poetry of love between me and you

Nil Desperandum

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 20:55:00 +0000

Day 10, PAD Challenge. Prompt: A "never again" poem.

never, again, look into the distance
and see--nothing

there is always--something, however small,
microscopic, that wants your

brushstroke touch, in spite of their
unknowing eyes, blinkered,

the tongues dumb with fear, the
staccato fingers on the thigh,

nil desperandum, never, never
draw the shades down so fully

you cannot still see a sliver of
the sun, the common gold bar,

some currency to hold in your heart
when all else is bankrupt, a string

of goose eggs fading into infinity

5:50 p.m. to Fleetwood

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 02:52:00 +0000

Day 9, PAD Challenge. Prompt: A "time of day" poem.

the day done, the noose of
the tie loosened, the crack
of a can opening, homeward they
go, this one working on a
crossword, the other ripping out
an article sssssssst from a
magazine, another TALKING TOO
LOUD on their cell phone

click click click click down
the aisle
tickets, please, tickets

the doors open to humid air,
honeysuckle-thick
another day done
another to come

Slicing Fruit

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 20:49:00 +0000

Day 8, PAD Challenge. Prompt: A "ready to celebrate" poem.

all is in readiness, the curtains
pulled to permit the first light

of Spring in, as she, green-gowned,
slices fruit and counts the

bright slashes of silver marking
the cloth, mirrors reflecting the

face of the sun, the brightness,
the long-hoped-for, the prodigal

returned home, her hair in
pincurls, the lining of her cases

ripped out, time to celebrate indeed

About A Boy Stirring Jam

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:09:00 +0000

A wooden spoon for stirring jam,
Dripping sweet tar, while in the pan
Plum magma’s bubbles blather.
For someone who can’t grasp the whole
There’s salvation in the remembered detail.
What, back then, did I know about that?
The real, hard as a diamond,
Was to happen in the indefinable
Future, and everything seemed
Only a sign of what was to come. How naïve.
Now I know inattention is an unforgivable sin
And each particle of time has an ultimate dimension.

— janusz szuber

Dance Me to the End of Love

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 03:19:00 +0000

by Leonard Cohen

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the wedding now, dance me on and on

Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long
We're both of us beneath our love, we're both of us above
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Dance me to the children who are asking to be born
Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn
Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I'm gathered safely in
Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

Three Years, Six Months, Two Days

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 20:42:00 +0000

Day 7, PAD Challenge. Prompt a "what if" poem.

what if his words were more honest,
honest, more, his words she
was honest, too, much more
than he

it goes in circles, he she, he she,
heshe, shehe, heshe, it was it
was it was
and then it was not

and that is the pity of the
thing, him raising his hands
in exasperation, herself
curdling, sour under

the sun, box of remnants shoved
into her hands, flatfooted on
a Summer sidewalk

I started early, took my dog

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 20:35:00 +0000

I started Early – Took my Dog By Emily Dickinson

I started Early – Took my Dog –
And visited the Sea –
The Mermaids in the Basement
Came out to look at me –

And Frigates – in the Upper Floor
Extended Hempen Hands
Presuming Me to be a Mouse –
Aground – upon the Sands

But no Man moved Me – till the Tide
Went past my simple Shoe –
And past my Apron – and my Belt
And past my Boddice – too –

And made as He would eat me up –
As wholly as a Dew
Opon a Dandelion's Sleeve –
And then – I started – too –

And He – He followed – close behind –
I felt His Silver Heel
Opon my Ancle – Then My Shoes
Would overflow with Pearl –

Until We met the Solid Town –
No One He seemed to know –
And bowing – with a Mighty look –
At me – The Sea withdrew –

Title used by Kate Atkinson for her new novel, "Started Early, Took My Dog"

Don't Weaken, Dig Your Heels In

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 20:13:00 +0000

Day 6, PAD Challenge. Prompt: "Don't (blank), (blank)"

easier than you think, to bite
off the matter with a brittle
smile, regardless of how

she has been assailed, know
that her heels will grind them-
selves into the earth before

she gives way and topples,
crushing you, at the last--
beware, beware, any who

would persecute her children--the
lovely reeds swaying in the wind--may
they be bedevilled by an itch
they cannot scratch
before the maw of the earth opens up
to enclose them

THE MERRI CREEK : POEMS & PIECES, #22, April, 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 11:37:00 +0000

C. D. BARRON

3 POEMS & A LETTER

oOo

THE PALM

"Nevertheless the truth that is in the intellect, some is simple and some is complex."

Joseph Delmedigo, 1629

A star-fish

suckered with hope

as a garden postponed

A helmet of shady thoughts

for an artist's hand splayed

brittle as bread-sticks

A hallowed mountain

feathered with eyelashes

as a lost piece of puzzle

A fragment of moss

on which sits an angel

waving a periwinkle

A sealed fountain self-effaced

a broken bell upturned

holding seventy paradoxes

A palm at the end of the mind

beyond bitter waters

and a desert of moon

[2009/11]

oOo

NEW MOON/Aspasia of the Archway

Self reflection

is the praxis of hypostatic unity

trinity in foil

res before convexity

finding your arche become

more knowing than epochal being

Beautiful you say

now shut up

and let the order begin

in wirkel

in gedichte

in principium

Only without principle can we properly live

self complacency our best hope

syllogisms full of bellis and systematic abuse

bending in haecceity catoptric for life

luteo scorpio this iron stillness is like hell

father fear the enemy in dwelling

[9/1/00/11]

oOo

POSHLOST

"before us the future looms dark, and that we can scarcely...."

Gogol, Dead Souls

Birds

fly through water

like silver

in transaction

whether this be deep

or the half life

is not the question

A half moon

like horns on the head

makes for better sacrifice

than the horizon of Marduk

his slavish destruction of chaos

causes us to forget cuppeity

and the filial tussle with quintessence

[2/'11]

oOo

CORRESPONDENCE :

Thoughts arising from a reading of Kris Hemensley article on Grossinger: -

Basically I hold to the anarchist's tenet, that we are best not to be overly-concerned with endings as to do so is to be purloined by "means". Rather concentrate on the paradoxes and interactions of our times beyond solution. Perhaps the Homeric encounter with Calypso speaks best, where one sought, whether reasonably or unreasonably, release from specific mystification for a better journeying. Interestingly, the release was only made possible by Hermes, the mercurial one. For some the vessel of journey may itself bear the veiling name, as with Cousteau, the deep sea explorer: for for some there is no release, life is forever mystery, as with a mirroring sea. In contrast the seduction of the portal accepts some pre-existant framing which may or may not prove useful. Indeed a port-hole as opposed to a starboard hole, would surely have direct linkage with left brain/right brain posturing, which is where I come undone.

Goethe's "gross natural array" has long been seen as obdurate, and it may or may not have something to do with politics. I haven't read Williams' "Kora in Hell" but would be most interested, as formative work usually holds some germ that is enlightening. The present re-appraisal of Goethe's criticisms of Newton I find fascinating. But God forbid some elected or unelected ecclesia have power to declare one or other invalid. We would do well to preserve the Manichees and their unmediated black and white, at the same time, wisely and yet with relish, explore outside possibilities while we have the chance. Why should one exclude the other? Thank goodness for pamphlets and blogs which give rise to dialogue, to disclose, to explore, to express unwillingness to have wool pulled over our eyes, however charmingly . Yet the poet is not always sooth-sayer. I believe, perhaps you think wrongly, that his training should be sufficient to allow him to express untruth with positive outcome. This may be to launch again the good ship Calypso, and furthermore to pit poetry against reason for yet another season. It may possibly even force the composers of music into their diatonic vs chromatic camps again.

[22-1-11]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

VERA DI CAMPLI SAN VITO

3 Poems

oOo

Burnley Oval

An orange halo wavers around the streetlight –

a gelatinous moon.

Walk past the children's playground, into the middle.

Let your eyes adjust to the dark.

Now you’re exposed like the whitewashed wooden posts.

Listen to the boom gates clang, train rumble past.

Continue on, away from the houses and the street, where it's darker still.

Beside the tracks looms the stump of the corroboree tree.

Circle it once.

Sense the warmth of its fire-blackened trunk, the didgeridoos, the chanting.

Turn one-eighty degrees to see the moon risen

and ready to burst over the city's skyline.

You could almost howl.

oOo

Heptonstall

Up a steep cobblestoned lane, flies suck

the sun-withered corpses of black slugs.

Gaping ruins of a thirteenth century church

overlook a yard of fallen slabs.

Through an iron gate into a high-walled field

half-filled with graves, only you

the trees and the tombstones are standing.

Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted.

The wind picks up a heap of clouds

shoves them across the sun and cools your sweat.

You shiver and start back down.

oOo

Blackberries

“They don’t break ‘em like they used to,”

Mother said, picking blackberries at noon.

We’d gone to the edge of the cliff

where the brambles were thick.

“In those days we kept killer goats, ate anything,

chomped these bushes down to the ground.”

I pictured their cast-iron guts.

Mother licked blackberry juice from her fingers,

her voice as bitter as the juice was sweet:

“Afterwards we’d stamp on what was left with bare feet.”

----------------------------------------------------------------

CAROL JENKINS

The Tassajarah Way or Refrigerator No.5

I had my first heart attack at nineteen. I was making bread in a narrow kitchen that faced west. The louvres were closed so that everything hot in an Adelaide summer Saturday, everything compressed and still in the quiet of the inner city block, could build in the room. So the yeast could get cracking.

I was working with scholarly diligence from the Tassajarah Bread Book, making a bread sponge - that slurry of yeast, warm water and flour that has nothing in it to inhibit the yeast’s multiplication. The Tassajarah Bread Book promised me this would be an investment in gluten development. I wish I still had this book, with its paper bag brown cover, Moorish font, and thick pages that almost had the texture of a dense sourdough. It persuasively explained a system for the care and nurturing of bread that everyone should read, and the chapter on sour dough was excellent.

I was by myself for the weekend, my first term in a new university and a new city. Don’t ask why I was there, nineteen, no friends and no money, living in a semi with a lover who was conspicuously absent and a friend of his trying to make the most of this.

Emeric lived next door, in the ‘mirror’ semi – number 22. Canadian, he said was a geologist, and perhaps he was. What he was definitely, was hunting for company. Anytime someone called in to visit at 22A, he’d slouch over to give his long Canadian vowels a run. At fifty or more, he was in the process of realising he had been jilted by his much younger girlfriend. Maybe she had figured out that the gris eminis and convivial conversation, boiled down to the unforgivably boring much quicker than they should have. I had the idea that he lived on money sent to him from his mother who had a cherry orchard in Canada. Whatever work had bought him to Adelaide, the vicarious grip on youth that prolonged his stay had trailed off to something asymptotically flat. Eventually his mother paid for his ticket home and he announced that was returning to Canada, like he was doing her a favour. In this circumstance, where I could see the end of him in sight, and that he had promised I could have his fridge when he left in 2 weeks, I didn’t mind when he appeared at the back door asking for a cup of tea.

I still have the drop side table he had his elbow on as he sat drinking the tea in the kitchen. The bread sponge was working up at a great rate and I watched it seethe upwards in the bowl as I drank my tea, my back jammed against the makeshift kitchen bench that swayed like a boat and flaked off flat shards of slate.

I can’t remember anything specific Emeric said on that day, until he said It’s very hot in here and I don’t feel so well. He didn’t look well. A fine beading of sweat was starting to slide down his forehead. I suggested in an off-hand manner that he sit in the front room for a while. It was dark and cool in there, in the way of a south facing room with front verandah that had not seen a beam of sunlight since the roof was put on in 1890. And I could get on making bread without his expert commentary.

Emeric went to cool down. I turned my attention back to converting the sponge to dough. It was rye bread, a putty grey coloured flecked with brown. It was a true gaseous mass and the spoon made slurpy belching noises as it broke through pockets of carbon dioxide. The gluten had come into itself and the dough followed the spoon’s progress like fond glue. It smelt sour, and fecund: productive. It was a pity to overwhelm it with oil, salt and more flour but the way ahead was the Tassajarah path and I was on the road to bread.

Emeric reappeared in the kitchen. I was interested to see that people really did go grey and he was now one of them. Some distant part of my brain caste a clinical eye on his greyness, the funny hunched way he was standing and I suggested that he take 2 or 3 aspirin straight away. In hindsight this was excellent advice, if a little spooky in its unconscious choice of the need for something to thin the blood. Emeric went home.

A little while later while I was pummelling one load of dough, with another great mass growing like an opera chorus in its bowl, I heard Emeric singing. He sang quite a bit and very badly. My reflex was to turn a deaf ear. But this song had an odd rhythm and after a bit, I made myself listen to the words. Rather, the word, for it was just the one word repeated in rising scale. HELP.

The evidence that been churlishly, unconsciously collecting about Emeric’s bodily state seemed to rush with me as I did the loop out of my back door, around the fence, up the path and into his house. One look at Emeric flat on his bed with blue lips was enough to consolidate my suspicions. I said Emeric I think you’re having a heart attack. No, he said, he had pains, pins and needles in his arms. Sounded more and more like a heart attack. I said I would run to the phone box and call an ambulance. The idea that he needed oxygen, with its suggestion of mouth to mouth, shot me out of the room.

As I ran out of his door I realized my bread dough would need punching down, so I ran back into my kitchen and thumped the hell out of it, turned and ran out again, heading for phone booth a couple of blocks away. I didn’t have far to go, as I capitalized on fellow in the next block who was watering his garden, and begged the use of his phone. With the ambulance on its way I ran back to Emeric’s house.

The ambulance came very quickly, I had opened Emeric’s front door so they charged in like a movie. They asked him if he had had heart attack before. No, No he was saying as if to save himself. They had Emeric on the trolley and out the door while I was still loitering in his filthy kitchen. There was an unpleasant stale smell of dirty socks and sauerkraut.

There is an almost macabre fascination, standing in the kitchen of person who has been taken away by a wailing ambulance. I looked around in an interrogating way, at the dregs in coffee cups, then I opened the fridge. There was not much in it, jars of cheap red fish roe, sauerkraut, a bottle of milk that was mine, beer, mustard, wilted vegetables. A cold chop on a plate, much greyer than Emeric. Emeric did a line in damp dog-eared third hand books, with wrinkled corners and cracked paper spines, that would put most people off reading for life. On a kitchen shelf next to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged was a cookbook that caught my eye. The title of it went along the lines “How to Cook so you don’t have another heart attack”. I scrutinized the shelves more closely, this was the only cook book there. It seemed a bit of a giveaway to me. Was this his second heart attack? Was it vanity or some dreadful denial that had prompted Emeric to whisper emphatically to the ambulance officers that he had never had a heart attack. Perhaps he had experienced twinges and the cookbook was some sort of cut-rate insurance.

I thought about cleaning up, but decided against it. I went back to my place and the bread dough.

It turned out that Emeric’s heart attack might have been fatal. He spent a week in intensive care, before graduating to a ward. I got a message from his ex-girlfriend, who came with her friends to clean up his house, that he would have to delay his flight to Canada for six weeks. It would be weeks before he got out of hospital. I was annoyed, this meant that my two week wait for the fridge would slide into six week wait. But then I figured if he was in hospital he didn’t need a fridge. It was a heavy old lumbering fridge and I got my boyfriend and his mate, who was getting more desperate, to move it. It always smelt faintly like stale sauerkraut. But a fridge is a useful thing.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

CONTRIBUTORS :
C D BARRON & CAROL JENKINS have been this way before [see the name index for appearances in previous issues]. Chris is surely due for a book soon, and Carol, if she can spare the time from her River Road Press [Australian poets on CD] publishing, due for a second. VERA DI CAMPLI SAN VITO has been on the edges since it began and at last tips into it. Before returning to Australia a few years ago, she worked at the Poetry Cafe in London. Why did I think she was an assistant at the Poetry Library on South Bank? Occasionally publishes & reads on the Melbourne circuit.

--Now I have a 'plane to catch!
K.H., ed--

April 6th, 2011.

Deckle-Edged Invitation

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 18:56:00 +0000

Day 5, PAD Challenge. Prompt: write a "serious" poem.

time to make hay while
the sun shines, or else (ah,
you'll wear dead men's clothes
yet) aged and hungry,

incline upside a wall, whilst
the banquet goes on
behind leaded windows, the
tickets, deckle-edged, some-

how missed your mail-
box, amongst the pleading
four-color advertisements, glossy-
sharp, great for bookmarks

Gold-Braid Peacock

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 20:55:00 +0000

Day 4, PAD challenge. Prompt: "pick a type of person and write a poem about him/her."

you are for all time, like the
poverty, death, disease you
breed as you strut, peacock-feathered,
stiffened with gold braid as
volleys of ancient Kalashnikovs
fruitlessly pierce the sky

the blood dripping from your
pure gold taps--does it taste good?

or does it cramp your stomach, like
that of a child crying for cereal while
her mother faints in the sun?

The House Was Quiet on a Winter Afternoon

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 14:55:00 +0000

From Knopf's poem a day:

The House Was Quiet on a Winter Afternoon by David Young

Someone was reading in the back,
two travelers had gone somewhere,
maybe to Chicago,

a boy was out walking, muffled up,
alert on the frozen creek,
a sauce was simmering on the stove.

Birds outside at the feeder
threw themselves softly
from branch to branch.

Suddenly I did not want my life
to be any different.
I was where I needed to be.

The birds swirled in the dusk.
The boy came back from the creek.
The dead were holding us up

the way the ice held him,
helping us breathe the way
air helps snowflakes swirl and fall.

And the sadness felt just right,
like a still and moving wave
on which the sun shone brilliantly

Undomesticated Scenery

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 21:51:00 +0000

Day 3, PAD challenge. Prompt: "imagine the world without you."

tipple-topple the silver pan-lids are
clashing cymbals clattering to
the floor, the
milk scorched into a honeycomb
adhering to the bottom of a
pot, while the
dustmice slowly grow, fat and grey,
and four, no, six loads
of laundry sit, obdurate, waiting to be done,
the nose, unwiped, went off
to school, the telephone
rings with news of the
latest accident, but she is
not here to hear it

Greetings from....

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 01:20:00 +0000

Day 2 of the PAD challenge. Prompt: a "postcard" poem.

Seems so long since I saw you
yet it was only yesterday. Arrived
safely, though so tired found it
hard to sleep. Bread so rough
but the air so fresh
and springwater so
cold. I miss you, still,
through all our goodbyes. Be
safe, be still, be mine,
ever, in haste to make the last post,
ever...

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 04:01:00 +0000

George E. Lewis: Improvisation as a Way of Life

Transfer

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 21:18:00 +0000

PAD Challenge, Day 1 prompt: a "what got you here" poem.

transfer, held damply in her
hand, the snow melting
where her cap (nearly)
met her coat, her scarf
left where (behind), shed
like the skin of a snake,
useless as an escape tool,
however jauntily it was wrapped,
the pantone color the blue
of a Mediterranean summer
once seen in a postcard, the
demarcation of blue and
white wavering beneath her eyes

and her feet ache, now, in the
warmth of the bus, the slow
thawing an agony she distracts
herself from by repeating one
line, then the next, as
regular as the telephone
poles she passes, one, then
another, the marking points
of distance, as chatter
rises and falls the bus
creaks in protest, the
recirculation of exhaust, thick
and tarry, makes her
drowse...

so many miles to go, on her way
to a new habitat

A Cristobel La Motte poem - from the novel Possession

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 12:10:00 +0000

A Cristobel La Motte poem - from the novel Possession by A.S. Byatt:

Gloves lie together
Limp and calm
Finger to finger
Palm to palm
With whitest tissue
To embalm
In these quiet cases
With hands creep
With supple stretchings
Out of sleep
Fingers clasp fingers
Troth to keep

—C.LaMotte

Article: On Possession - By A.S.Byatt

And that made me think of this scene from The Age Of Innocence

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 04:01:00 +0000

Install the Flash plugin to watch this video.
Fred Wah introduced by Josephine Park
Fred Wah reading

Install the Flash plugin to watch this video.

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 04:01:00 +0000

Monica de la Torre at UC Berkeley

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 04:01:00 +0000

The 2011 YouTube Symphony Orchestra led by Michael Tilson Thomas

Happy? - By Cassidee Lin

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 01:19:00 +0000

Happy?

Hopeless.
The worst feeling.
Why do I try? Why do I bother?
It's a waste of time.
Nobody changes.
I don't change either.
Unhappy.
Another bad feeling.
Doesn't anybody else care?
Doesn't anybody else see?
How do I fix this?
How do I make it right?
Why does it have to be me,
in this never ending fight?
Should I stay?
Or, should I leave?
Which is worse, this,
or the unknown?
Am I being selfish?
Shouldn't I be happy?
Yes, I should.
And one day,
I will, be.

- Written by: Cassidee Lin

This poem can be used for free as long as the name of the author is included and the author is given credit.
If the poem is published online, please include a link to this post.

Stranger and Angel - By Jason

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 01:08:00 +0000

Stranger and Angel

Libra, the scales,
Gemini, the twins,
all she missed was a pair of wings
Genesis of love in the month of fools
saw his dove near by the grooves
Pointed chin and aquiline nose,
porcelain skin as white as snow
Resting over her ears,
glittering glasses to refrain from tears,
shielding black roses
With spikes and goatee,
appeared the devil
His sanguine heart intended no evil
Though with butterflies in stomach and a pounding heart,
he promenaded with hands in pocket and looked smart
Showed up alone, the Stranger Wow!
He called her an angel
Is that why she hid her name?
May be, she thought that he was so lame
Blurred vision, as she walks away
With a broken heart, he says,
“Oh! My daisy! Lily of the valley!
Bid farewell to the halo, my divine!
Don’t fly again, just be mine”

- Written by: Jason

This poem can be used for free as long as the name of the author is included and the author is given credit.
If the poem is published online, please include a link to this post.

The Men of the Somme - By E Quarman

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 00:40:00 +0000

The Men of the Somme

I feel their names upon my lips.
I hear their cries inside my head.
I know that I will never forget,
What once happened here, so many years ago.
I shed a silent tear on my own,
But as I look around I can see that I'm not alone.

We will never comprehend,
What these men had to contend.
But it is clear, that for some time,
A small corner of hell appeared on Earth.

What is to become of the lost?
Are they now in the better place they longed & despaired for?
Whilst neglected by their God in their trenched,
Are they now in the care and safety of His?

Is there hope for Our race?
If we can think of this, for Anothers bitter taste.
To force such fear and scare,
Onto boys we knew would not bare.

I believe that I can say,
That if I should live through this one day,
'The Great War' take four,
Will be fought with Sticks and Stones.

- Written by: E Quarman

My poem can be used for free as long as the name of the author is included and the author is given credit.
My poem can be used for free as long as people first obtain my permission by writing to:
3 Wellen Rise
Hemel Hempstead
Hertfordshire
HP3 9PE

César Vallejo: from Against Professional Secrets (Book of Thoughts)

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Veb'by H (aris)) — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 16:00:00 +0000

Translation from Spanish by Joseph Mulligan

The following is excerpted from C. Vallejo, Against Professional Secrets, ISBN: 9781931824422, Pages: 100, Price: $14.95, available from Roof Books and Small Press Distribution]

AN ANIMAL IS LED...

An animal is led or is pushed. Man is accompanied in parallel.

THERE EXIST QUESTIONS...

There exist questions without answers, which fill the spirit of science and common sense with uneasiness. There exist answers without questions, which are the spirit of art and the dialectic consciousness of things.

THE HEAD AND FEET OF DIALECTICS

Facing the stones of Darwinian risk that compose the Tuileries palace, Potstam, Peterhof, Quirinal, the White House and Buckingham, I suffer the pain of a megatherium, who meditated standing upright, the hind legs on the head of Hegel and the front legs on the head of Marx.

THE DEATH OF DEATH

In reality, the sky isn’t far from or near the land. In reality, death isn’t far from or close to life. We are always before the river of Heraclitus.

EXPLANATION OF HISTORY

There are people who are interested in Rome, Athens, Florence, Toledo and other ancient cities, not because of their past––static and immobile––but because of their present––lively and dynamic. For these people, the world of El Greco, the green and yellow robes of his apostles, his house, his kitchen, his crockery, are not very interesting. What do they care about the cathedral of Toledo, with its five doors, its seven centuries, its refreshing cloisters, its silver choir and its enchanting Mozarab chapel? What do they care about the Inn of Blood, where Cervantes was to write The Illustrious Kitchen Maid...? What do they care about the Palace of Carlos V, all of its stone and its distinguished coffered ceiling? The celebrated Castle of San Servando on the other side of the ravine might as well disappear in broad daylight. The tombs of the heroes and cardinals of the cathedral might as well disappear. The Munitions Factory in Toledo––what do they care!? The Tránsito Mosque, constructed in the XIV century by the Jew Samuel Levi––what do they care!? These passersby are utterly indifferent to history in a text, in a legend, in a painting, in architecture, in tradition.

While the guide explains the date and political circumstances of its construction on the Bridge of Alcántara, I note that one of the tourists becomes a disengaged schoolboy and stares at an old Toledan, who is just arriving home on the back of his donkey. The old man laboriously gets down, in the middle of his receiving room. “Ah...!” the old man snorts and begins to loudly call to the watchmen on the corner, so that they help him remove the donkey’s saddle. This happens on the street that bears the name Sponge Cake Oven Way or on that slightly rougher one called Don Pedro’s Path to the Chicken Coop.

These are the scenes that interest certain people: the historical present of Toledo; not its past. They want to submerge in the fleeting present, which in the end recasts and crystallizes the essentials of past history. That old man, seated atop a donkey, summarizes in his snort El Greco, the Cathedral, the Palace, the Mosque, the Munitions Factory. It is a living and transitory scene of the moment, synthesizing, like a flower, Toledo’s uproar and defunct deeds.

The same can be said of all the ancient cities, historical ruins and treasures of the world. One does not narrate history, or see it or hear it or touch it. One lives history and feels it live.

THE INTRINSIC MOVEMENT OF MATTER

Parallels exist neither in the spirit nor in the reality of the universe. It is but an abstract supposition of geometry. There is no room for a parallelism within the single and linear continuity of life. History and nature unfold linearly and, in this single, solitary line, human events and natural phenomena occur, one after another, successively and never simultaneously.

The parallelism of a railroad does not have a greater living reality than that of two lines drawn on a chalkboard. Two trees or two children born at the same instant do not constitute an effective parallelism either. In all these cases, the geometrical illusion does not sustain objective events, but participates in the nature of so many other fictions of the senses or abstractions of intelligence, like when we see, from a train in motion, that the houses are on parade or when, a burning stick is moving in a circle (see Pascal), we believe that we see and affirm an arc of fire, etc.

Life is a succession and not simultaneity. The apparent parallels of a railroad do not develop at once, but one after another. Men do not live together, but they occur one after another. Towns do not live together either, but occur. Plurality is a phenomenon of time and not of space. The number 1 is solitary of place. The number 2 and the subsequent single or compound numbers do not exist as objective reality, but as abstract suppositions of thought.

Life does not play out in various forms at once. But in various successive forms. A planet does not have a destiny different from that of other planets, but the same and unique end that all the others have managed to carry out. A stone meets a destiny identical to that of a mollusk, and it goes before or after a man, but not at the same time as he. If one could depict the evolution of life, it would be represented by a line of beings and things, with one at the end. In abstract terrain, beings and things unfold with an apparent myriad character. But this is not substantive reality. Beneath the illusory simultaneity of things and beings, reality, at the end, is solely a succession in the movement of the universe. The masses are more a parade than a crowd. The asyndeton surging from history is more a line than a point.

THE MONUMENT TO BAUDELAIRE...

The monument to Baudelaire is one of the most beautiful headstones in Paris, an authentic cathedral tombstone. The sculptor took a lapidary block, split it in two and fashioned a compass. Such is the frame of the monument. A compass. An airplane, one of whose wings drags on the ground, due to its great size, just like the symbolic albatross. The other half is raised perpendicularly to the first and presents in its upper half a giant bat with outstretched wings. Above this creature, alive and floating, there is a gargoyle, whose jutting, vigilant and aggressive chin rests and does not rest upon its hands.

Another sculptor might have chiseled the heraldic cat of the bard, so groped by the critics. He, who worked this stone, however, delved deeper and chose the bat, this zoological binomial––between mammal and bird––that ethical image––between Lucifer and angel––who embodies the spirit of Baudelaire so well. And this, because the author of The Flowers of Evil was not diabolical, in the Catholic sense of the word, but diabolical in a lay and simply human sense, a natural coefficient of rebellion and innocence. Rebellion is not possible without innocence. Only children and angels rebel. Malice never rebels. An old man can only become spiteful and grow bitter. Hence, Voltaire. Rebellion is the fruit of an innocent spirit. And the cat carries malice in each of its paws. On the other hand, the bat––that airborne mouse of the mausoleums, that hybrid specimen of the cornices––has a knack for height and the shadows. It is a native of the kingdom of darkness and also a dweller of the cupolas. Due to its dual nature of flight and darkness, it possesses wisdom in shadows and, as in heroic acts, performs the upward fall.

COMMENTARY:

After publishing two major poetry collections, The Black Heralds (1918) & Trilce (1922), as well as the exceptional & under-celebrated book of prose, Scales (1923), César Vallejo headed for Europe, where he would immerse himself in the world of journalism. His three trips to an interwar Soviet Union, his innumerable personal interviews with a broad demographic, his more than two hundred articles (ranging from sports to theater, from archeology to modern marvels, from labor issues to judicial proceedings)—all this is in concert with his eventual socialist turn. Against Professional Secrets, written during his early years in Europe, is the product of Vallejo’s search for an integral poetics. The schools that were then flourishing in Europe & being imported to Latin America, for him, proved problematic in their search for social change by way of forming exclusive oppositional groups, open only to initiates.

Against Professional Secrets is indeed a critique (of what Vallejo saw as a pose in the European schools & as insincerity in Latin American poetry); yet it is also a proposal, & this I think is what makes his curious “book of thoughts” so compelling. Readers, who revere his indigenism in The Black Heralds, gawk at his experimentalism in Trilce, & hear his resounding call for solidarity in Poemas humanos, will find, amid his many well-employed metaphors, the stunning presence of chromophores (i.e. language matter absorbing light at specific frequencies & thereby imparting color onto its surface). It is due to chromophores that certain chameleons have the ability to adopt the appearance of their surroundings.

Vallejo’s writing in Against Professional Secrets is chromophoric in the sense that it adopts the very modalities that it has set out to critique. It creeps unnoticed like a chameleon through the European literature of the late 19^th & early 20^th centuries, taking on its likeness & surreptitiously proposing that the content of modern poetry should supersede its form. While at first this may seem contradictory, since in Vallejo’s writing there appears to be a certain preoccupation with technique, a close reading will show that, by including himself within the mark of his own critique, his proposal is one of an integral poetics instead of the conventional oppositional polemics.

—Joseph Mulligan

[Joseph Mulligan, poet and translator, was born in Batavia, NY. His translations include Trilce and Scales by César Vallejo, as well as major works by Jorge Eduardo Eielson, Oliverio Girondo and Alejandra Pizarnik. He lives in New York and Lima. He regularly publishes poetry, translations & essays on his blog The Smelting Process.]