You sing, and your voice peels the husk
of the day's grain, your song with the sun and the sky,
the pine trees speak with their green tongue:
all the birds of the winter whistle.

The sea fills its cellar with footfalls,
with bells, chains, whimpers,
the tools and the metals jangle,
wheels of the caravan creak.

But I hear only your voice, your voice
soars with the zing and precision of an arrow,
it drops with the gravity of rain,

your voice scatters the highest swords
and returns with its cargo of violets:
it accompanies me through the sky.


Pablo Neruda

Always for the first time
Hardly do I know you by sight
You return at some hour of the night to a house at an angle to my window
A wholly imaginary house
It is there that from one second to the next
In the inviolate darkness
I anticipate once more the fascinating rift occurring
The one and only rift
In the facade and in my heart
The closer I come to you in reality
The more the key sings at the door of the unknown room
Where you appear alone before me
At first you coalesce entirely with the brightness
The elusive angle of a curtain
It's a field of jasmine I gazed upon at dawn on a road in the vicinity of Grasse
With the diagonal slant of its girls picking
Behind them the dark falling wing of the plants stripped bare
Before them a T-square of dazzling light
The curtain invisibly raised
In a frenzy all the flowers swarm back in
It is you at grips with that too long hour never dim enough until sleep
You as though you could be
The same except that I shall perhaps never meet you
You pretend not to know I am watching you
Marvelously I am no longer sure you know
Your idleness brings tears to my eyes
A swarm of interpretations surrounds each of your gestures
It's a honeydew hunt
There are rocking chairs on a deck there are branches that may well scratch you in the forest
There are in a shop window in the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette
Two lovely crossed legs caught in long stockings
Flaring out in the center of a great white clover
There is a silken ladder rolled out over the ivy
By my leaning over the precipice
Of your presence and your absence in hopeless fusion
My finding the secret
Of loving you
Always for the first time


Andre Breton




Image: jasmine

The Confirmation


Yes, yours, my love, is the right human face.
I in my mind had waited for this long,
Seeing the false and searching for the true,
Then found you as a traveler finds a place
Of welcome suddenly amid the wrong
Valleys and rocks and twisting roads. But you,
What shall I call you? A fountain in a waste,
A well of water in a country dry,
Or anything that's honest and good, an eye
That makes the whole world bright. Your open heart,
Simple with giving, gives the primal deed,
The first good world, the blossom, the blowing seed,
The hearth, the steadfast land, the wandering sea,
Not beautiful or rare in every part,
But like yourself, as they were meant to be.


Edwin Muir

Days


You don’t have “bad” days and “good” days.
You don’t feel sometimes brilliant and sometimes dumb.
There’s no studying, no scholarly thinking having to do
with love,
but there is a great deal of plotting, and secret touching,
and nights you don’t remember at all.


Rumi

There's No Forgetting (Sonata)


If you should ask me where I've been all this time
I have to say 'Things happen.'
I have to dwell on stones darkening the earth,
on the river ruined in its own duration:
I know nothing save things the birds have lost,
the sea I left behind, or my sister crying.
Why this abundance of places? Why does day lock
with day? Why the dark night swilling round
in our mouths? And why the dead?

Should you ask me where I come from, I must talk, with broken things,
with fairly painful utensils,
with great beasts turned to dust as often as not
and my afflicted heart.
These are not memories that have passed each other
nor the yellowing pigeon asleep in our forgetting;
these are tearful faces
and fingers down our throats
and whatever among leaves falls to the ground:
the dark of a day gone by
grown fat on our grieving blood.

Here are violets, and here swallows,
all things we love and which inform
sweet messages seriatim
through which time passes and sweetness passes.

We don't get far, though, beyond these teeth:
Why waste time gnawing the husk of silence?
I know not what to answer:
there are so many dead,
and so many dikes the red sun breached,
and so many heads battering hulls
and so many hands that have closed over kisses
and so many things that I want to forget.







There's No Forgetting: Sonata


Ask me where have I been
and I'll tell you: "Things keep on happening."
I must talk of the rubble that darkens the clay;
of the river's duration, destroying itself;
I know only the things the birds have abandoned,
or the ocean behind me, or my sorrowing sister.
Why the distinctions of place? Why should day
follow day? Why must the blackness
of nighttime collect in our mouths? Why the dead?

If you question me: where have you come from, I must talk with
things falling away,
artifacts tart to the taste,
great beasts, always rotting away,
and my own inconsolable heart.

Those who cross over with us, are no keepsakes,
not the yellowing pigeon that sleeps in forgetfulness:
only the face with its tears,
the hands at our throats,
whatever the leafage dissevers:
the dark of an obsolete day,
a day that has tasted the grief in our blood.

Here are violets, swallows --
all things that delight us, the delicate tablets
that show us the lengthening train
through which pleasure and transiency pass.

Here let us halt, in the teeth of a barrier:
useless to gnaw on the husks that the silence assembles.
For I come without answers:
see: the dying are legion,
legion, the breakwaters breached by the red of the sun,
all the heads knocking the ship's side,
the hands closing over their kisses,
and legion the things I would give to oblivion.




Pablo Neruda




I find it fascinating to compare translations of poems, to look at the nuances of language. I feel that the best translations capture the mood of the poem, staying true to the poet's style and to the original language.

I enjoy reading poems in different moods. Like listening to different artists sing the same song. Beautiful, each.




(Image: violets)

"Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."

Vaclav Havel





Image: The Fortune Teller by Brassai

Joy and Sorrow



Then a woman said, “Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.”

And he answered:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits alone with you, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.

Only when you are empty are you at a standstill and balanced.

When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.



Khalil Gibran