the laughter of women

The laughter of women sets fire
to the Halls of Injustice
and the false evidence burns
to a beautiful white lightness

It rattles the Chambers of Congress
and forces the windows wide open
so the fatuous speeches can fly out

The laughter of women wipes the mist
from the spectacles of the old;
it infects them with a happy flu
and they laugh as if they were young again

Prisoners held in underground cells
imagine that they see daylight
when they remember the laughter of women

It runs across water that divides,
and reconciles two unfriendly shores
like flares that signal the news to each other

What a language it is, the laughter of women,
high-flying and subversive.
Long before law and scripture
we heard the laughter, we understood freedom.

Lisel Mueller

'with music, and with banners'

 

'Speak not of guilt, speak not of responsibility. When the Regiment of the Senses parades by, with music, and with banners; when the senses shiver and shudder, it is only a fool and an irreverent person that will keep his distance, who will not embrace the good cause, marching towards the conquest of pleasures and passions.
      All of morality’s laws – poorly understood and applied – are nil and cannot stand even for a moment, when the Regiment of the Senses parades by, with music, and with banners.
      Do not permit any shadowy virtue to hold you back. Do not believe that any obligation binds you. Your duty is to give in, to always give in to Desires, these most perfect creatures of the perfect gods. Your duty is to enlist as a faithful footman, with simplicity of heart, when the Regiment of the Senses parades by, with music, and with banners.
      Do not confine yourself at home, misleading yourself with theories of justice, with the preconceptions of reward, held by an imperfect society. Do not say, Such is my toil’s worth and such is my due to savor. Just as life is an inheritance, and you did nothing to earn it as a recompense, so should Sensual Pleasure be. Do not shut yourself at home; but keep the windows open, open wide, so as to hear the first sound of the passing of the soldiers, when the Regiment of the Senses arrives, with music, and with banners.
      Do not be deceived by the blasphemers who tell you that the service is dangerous and laborious. The service of sensual pleasure is a constant joy. It does exhaust you, but it exhausts you with inebriations sublime. And finally, when you collapse in the street, even then your fortune is enviable. When your funeral will pass by, the Forms to which your desires gave shape will shower lilacs and white roses upon your coffin, young Olympian Gods will bear you on their shoulders, and you will be buried in the Cemetery of the Ideal, where the mausoleums of poetry gleam conspicuously white.'

C.P. Cavafy, The Regiment of the Senses

translated from the Greek by Manuel Savidis

The Cavafy Archive

Power

Circe's Power

'I never turned anyone into a pig.
Some people are pigs; I make them
Look like pigs.

I'm sick of your world
That lets the outside disguise the inside. Your men weren't bad men;
Undisciplined life
Did that to them. As pigs,

Under the care of
Me and my ladies, they
Sweetened right up.

Then I reversed the spell, showing you my goodness
As well as my power. I saw

We could be happy here,
As men and women are
When their needs are simple. In the same breath,

I foresaw your departure,
Your men with my help braving
The crying and pounding sea. You think

A few tears upset me? My friend,
Every sorceress is
A pragmatist at heart; nobody sees essence who can't
Face limitation. If I wanted only to hold you

I could hold you prisoner.'

 

Louise Gluck

'our efforts are the efforts of the Trojans'

 

Trojans

i
Our efforts are the efforts of the Trojans.
We prosper in some measure; we believe
in our own power a little; and we begin
to move intrepidly and with fair hopes.

But always something rises and repels us.
Achilles at the trench in front of us
rises, and with far-sounding cry dismays us.

ii
Our efforts are the efforts of the Trojans.
We think that with decision and with boldness
we may repress the enmity of fortune,
and we abide the conflict in the open.

But when the crisis exigent is come,
our boldness and decision fall away;
the soul is disconcerted, paralysed;
and round about the walls we run apace,
endeavouring in flight to find escape.

And our defeat is certain. Even now,
above us, on the walls, the wail begins.
Memories wail, and affections of our day.
Grievously Priam and Hecuba bewail us. 

C.P. Cavafy

Poems by C. P. Cavafy. Translated, from the Greek, by J. C. Cavafy. Ikaros, 2003

The Cavafy Archive

Fire

'A Small Story about the Sky'

'The fire was so fierce,
So red, so gray, so yellow
That, along with the land,
It burned part of the sky
Which stayed black in that corner
For years,
As if it were night there
Even in the daytime,
A piece of the sky burnt
And which then
Could not be counted on
Even by the birds.

It was a regular fire—
Terrible—we forget this
About fire—terrible
And full of pride. 
It intended to be
Big, no regular fire. 
Like so many of us,
It intended to be more
And this time was.
It was not better or worse
Than any other fire
Growing up. 
But this time, it was a fire
At just the right time
And in just the right place—
If you think like a fire—
A place it could do something big.

Its flames reached out
With ten thousand pincers,
As if the fire
Were made of beetles and scorpions
Clawing themselves to get up,
Pinching the air itself
And climbing,
So many sharp animals
On each others' backs
Then into the air itself,
Ten thousand snaps and pinches
At least,
So that if the sky
Was made of something,
It could not get away this time.

Finally the fire
Caught the sky,
Which acted like a slow rabbit
Which had made a miscalculation.
It didn’t believe this could happen
And so it ran left,
Right into the thin toothpicks of flames,
Too fast to pull back,
The sky with all its arms,
Hands, fingers, fingernails,
All of it
Disappeared. 
Goodbye.

The sky stayed black
For several years after.
I wanted to tell you
This small story
About the sky.
It’s a good one
And explains why the sky
Comes so slowly in the morning,
Still unsure of what’s here. 
But the story is not mine.
It was written by fire,
That same small fire
That wanted to come home
With something of its own
To tell,
And it did,
A small piece of blue in its mouth.'

Alberto Rios
Poetry magazine, February 2011

Sadness

Oda a la tristeza

Tristeza, escarabajo
de siete patas rotas,
huevo de telaraña,
rata descalabrada,
esqueleto de perra:
Aquí no entras.
No pasas.
Ándate.
Vuelve
al Sur con tu paraguas,
vuelve
al Norte con tus dientes de culebra.
Aquí vive un poeta.
La tristeza no puede
entrar por estas puertas.
Por las ventanas
entra el aire del mundo,
las rojas rosas nuevas,
las banderas bordadas
del pueblo y sus victorias.
No puedes.
Aquí no entras.
Sacude
tus alas de murciélago,
yo pisaré las plumas
que caen de tu manto,
yo barreré los trozos
de tu cadáver hacia
las cuatro puntas del viento,
yo te torceré el cuello,
te coseré los ojos,
cortaré tu mortaja
y enterraré tus huesos roedores
bajo la primavera de un manzano.

Pablo Neruda

Ode to Sadness

Sadness, scarab
with seven crippled feet,
spiderweb egg,
scramble-brained rat,
bitch's skeleton:
No entry here.
Don't come in.
Go away.
Go back
south with your umbrella,
go back
north with your serpent's teeth.
A poet lives here.
No sadness may
cross this threshold.
Through these windows
comes the breath of the world,
fresh red roses,
flags embroidered with
the victories of the people.
No.
No entry.
Flap
your bat's wings,
I will trample the feathers
that fall from your mantle,
I will sweep the bits and pieces
of your carcass to
the four corners of the wind,
I will wring your neck,
I will stitch your eyelids shut,
I will sew your shroud,
sadness, and bury your rodent bones
beneath the springtime of an apple tree.
 

Pablo Neruda

fighting magic with magic

 

 'Fairy tales are full of impossible tasks:
Gather the chin hairs of a man-eating goat,
Or cross a sulphuric lake in a leaky boat,
Select the prince from a row of identical masks,
Tiptoe up to a dragon where it basks
And snatch its bone; count dust specks, mote by mote,
Or learn the phone directory by rote.
Always it’s impossible what someone asks—

You have to fight magic with magic. You have to believe
That you have something impossible up your sleeve,
The language of snakes, perhaps, an invisible cloak,
An army of ants at your beck, or a lethal joke,
The will to do whatever must be done:
Marry a monster. Hand over your firstborn son.'

A.E. Stallings: Fairy-tale Logic

Conversation

 

The tumult in the heart
keeps asking questions.
And then it stops and undertakes to answer
in the same tone of voice.
No one could tell the difference.

Uninnocent, these conversations start,
and then engage the senses,
only half-meaning to.
And then there is no choice,
and then there is no sense;

until a name
and all its connotation are the same.
 

Elizabeth Bishop