Happiness

Happiness, to some, elation;

Is, to others, mere stagnation.

Days of passive somnolence,

At its wildest, indolence.

Hours of empty quietness,

No delight, and no distress.

Happiness to me is wine,

Effervescent, superfine.

Full of tang and fiery pleasure,

Far too hot to leave me leisure

For a single thought beyond it.

Drunk! Forgetful! This the bond: it

Means to give one's soul to gain

Life's quintessence. Even pain

Pricks to livelier living, then

Wakes the nerves to laugh again,

Rapture's self is three parts sorrow.

Although we must die to-morrow,

Losing every thought but this;

Torn, triumphant, drowned in bliss.

Happiness: We rarely feel it.

I would buy it, beg it, steal it,

Pay in coins of dripping blood

For this one transcendent good. 

Amy Lowell

remembering & forgetting

Camino al revés

De vez en cuando

camino al revés:

es mi modo de recordar.

Si caminara sólo hacia delante,

te podría contar

cómo es el olvido.

Humberto Ak'abal

I Journey Backwards

From time to time

I journey backwards

It is my way of remembering.

If I walked forward alone,

I would be able to tell you

What oblivion is like.

Translated from Spanish to English by Andres Alfaro

sombra

Sombra:

noche pequeña

al pie de cualquier árbol.

Humberto Ak-Abal

clairvoyance

'Sólo la poesía es clarividente.'

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

future - silence - nothing

When I pronounce the word Future,

the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,

I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,

I make something no nonbeing can hold. 

Wislawa Szymborska: Three oddest words

bleeding hearts

Dainty bleeding hearts

Flower in shady gardens

An ode to lost loves 

Haiku Bleeding Hearts

by 

A Poet Who Loves To Sing ….AlvesHolmes

Carpet

 

Carpet

Each colour expands and stretches out
into the other colours
To be the more alone if you look at it.

Giuseppe Ungaretti  

'one wild and precious life'

 

'Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?'

Mary Oliver, The Summer Day

New and Selected poems (1992)

Beacon Press, Boston/MA

men who want to love women

Gioconda Belli:

 

Reglas del juego para los hombres que quieren amar a mujeres

I
El hombre que me ame
deberá saber descorrer las cortinas de la piel,
encontrar la profundidad de mis ojos
y conocer la que anida en mí,
la golondrina
transparente de la ternura.
 

II
El hombre que me ame
no querrá poseerme como una mercancía,
ni exhibirme como un trofeo de caza,
sabrá estar a mi lado
con el mismo amor
con que yo estaré al lado suyo.
 

III
El amor del hombre que me ame
será fuerte como los árboles de ceibo,
protector y seguro como ellos,
limpio como una mañana de diciembre.
 

IV
El hombre que me ame
no dudará de mi sonrisa
ni temerá la abundancia de mi pelo
respetará la tristeza, el silencio
y con caricias tocará mi vientre como guitarra
para que brote música y alegría
desde el fondo de mi cuerpo.
 

V
El hombre que me ame
podrá encontrar en mí
la hamaca para descansar
el pesado fardo de sus preocupaciones
la amiga con quien compartir sus íntimos secretos,
el lago donde flotar
sin miedo de que el ancla del compromiso
le impida volar cuando se le ocurra ser pájaro.
 

VI
El hombre que me ame
hará poesía con su vida,
construyendo cada día
con la mirada puesta en el futuro.
 

VII
Por sobre todas las cosas,
el hombre que me ame
deberá amar al pueblo
no como una abstracta palabra
sacada de la manga,
sino como algo real, concreto,
ante quien rendir homenaje con acciones
y dar la vida si necesario.
 

VIII
El hombre que me ame
reconocerá mi rostro en la trinchera
rodilla en tierra me amará
mientras los dos disparamos juntos
contra el enemigo.
 

IX
El amor de mi hombre
no conocerá el miedo a la entrega,
ni temerá descubrirse ante la magia del
enamoramiento
en una plaza pública llena de multitudes
Podra gritar —te quiero—
o hacer rótulos en lo alto de los edificios
proclamando su derecho a sentir
el más hermoso y humano de los sentimientos.
 

X
El amor de mi hombre
no le huirá a las cocinas
ni a los pañales del hijo,
será como un viento fresco
llevándose entre nubes de sueño y de pasado
las debilidades que, por siglos, nos mantuvieron
separados
como seres de distinta estatura
 

XI
El amor de mi hombre
no querrá rotularme o etiquetarme,
me dará aire, espacio,
alimento para crecer y ser mejor,
como una Revolución
que hace de cada día
el comienzo de una nueva victoria.
 

New departures

desires and sensations - deseos y sensaciones

'I sit in a mood of reverie.
I brought to Art desires and sensations:
things half-glimpsed,
faces or lines, certain indistinct memories
of unfulfilled love affairs. Let me submit to Art:
Art knows how to shape forms of Beauty,
almost imperceptibly completing life,
blending impressions, blending day with day.'

C.P. Cavafy:  I’ve Brought to Art

 

Translated by Edmund Keeley/Philip Sherrard

C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition. Princeton University Press, 1992

Me siento y medito.

He dado al Arte deseos, sensaciones, 

ciertos entrevistos
rostros o líneas, la insegura imagen
de amores incompletos. Dejad que a él me entregue.
El Arte sabe dar forma a la Belleza,
con toque imperceptible completando la vida
combinando impresiones, combinando los días.

Versión de José Ángel Valente

glimpses

'imagine immensities'

'We begin by worrying we aren’t good enough, smart enough or talented enough to get what we want, then we voluntarily live in this paralyzing mental framework, rather than confront our own role in this paralysis. Just the possibility of failing turns into a dutiful self-fulfilling prophecy. We begin to believe that these personal restrictions are, in fact, the fixed limitations of the world. We go on to live our lives, all the while wondering what we can change and how we can change it, and we calculate and re-calculate when we will be ready to do the things we want to do. And we dream. If only. If only. One day. Some day.

Every once in a while — often when we least expect it — we encounter someone more courageous, someone who chooses to strive for that which (to us) seemed unrealistically unattainable, even elusive. And we marvel. We swoon. We gape. Often, we are in awe. I think we look at these people as lucky, when in fact, luck has nothing to do with it. It is really about the strength of their imagination; it is about how they constructed the possibilities for their life. In short, unlike me, they didn’t determine what was impossible before it was even possible.

[…]

If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve. Do what you love, and don’t stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities, don’t compromise, and don’t waste time. Start now. Not 20 years from now, not two weeks from now. Now.'
 

Millman, Debbie (2009).  Look Both Ways: Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design

red heart - corazon rojo

To own the Art within the Soul

To own the Art within the Soul
The Soul to entertain
With Silence as a Company
And Festival maintain

Is an unfurnished Circumstance
Possession is to One
As an Estate perpetual
Or a reduceless Mine.

Emily Dickinson

The reflection of the sky in the water - el reflejo del cielo en el agua

Song of the spirits over the waters

 

Gesang der Geister über den Wassern

Des Menschen Seele
Gleicht dem Wasser:
Vom Himmel kommt es,
Zum Himmel steigt es,
Und wieder nieder
Zur Erde muß es,
Ewig wechselnd.

Strömt von der hohen,
Steilen Felswand
Der reine Strahl,
Dann stäubt er lieblich
In Wolkenwellen
Zum glatten Fels,
Und leicht empfangen
Wallt er verschleiernd,
Leisrauschend
Zur Tiefe nieder.

Ragen Klippen
Dem Sturz entgegen,
Schäumt er unmutig
Stufenweise
Zum Abgrund.

Im flachen Bette
Schleicht er das Wiesental hin,
Und in dem glatten See
Weiden ihr Antlitz
Alle Gestirne.

Wind ist der Welle
Lieblicher Buhler;
Wind mischt vom Grund aus
Schäumende Wogen.

Seele des Menschen,
Wie gleichst du dem Wasser!
Schicksal des Menschen,
Wie gleichst du dem Wind!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1779)

Song of the spirits over the waters
The soul of man
Is like the water:
It comes from heaven,
It returns to heaven,
And down again
To earth must go,
Ever changing.

When from the high,
Sheer wall of rock
The pure stream gushes,
It sprays its lovely vapor
In billowing clouds
Towards the smooth rock,
And lightly received,
It goes enshrouded,
Softly hissing
Down to the deep.

Cliffs tower,
Opposing its fall.
Annoyed, it foams
Step by step
Into the abyss.

In a flat bed
It slinks down the grassy vale,
And in the waveless lake
All the stars
Feast on their likeness.

Wind is the wave's
Handsome suitor;
Wind stirs up from the depths
Foaming billows.

Soul of man,
How like to the water!
Fate of man,
How like to the wind!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1779)

image: 'Traumfaenger' fountain by Norbert Then, Fuerst Leopold Zeche, Dorsten

Everything flows

a visitor - un visitante

Un Visitante

Alguien abrió con el mayor sigilo
mi puerta, de seguro mal cerrada.
Le vio, sin forma apenas, mi almohada,
el paso muelle y la palabra en vilo.

No, no era nadie que buscara asilo
ni que quisiera demandarme nada.
Con la primera luz de la alborada,
salió en silencio y me dejó intranquilo.

Eso fue todo. ¡Nada más! No espero
saber la causa ni atisbar los fines
de esa visita inesperada. Pero

esta mañana oí sonar violines.
Nada tampoco… ¡Amaneció mi alero
cubierto de hojas rubias y jazmines!

Raúl Contreras

walls or wings - muros o alas

 

'Where the wind of change is blowing some build walls and others windmills.'
Chinese proverb

'Cuando el viento de cambio sopla unos construyen muros y otros molinos de viento.'
Proverbio chino 

 

'Wo der Wind des Wandels weht, bauen die einen Mauern und die anderen Windmühlen.'

Chinesische Redensart

mis alas inexistentes - my nonexistant wings

 

'Una planicie suspendida en el aire, segundo cielo tal
vez. En este lugar, el futuro y el pasado no existen,
nada altera el destino y todo lo altera (porque el
destino es un circulo), cada pensamiento es todas las
existencias, cualquier pregunta es inútil. En una
pequeña choza está Gabriel. Por su cuerpo
extraviado, su delgadez prodigiosa, su abandono
paciente, descubro que ha envejecido. Yo lo cuido,
una forma de dejarme cuidar. Afuera, acogidas al
mismo deseo, múltiples figuras con los ojos cerrados,
haciendo un elipse. Almas movedizas del cosmos,
esferas dormidas. Visten túnicas pálidas. Imposible
discernir en sus rostros la felicidad o la desgracia: tal
la intensidad de lo que sienten. Y la luna quieta,
traicionera. Y algunas luciérnagas. Y su canto de oeste
a este, de un mundo a otro. Antes de abandonar la
choza y partir, hay que ver con que gracia me
acomodo las alas inexistentes.'

Maria Negroni: Gabriel

 in Night Journey, Princeton University Press 2002, p. 15

'A plane suspended in air, perhaps second heaven. In
this place, past and future do not exist, nothing and
everything will alter fate (because fate is a circle),
each thought is every thing that is, all questions
futile. In a small hut, Gabriel. His spellbound body,
its eerie tapering, patient abandon, tell me that he
has aged. I tend to him to place myself under his
protection. Outside, communicants in one desire,
many figures, eyes shut, forming an ellipse. Traveling
souls of the cosmos, sleeping spheres. In pale tunics.
Indiscernible their sentiment, neither joy nor sorrow,
pure intensity. And the silent traitorous moon. And a
few fireflies. And their song from west to east, from
one world to another. Before I leave the hut, you
should see how gracefully I adjust my (nonexistent)
wings.'

Maria Negroni: Gabriel, in Night Journey

 translated from the Spanish by Anne Twitty

Princeton University Press 2002, p. 15

 

hombres, llorando - weeping men

'Después que la casta Persefonea hubo dispersado acá y acullá las almas de las mujeres, presentóse muy angustiada la de Agamemnón Atrida; a cuyo alrededor se congregaban las de cuantos en la mansión de Egisto perecieron con el héroe cumpliendo su destino. Reconocióme así que bebió la negra sangre y al punto comenzó a llorar ruidosamente: derramaba copiosas lágrimas y me tendía las manos con el deseo de abrazarme; mas yo no disfrutaba del firme vigor, ni de la fortaleza que antes tenía en los flexibles miembros.

Al verlo lloré, y, compadeciéndole en mi corazón, le dije estas aladas palabras 

¡Atrida gloriosísimo, rey de hombres Agamemnón! ¿Cuál hado de la aterradora muerte te quitó la vida? ¿Acaso Poseidón te mató en tus naves, desencadenando el fuerte soplo de terribles vientos o unos hombres enemigos acabaron contigo en la tierra firme, porque te llevabas sus bueyes y sus hermosos rebaños de ovejas o porque combatías por apoderarte de su ciudad y de sus mujeres?'

Homero, Odisea, Canto XI: Descenso a los infiernos.

'When Persephone had dismissed the female ghosts in all directions, the ghost of Agamemnon son of Atreus came sadly up to me, surrounded by those who had perished with him in the house of Aigisthos. As soon as he had tasted the blood he knew me, and weeping bitterly stretched out his arms towards me to embrace me; but he had no strength nor substance any more, and I too wept and pitied him as I beheld him. ‘How did you come by your death,’ said I, ‘King Agamemnon? Did Poseidon raise his winds and waves against you when you were at sea, or did your enemies make an end of you on the mainland when you were cattle-lifting or sheep-stealing, or while they were fighting in defense of their wives and city?’

Homer, The Odyssey, 11.9
Samuel Butler, Based on public domain edition, revised by Timothy Power and Gregory Nagy., Ed.

Arte poética - the art of poetry

 

Mirar el río hecho de tiempo y agua
y recordar que el tiempo es otro río,
saber que nos perdemos como el río
y que los rostros pasan como el agua.

Sentir que la vigilia es otro sueño
que sueña no soñar y que la muerte
que teme nuestra carne es esa muerte
de cada noche, que se llama sueño.

Ver en el día o en el año un símbolo
de los días del hombre y de sus años,
convertir el ultraje de los años
en una música, un rumor y un símbolo,

ver en la muerte el sueño, en el ocaso
un triste oro, tal es la poesía
que es inmortal y pobre. La poesía
vuelve como la aurora y el ocaso.

A veces en las tardes una cara
nos mira desde el fondo de un espejo;
el arte debe ser como ese espejo
que nos revela nuestra propia cara.

Cuentan que Ulises, harto de prodigios,
lloró de amor al divisar su Itaca
verde y humilde. El arte es esa Itaca
de verde eternidad, no de prodigios.

También es como el río interminable
que pasa y queda y es cristal de un mismo
Heráclito inconstante, que es el mismo
y es otro, como el río interminable.

Jorge Luis Borges

To gaze at a river made of time and water
and remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.

To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.

To see in every day and year a symbol
of all the days of man and his years,
and convert the outrage of the years
into a music, a sound, and a symbol.

To see in death a dream, in the sunset
a golden sadness--such is poetry,
humble and immortal, poetry,
returning, like dawn and the sunset.

Sometimes at evening there's a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
disclosing to each of us his face.

They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
wept with love on seeing Ithaca,
humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,
a green eternity, not wonders.

Art is endless like a river flowing,
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another, like the river flowing.
 

Jorge Luis Borges

translated by Anthony Kerrigan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp4vLJ3oMKY

El encuentro: Cassandra meets Agamemnon

the strength of necessity

'But I must bear my destiny as best I can, knowing well that there is no resisting the strength of necessity.

Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.),  Prometheus Bound, l. 103.

love (variations)

Variations on the Word Love

This is a word we use to plug
holes with. It's the right size for those warm
blanks in speech, for those red heart-
shaped vacancies on the page that look nothing
like real hearts. Add lace
and you can sell
it. We insert it also in the one empty
space on the printed form
that comes with no instructions. There are whole
magazines with not much in them
but the word love, you can
rub it all over your body and you
can cook with it too. How do we know
it isn't what goes on at the cool
debaucheries of slugs under damp
pieces of cardboard? As for the weed-
seedlings nosing their tough snouts up
among the lettuces, they shout it.
Love! Love! sing the soldiers, raising
their glittering knives in salute.

Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
this word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go.

Margaret Atwood

The Dream Keeper

 

The Dream Keeper

Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamer,
Bring me all your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.

Langston Hughes

Stories

 

 Why We Tell Stories

For Linda Foster


I
Because we used to have leaves
and on damp days
our muscles feel a tug,
painful now, from when roots
pulled us into the ground

and because our children believe
they can fly, an instinct retained
from when the bones in our arms
were shaped like zithers and broke
neatly under their feathers

and because before we had lungs
we knew how far it was to the bottom
as we floated open-eyed
like painted scarves through the scenery
of dreams, and because we awakened

and learned to speak

2
We sat by the fire in our caves,
and because we were poor, we made up a tale
about a treasure mountain
that would open only for us

and because we were always defeated,
we invented impossible riddles
only we could solve,
monsters only we could kill,
women who could love no one else
and because we had survived
sisters and brothers, daughters and sons,
we discovered bones that rose
from the dark earth and sang
as white birds in the trees

3
Because the story of our life
becomes our life

Because each of us tells
the same story
but tells it differently

and none of us tells it
the same way twice

Because grandmothers looking like spiders
want to enchant the children
and grandfathers need to convince us
what happened happened because of them

and though we listen only
haphazardly, with one ear,
we will begin our story
with the word and
 

Lisel Mueller

Art, life & alienation

 

'I also make you witness to a process which has changed my lens on the world. But this process of change has only just begun, and I feel keenly the tension between the artistic forms within which we have agreed to abide and the living material, borne to me by my senses, my psychic apparatus, and my thought, which has resisted these forms. If I may formulate a poetological problem so soon, let it be this: There is and there can be no poetics which prevents the living experience of countless perceiving subjects from being killed and buried in art objects. So, does that mean that art objects ("works") are products of the alienation of our culture, whose other finished products are produced for self-annihilation?'

Wolf, Christa, 1984. Conditions of a narrative. In: Wolf, Christa, 1984. Cassandra: a novel and four essays. Translated from German by Jan van Heurck. London: Virago, p.142

If

If I should die to-night,
My friends would look upon my quiet face
Before they laid it in its resting-place,
And deem that death had left it almost fair;
And, laying snow-white flowers against my hair,
Would smooth it down with tearful tenderness,
And fold my hands with lingering caress, --
Poor hands, so empty and so cold to-night!

If I should die to-night,
My friends would call to mind with loving thought
Some kindly deed the icy hands had wrought,
Some gentle word the frozen lips had said,
Errands on which the willing feet had sped;
The memory of my selfishness and pride,
My hasty words would all be put aside,
And so I should be loved and mourned to-night.

If I should die to-night,
Even hearts estranged would turn once more to me,
Recalling other days remorsefully;
The eyes that chill me with averted glance
Would look upon me as of yore, perchance,
And soften in the old familiar way,
For who could war with dumb, unconscious clay?
So I might rest, forgiven of all to-night.

Oh, friends! I pray to-night,
Keep not your kisses for my dead, cold brow:
The way is lonely, let me feel them now.
Think gently of me; I am travelworn;
My faltering feet are pierced with many a thorn.
Forgive, oh, hearts estranged, forgive, I plead!
When dreamless rest is mine I shall not need
The tenderness for which I long to-night.

 

Arabella Eugenia Smith