my life that I first began to dream. I have enjoyed many women indiscriminately. I have been sincerely insincere with them. I was like a butterfly passionately addicted to pleasure, sucking the juice of flowers and leaving them stunned and bewildered only to hop on to other flowers. But it was you who made me realize what love was. Do you know what I pray for? I pray I can remain stuck like a pollen grain to your petal-feet, listening to your anklet chimes.”
Aniket, her husband, used to write such gratifying lines for Kuki when she was sixteen or seventeen. “I would be blessed to adorn your feet.” How old was Aniket then? Twenty, perhaps twenty-one. Time had played its all too familiar but never-welcome tricks and had now left its mark on the color of his hair and the wrinkles on Kuki’s body. Youth had been left behind somewhere far away near the distant horizon. And love? It was as if love has been long buried under the apple cart of life, condemned to a monotonous and never-ending treadmill. Her dreams and aspirations lay hidden beneath the rubble of the dream-house of immortal romance that she had once built so enthusiastically.
Safiq was taking great pains to convince Kuki that he was not flirting with her. His love was sincere and intense and not a fleeting and ephemeral one. He would sometimes send her a sketch drawn from his imagination or some favorite quotations of his. Quoting Einstein, he had once written, “Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.”
Slowly and without any reason whatsoever, this person she had never met had somehow begun to occupy a corner of her heart, and perhaps, of her subconscious mind, too. It puzzled her immensely, though; how could a man love someone so intensely without ever having even seen her? What was the motive? How was this possible? She had even raised this question once, so intrigued had she been by the question.
Apt came the unique and flattering reply. “Who told you I have not seen you? Look—aren’t you exactly like this?” The sketch sent as an attachment with the mail was somehow ‘Kuki’ for this man. The sketch revealed that he had spent these last few days bringing his imagination to life, Kuki thought.
How eccentric these artists were!
The girl in the sketch had locks of hair hanging down to her shoulder. Emotions of trust and anxiety were playing hide-and-seek on her face. A nubile nymphet oozing youth, she was draped in an almost transparent fabric clinging to her every curvaceous contour, revealing more then it was hiding, leaving nothing to the imagination. A creeper wound its way round her waist and her navel was tinged with a shade of topaz. Kuki kept looking at the sketch and tried to find herself in it. Which part of her body did the sketch resemble most? The dark almond shaped eyes? The aquiline neck? The rotund bust? The navel? No, perhaps the resemblance lay in the coy smile. It was that smile that defined his perceptions of her. How could Kuki have concealed it within herself?
Plagued by orthodox and conservative thoughts, she would retreat a step even as she moved two steps towards that man. No, Kuki had never engrossed herself in amorous love. The reason for her fear and suspicion was beyond her comprehension. Perhaps the man had read her thoughts much earlier; that was perhaps why he had tried to purge her doubts and dilemmas. “Listen, we must transcend the petty considerations of caste, religion and nationality. Never allow them a place in your heart.”
But Kuki found it impossible to ignore her age-old values ingrained so deeply within herself. It was not as if she had never met a Muslim. When she was a child, they had lived in a house that was adjacent to a Muslim colony. She had also had a few Muslim friends at school. She used to visit their houses as well. Shabnam came from a prosperous family. Their house was well decorated, with manicured lawns and many different varieties of roses in their garden, all of which spoke highly of their status. They had a Doberman whom Kuki was very scared of. Sitting under a tree in the garden, Shabnam would tell Kuki stories about Allah.
Then there was Latifa, another friend of Kuki’s. In sharp contrast to Shabnam, Latifa’s family lived in a gloomy, muddy and filthy house in very unhygienic surroundings somewhere deep inside the colony. A foul smell would emanate from their yard; it was always flecked with droppings of goats and hens, and sometimes, even feces of children. Kuki could never invite them to her home. She would steer off topic even if they expressed their desire to visit her at home. They had, of course, come to her house a few times, but her mother would always grumble after they left. Angry, she would start throwing the utensils this way and that with a resounding crash; she would start washing the bed-sheets as soon as they had left. Kuki had to wash in the backyard the utensils in which she served food to her friends. As the mattresses could not be washed, they were sanctified with sprinkles of holy water from the Ganga. Kuki used to do all this out of fear of getting a beating; she herself had never considered Muslims untouchable.
True, Kuki hadn’t ever considered them untouchable; but wasn’t there a faint ray of mistrust concealed somewhere inside her? This was something more than any personal vendetta; there was no personal reason behind her mistrust of Muslims.
She was what her circumstances, upbringing and environment had made her. The prejudices had seeped into her psyche. She couldn’t help it. As a child she had often heard elders say, “Don’t trust even a dead Muslim.” She had never analyzed or questioned this stance. She had accepted such dictums at face value. Like so many other things. Although the inhabitants of that ‘colony’ were not looked upon as creatures from some other planet, they were still never considered as one of them. It was as if, to them, the Muslim ‘colony’ was a miniature Pakistan!
He was from Pakistan. Kuki had never imagined that she would someday fall so intensely in love with a Pakistani. She found it impossible to refuse his passionate overtures. On the contrary, she would spend hour after starry-eyed hour poring over his e-mails with the enthusiasm and curiosity of a teenager; each time she re-read his messages, she discovered new meanings in them—it was as if she had never read them before. If she took too long to reply, she would find a passionate letter, choked with emotion, waiting for her in her inbox the next morning. He wanted to lie down with his head in her lap and weep, he would write.
“Each night my visions wander far,
To places I cannot travel to;
And there they mingle with your thoughts
In a lovers’ rendezvous”
Kuki would send him a list of all the household chores she had to manage and earnestly plead with him not to be so restless over the slightest of delays on her part in replying to his e-mails. But she herself would become listless as she ran through his letters. He once wrote in desperation, “I know I can never visit India, nor can you come to me here in Pakistan. The relationship between the two countries, the visa problem and so many different restrictions will keep us separated. We may not be able to even see each other; yet, if you so agree, we can belong to one another till death overtakes us. But please never mope over the fact that you are a Hindu, and I, a Muslim, or that you are an Indian, and I, a Pakistani.”
She had read Virginia Woolf: “As a woman, I have no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.” But the word, ‘Pakistani’ was synonymous with ‘terrorist’ for her. A slew of questions disturbed her. What if her husband and children were to discover this secret online affair? What if her son were to ask, “Mama, how dare you love a Pakistani?” Her son, her own flesh and blood, was no less than a fundamentalist. The very thought of Muslims made his blood boil. The younger one was more gentle. He loved her very much; so, perhaps he would sit by her and say “You don’t know, mama; all Pakistanis are terrorists. You have not seen the movie, ‘XYZ’”. What would Kuki say, then?
The man offered namaz only once in a while; nor was he very fastidious about observing Roza during Ramzan. On Id-ul-Fitre he preferred a quiet nap; instead of going to the Idgah, he would sleep quietly at home. He believed in Allah, of course, but he called himself a kafir.
He would bombard Kuki with child-like inquisitive queries in every letter of his. She tried to explain things to him the way she did to her children; she would narrate to him many tales from Hindu mythology, the Upanishads in particular. He would be overwhelmed by each tale; he said there was a fascinating and well-defined philosophy in Hindu mythology—something that the Quran lacked. The Quran spoke only of social commitment; its aim was to build a healthy society, he said.
Whenever she woke up early in her childhood, Kuki would hear the “Allah Ho Akbar” cry floating in from the mosque. One could not hear bhajans from the Hindu temples, though. The mosque in their town would wake up at dawn while the temple was still wrapped in sleep. Her younger sister couldn't help but frown each time she was disturbed in her sleep by the cacophony blasting through the loudspeakers of the mosque around the corner; she would grumble, “Is Allah deaf? Why do they call so loudly?”
Kuki had once ventured into the mosque with Shabnam. Shabnam took her to every nook and corner of the mosque. Kuki was ten or eleven then. Although her eyes were looking for a deity in that big vacant room, she didn’t dare ask Shabnam about it; she was engulfed with some strange fear. She was petrified that someone would recognize her and ask, “Hey, you’re a Hindu child; how dare you come inside?” She ran out of the mosque when she couldn’t bear it any longer. And she had never visited a mosque since then. It was a vacuum for her; her notion of what a mosque was really like was as vague as her notion of Islam.
Of course, she knew that there was no idol-worship in Islam and had even made offerings once at the dargah of Moinuddin Chisti; yet the absence of a deity in the dark interiors filled her own heart with an unusual emptiness. Kuki would often make fun of Hinduism. We have created numerous gods for our endless desires, for birth, death, wealth, wisdom, everything one could think of. Yet her heart looked for an idol where no idol was there. The human mind searched for something concrete and tangible. God was formless, attributeless and impossible to define, she knew. She knew God was nothingness yet omnipresent, but her heart could still not accept the empty chamber.
But did love care for religion? The true religion of love was to tread the untrodden path. It was as if he had totally mesmerized Kuki.
“Each passing day makes me love even more and more,” he had once written. Today, more than yesterday, and tomorrow, more than today.” Kuki also felt that there was a freshness in their love, a freshness that refused to fade away or become stale with the passage of time. And she was utterly fascinated by this man’s absolute frankness and candor.
He had revealed everything about himself, even the darkest of his sins, in his very first letter—he had two wives and four children. His first wife lived in the village and did not have any sexual relations with him now. But her two daughters stayed with him in town and were pursuing their higher studies. His second wife, incidentally, had been his student. He had had sexual relations with her before their marriage. He had also had a long-term relationship with Linda Johnson, an American girl, who had clued him into the intricacies of sex. But he was no longer in touch with her.
Kuki had read this man’s life story the way she read the newspapers. “A complete pervert!” His ‘love’ was like M F Hussain’s love for Madhuri—it was not her cup of tea, she had thought.
“Perversion goes hand in hand with genius; be it Einstein or Flaubert, it boosts creativity”. This was the only consolation for her. While the man’s honest and spontaneous ramblings impressed Kuki, his habit of going astray had filled her with utter disdain and contempt.
After reading his letters, Kuki became curious about the nikah of Muslims. Of course, she knew a Muslim man could marry four times. She had once quizzed Professor Siddiqui to satisfy her curiosity. He cited several references from the Quran and tried to explain things to her. “Look madam. The Quran doesn’t encourage four marriages in the sense you look at it. The law was actually made to protect women and the destitute. Many men die on the battlefield. The system of polygamy was devised to protect widows and orphans and to save them from harassment.”
Kuki felt a sense of relief after hearing Professor Siddiqui’s analysis, but the feeling was short-lived. The man who loved her had not married a second time to save some helpless woman! And what of his relationship with Linda Johnson? Yet, Kuki couldn’t forget his love for her. She felt as if no one had ever given her so much in her entire life.
Kuki was gradually drifting away from her own usual domestic self. She felt as if she was living in a dream world where there was no one else apart from the two of them. She lost interest in devising innovative delicacies for her children; nor could she apply her mind to the little problems Aniket came up with. The plants, unwatered, began to wither away.
The garden had stopped smiling in delight; with their moth-eaten petals, the flowers sat gloomily, looking emaciated. Portions of the lawn had become bald, rooms had been smutted with spider webs, and a patina of dust had gathered on the idols placed on the shelves. Taking advantage of her absent-mindedness, the housemaid was skipping her work. Her domestic set-up was moving through a period of chaos. But where was she?
She became obsessed with sitting in front of the computer and responding to the call of love. She was trying to provide shape to all that remained unexpressed within her. And to her surprise, even after saying so much everyday, new thoughts would blossom inside her like an endlessly meandering stream.
They had decided to have their conversation at three levels.
The first one was about the common man’s world; the second was ethereal love; and the third one related to sensual love. In the course of this conversation, Kuki mastered several words she had never been able to use earlier. After her children had left for school and college, and Aniket, for work, she would spend hours on the computer, writing letters to this man.
She would be very upset whenever she heard of any strains in the relations between India and Pakistan. The prospect of a war between these countries frightened her immensely. Even the thought that her children and husband were all together here, her parents, siblings, relatives, home, everything was here, was not of much consolation to her. Perhaps everything would be destroyed by a bomb. She felt as if her heart was beating at some unseen place in Pakistan and would suddenly stop with the dropping of a bomb, leaving behind a pool of blood. Her world would come crashing down …
Kuki often felt that India and Pakistan should not have been two different nations at all. What was the need to divide them and leave them fighting forever? Kuki had never seen Kashmir. But what could there possibly be in Kashmir that the two countries had been fighting ever over it as if she was a beautiful damsel? Her blood would curdle whenever she heard of terrorist activities in Kashmir. Shocked by the brutality of those people, she had decided Pakistan was a heartless country. Like Sparta, the country had been manufacturing militants masquerading as jehadis. But all her notions changed after she came to know him. She realized there were still some people with compassion and intelligence amidst the oppressive ambience created by the military junta.
Aniket and Kuki were returning from their visit to a hill-station. As they could not get reservations they had to wait in Delhi for three more days. While visiting various places, they had entered the Dhumimal art gallery. Kuki was fond of art, but Aniket was a very different person. Modern painting, like modern poetry, was obscure to him. He felt suffocated in the serene ambience of the gallery and wanted to go outside for a smoke. Kuki was now left alone with her senses. As she scanned through each painting hanging on the wall, one painting in particular held her eyes. There was a strange loneliness written all over the painting. She felt as if someone had held her hand and dragged her down some unfamiliar street of an unknown city to a very lonely man. A man whose anguish was so acute that it was yet to find expression in words. The tiny letters said, ‘Alienation, oil-on-canvas, 191 X 143cms, Safiq Mohammed, published by Pakistani Art Forum, Lahore.’
Kuki did not have enough money to buy the painting. Yet she felt life would lose all meaning for her if she could not buy it. Rich people never understood painting, yet they would buy paintings to show their wealth off, she thought. She was a connoisseur of art, but could not afford to buy paintings. She couldn’t concentrate on any other painting that day; she kept returning to that one canvas. The man at the counter asked, “Madam, we can get a print of the painting; would you like one?”
Kuki had been delighted. She had returned with the print and brochure. She could get Safiq Mohammed’s e-mail id from the brochure. Then she had knocked on the door of Safiq Mohammed’s consciousness. She had never imagined that someone eager for her would say, “Each night my vision wanders to a place I can’t travel to.”
“Why can’t you come to India?” Kuki asked him. “Restrictions on travel between the two countries have been relaxed now. Besides, you are an artist. You are famous for ‘Alienation’.” Who will stand in your way? If Sheema Kermani’s troupe can perform in Kolkata, if the Pakistani cricket team can come and play in Indian cities, why can’t you come to India?”
He tried to evade the question, and instead, diverted Kuki’s mind to a love poem. Replete with effusive sentimentality. He was as much outspoken as he was emotional in writing the poem. As if he had been trying to find an answer to that question, “If Sheema Kermani’s troupe can perform in Kolkata, if the Pakistani cricket team can come and play in Indian cities, why can’t you come to India?” One day he wrote a reply of sorts, “The whole world is a stage. Never think that India and Pakistan constitute the entire world. There are so many other places in the world where we can move freely and chat for hours and where I can hum poems close to your ears under the moonlight. One room, one bed—that’s all we need to dissolve all barriers and barbed-wire fences. It is my dream that someday I will take you to a place like that. “This man is tempting me with a dream again,” thought Kuki. He began to tempt her with a dream, and that, at a time when her heart craved freedom from the monotonous letter writing, from an unresolved mystery! Yes, the world was vast, big and wide…besides, how much space did two people need? As Kuki wove such dreams, the man offered her a strange proposal. “You know, I wish to sketch the most priceless painting of my life with your love. Come close to me, become my skin, my self, my world, and bless me with the gift of fatherhood.”
Kuki was both startled and offended by the man’s candid proposal but she also felt a shiver of excitement. An invitation beckoned her from a distance. As if she was a goddess, and a devotee from some remote place was coming to worship her. She felt restless, but whom could she confide in? There was no one at all. Yet she wished she could speak to someone; she wished she could tell someone that there was a man she felt like writing poetry for. An unknown fear also plagued her. The gentle breeze kissed her forehead and wafted by, sending a shiver down her spine and inducing a feeling at once unfamiliar and so well known.
“I am in this prison of a soul that I have created for myself dwelling over my unrequited love for you." Finally she wrote, “Ok, I am more than willing to come to you with all my love and dedication and bless you with fatherhood. If I, me, my body, can be the canvas for your priceless painting, I am ready and I am looking forward to your most beautiful creation after ‘Alienation’.”
Kuki’s consent delighted him. He wrote, in his next letter, “You are the beacon of my life, new dawn in my existence. You came into my life, and I began to see life anew. I’ll sketch the most priceless painting of my life with your love. I’ll tie your name with mine. As you are the new morning of my life, you won’t be Kuki any longer, but Rokshana. I want to introduce you to the whole world as Rokshana.”
Kuki felt numb. Her whole world seemed to be crumbling into dust at her feet. The skies suddenly looked grey and gloomy, the rustling leaves, dead, and the chirpy birds, silent; she became very pensive. She was not herself any longer. She was somebody else. Then who was she till today? Whom did the man love? Kuki? Or Rokshana? But Kuki had never wanted to marry him. She had desired only love. Unconditional love. Why such a condition, then? Why ‘Rokshana’ instead of ‘Kuki’? Who was this Rokshana? From where had she suddenly surfaced? Where had she remained hidden all these years? Within the recesses of his wild imagination, or in the pages of the Quran? The very thought sent a shudder down her spine. “Am I being selfish? Is it selfish to want to preserve oneself, one’s own identity?”
Look at me, feel me in my wholeness, experience me as I am. Don‘t try to transform me. Let me be myself. Don't push me into oblivion. Accept me as what I am. Accept me with my wrinkles, my tokens of age, the traces of my beauty, my innocence, my arrogance. Accept me as I am…Do not try to transform me. Tell, whom do you want—the complete Kuki or the new Rokshana?
Kuki became restless. Her otherwise nimble fingers seemed reluctant to move over the keyboard. Her words refused to find shape; she groped in darkness for the right letters, the right words for her emotions, but everything remained as formless and shapeless and vague as ever. After much effort, Kuki managed to jot down everything she wanted to say. A wave of relief swept over her. She wished to fly like a bird. She wanted to return to her threshold and her garden. The rose leaves had shriveled up. The buds on the dahlia plant refused to blossom; those wild plants looked pale behind the grass. Smut had piled up in the corners of the house. Dust gathered on the furniture. Sarees lay in a mess in the cupboard. A peepal plant had sent down roots beside the bathroom window. Kuki had been far away from her domestic self for too long. It was time for her to return to it once again.
Kuki tried to arrange everything neatly in her house. She chatted heartily with the plants in the garden, and they also smiled at her new look. She finished all her household chores that afternoon. Prepared delicacies for everybody. Her house began to feel complete with broad smiles lighting up every face.
Yet, a Rokshana still writhed somewhere in Kuki’s consciousness. She could not bring herself to send the letter she had written. There was no mail for her either; she hadn’t got anything after that day. The inbox showed—“You have zero unread mail.” Yet her heart would pound heavily; the man would be desperately searching through his mailbox everyday. Perhaps he would think something dreadful had happened to her. She would often have this funny feeling at the oddest of hours that the man would come and knock on her door, or would stand by the window and smoke cigarette after cigarette, desperate to meet her.
Kuki sat once again in front of the blank monitor... She sat with her listless fingers on the keyboard. Perhaps, her fingers would now come to life. Perhaps she would write now: “Hey, look, I have returned again to your world. I am Rokshana, not Kuki. But what is there in a name? It is meaningless. I will give you fatherhood. You can now start the most priceless painting of your life.” Kuki’s fingers became animated, but she reclined into silence after a few lines. She opened the old letter in which she had expressed her desire to be Kuki and only Kuki. But a sense of emptiness kept her gazing at the lifeless and now useless computer.
What was her next course of action to be? Was she ready to relinquish her own identity and start afresh, or was it best for her to find solace in her very own small paradise, her sweet home?
What about her love, then? The love she had nurtured in her breast all these days? Was it false? What about her hopes, her dreams, her despair? Could she possibly survive without the love of that man?
On one hand, there was Aniket and his old, sweet and stable world with its lost charm; on the other, there was Safiq and his alluring, exciting new world. Both had stretched their hands out towards her. Which one she would embrace?
What had she hoped to find? she wondered. These were the things men lived by, the forms of their spirit, of their culture, of their enjoyment. She had seen nothing else anywhere for many years.
She remained immersed in her pensive introspection; her body was still as a statue. It was time for her to move…But in which direction was she to move? Experience and instinct battled ferociously inside her.
She had felt her fingers raring to run over the keyboard. But she remained motionless. All of a sudden a thought blazed through her mind. Nuni. Yes, it was Julius Caesar who had given the name ‘Nuni’ to his beloved Cleopatra. Love encompasses every obsession; one can even feel like giving a new name to that very special person and calling her by that name. What was she so worried about? Why should the fact that someone wanted to call her by a special name give rise to such a dilemma and such hair-splitting? Why was she getting so upset? It was a kind of rebirth for her.
Kuki started on her third e-mail. “I am ready to live my lovely life with you, as your beloved. You can call me by any name you want to.”
Yours ROKSHANA.
Sarojini Sahoo is an Indian feminist writer who has received the Orissa Sahitya Academy Award, the Jhankar Award, the Bhubaneswar Book Fair Award and the Prajatantra Award. Born in 1956 in Dhenkanal in the Orissa state of India, she holds an MA and PhD in Oriya Literature. She teaches college in Belpahar, Jharsuguda, Orissa.
The author of seven novels and nine collections of short stories, Sarojini Sahoo’s fiction has been translated from Oriya into Bengali, English and French. She has been acclaimed for breaking sexual and ethnic taboos in India, reaching a large audience there and in neighboring Bangladesh. Her novel Gambhiri Ghara became a cult classic in Oriya literature when it appeared in 2005. A Bengali translation, under the title Mithya Gerosthali, was published in Dhaka in 2007. A French translation is due out from Editions Ecriture, Paris.
The first chapter of Gambhiri Ghara appears here for the first time in English, under the title The Dark Abode. It is translated from the Oriya by Mahendra Dash.
Sarojini Sahoo maintains the blog Sense & Sensuality.
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