The Nacreous Oughts

2008-07-24T11:39:00.001-08:00

"Sonette an Orpheus, II. 29"

Quiet friend of farflung furlongs, feel
how more & more your breathing swells the room.
Among the rafters of the gloomy belfry
let yourself toll. What takes its life from you
gathers to a greatness over this repast.
Embrace the transmutation,--there & back.
What's your most excruciating practice?
Does drinking twist your face? Turn into wine.
Be, tonight, out of overplus,
wizardry at your senses' intersecting;
of their weird conjunction make the sense.
Then, when all the homely round forgets,
to the sempiternal earth declare: I run.
To the rushing waters answer: I remain.

--Rainer Maria Rilke (my tr, 1987)

2008-07-17T13:32:00.000-08:00

"Celebration of Failure"

Through pain the land of pain,
Through tender exiguity,
Through cruel self-suspicion:
Thus came I to this inch of wholeness.

It was a promise.
After pain, I said,
An inch will be what never a boasted mile.

And haughty judgement,
That frowned upon a faultless plan,
Now smiles upon this crippled execution,
And my dashed beauty praises me.

--Laura Riding

2008-07-17T13:31:00.001-08:00

"The Southern Road"

There the black river, boundary to hell.
And here the iron bridge, the ancient car,
And grim conductor, who with surly yell
Forbids white soldiers where the black ones are.
And I re-live the enforced avatar
Of desperate journey to a dark abode
Made by my sires before another war;
And I set forth upon the southern road.

To a land where shadowed songs like followers swell
And where the earth is scarlet as a scar
Friezed by the bleeding lash that fell (O fell)
Upon my fathers' flesh. O far, far, far
And deep my blood has drenched it. None can bar
My birthright to the loveliness bestowed
Upon this country haughty as a star.
And I set forth upon the southern road.

This darkness and these mountains loom a spell
Of peak-roofed town where yearning steeples soar
And the holy holy chanting of a bell
Shakes human incense on the throbbing air
Where bonfires blaze and quivering bodies char.
Whose is the hair that crisped, and fiercely glowed?
I know it; and my entrails melt like tar
And I set forth upon the southern road.

O fertile hillsides where my fathers are,
From which my griefs like trouble streams have flowed,
I have to love you, though they sweep me far.
And I set forth upon the southern road.

--Dudley Randall

2008-07-17T13:27:00.001-08:00

"The Lie"

GO, Soul, the body's guest,
Upon a thankless arrant:
Fear not to touch the best;
The truth shall be thy warrant:
Go, since I needs must die,
And give the world the lie.

Say to the court, it glows
And shines like rotten wood;
Say to the church it shows
What's good, and doth no good:
If church and court reply,
Then give them both the lie.

Tell potentates, they live
Acting by others' action;
Not loved unless they give,
Not strong but by affection:
If potentates reply,
Give potentates the lie.

Tell men of high condition
That manage the estate,
Their purpose is ambition,
Their practice only hate:
And if they once reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell them that brave it most
They beg for more by spending,
Who, in their greatest cost,
Seek nothing but commending:
And if they make reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell zeal it wants devotion,
Tell love it is but lust;
Tell time it metes but motion,
Tell flesh it is but dust:
And wish them not reply,
For thou must give the lie.

Tell age it daily wasteth;
Tell honour how it alters;
Tell beauty how she blasteth;
Tell favour how it falters;
And as they shall reply,
Give every one the lie.

Tell wit how much it wrangles
In tickle points of niceness;
Tell wisdom she entangles
Herself in over-wiseness:
And when they do reply,
Straight give them both the lie.

Tell physic of her boldness;
Tell skill it is pretension;
Tell charity of coldness;
Tell law it is contention;
And as they all reply,
So give them still the lie.

Tell fortune of her blindness;
Tell nature of decay;
Tell friendship of unkindness;
Tell justice of delay;
And if they will reply,
Then give them all the lie.

Tell arts they have no soundness,
But vary by esteeming;
Tell schools they want profoundness,
And stand too much on seeming:
If arts and schools reply,
Give arts and schools the lie.

Tell faith it's fled the city;
Tell how the country erreth;
Tell manhood shakes off pity
And virtue least preferreth:
And if they do reply,
Spare not to give the lie.

So when thou hast, as I
Commanded thee, done blabbing
--Although to give the lie
Deserves no less than stabbing--
Stab at thee he that will,
No stab thy soul can kill.

Sir Walter Raleigh

2008-07-17T13:23:00.001-08:00

"The World"

It burns in the void.
Nothing upholds it.
Still it travels.

Traveling the void
Upheld by burning
Nothing is still.

Burning it travels.
The void upholds it.
Still it is nothing.

Nothing it travels
A burning void
Upheld by stillness.

--Kathleen Raine

2008-07-17T13:01:00.001-08:00

"Hasbrouck and the Rose"

Hasbrouck was there and so were Bill
And Smollet Smith the poet, and Ames was there.
After his thirteenth drink, the burning Smith,
Raising his fourteenth trembling in the air,
Said, "Drink with me, Bill, drink up to the Rose."
But Hasbrouck laughed like old men in a myth,
Inquiring, "Smollet, are you drunk? What rose?"
And Smollet said, "I drunk? It may be so;
Which comes from brooding on the flower, the flower
I mean toward which mad hour by hour
I travel brokenly; and I shall know,
With Hermes and the alchemists—but, hell,
What use is it talking that way to you?
Hard-boiled, unbroken egg, what can you care
For the enfolded passion of the Rose?"
Then Hasbrouck’s voice rang like an icy bell:
"Arcane romantic flower, meaning what?
Do you know what it meant? Do I?
We do not know.
Unfolding pungent Rose, the glowing bath
Of ecstasy and clear forgetfulness;
Closing and secret bud one might achieve
By long debauchery—
Except that I have eaten it, and so
There is no call for further lunacy.
In Springfield, Massachusetts, I devoured
The mystic, the improbable, the Rose.
For two nights and a day, rose and rosette
And petal after petal and the heart,
I had my banquet by the beams
Of four electric stars which shone
Weakly into my room, for there,
Drowning their light and gleaming at my side,
Was the incarnate star
Whose body bore the stigma of the Rose.
And that is all I know about the flower;
I have eaten it—it has disappeared.
There is no Rose."

Young Smollet Smith let fall his glass; he said,
"O Jesus, Hasbrouck, am I drunk or dead?"

--Phelps Putnam

2008-07-17T10:19:00.006-08:00

    Elegy IV.8

Hear me, and learn
   what pulse of alarm
      struck through the night of the liquid Esquiline,
propelling a fearful throng through the New Field gardens
   when a foul tumult agitated the darkness,
      tumult in which I meant to be no contender,
   & in which my good name received certain injuries.
Lanuvium is from old times guarded by her tutelary snake,
      an ageless reptile; a pause there is worth your while,
      a pause for this distinguished attraction.
Sacred steps plunge down a black cleft there,
   down which his yearly sacrifice descends,
   when reptilian hunger requires propitiation
(Young woman, beware of such places)
         when his annual hisses curl from the hollow earth.
A pale virgin descends to lurid rites,
   hands held our rashly with provender
         for his honorable maw,
   canister clattering in fearful hands.
If she be chaste, she returns to her parents' arms
      & the farmers sing that it will be a prosperous year, a fertile year.
My Cynthia took herself there, with gleaming horses,
   pleading Juno's worship, intending Aphrodite's,
her chariot hurtling over the rocks,
   wheels reckless on the Appian Way.
Cynthia suspended at the pole's head, a spectacular sight,
   whipping her way through the bad spots in the road
   with somewhat more daring than the average beardless prodigal
in his carriage hung with Chinese silk
   & his necklaced poodle.
(...) Thus another of her absences from our bed,
   & I undertook a little diversion,
      & pitched camp elsewhere.
Two girls, Phyllis, who lives near the Aventine Diana;
   who lacks charm sober, although things improve when she drinks;
   & Teia, who resides near the Tarpeian wood,
      a glowing beauty, & when she is fired by wine,
         half a dozen lovers are scarcely sufficient.
I invited these two, set up a small orgy
      to soothe the long night & renew the dormant rites
      of Aphrodite
            with secret lubricity.
One couch in a hidden garden served for 3 of us,
   me between the two,
and Lygdamus manned the wine ladle,
   & our summertime equipage of chalices served for the wine,
      a Greek wine, odor of Methymna.
Flutist from the Nile, a treble flute was played that night,
   & Phyllis played the castanets, elegantly artless,
   pleased to receive roses of acclamation.
Magnus the dwarf hopped and waved his hardened hands
   to the fluted descant, song of the hollow boxwood.
The lantern was full; the flame wavered in the night,
   the table had collapsed with its burden,
      & as the dice clattered I prayed for the Venus throw,
but always the damned dog leapt into the light;
And they sang to a deaf man, & bared their bodies
            for a blind man,
for I was alone at the gates of Lanuvium.
Suddenly a hinge creak at the doorposts,
   loud and resonant, a light footfall at the Lares,
   & then Cynthia threw down the folding doors,
hair disheveled, in a fiery rage.
She smashed the cup from my fingers; my wine-stricken lips went white,
   her eyes glittered, female rage possessed her;
A city would burn less wildly than she did,
as she sank savage claws in Phyllis's face,
   & Teia's frightful wail floated into the watery environs;
      and the neighbors, aroused,
   raised torches and milled in the street,
& the paths of the night echoed with madness.
My two girls fled, hair torn & tunics loose,
   into the first tavern on the dark road.
Now Cynthia came back, victress, & took a menacing pleasure
      in the spoils she had captured, wounded my mouth
   with her nails & bloodied my neck with her teeth,
& undertook to darken my wandering eyes with her fists;
   & when her arms got tired with that she spied Lygdamus
         cowering by the sinister couch, & she dragged him into the light
      as he prayed that I protect him. How can I protect you,
Lygdamus, when she has me by the balls?
      With much supplication, she became more reasonable,
   though she would scarcely let me touch her feet.
"If you really want me to forgive this turpitude,
then you will no longer go strolling
      in the shade of Pompey's colonnade, dressed in
   your best finery; you will abstain from attending
the games in the forum; you won't loiter about eyeing the curtainless
      palanquins jog past; you will abstain also
   from craning your neck at those attractions
         in the high tiers of the theater, and finally,
   let Lygdamus, that great troublemaker, be sold;
   let his ankle chains clank as he walks."
To all this I acceded, and she smiled proud in her sovereignty,
      and she perfumed the contamination of those others,
   & washed the threshold with clear water,
      had me change my mantle, and with a fire of sulfur
      touched my head 3 times;
and then with the sheets changed
      we ascended into the covers,
   & we rolled over the whole bed,
   & thus resolved our quarrel.

--Sextus Propertius (tr J P McCulloch, 1972)

2008-07-11T12:40:00.001-08:00

from Hugh Selwyn Mauberley

IV.

THESE fought, in any case,
and some believing, pro domo, in any case . .
Some quick to arm,
some for adventure,
some from fear of weakness,
some from fear of censure,
some for love of slaughter, in imagination,
learning later . . .

some in fear, learning love of slaughter;
Died some "pro patria, non dulce non et decor". .

walked eye-deep in hell
believing in old men's lies, then unbelieving
came home, home to a lie,
home to many deceits,
home to old lies and new infamy;

usury age-old and age-thick
and liars in public places.

Daring as never before, wastage as never before.
Young blood and high blood,
Fair cheeks, and fine bodies;

fortitude as never before

frankness as never before,
disillusions as never told in the old days,
hysterias, trench confessions,
laughter out of dead bellies.

V.

THERE died a myriad,
And of the best, among them,
For an old bitch gone in the teeth,
For a botched civilization,

Charm, smiling at the good mouth,
Quick eyes gone under earth's lid,

For two gross of broken statues,
For a few thousand battered books.

--Ezra Pound

2008-07-11T12:34:00.001-08:00

   from versus anacycli

With the charms of Venus cruel Death fell deeply in love,
  he no longer allowed the usual Stygian rigors.
The usual Stygian rigors he did not allow, in love
  fell cruel Death with the charms of Venus...

--Publilius Optatianus Porfyrius

2008-07-09T08:28:00.002-08:00

"Ulalume"

THE SKIES they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crispèd and sere,
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir:
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Here once, through an alley Titanic
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul—
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
These were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll,
As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole,
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober,
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere,
Our memories were treacherous and sere,
For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year,
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)
We noted not the dim lake of Auber
(Though once we had journeyed down here),
Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

And now, as the night was senescent
And star-dials pointed to morn,
As the star-dials hinted of morn,
At the end of our path a liquescent
And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
Arose with a duplicate horn,
Astarte's bediamonded crescent
Distinct with its duplicate horn.

And I said—"She is warmer than Dian:
She rolls through an ether of sighs,
She revels in a region of sighs:
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
And has come past the stars of the Lion
To point us the path to the skies,
To the Lethean peace of the skies:
Come up, in despite of the Lion,
To shine on us with her bright eyes:
Come up through the lair of the Lion,
With love in her luminous eyes."

But Psyche, uplifting her finger,
Said—"Sadly this star I mistrust,
Her pallor I strangely mistrust:
Oh, hasten!—oh, let us not linger!
Oh, fly!—let us fly! for we must."
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Wings until they trailed in the dust,
In agony sobbed, letting sink her
Plumes till they trailed in the dust,
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

I replied—"This is nothing but dreaming:
Let us on by this tremulous light!
Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
Its sibyllic splendor is beaming
With hope and in beauty to-night:
See, it flickers up the sky through the night!
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,
And be sure it will lead us aright:
We safely may trust to a gleaming
That cannot but guide us aright,
Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloom,
And conquered her scruples and gloom;
And we passed to the end of the vista,
But were stopped by the door of a tomb,
By the door of a legended tomb;
And I said—"What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of this legended tomb?"
She replied—"Ulalume—Ulalume—
'T is the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
As the leaves that were crispèd and sere,
As the leaves that were withering and sere,
And I cried—"It was surely October
On this very night of last year
That I journeyed—I journeyed down here,
That I brought a dread burden down here:
On this night of all nights in the year,
Ah, what demon has tempted me here?
Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber,
This misty mid region of Weir:
Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."

--Edgar Allan Poe

2008-07-08T05:56:00.001-08:00

"Lorelei"

It is no night to drown in:
A full moon, river lapsing
Black beneath bland mirror-sheen,

The blue water-mists dropping
Scrim after scrim like fishnets
Though fishermen are sleeping,

The massive castle turrets
Doubling themselves in a glass
All stillness. Yet these shapes float

Up toward me, troubling the face
Of quiet. From the nadir
They rise, their limbs ponderous

With richness, hair heavier
Than sculptured marble. They sing
Of a world more full and clear

Than can be. Sisters, your song
Bears a burden too weighty
For the whorled ear's listening

Here, in a well-steered country,
Under a balanced ruler.
Deranging by harmony

Beyond the mundane order,
Your voices lay siege. You lodge
On the pitched reefs of nightmare,

Promising sure harborage;
By day, descant from borders
Of hebetude, from the ledge

Also of high windows. Worse
Even than your maddening
Song, your silence. At the source

Of your ice-hearted calling --
Drunkenness of the great depths.
O river, I see drifting

Deep in your flux of silver
Those great goddesses of peace.
Stone, stone, ferry me down there.

--Sylvia Plath

2008-07-07T08:05:00.002-08:00

from Satyricon

If you make a reckoning you will find
Everywhere shipwreck.

--Gaius Petronius Arbiter (my tr.)

2008-07-07T08:03:00.000-08:00

"Ah, Quanta Melancolia"

So final seems this misery,
so final this bleak solitude
that starry wastes invade my soul
and I feel frozen and without
any echo in my heart.

What an anguish stripped of hope,
what grief that only tastes the end;
if nevermore returned the ship,
if in the street a blind man fell--
give it up, there’s nothing else.

Without content, without repose
not a single hour of mine
in which a soul finds full employment;
the blind man in the street succumbs,
the ship then dwindles out of sight.

So final seems this misery,
so final this bleak solitude
that starry wastes invade my soul
and I feel frozen and without
any echo in my heart.

--Fernando Pessoa (My tr.)

2008-07-07T07:40:00.002-08:00

The trembling piano will lick foam from its mouth:
Delirium--which makes your knees give way
Will lift you. You'll say, 'Darling,' and 'No,' I'll shout,
'While playing music?' But can we be, say,

Closer than in twilight throwing chords
Into the fireplace like a diary
Set, year on year. Oh, great awareness, nod,
Nod and you'll be astonished! -You are free.

I won't hold you. Go. Do your charity.
Go elsewhere. Werther can't be written again:
In our times even air smells death to me.
Opening a window is like opening a vein.

--Boris Pasternak (tr Markov & Sparks)

2008-07-04T07:22:00.001-08:00

Only, for the nights that were,
Soldier, and the dawns that came,
When in sleep you turn to her,
Call her by my name.

--Dorothy Parker

2008-07-03T11:47:00.001-08:00

epigram

Time tranforms itself and so do we in time.
For what? To reach the utmost imperfection.

--John Owen (my tr.)

2008-07-03T11:44:00.001-08:00

THE FORMS OF LOVE

Parked in the fields
All night
So many years ago,
We saw
A lake beside us
When the moon rose.

I remember
Leaving that ancient car
Together. I remember
Standing in the white grass
Beside it. We groped
Our way together
Downhill in the bright
Incredible light
Beginning to wonder
Whether it could be lake
Or fog
We saw, our heads
Ringing under the stars we walked
To where it would have wet our feet
Had it been water

--George Oppen

2008-07-03T11:34:00.005-08:00

The Desperado

I am the bereaved, the widower, the shadowy,
the Cathar prince of the devastated citadel:
my guiding star is snuffed, my galactic lute
carries Melancholy's sable pentacle.

You who consoled me in the ark of the sepulcher,
give me back Posilipo & the Mediterranean,
the fragrance that enchanted my sere despair,
& that arbor where the rose & grape are intimate!

Am I Cupid or Apollo? ...Poe or Byron?
The kiss of some dread queen still stains my brow;
I have dreamed in the grotto where the siren plashes...
& twice have I crossed Acheron victorious:

practicing in turn on the lyre of Orpheus
moans of a mystic, sobs of a dying elf.

--Gérard de Nerval (my tr.)

2008-06-26T06:35:00.000-08:00

This is not the moon,
nor is this the spring,
of other springs,
and I alone
am still the same.

--Ariwara no Narihira (tr Rexroth)

This is not that moon
And it cannot be this is the spring
Such as the spring I knew;
I am myself the single thing
Remaining as it ever was.

(tr Earl Miner)

This is not that spring,
nor even the selfsame song
so broken-hearted.
I myself am the one thing
staying as it ever was.

(my tr.)

2008-06-26T06:30:00.003-08:00

Someone passes,
and while I wonder
if it is he,
the midnight moon
is covered with clouds.

--Lady Murasaki (tr Rexroth)

Night in the garden;
someone passes. I wonder
if it could be him
as the moon, till now unseen,
disappears behind a cloud.

(my new tr.)

Steps in the garden.
And while i wonder whether
it is he i seek,
the terrible plenilune
slides behind a cloud curtain.

(10/02)

2008-06-26T06:27:00.001-08:00

The white chrysanthemum
is disguised by the first frost.
If I wanted to pick one
I could find it only by chance.

--Oshikochi no Mitsune (tr Rexroth)

White chrysanthemums,
lost amidst the handiwork
of this first snowfall:
if i tried to pick one i
could find it only by chance.

(my tr.)

2008-06-26T06:22:00.003-08:00

36.

I did see the moth go up
To the lighted candle,
Then nothing else besides
A startled flame.

The life of the company
Was only a wink;
The cup departed taking
With it the eye-bedewed.

If a hundred roses boomed
It mattered not;
How long ago was it
That I went to the garden?

--Mohammad Taqi Mir (tr Ahmed Ali)

2008-06-25T05:59:00.002-08:00

from Paradise Lost (242-263)

"Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,"
Said then the lost Archangel, "this the seat
That we must change for Heav'n, this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he
Who now is sov'reign can dispose and bid
What shall be right: farthest from him is best
Whom reason hath equaled, force hath made supreme
Above is equals. Farewell happy fields
Where joy forever dwells: Hail, horrors, hail
Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell
Receive thy new possessor: one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n..."

--John Milton

2008-06-23T07:10:00.000-08:00

Pity me not because the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky;
Pity me not for beauties passed away
From field and thicket as the the year goes by;
Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,
Nor that a man's desire is hushed so soon,
And you no longer look with love on me.
This have I known always: Love is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,
Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,
Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales:
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.

--Edna St Vincent Millay

2008-06-22T20:11:00.002-08:00

"The Lady with the Heron"

I walk athirst
In a month of rain;
Drought I learned
At the feet of a heron.

Green trees, full rivers;
Athirst I went,
With a shrieking bird
In the drawn breath.

At the only spring
When I went for water
I met a lady
And thirst I had none.

I say, at the fountain
There I met a lady,
She led a blue heron
By the beck of her hand.

Moon-wise the owl is,
The wren not tame,
But I unlearned patience
At the feet of a heron.

So deep the water
As those her eyes
Kissed I never
At the lip of April.

Drink, sir, she said,
Of so sweet water.
The bird was blind
That she led by a shadow.

Lady, I said,
Thirst is no longer.
But she led my eyes
By the beck of her hand.

Of her eyes I drank
And no other water.
Hope I unlearned
At the feet of a bird.

And saw no face
When I bent there;
Such saw I never
In other water.

My lips not wet,
Yet was she gone
Leading a heron
By the shade of her hand.

And my eyes thirst
On the birdless air;
Blindness I learned
At the feet of a heron.

--W S Merwin