True Love III - Non è detto

Se è tanto bello perché non vivi lì?
Ecco, adesso ripartiamo con l'interrogatorio. Tu faresti strada nella polizia, lo sai?
Dimmi ancora soltanto questo. Perché non vivi lì, se lui è... se lì è così bello?
E una storia da grandi, lascia perdere.
Dimmi soltanto l'inizio.
L'inizio? Quale inizio?
Come inizia la storia?
Ma guarda che sei un bel tipo.
Per favore.
Ma niente, è la solita storia, è l'uomo della mia vita e io sono la donna della sua vita, tutto lì, solo che non siamo mai riusciti a vivere insieme, contento?
Grazie.
Non è neanche detto che se ami davvero qualcuno, ma tanto, la cosa migliore che puoi farci insieme sia vivere.
No?
Non è detto.
Ah.


Tre volte all'alba, Alessandro Baricco

A jewel hung

                                                          

                                                              ... my soul's imaginary sight                 

                                                              Presents thy shadow to my sightless view 
                                                              Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,
                                                              Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.    

                                                                     - Shakespeare, Sonnet XXVII

I've dreamt again

Now these dreams of mine
(of you)
of anything but ours
have become funny

funny little tragedies
which are no tragedies at all
but just the imaginary of distance

ancient
archetypical

                                  and true

as true as art
or literature
or music
             
                                 or any other such fiction

truer
indeed
than we both are

The realm of chance

I bet it was an r
I'm pretty sure it began with an r

R as in too many requests
R as in rather reticent replies
R as in reporter, or the realm of chance

or

R as in rather not

A resonant initial R
with (maybe) a melodious d in the middle
but never as sweet as a sweet liquid l
either in between... or at the end

Then the bureocracy of the private industry
and time wasting itself away
or being denied

A problem of incompetence
let's say
even though we both tried
not to blush

Elegía VIII

A las tangentes

Elegía VII

Al silencio

Elegía VI

Al tequila y al mezcal, y a las danzas de los caracoles

Elegía V

A las pausas

Elegía IV

A las distancias.

Elegía III

Al fuego, al gato de Alicia, a los paracaídas y a las tierras sin dueño.

Elegía II

A los colores del mar

Elegía I

A un espacio que ya no existe

y a un par de piezas de un rompecabezas

There may be chaos still around the world

There may be chaos still around the world,

This little world that in my thinking lies;

For mine own bosom is the paradise

Where all my life’s fair visions are unfurled.

Within my nature’s shell I slumber curled,

Unmindful of the changing outer skies,

Where now, perchance, some new-born Eros flies,

Or some old Cronos from his throne is hurled.

I heed them not; or if the subtle night

Haunt me with deities I never saw,

I soon mine eyelid’s drowsy curtain draw

To hide their myriad faces from my sight.

They threat in vain; the whirlwind cannot awe

A happy snow-flake dancing in the flaw.

By George Santayana

The Sacred Geometry of Chance

Known unnamed

There has to be a kind of speech

beyond naming, or even praise,  

a discipline                                  

that locates light and lets it go.   

- "Observer", by Nate Klug

It is not lust
(or at least not yet)
which only makes it more beautiful
and more confusing

It is your hand caressing
the cloth that keeps my arm
your face seeking closeness to mine
closeness alone

your hand resting on my bare skin
your whole body resting
beside my uninterrupted nakedness
just resting

even when I feel you awakening next to me
your hand rests
and remains
and keeps the stillness

No error of method: an invisibly unstable world

Not seeing me, not even looking,
K. on her silver cruiser charms her way

through the last long moment
of the changing light:

a rolled-up yoga mat in her basket
wobbling like a wild tiller as she pedals.

It feels illicit and somewhat right
to stand accross the intersection

without shouting
her name, or even waving.

According to the internet
tutorial, the fact that photons

turn into tiny loyal billiard balls
as soon as we start watching suggests

no error of method
or measurement, but rather,

as fas as anyone can tall,
an invisibly unstable world,

a shaking everywhere
that seeing must pin down and fix.

So, that morning I stumbled on you
out, alone, bending through

the traffic at Orange and Edwards Streets:
a someone else then

whom I, alone,
can never otherwise see-

there has to be a kind of speech
beyond naming, or even praise,

a discipline
that locates light and lets it go.

"Observer", by Nate Klug


(Corolario para Known unnamed)

True Love I

"Un día te vas a enamorar de un hombre, y vas a hacer todo lo que él te diga".

(o, de la ilusión de la obediencia como signo inconfundible del fervor amoroso)

(o, de la pregunta: ¿por qué llamamos "amor" a las formas en que una persona ejerce poder sobre otra?)

Ahí les dejo esta piececita pa' que echen el bailongo, chatos:

"María Cristina me quiere gobernar

y yo le sigo le sigo la corriente

porque no quiero que diga la gente que

María Cristina me quiere gobernar"

True Love II - Quien te quiere bien, te hará sufrir

(o, de la legitimación de la violencia)

Teeth lined up in perfect rows

There are things that I've seen in my head while I'm sleeping in bed

They do not wither in the morning light

I'm taken back, oh I'm taken back to the dry grass and the shadows

Thinking I'd like to look at your teeth lined up in perfect rows

A maze of children feeding orchard trees

Where the flat lands stretch inside your mouth

And when you laugh all the star-thistles stumble out

The flat lands stretch inside your mouth

And when you laugh all the star-thistles stumble out

(I'm taken back, oh I'm taken back to the dry grass and the shadows)

Bones they are trees, not enemies

And I collect their skin
Yes I need their bark
For my new kind of hide in my new kind of dark

For these fruits that we have grown have froze heavy on the vine
Winter brew is born from the temporal and rime
Yeah the thicket and the thistle cry: new kind of wild!
Drink up to new dead and new alive

Portraits (en orden de aparición)

I.
Sonríe. Desmorona pan, se voltea y lo obsequia a los pájaros. Y tiene al lado de la mesa, sobre una jardinera, un libro de Virginia Woolf: Flush. Y atiende a los clientes que llegan a pedirle atole y tamales y les regresa su cambio. Y tiene una presencia que calma el aire, que lo llena con la honestidad de su sonrisa, de sus ojos grandes, de su cabello lacio.

II.
Observa. Piensa. Deduce. Infiere. Pregunta. ¿Me compra un mazapán?, interrumpiendo mi lectura. Pero no sólo eso: ¿Le caen mal esas señoras? Volteo a donde se dirige su mirada, del otro lado del vidrio, a la mesa casi contigua a la mía donde toman café y platican dos mujeres. No... ¿lo dices por que crees que hacen ruido? No, no me molesta, no las escucho. Sonreímos y me da las gracias. Después lo veo acercarse a la mesa frente a mí, ofrecer mazapanes a la familia que la ocupa, y después preguntarles ¿Para qué es esto? Señalando una caja blanca de madera adosada a la pared, con la leyenda "Sugerencias". La familia le ofrece sus explicaciones. El niño sonríe, da las gracias, y sale a ofrecer mazapanes a las mesas de afuera.

III.
No lo veo, sólo lo escucho: el sonido que sube desde la esquina de la calle empujado por el aire, deslizándose por el balcón hasta llegar al sillón donde dormito. Una armónica. Y lo imagino tocando.

IV.
Entra con un aire de mucha confianza, cargando un estuche con su guitarra adentro. La miro, porque pienso que también será una comensal, y me sonríe, devolviéndome la mirada, igualmente fija. Después pasan otras cosas, el arroz y las tortillas, y la olvido. Después escucho detrás una voz delgada, con una emoción que no acaba de revelarse por completo, y la música tenue que la acompaña. Y después su voz segura, reaccionando ante la generosidad de una niña pequeña: ¡Gracias hermosa! Y volteo, y nos miramos y sonreímos de nuevo. De ahí en adelante la mantengo en mente, y escucho cómo su voz crece. Cuando se va, sólo veo su espalda llevando su guitarra.

Will time make us wise?

... and I knew the silence of the world

to myself, rather belatedly, but still on time

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

(And yet, I I'm almost certain

that I can hear it again.)

Poetry: Elizabeth Bishop, One Art

Falling madly (and therefore obsessively) in love with Edna

St. Vincent Millay... isn't she the most perfect Orlando in this picture? 

and so renascently romantic in this one...she would touch a hundred flowers 

and not pick one, 

and watch the wind bow down the grass

and the grass rise

with quiet eyes

and here perhaps thinking: we talk of taxes, and I call you friend; 

well, such you are, but well enough we know

how thick about us root, how rankly grow

those subtle weeds no man has need to tend,

that flourish through neglect, and soon must send

perfume so sweet upon us and overthrow

our steady senses

then perhaps in her mind beginning to seek Her, her other sister, 

her other soul: Grave Silence, lovelier 

than the three loveliest maidens,

whom evermore she follows wistfully, 

wandering Heaven and Earth

and Hell and the four seasons through.

and finally... before ever sweeping floors

or making dishes done,

she shall always be found

a-sunning in the sun!

Interested? Her bio and a few poems here, and a good collection of her work in digital format here.

Variación primera: "Afternoon on a Hill",  de Renascence

Variación segunda: Sonnet I, en Second April

Variación tercera: "Ode to Silence", also in Second April

Variación cuarta: "Portrait by a Neighbor", from A Few Figs from Thistles

Jewels and flowers

You were afraid of the god
sitting there among his jewels
and flowers and precious fabrics
all brightly colored
looking you straight in the eye
from the fake sky
of painted clouds

The god of fortune.
You were afraid of the god of good fortune.


But you also sang songs

(and claimed your right to freeedom
asking if I'd join you)

Somewhere between what the eye sees and what the mind thinks is the world

When I read about the garden

designed to bloom only white flowers,

I think about the Spanish friar who saw one

of my grandmothers, two hundred years

removed, and fucked her. If you look

at the word colony far enough, you see it

traveling back to the Latin

of  inhabit, till, and cultivate. Words

that would have meant something

to the friar, walking among the village girls

as though in a field of flowers, knowing

that fucking was one way of   having

a foreign policy. As I write this, there’s snow

falling, which means that every

angry thought is as short-lived as a match.

The night is its own white garden:

snow on the fence, snow on the tree

stump, snow on the azalea bushes,

their leaves hanging down like green

bats from the branches. I know it’s not fair

to see qualities of injustice in the aesthetics

of a garden, but somewhere between

what the eye sees and what the mind thinks

is the world, landscapes mangled

into sentences, one color read into rage.

When the neighbors complained

the roots of our cypress were buckling

their lot, my landlord cut the tree down.

I didn’t know a living thing three stories high

could be so silent, until it was gone.

Suddenly that sky. Suddenly all the light

in the windows, as though every sheet

of glass was having a migraine.

When I think about that grandmother

whose name I don’t even know, I think of

what it would mean to make a garden

that blooms black: peonies and gladiolas

of deepest purple, tulips like ravens.

Or a garden that doesn’t bloom at all: rocks

poised on clean gravel. When the snow stops,

I walk to see the quiet that has colonized

everything. The main street is asleep, except

for the bus that goes by, bright as a cruise ship.

There are sheet cakes of  snow on top

of cars. In front of   houses, each lawn

is as clean as paper, except where the first cat

or raccoon has walked across, each track

like a barbed-wire sash on a white gown.

On Gardens, by Rick Barot

The Wrong Pronouns

You made me cry in cruel stations,

So I missed many trains. You married others

In plausible buildings. The subsequent son

Became my boss. You promised me nothing

But blamed me for doubting when who wouldn’t.

If  I knew how to please you — who have found

Out my faults. In dreams I’m wild with guilt. Have pity

Kill it. Then, when I’ve lost all hope,

Kiss me again, your mouth so open — 

I’d give anything for one more night — 

That I go without thought. Don’t bite. No,

Mark me. My husband already knows

Exactly what owns me.

Gwyneth Lewis, Fooled Me for Years with the Wrong Pronuns

Et en plus...

All'urgenza che preme io rispondo con il tuo nome

Riconoscersi e danzarsi
spendendo il tempo che naviga in contro
All'urgenza che preme
io rispondo con il tuo nome

Sempre con il tuo nome

I found you on facebook (even though I wasn't looking)

You’re in that class with me. We go on
from there—not long. You do The Waste Land
in different voices—Come in under the shadow
of this red rock—Strom Thurmond, Aussie
bartender, Cantonese. HURRY UP PLEASE
ITS TIME. Twenty years later,
I get your news by Facebook update,
three hundred characters or less,
waiting for the Scrovegni to open
in the windy square across from
Donatello’s horse and rider,
dust flecks foaming past fetlocks
and stirrups.

Elegy, by Daisy Fried

I Found You On Facebook by Quarion

Tacere

A veces me gustaría vivir en un planeta lo suficientemente pequeño como para poder hacer ese truco que hacía el principito, sólo mover mi silla un poquito y poder seguir viendo el atardecer.

je ne se rien de l'amour

mais je suis qu'il n'aime pas hésite

(ouvre ta bouche et place mon nom dedans
laisse-le là sur la langue)




(words, both written and sung: Rupa and the April Fishes': C'est moi et Maintenant)

What blame to us if the heart live on (or a kitten in the wilderness, or, we can still love the world)

We make our meek adjustments,

Contented with such random consolations

As the wind deposits

In slithered and too ample pockets.

For we can still love the world, who find

A famished kitten on the step, and know

Recesses for it from the fury of the street,

Or warm torn elbow coverts.

We will sidestep, and to the final smirk

Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb

That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,

Facing the dull squint with what innocence

And what surprise!

And yet these fine collapses are not lies

More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;

Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.

We can evade you, and all else but the heart:

What blame to us if the heart live on.

The game enforces smirks; but we have seen

The moon in lonely alleys make

A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,

And through all sound of gaiety and quest

Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.

Hart Crane, “Chaplinesque”.

Music for mermaids (ou à la recherche du J. A. P. perdu)

                                                                                       There was nothing in our hands

                                                                                       no history      

                                                                                       no waiting, no memory

                                                                                       no fate

                                                                                       there was only one moment

                                                                                       only one moment

                                                                                       our hearts were on fire

                                                                                       and it burned in our bones.

                                                                                          -Our Hearts, Firehorse

An indeed there was no time
to wonder, "Do I dare?" and "Do I dare?"
There was time to turn back and ascend the stair,
Time to disturb the universe
with a hundred visions and decisions
that no revisions could reverse.
Time for you and time for me.

For either of us could be Hamlet,
and we've both had our prophet.
We did not let the moment of our greatness flicker,
we just bit off the matter with a smile,
we squeezed the universe into a ball
and rolled it towards some overwhelming question,
We each said: "I have been Lazarus, come from the dead,
I could tell you all, but I shall not tell you all."

And it was worth it, after all, it was worth while
when, settling a pillow by each other's head
we did not need to say: "That is what I mean,
indeed, that is it".

And in short, we were not afraid.

En busca del tiempo perdido XVI

Otras veces, el tiempo es como un perfume que no se puede describir, un perfume que es sólo tangible en la piel de algún otro, que se eleva sólo para convertirse en la memoria de su esencia, cada vez más tenue, cada vez más estrecha dentro del abrazo que la aferra.

En busca del tiempo perdido XV

A veces, el tiempo también encuentra la manera de regresar: da un salto gigantesco y alcanza una coordenada tan cercana que es casi la misma: escapa del no, y encarna finalmente el sí.

Whom had he loved, what had he loved, he asked himself in a tumult of emotion, until now?

He had indeed just brought his feet together about six in the evening of the seventh of January at the finish of some such quadrille or minuet when he beheld, coming from the pavilion of the Muscovite Embassy, a figure, which, whether boy's or woman's, for the loose tunic and trousers of the Russian fashion served to disguise the sex, filled him with the highest curiosity. The person, whatever the name or sex, was about middle height, very slenderly fashioned, dressed entirely in oyster-coloured velvet, trimmed with some unfamiliar greenish-coloured fur. But these details were obscured by the extraordinary seductiveness which issued from the whole person.  Images, metaphors of the most extreme and extravagant twined and twisted in his mind.    He called her a melon, a pineapple, an olive tree, an emerald, and a fox in the snow all in the space of three seconds;  he did not know whether he had heard her, tasted her, seen her, or all three together. 

Virgina Woolf's, Tilda Swinton's and Sally Potter's Orlando

A word which is not

                                                                              ...the whole room swells

                                                                              with the scent of cinnamon & desire.

                                                                              How imprecise the smell of desire.

                                                                              -Mathew Nienow, "Ode to the Belt Sander 

                                                                               & This Cocobolo Sapwood"

To forge a word
                           which is not
to make it out of someone else's breath
to open up and give it a home
                                                 inside
to keep it unspoken among blankets
where there is no room for fear of pleasure
no room for thought

If anything, it would have to be the name of a scent
                                                                                  and of its alchemy
lavender turning into something incandescent and sharp
like cinnammon
                         or crimson red

or a thousand different glasses reflecting one same flame