Justin Erik Halldór Smith

Queries IV

Whether gold may be obtained from the transmutation of base metals, as tin, brass, copper, lead.

Whether life may be restored to an animal dead.

Whether the time (whether the weather) be felt first by the crows.

Whether there be knowing wherein a man knows not, what he knows.

What the power ascribed to the sea, to eject dead bodies, succinum, ambergris.

What the shining of the sea in the night. And what the fish there whose heart giveth light.

What a brute. And what a tree. And whether there be a God. And what he be.

e. e. cummings in French and Sakha

I've been trying to translate English-language poetry into Sakha, mostly out of curiosity, but also because this exercise reveals new limits and expressive possibilities of both the original and the target languages. Because I speak French with my Sakha tutor, I am also in the habit of translating whatever I come up with in Sakha into French as well. I have recently tried to render three poems by e. e. cummings in Sakha, but have only succeeded with one of them. The other two I have been able to render in French, while the huge differences in the grammar and vocabulary of Sakha and English respectively leave me practically unable even to start their Sakha translations. 

The one successful translation is the famous “I carry your heart with me...” of 1952:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
                                                i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

I came up with a serviceable French translation first (numerous French translations already exist in print):

je garde ton coeur avec moi(je le garde
dans mon coeur)je l'ai toujours(où que
j'aille tu vas,ma chère;et tout ce que je fais
tout seul tu fais,ma chérie)
                                                je n'ai peur
d'aucun sort(car c'est toi mon sort,ma douce)je ne veux
aucun monde(car tu es belle mon monde,ma fidèle)
et c'est toi que la lune a toujours voulue dire
et ce que le soleil chantera toujours c'est toi

voici le plus profond secret que personne ne sait
(voici la racine de la racine et le bourgeon du bourgeon
et le ciel du ciel de l'arbre qui s'appelle vie;qui croît
plus haut que l'âme ne puisse espérer et l'esprit ne puisse se cacher)
et c'est ça la merveille qui maintient les étoiles séparées

je garde ton coeur(je le garde dans mon coeur)

And finally, in Sakha: 

мин эн сүрэххин кэтэбин(мин маны
сүрэхпэр кэтэбин)хаһан да кинитэ суох сылдьыбаппын(ханна эмэ
барабын, тапталааҕым, эн миигинниин;уонна тугу барыта мин
соҕотох оҥоробун, эн оҥорогун, күндүм)
                                                            дьылҕаны
кутаммаппын(эн дьылҕам буолагын, минньигэһим)аан дойдуну
баҕарбаппын(эн кэрэ аан дойдум буолагын, эрэллээҕим)
уонна тугу эрэ ый мэлдьи көрдөрдө, диэн эн буолагын
уонна тугу эрэ күн мэлдьи ыллыа, диэн эн буолагын.

бу саамай дириҥ ким да билбэт кистэлэҥэ
(бу силис силиһэ уонна үнүгэс үнүгэһэ
уонна олох аатынан мас халлаанын халлаана;кини
эрэнэр дууһатааҕар уонна кистэнэр өйдөөҕөр уһун үүнэр)
уонна бу дьикти сулустары түмэр.

мин эн сүрэххин кэтэбин(мин маны сүрэхпэр кэтэбин)

I'm sure there are still problems with this, but it's a start.

Next I tried the lovely 1961 poem, “2 little whos”:

2 little whos
(he and she)
under are this
wonderful tree

smiling stand
(all realms of where
and when beyond)
now and here

(far from a grown
-up i&you-
ful world of known)
who and who

(2 little ams
and over them this
aflame with dreams
incredible is)

It comes out very nicely in French:

2 petits qui
(elle et lui)
sous sont cet
arbre inouï

souriant sont
(tous les pays
d’où et de quand au-delà)
maintenant et ici

(loin d’un ad-
ulte monde de su
avec moi&toi)
qui et qui

(2 petits suis
et sur eux cela
embrasé par de rêves
incroyable est)

I have no idea how even to begin to render it in Sakha. This reveals an interesting limitation: how do you convey the aesthetic qualities of brokenness, fragmentariness, and childlikeness in a language that you still have only mastered in a broken, fragmentary, and childlike way?

The final cummings poem is “all nearness pauses...” of 1952:

all nearness pauses, while a star can grow

all distance breathes a final dream of bells;
perfectly outlined against afterglow
are all amazing the and peaceful hills

(not where not here but neither’s blue most both)

and history immeasurably is
wealthier by a single sweet day’s death:
as not imagined secrecies comprise

goldenly huge whole the up floating moon.

Time’s a strange fellow;
                                    more he gives than takes
(and he takes all) nor any marvel finds

And in French:

Toute proximité s’arrête, lorsqu’une étoile peut croître

Toute distance respire un dernier rêve de cloches;
parfaitement esquissé sur les dernières lueurs
sont toutes merveilleuses les et pacifiques collines

(pas ici pas où mais ni leur bleu surtout les deux)

et l’histoire immesurablement est
plus riche de la mort d’un seul doux jour:
comme le comprennent les secrets non imaginés

énorme d’or la toute lune ascendante.

Le Temps est un drôle de type;
il plus donne que de prendre
(et il prend tout) sans y trouver une merveille

I am somewhat less satisfied with this translation than with “2 little whos”, mostly because I am sometimes unsure whether cummings is intentionally “breaking language” and descending downward into meaninglessness for a reason, or whether I simply haven't understood the fractured but still extractable meaning. This is particularly the case in the parenthetical line. Once again, with the Sakha translation, I barely know where to start. But for now I'm happy with one out of three. 

Disambiguation

Antinomy is when, of two things, both can’t be right.
Antimony is mostly found in sulfide mineral stibnite.
A big difference indeed, but still not quite antonymy,
Nor yet, like bank and bank, bark and bark, homonymy:
As also when we learn,
That coke is something that you burn,
And coke is something that you drink and something that you snort,
And Edward Coke sollicited before the English court.
Parsimony is, like, when you say no more words than suit,
Persimmony’s the essence of a common Asian fruit.
Possum is Latin for whatever I can do,
Opossum with an o entails things I can’t do too,
Like playing dead, or tonic immobility (synonymy),
Among the other features of this noble beast’s zoonomy.

The Brave Er Soğotoχ

These are the opening lines of Модун Эр Соҕотох, a now-canonical poem in the Sakha oral epic tradition known as Olonχo. The canonical version is based on a recording made in 1982 of a recitation by the olonχosut bard V. O. Karataev (1926-1990). For my previous translation of the opening lines of the Кыыс Дэбилийэ, another epic in the same tradition, go here. 

Far beyond
The highest peak
Of my former years,
Way beyond
The repellent ridge
Of my previous years,
Quite beyond the border
Of the cold windy days
Of my bygone years,
Beyond the range
Of perilous ridges
Of my outrun years,
My tribe of men,
Still unacquainted, began to speak,
My tribe of Yakuts began to converse,
Not yet knowing each other,
My uraangkhai* Yakuts
Dressed in coats like urasas**
With words flowing like water,
With soles flat on the ground
When they met
Not yet talking of this or that,
My seers in the flesh
With stained bone,
Shamans of my tribe
Not yet auguring the future,
My lady Mother Earth,
Still the size of a grey squirrel's claw
Spreading out and stretching,
Generating and growing,
Like the suede of the ear
Of my two-year-old doe
Turned inside out,
Spreading out and growing,
Gradually outspreading: so it happened, they say.
(Hey!)
And so,
If you push her, she does not flinch,
If you press her, she does not bend,
So sturdy she became,
My dark black bedrock of soil,
Growing strong, she was born: so it happened.
My dark black bedrock of soil,
Surrounded by indestructible cliffs,
The Araat Sea swelling,
The unsubsiding sea bounding
With seven walls,
With seven beams,
Mother Earth, my land,
Thus was she born: so it happened.
(Hey!)
This
Mother Earth, land of mine,
Connected by roots,
Fortified by grass,
Entangled by woods,
Where the fulvous bear digs his den,
Where the wide black taiga spreads,
Where the elk grazes
And the black taiga spreads out in all directions:
This is how they founded
My Mother Earth, my land: so it happened.
And so,
With the trees, having fallen, perishing,
With the waters, having subsided, going quiet,
With the cuckoo, having sung itself out, returning,
With the fish, having thought the better of it, returning,
With the needles, having faded, returning,
With the cattle, having dwindled, returning:
This is how they founded the bedrock
Of my my middle land, my Mother Earth,
In this way ever
Did they make and found her: so it happened.
(Hey!)
So that my wide resounding sky
With its unattainable secret,
Having fractured, should not fall,
They filled it with the Pleiades as its lord.
So that, having cracked, it should not fall,
They wedged into it our lord the moon.
So that, having fragmented, it should not fall,
They added our lord the sun, like a wheel.
For its setting sun they made
The fledgling bird to count the hours.
For its rising sun
They made the lark to be its attendant.
So that those with crooked bones
And black eyes
Should not suffer from eye sickness,
They made the night dark: so it happened.
(Hey!)
With the game straps of forty boreal owls,
With the harnesses of grey hares,
With the dark grey night falling,
They made the dark descend: so it happened.
(Hey!)
So that those plunged in good thoughts,
With the eyes of prophets
In the land of the sun,
Should live and thrive,
They made the day blaze
With radiant light: so it happened.
(Hey!)
And so,
With eight walls,
With conflict and worry,
With luxuriant beauty,
This is how they founded
My dear fatherland,
Just so, from the beginning: so it happened.
With seven walls,
With seven beams,
They drove along and guided
Mother Earth, land of mine,
Bounded by seven dry seas: so it happened;
(Hey!)
With nine walls,
With nine beams,
Bounded by nine unfrozen seas,
In this way they put down
My dark black bedrock of soil: so it happened.

*

Быстар мындаатын
Быдан ынараа өттүгэр,
Урукку дьылым
Охсуһуулаах уорҕатын
Отой аннараа өттүгэр,
Ааспыт дьылым
Анысханнаах айдааннаах күнүн
Адьас анараа таһаатыгар,
Куоппут дьылым
Кудулҕаннаах кудан өлүү уорҕатын
Куоһаралаах хоҥноҕор
Киһи аймаҕым
Кэпсэтэн билсэ илигинэ,
Саха аймаҕым
Саҥарсан дьааһыйа илигинэ,
Урааҥхай сахам,
Ураһа соннооҕум,
Уу ньамаан тыллааҕым,
Уһаты уллуҥахтааҕым,
Утарыта көрсөн,
Ол-бу дии илигинэ,
Ичээн эттээҕим,
Куодалаах уҥуохтаахтарым,
Ойуун аймахтарым
Одуулаан көрө иликтэринэ,
Сир ийэ хотунум
Сиэрэй тииҥ тиҥилэҕин саҕаттан
Тэнийэн-тэрбэйэн,
Үүнэн-үөскээн,
Сачарыы табам
Туруу чоҕой хара буорум
Туруу дьааҥынан тулаланан,
Араат байҕалынан арҕастанан,
Уолбат муоранан улаҕаланан [испит]
Сэттэ иилээх-саҕалаах,
Сэттэ биттэхтээх
Сир ийэ-аан дойдум
Сити курдук үөскээн испит эбит.
(Ноо!)
Бу
Сир ийэ аан дойдубун
Силиһинэн силбиэһиннээннэр,
Отунан оскуомалааннар,
Маһынан бааччыйаннар,
Хардаҥ эһэ арҕах хастар
Халыҥ хара тыалааннар,
Анабы тайах арҕастар
Адаар хара тыалааннар,
Аан ийэ дойдубун сол курдук
Айан испиттэр эбит.
Ол курдук
Охтон баранар мастаах,
Уолан суоруйар уулаах,
Хараан төннөр кэҕэлээх,
Ханчылаан төннөр балыктаах,
Хагдарыйан төннөр мутукчалаах,
Олкураҥнаан төннөр сүөһүлээх,
Ороһулаан төрүүр киһилээх
Орто туруу аан ийэ дойдубун
Сол курдук
Оҥорон-тутан испиттэр эбит.
(Ноо!)
Кистэлэҥэ биллибэт
Киҥкиниир киэҥ халлааммын
Үллэн-тохтон түһүө диэннэр,
Үргэл тойонунан өһүөлээбиттэр.
Ыллан-хайдан түһүө диэннэр,
Ый тойонунан ытаһалааннар,
Көллөн-тохтон түһүө диэннэр,
Күн тойонунан көлөһөлөөннөр,
Тахсар күммүн
Далбарай чыычааҕынан чаһыылааннар,
Киирэр күммүн
Күөрэгэй чыычааҕынан дьөһүөлдьүттээннэр,
Хардастыгас уҥуохтаахтар,
Хара харахтаахтар
Харах ыарыһах буолуохтара диэннэр,
Хараҥа түүннээбиттэр эбит.
(Ноо!)
Түөрдуон түлүрбэх көтөр төргүүлээх,
Бороҥ куобах болбуоттаах
Бороҥой хараҥа түүннээн
Боруорсубуттар эбит.
(Ноо!)
Көрүлүөс күргүөм санаалаахтар,
Көрбүөччү харахтаахтар
Күн сиригэр
Көччүйэн үөскээтиннэр диэн,
Күндү күлүмнэс сырдыктаан,
Күнүстээбиттэр эбит.
(Ноо!)
Ол курдук
Аҕыс иилээх-саҕалаах,
Атааннаах-мөҥүөннээх,
Айгырдаах-силиктээх
Аҕа бараан дойдубун
Аан бастаан соҕурдук
Айан испиттэр эбит;
Сэттэ иилээх-садалаах,
Сэттэ биттэхтээх
Сир ийэ аан дойдубун
Сэттэ сиикэй муоранан сиксиктээннэр
Ситэрэн-ханаран испиттэр эбит.

--

*uraangkhai - an archaic endonym, used in an honorific register to mean “our people”. 

**urasa - a traditional summer dwelling, constructed somewhat like a Native North American tipi, and covered in deer hide.

 

Kyys Däbiliïä, Lines 1-82

This is a translation of some of the opening lines of theКыыс дэбилийэ, an epic poem in the Sakha oral epic tradition known as Olonkho. It was recited by an olonkhosut bard named Nikolai Petrovich Burnashev in 1941, and was transcribed by S. K. D'iakonovyï.

Beyond the distant days
Of dread and sorrow
In ancient times,
Beyond the
War and bloodshed
Of a bygone age,
Beyond the invisible boundary
Of the terrible grief
Of yesteryear, a
Sakha man's mind
Sees not nor discovers how the
Secret unattainable
Sky, effulgent-white, like a
Suede deerhide coat,
Falling from above,
Expanding and spreading,
Was, it appears, created
--For the people of the three tribes
Of goodly constitution,
Their thrice-radiant gaze
Turned upwards,
Attentively searching,
Are unable to make out
Its four walls, nor limn its edges--;
How, it appears, such a crisp bold white sky,
Like the skis of an Evenk man's sled,
Bending downward,
Surging forth radiant, began.
Beneath this original
Lucent and limpid sky,
Where the two-legged ones,
Familiars of war and strife,
With their mortal bodies
And hollow bones,
With their wounded brains
And trembling souls,
Must multiply and spread;
With the cool wind of the western sky,
With the soothing eastern sky,
With the greedy southern sky,
With the spinning vortex of the northern sky;
With the swelling surface of the sea,
With the heaving bottom of the sea,
With the surging depth of the sea,
With the swirling axis of the sea,
With the seething shores of the sea;
With the venerable aiyy* protecting,
With the solar aiyy shepherding;
With abundant yellow nectar**,
With abundant white nectar;
With the multitude of stars,
With the innumerable herd of stars,
With the signs of rare planets among the stars,
With the full moon escorting,
With the bright sun accompanying,
With the purifying roar of thunder,
With the cracking knout of lightning,
With the moistening cloud-bursts of rain,
With the vital heat of the breath,
With the drying out and again the replenishing of waters,
With the falling down and again the growing up of trees,
With inexhaustible generous gifts,
With the girding of the low-pitched mountains,
With the gardens of the earthen mountains,
With the hot beneficent summer,
With the spinning axis of the center,
With the four convergent sides:
With such a high firmament,
Where you tread will not give way;
With such unencompassable space,
What you rattle will not break;
With such unfathomable expanse,
What you press will not bend;
With eight chambers and eight sides,
With six circles,
With troubles and worry,
With luxurious ornament,
Serenely peaceful,
Always-existing Mother Earth
Came shining forth, it appears,
Like a silver buckle
On a horned hat with a feather.

*

Былыргы дьыл
Былдьаһыктааҕын-быһылааннааҕын
Быдан анараа өттүгэр,
Урукку күн
Охсуһуулааҕын-оһоллооҕун
Улаҕа өттүгэр,
Ааспыт дьыл
Алдьархайдааҕын-арасхааттааҕын
Анараа таһаатыгар
Саха киһи
Санаата тиийэн
Сабаҕалаан көрбөтөх
Сарыал маҥан халлаана диэн,
Сарыы таҥалай курдук,
Таҥнары тардыллан,
Тараадыйан-тарҕанан,
Айыллыбыт эбит;
Үүттээх-үүчээн эттээх
Үс биис ууһа,
Үс өргөстөөҕүнэн
Өрө көрөн туран,
Өйдөөн-дьүүллээн көрбүтүн да иһин,
Түөрт эркинин бүдүүлээбэтэх,
Түгэҕин-төрдүн билбэтэх
Дьулусханнаах добун маҥан халлаана диэн,
Тоҥус киһи туут хайыһарын курдук,
Таҥнары иэҕиллэн түһэн,
Дуйданан долгуйан үөскээбит эбит.
Бу айыллыбыт
Арылы халлаан алын өттүгэр
Куордаах эттээх,
Куодаһыннаах уҥуохтаах,
Оһол-охсуһуу доҕордоох,
Иирээн-илбис энээрдээх,
Ириҥэ мэйиилээх,
Иһэгэй куттаах,
Икки атахтаах үөскээн тэнийдин диэн,
Анысханнаах арҕаа халлааннаах,
Иэйиэхситтээх илин халлааннаах,
Соллоҥноох соҕуруу халлааннаах,
Холоруктаах хоту халлааннаах,
Үллэр муора үрүттээх,
Түллэр муора түгэхтээх,
Аллар муора арыннаах,
Эргичийэр муора иэрчэхтээх,
Дэбилийэр муора сиксиктээх,
Ахтар айыы араҥаччылаах,
Күн айыы күрүөһүлээх,
Араҥас илгэ быйаҥнаах,
Үрүҥ илгэ үктэллээх,
Элбэх сулус эркиннээх,
Үгүс сулус үрбэлээх,
Дьэллэҥэ сулус бэлиэлээх,
Туолбут ый доҕуһуоллаах,
Аламай күн аргыстаах,
Дорҕоон этиҥ арчылаах,
Тоһуттар чаҕылҕан кымньыылаах,
Ахсым ардах ыһыахтаах,
Сугул куйаас тыыннаах,
Уолан угуттуур уулаах,
Охтон үүнэр мастаах,
Уһун уйгу кэһиилээх,
Сытар хайа сындыыстаах,
Буор хайа модьоҕолоох,
Итии сайын эркиннээх,
Эргичийэр эрэһэ кииннээх,
Төгүрүйэр түөрт тулумнаах,
Үктүөлээтэр өҕүллүбэт
Үрдүк мындаалаах,
Кэбиэлээтэр кэйбэлдьийбэт
Кэтит киэлилээх,
Баттыалаатар маталдьыйбат
Баараҕай таһаалаах,
Аҕыс иилээх-саҕалаах
Алта киспэлээх,
Атааннаах-мөҥүөннээх,
Айгырастаах-силиктээх,
Алыгыр-налыгыр
Аан-ийэ дойду диэн
Муостаах-нуоҕайдаах бэртэһэ
Туоһахтатын курдук,
Туналыйан тупсан үөскээбит эбит.

--

*aiyy (айыы) - benevolent nature divinities.

**'nectar' - илгэ, a divine drink, comparable to Greek ambrosia, which in this instance seems to be assimilated to milk, which in turn is conceived as the substance of the white bodies of the sky. 
 

I Got Retweeted by Joyce Carol Oates

Though I’d never had one single book-worthy thought,

I was tired of being confused for a bot.

 

I began to imagine I had what it takes

To rise above all the trolls, shitlords, and fakes, 

And to be a great writer, with all that connotes,

The day I was retweeted by Joyce Carol Oates.

 

I undertook to work on my book,

Asked an agent acquaintance to have a quick look,

And to herd me along with the sheep, not the goats,

When I was retweeted by Joyce Carol Oates.

 

One year has passed now and not much has changed.

A new SelfControl icon, desktop rearranged. 

But I’ve got a collection of reading-themed totes,

And I got retweeted by Joyce Carol Oates. 

 

No bidding wars fought over little old me,

No contract for paperback, hardback, or e-.

If I can’t be a writer, I’ll be a ‘writer’ in quotes, 

For I’ve been retweeted by Joyce Carol Oates. 

Poems for Philosophers

G. W. Leibniz, Letter to Antoine Arnauld

You say the best possible state of affairs
Is the one where God let me keep all of my hairs.
But me with one single hair less or hair more
Is no more still me than an ichthyosaur. 

 

G. W. Leibniz, Monadology

Every true being is perfectly simple, 

Unlike the atom, the gnat, or the pimple,

The leaf or the lily-pad, 

The Battle of Stalingrad,

Or the cute and kissable,

Ontologically dismissible 

Dimple. 

 

 

Immanuel Kant, Dreams of a Spirit-Seer

For Dorothy Parker

I’d rather end up at the morgue

Than in kingdom come with Swedenborg. 

 

Immanuel Kant (pronounced in the British manner, /kænt/), Critique of Practical Reason

There once was a docent named Kant
Who dripped remoulade on his pant.
Herr Lampe, his man,
Said: “Don’t wipe that, I can.”
And Kant said: “You can, but you shan’t.” 

 

William of Ockham, Summa Logicae

Today universals are par for the course,

As when horseness is said of a horse. 

 

And dogness is solemnly logged for a dog, 

And logness is doggedly barked of a log.

 

And now the whole lot of us

Are expected to talk as though hippopotamateity inhered in a hippopotamus. 

 

But all of these quiddity-quoddity hacks

Could not tell a duck from the fact that it quacks. 

 

Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals 

For Ogden Nash

To beget with a cloacal kiss
Is the apex of avian bliss.
Crows do it.
Owls do it.
Even sopping waterfowls do it.
And unlike the fish who discharges his milt from afar on the external eggs of his mate in an ovuliparious fit, well…
Our bird is sure not to miss.

 

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

The world is all that is the case.

If you don’t learn your lessons, I’ll smack your face. 

 

If it can be thought, it can be thought clear.

And don’t talk back, or I’ll box your ear.

 

Whereof you can’t speak, thereof be silent.

Not a peep out of you, kids, you know I get violent. 

'How-To', by Anders Carlson-Wee

For more of this poet's work, visit his website here.

Please join me in not visiting the poetry section of The Nation, where the poetry editors, Steph Burt and Carmen Giménez Smith, after having published this poem, disgracefully caved to public pressure and announced that its acceptance had been a mistake.

The poem was said to be 'ableist' and 'disparaging of many communities'. In the words of the editors: "We made a serious mistake by choosing to publish the poem 'How-To'. We are sorry for the pain we have caused to the many communities affected by this poem." I don't even know where to start. It may be that Burt and Giménez Smith simply have a completely different understanding of what poetry is, and of what pain is, than I do. I will say bluntly that I do not believe that any communities were in fact caused pain by this poem. I do not think that is possible. 

Burt and Giménez Smith also write that as a result of the pressure on them, they are now 'unable to read' the poem as they had initially done (i. e., one supposes, charitably). I can't guess what was going on in their heads, but in their actions these two editors have chosen to place their trust in the ever-shifting winds of online outrage rather than in their own reading ability, i.e., their own capacities as editors. They are unfit for the position they were given, and should resign.

I for my part apologise for having agreed to interview them a few months back, when they had taken on their new position. I cannot say, from our conversation and from what I read by and about them at the time, that I did not see this coming. 

*

If you got hiv, say aids. If you a girl,
say you’re pregnant––nobody gonna lower
themselves to listen for the kick. People
passing fast. Splay your legs, cock a knee
funny. It’s the littlest shames they’re likely
to comprehend. Don’t say homeless, they know
you is. What they don’t know is what opens
a wallet, what stops em from counting
what they drop. If you’re young say younger.
Old say older. If you’re crippled don’t
flaunt it. Let em think they’re good enough
Christians to notice. Don’t say you pray,
say you sin. It’s about who they believe
they is. You hardly even there.

Un remède

Prenez fleurs de romarin
Électuaire de succotrin

Prenez scrupule de zédoaire
Ajoutez fleurs de primevère

Prenez pivoine, mélisse, reglisse
Betoine, euphorbe, queue d'ecrévisse

Prenez racine de couleuvrée
Rhubarbe choisie & pulvérisée

Prenez cubebes, axonge, agaric
Mastic, angélique, olymel scillitique

Prenez os de coeur de cerf
Bezoar de vache de mer
Prenez huile de castor raffinée 
Gésier de vers de terre

Faites pilules de grosseur médiocre
De mucilage de racine de guimauve
De poudre d'ailes de souris-chauve
De térébenthine de couleur d'ocre

Et surtout ne pensez point à la mort
Avalez thériac, vous resterez fort.

*

Inspiré en partie par Johannes Marius, Traité du Castor, dans lequel on explique la nature, les proprietés & l'usage Médico-Chimique du Castoreum dans la Médecine, Paris, Durand, 1746.

 

A Conversation With Steph Burt and Carmen Giménez Smith, The Nation's New Poetry Editors

Originally posted at 3 Quarks Daily.

On August 7, The Nation announced the appointment of Steph Burt and Carmen Giménez Smith as its new poetry editors. Beginning in the Fall, they will be soliciting and commissioning a wide range of American and international poetry, and will begin accepting submissions on September 15.

Steph Burt is Professor of English at Harvard University, and the author of several books of poetry and criticism, including The Poem Is You (Harvard University Press, 2016). 

Carmen Giménez Smith is Professor of English at Virginia Tech, a CantoMundo fellow, and the author of a memoir and four poetry collections, including Milk and Filth, a finalist for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award.

On August 15, Carmen and Steph joined Justin E. H. Smith by Skype to talk about their work to come at The Nation, and about poetry in America. 

* * *

Justin E. H. Smith: What is poetry doing in The Nation? Does it fit within a unified mission that the magazine has, or is it something more like a breath of fresh air that one can take while absorbing all the difficult news? How do you see it?

Steph Burt: That's a good question. There are a couple of answers I'd want to give to that. The first is that different poems do different things. Carmen and I are only going to print poems we like a lot. But we're not going to like them all for the same reasons. I assume that you like more than one kind of food and my guess is that you listen to more than one kind of music, and that you like different foods and different kinds of music for different reasons. This is sort of the argument of the book about how to read poetry that I'm working on now, so we're talking about that at the same time as we're talking about poetry at The Nation. Different poems do different things. We might print a poem that is a breath of fresh air and a break from thinking abut the struggle against white supremacy; and then we might print a poem whose subtle, careful way of examining language and history shows us how complicated the roots of the problem of white supremacy are; and then we might print a third poem that is a turning-it-up-to-eleven, articulate expression of the need to stay outraged. Those are three good kinds of poem. Three poems in one issue might be a bit much, though if they're short we could do that. Take another urgent problem of politics and culture that The Nation frequently addresses: we might print a poem about the delights of a fruit orchard; we might then print another poem that is a very cold, scientific look at how the earth has changed; and we might print another poem whose emotional undercurrent is, Holy cow! Miami's going to be underwater really soon. Those are three poems that all address the same urgent issue, that's a political issue, but in three different ways, one of which might seem non-political if you're looking at it in a certain way. It is true that in some sense everything is political. It is true in another sense that if the only question you ask about something in your life is, How can I address this as a matter of public policy? Or, How can I address this as a community activist? that's not a life, as someone who is concerned with public policy and with communities, that I want anyone in my community to have to live. So poetry in general can speak to what we need to do together, and it can speak to the lives and the experiences that it is the job of politics to make possible.

Carmen Giménez Smith: I think poetry has always had a role in social-justice movements, and I think rhetorically that there is a way in which theoretical approaches and descriptions, and reportage-based work is vital to changing the world. But I also think that there's a kind of new world-building, a kind of optimistic possibility that gets expressed in art that sometimes can't get expressed in journalism. I also think, again rhetorically --and I think of all writing as having a rhetorical purpose--, that art can say a lot of things and have a tone that cannot be expressed in journalism. So my goal as an editor is to bring works that complement the rigorous journalistic work in the same pages, that add nuance to it, that deepen it, that humanize it. That's how I imagine the curatorial work that Steph and I will be doing for The Nation. I wouldn't necessarily dichotomize poetry into political and apolitical, because in some countries merely expressing the gaze is transgressive, writing a poem is transgressive. I think that having the liberty to look into the world and describe it in itself can be a highly transgressive mode. Having subjectivity isn't a guarantee, no one is guaranteed a subjectivity, and so any kind of expression in art, I think, is implicitly resistant. It's not the way we talk, it's not the way we think, yet we're still moved to be in the world in that way. So I do think that there's a kind of political charge in every expression of poetry, whether it's about just the changing of the seasons or, whether it's about the change of seasons representing the coming of the apocalypse. Which it sure feels like these days.

Three Poems

Angle

Scholars of foreign nations teach
that Pigeons will fly forty miles
for a breakfast. So be quiet
for a while and let’s go see what
int’rest the Trouts will pay us. Nor
let us get snagged upon the lost
credit of the poor despised Chub,
the fluid watery humour
with which all such do abound, or
the gravid drag of the jighead.

Grandpa preferred motorless troll,
bobbers, silence, sensitive pole,
recycled guts in crawdad traps,
and secret lakes unmarked on maps.

PG&E ex nihilo
created waters, built up dams:
modern constructions, grandiose,
unknown to mortal fisherman.

Venerable Bede says there’s an
island of England called Ely
for the innumerable Eels
born there. Other lands give Roughy,
Crappie, struck dumb by the lures of
blessed (happy) piscatores,
rich in fish, death-bound without a
further wish.

*

Herberti Hooverii Somnium

My nightcap’s inside out a-
gain, a sign, of what-a-scene:
of basalt, bismuth, fluorspar
burnt out from earthen sunken
seams unseen by men above,
which our Agricola laid
bare in his Metallica.
Or Lou-Lou did he speak, de
re, of one Metallic thing?
Lou Henry grammar swirls
in this generative matrix
as the flowing allantois
fuses to firm chorion.
Lou Henry, Lou Henry, my
love, there are veins, too, beneath
the earth. Down there is no dark
nescio quod but a world,
a counter-world bearing wealth
beyond all surface scuttlers’
dreams.

*

A Remedy

Our worshipful company of grocers
swears by the restorative effects of
common gum, Bubble Yum, pyrotechnic
powder of gun. Phenylketonurics
(this is vocative): your tonic contains
phenylalanine. Yea, this theriac
wants saxifrage. Palatine sortilege
foretells saccharine electuary
going down like eggs of estuary
birds preserved in Mithridatic honey.
And damaged brains. And mountains of money.

 

Three Translations from Old High German

Wes er mit mir pflaege 
niemer niemen
bevinde daz, wan er und ich, 
und ein kleinez vogellîn: 
tandaredei, 
daz mac wol getriuwe sîn.

What he did to me 
May no one ever 
Know but he and I 
And a little bird: 
Tandaredei 
(Who can keep a secret).

*

Mich dunket niht sô guotes noch sô lobesam 
sô diu liehte rôse und diu minne mîns man. 
diu kleinen vogellîn 
diu singent in dem walde: dêst menegem herzen liep. 
mir enkome mîn holder geselle, ine hân der sumerwunne niet.

I think nothing so good or praiseworthy
As the bright rose, and my dear one's love.
The little bird
That sings in the forest sets many a heart a-flutter
But if my sweetheart cometh not, no summer sun can melt my butter.

*

Dû bist mîn, 
ich bin dîn, 
des solt dû gewis sin. 
dû bist beslozzen 
in mînem herzen, 
verlorn ist daz sluzzelîn: 
dû muost ouch immér darinne sîn.

You are mine,
I am thine,
Of this much please be certain.
You're under arrest.
Your cell? My breast. 
The key? Don't know.
Really, now. You mustn't go.

Song of a Mansi Elder

I, mistress of the three princes,

you called for me, offering me your catch,

by the call of the sable,

the call of captured prey.

 

By a long route across the earths,

a long voyage down the rivers,

I came to this place. 

 

Three castrated reindeer, their skin thick,

My three reindeer, forked antlers,

I've bled them at the ski,

the arched blade of the sledge,

shorter than the foot of a grouse.

 

On my sledge with fine skis,

shorter than the foot of a grouse,

I sit, guardian goddess,

disguised as a marsh crow,

a crow of the woods, good bearing.

 

The firm haunch of my reindeer,

bull reindeer, solid haunch,

I punch it, guardian goddess,

with my hand, the palm with five fingers.

 

From the edge of the racing clouds

I catch him, I hold him tight

from the clouds, great drift. 

 

Upon the covered enclosure

I sit down, guardian goddess,

disguised as a marsh crow

with good bearing, as a marsh magpie.

 

How should I come to your service,

by what swift ligament, what strong hand,

by what means to your rescue? 

 

 --

 

From Artturi Kannisto (ed.), Wogulische Volksdichtung, vol 1., Finno-Ugric Society: Helsinki, 1951, ch. 119; tr. Gabriel Rebourret (ed.), Chants ouraliens. Chants, poèmes et prières de trois peoples ouraliens: Mordves, Vogoules, Ostyaks, Paris: Gallimard, 2006, 362-263. Translated from the French translation of a German translation of a Mansi (Vogul) transcription of a song sung by a certain Saveliï Vingalev from the village of Sartynja, who learned it from a man at the mouth of the Vissum River, near the village of Toboldi, circa 1903. 

 

The 12th-century Arab explorer Abu Hamid al-Gharnati offers the following description of the land of Yugra (a traditional term for the Ugrian regions of the Urals and of Western Siberia): "In summers the days are very long there, so that the Sun does not set for forty days, as the merchants say; but in winters the nights are equally long. The merchants report that Darkness is not far (from them), and that the people of Yura go there and enter it with torches, and find a huge tree there which is like a big village. But on top of the tree there sits a large creature, they say it is a bird. And they bring merchandise along, and each merchant sets down his goods apart from those of the others; and he makes a mark on them and leaves, but when he comes back, he finds commodities there, necessary for his own country" (Al-Garnati, Puteshestvie Abu Hamida al-Garnati v vostochnuiu i tsentralnuiu Evropu, Moskva, 1971, 32).

Paul Valéry, 'Helen' (from the Album des vers anciens, 1920)

 

Azure! That’s me… I come from the caves of the dead

To hear the waves break by degrees of sound

And I see again the galleys of dawn rebound

From shadow in the golden oars’ thread.

 

My solitary hands call out to the lords,

Who pleased my pure fingers with their beards of salt;

I cried. They their dark victories took to exalt

And the fleeing gulfs of their vessels’ boards.

 

I hear the deep conchs and the martial horns

Imparting their rhythm to the flight of the oars;

The clear song of the rowers triggers a roar,

 

And the Gods reach, at the heroic prow exalted

In their ancient smile, and which the foam abhors,

Me, now, in their great kind arms envaulted.

 

*

 

Azur! c’est moi... Je viens des grottes de la mort

Entendre l’onde se rompre aux degrés sonores,

Et je revois les galères dans les aurores

Ressusciter de l’ombre au fil des rames d’or.

 

Mes solitaires mains appellent les monarques

Dont la barbe de sel amusait mes doigts purs;

Je pleurais. Ils chantaient leurs triomphes obscurs

Et les golfes enfuis aux poupes de leurs barques.

 

J’entends les conques profondes et les clairons

Militaires rythmer le vol des avirons;

Le chant clair des rameurs enchaîne le tumulte,

 

Et les Dieux, à la proue héroïque exaltés

Dans leur sourire antique et que l´écume insulte,

Tendent vers moi leurs bras indulgents et sculptés.

Joseph Brodsky, from 'A Part of Speech' (1977)

From the point of view of air, the edge of earth
is everywhere. Which, mowing away the clouds,
coincides - no matter how they cover
their tracks - with the sensation of a heel.
And the eye that looks around
mows, as your sickle, the fields;
the sum of small places added in change,
is less knowable than zero.
And a smile will show forth like the shadow of a rook
upon a pock-marked hedge, holding down
the splendid thick of the rosebush, but crying
through honeysuckle with closed beak.

*

С точки зрения воздуха, край земли
всюду. Что, скашивая облака,
совпадает - чем бы не замели
следы - с ощущением каблука.
Да и глаз, который глядит окрест,
скашивает, что твой серп, поля;
сумма мелких слагаемых при перемене мест
неузнаваемее нуля.
И улыбка скользнет, точно тень грача
по щербатой изгороди, пышный куст
шиповника сдерживая, но крича
жимолостью, не разжимая уст.

"Prose isn't here to stay": The Poetry of Les Murray

Around the same time English-language philosophers were debating whether or not you can know what it is like to be a bat (generally deciding that you can not), the Australian poet Les Murray was busy directly transcribing the thought-world of an imagined representative of this order. Here are the final six lines from his 1986 poem, "Bat's Ultrasound":

ah, eyrie-ire; aero hour, eh?
O'er our ur-area (our era aye
ere your raw row) we air our array
err, yaw, row wry—aura our orrery,
our eerie ü our ray, our arrow.
 
A rare ear, our aery Yahweh.

Murray channels the inner language of other species as well. For instance, pigs, in his 1992 poem, "Pigs":

Us shoved down the soft cement of rivers.
Us snored the earth hollow, filled farrow, grunted.
Never stopped growing. We sloughed, we soughed
and balked no weird till the high ridgebacks was us
with weight-buried hooves.  Or bristly, with milk.

While the individual pig refers to the collectivity as 'us', Murray imagines that cattle conceptualize that same first-person plural as 'me'. This from "The Cows on Killing Day" of 1998:

The heifer human smells of needing the bull human   

and is angry. All me look nervously at her

as she chases the dog me dream of horning dead: our enemy   

of the light loose tongue. Me’d jam him in his squeals.

 

Me, facing every way, spreading out over feed.

The individual 'me' (to the extent that these can be individuated), the cow that narrates the poem, ends up slaughtered by a blade, and now sees the blood, or perhaps the guts, running out of her as 'me' too:

Looking back, the glistening leaf is still moving.

All of dry old me is crumpled, like the hills of feed,   

and a slick me like a huge calf is coming out of me.

So, it turns out you can know what it is like to be a bat, or a pig, or a cow. As far as I am concerned, Murray proves as much: he offers a verisimilar report on the inner world of these animals. He does so 'shamanistically', to deploy one of his own key concepts. He moves himself poetically into a position of certainty, a position that overcomes the skeptical limitations of philosophers, which are, one now sees, the same limitations that constrain the philosophers to write in prose.

 

Murray is often criticized, particularly by fellow Australians, for his presumption of authority, for his self-assured declamations about how the world really is. But this is to fail to engage with the poet on his own terms. Murray's certainty is not like the 'intuition' of armchair philosophy, which purports to be getting the world right in view of a unique capacity possessed by human beings, called 'reason', a capacity that all too often with distance or retrospection can easily turn out to be a mere cataloguing of prejudices. Murray's reports are rather, by his own description, a result of the proper combination of three varieties of mental activity: daytime consciousness, dreamtime consciousness, and 'the body'. Any writing that does not pay proper respect to all three of these is mendacious. It is the last of them, in particular, that gives the poet access to certainty about how the world, or nature, is, since this certainty is really only something that he shares with everything else in nature, but from which language has the power to cut us off. In an astoundingly simple, direct, self-assured, and utterly true poem of 2002 called "The Meaning of Existence," Murray sums up his metaphysics (if that word may be used):

Everything except language
knows the meaning of existence. 
Trees, planets, rivers, time
know nothing else. They express it 
moment by moment as the universe.

Even this fool of a body
lives it in part, and would 
have full dignity within it 
but for the ignorant freedom 
of my talking mind.

One of my regular preoccupations in this space is to provide some sort of account for why, in spite of my official job title, I do not feel naturally inclined to philosophy. The most straightforward account might just be to say that I share Murray's metaphysics entirely. I know nature knows what's going on. I believe philosophy, or prosaic argument, or 'daytime consciousness', is the cause of the loss of this certainty, and not at all the best hope for preventing this loss. I believe Descartes's argument that he is not dreaming, quite apart from the question of its soundness or validity, represents the limitations of the tradition in which I am implicated; it takes for granted that dreams are spurious trickery, rather than vehicles of truth. I believe Descartes is mistaken about dreams. (I know I'm sounding like a vapid new-ager, but the fact that I can only sound this way, in saying something that ought to be obvious, is itself a measure of the depth of the prejudice I am trying to expose.) 

Murray has said that poetry beckoned him from an early age "by its not putting humans above other subject matter." He credits his early life on a farm as the initial source of his animistic sensibility. In politics, he claims to be above the left-right divide, but is defiantly anti-Marxist and scornful of the formulae of academic leftism. He believes that the rural point of view is one that is systematically left out of academic attention to the various species of otherness, complaining of his early experience "of being relegated and scorned, as a country bumpkin, an uncultured yahoo, all that sanctified anti-rural prejudice that goes right back to classical times and which no antidiscrimination law or postcolonial rhetoric ever protects you from—so to hell with those." Of course, at the same time, he presumes to know all possible forms of otherness-- if you can know what it is like to be a bat, then it is not so difficult to work your way into the thought-world of an Australian Aborigene, or to imagine that you have worked your way in. Murray's complaint is not that the urban academics do not value otherness enough, but that in their limited daytime consciousness they are unable to appreciate what is really at stake in being other.

I probably value New Left prose and arguments a good deal more than Murray does, but I also appreciate his defiance of the prevailing left ideas about the forms otherness can take. When I hear academics carrying on about 'intersectionality', and composing recipes for social difference from a very short list centered upon race, gender, and sexual identity, I want to ask: but what do we get from the intersection of a Hmong peasant, say, or an Amazonian forager, with the institutions of modern society, institutions to which all intersectionality fans --being essentially urban, western, and bourgeois-- submit as if these were timeless and self-evident (particular inheritance structures, the use of first and last names, monogamous pair-bonding as the basis of child-rearing, the relative importance of fathers and unimportance of maternal uncles, a more or less utilitarian conception of human well-being...)? What about the animals? What about the ancestors? Anthropology has typically done better than philosophy at accounting for the true depth and range of human difference, but it too is constrained to do so in the language of daytime consciousness, even as it comes up against subjects and structures that are understood equally by means of dreaming and the body by the people who live them, the people for whom they have meaning.

Poetry is infinitely better equipped; it is not another domain of inquiry, but rather another modality of thought. It alone enables a person to move away from the circumstances of identity and to claim to speak for others, or for everything at once, with the universal 'me' of a cow. 

Novalis, 'Longing for Death'

From the Hymns to the Night (1799-1800)

Down below, in the shafts of earth,

Far removed from the reach of light,

The rage and wild push of pain

Are the sign of a happy flight.

Laid out in our narrow punt,

We'll soon arrive at heaven's front.

Praised be to us the eternal night,

Praised be our eternal sleep.

The day indeed has made us warm
And our cares have made us weak.

Driven no more by a longing to roam,

We want to go back to our father's home.

What are we to do in this world

By loving more, by staying true?

All that is old is set aside,

What then of all that is new?

O! deeply sad and alone you'll stay,

With your pious hot love for a bygone day.

In a bygone day when the senses' light

Still burned in mounting flames,

The people still did recognize

Their father's hand and face.

And with heightened sense, and without being told,

Many still fit the primordial mold.

In a bygone day, when ancient stalks

Still shone forth replete with flowers,
And children longed for pain and death

Driven on by heaven's power.

And when life and longing also spoke,

So many hearts for love were broke.

In a bygone day, when in blush of youth,

God announced his own arrival.

And to early death in courageous love

He renounced his sweet survival.

And drove away not pain nor fear,

So that to us he would stay dear.

With anxious longing we see it

In night's darkness drenched.

In this temporality

Hot thirst cannot be quenched.

To our homeland we must go
For this holy time to know.

What delays our return still?

Those we love are long at rest.

The course of our life is buried there,

And now we know only pain and stress.

We seek no more, we have no care,

Our heart is full - the world is bare.

Infinite and mysterious,

Sweet showers through us course -

A distant echo of our grief, it seems,
Rings out from an unknown source.

Our loved ones also pine in death,
And sent to us their longing's breath.

 

Downwards, to the cherished bride,

To Jesus, the beloved,

Assured of dusk's dark menacing

Are those who grieve and love.
A dream has caused our bands to snap
And sunk us in our father's lap.

Paul Celan, Death Fugue (1948)

 

Black milk of dawn we drink it at evening

we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night

we drink and we drink

we're digging a grave in the airs where you won't lie too tight

A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents he writes

he writes when Deutschland is darkened by your golden hair Margarete

he writes it and goes 'fore the house and the stars shine he calls for his hounds

he calls for his Jews a grave in the earth he leaves them to dig

he commands us now play for to dance

 

Black milk of dawn we drink it at night

we drink it at morning and midday we drink it at evening

we drink and we drink

A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents he writes

he writes when Deutschland is darkened by your golden hair Margarete

Your ashen hair Sulamith we're digging a grave in the airs where you won't lie too tight

 

He calls push deeper into the soil you and the others sing and you play

he grips at his belt for the iron his eyes are blue

push the spades deeper you and the others play on for to dance

 

Black milk of dawn we drink you at night

we drink you at midday and morning we drink you at evening

we drink and we drink

a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete

your ashen hair Sulamith he plays with the serpents

he calls play death sweeter death is a master from Deutschland

he calls stroke the violins more darkly for you'll rise like smoke in the air

for you'll have your grave in the clouds where you won't lie too tight

 

Black milk of dawn we drink you at night

we drink you at midday death is a master from Deutschland

we drink you at evening and morning we drink and we drink

death is a master from Deutschland his eye is blue

he hits you with bullet of lead he hits you true

a man lives in the house your golden hair Margarete

he sets his hounds on us he gives us a grave in the air

he plays with the serpents and dreameth death is a master from Deutschland

 

your golden hair Margarete

your ashen hair Sulamith 

 

German Poetry: Selected Translations

A Blessing for Horses (Pariser Handschrift, 12th century)

A man went his way ·
dragging his steed ·
There my lord met him ·
With all of his men ·

How · is it going · man?
Why aren't you riding?
How can I ride when ·
my steed is all stiff?

Just push at his flank, man ·
while whispering to him ·
he'll step with his right foot ·
and get along good ·

A Blessing for a Journey (Weingartner Handschrift, 12th century)

I want to see you · I want to send for you
with my five fingers · my fifty-five angels ·
May God send you home safe ·
May triumph's door be open to you ·
and to you the door of sailing ·
May drowning's door be closed to you ·
and to you the door of fighting ·

*

Heinrich Heine

 From Das Buch der Lieder (1827)

The Return

How can you sleep peacefully,
Knowing, I live still?
When the old anger comes again,
I'll bend this yoke to my will.

Do you know the old song:
How there once was a dead knave,
Who grabbed his beloved at midnight
And pulled her into his grave?

Believe me, you magnificent,
You all-too lovely kid,
I'm still alive, and stronger,
Than any dead man is!

The Homecoming

If you shall be my faithful wife
Then fortune on you shines.
You'll live a gay and carefree life
Of leisurely pastimes.

And if you scold and if you rave
I'll abide it all with pleasure.
But if my poems you will not praise
Then let us split forever.

*

Friedrich Hölderlin

The Ages of Life

You, cities of Euphrates!
You, alleys of Palmyra!
You forests of columns in the plain of the desert,
What are you?
The fire stripped you
Of your crowns as you passed
Over the border of the breathing
By the smoke of the heavenly beings;
But now I sit under clouds, in which
Each thing has its quietude, under
Well-ordered oaks on the meadow
Of deer, and strange to me
And dead to me seem
The spirits of the blessed.

A Fragment of a Hymn

What is God? unknown, and yet

Is the face of heaven full
Of signs of him. Lightning in fact
Is the wrath of a god. The more one is
Invisible,       the more one conforms to what one is not. But thunder
Is the glory of God. The love of immortality,
As ours, is likewise the property
Of a god.

*

Rainer-Maria Rilke

Judith's Return (1911)

Sleepers, black is the wetness still upon my feet, imprecise. Dew, you say.
O, that I am Judith, I am come from him, from the tent from the bed, his head trickling, thrice-drunk blood. Wine-drunk, drunk on incense, drunk on me -- and now arid as dew. 
Low-held head above the morning grass; but I, above in my going, I erect.
Brain suddenly empty, images flowing out into the earth; but I am still pricked in the heart by the whole breadth of the night's deed.
Lover that I am.
Horrors drive all the pleasures in me together, all places are on me.
Heart, my famed heart, beat against the wind: 
     as I go, as I go
and faster the voice in me, my voice, which will call a birdcall before the city of need.

From the Sonnets to Orpheus (1922)

A god could do it. But how, tell me, could
a man follow him through a narrow lyre?
His sense is discord. At the crossing of two
hearts' paths stands no temple for Apollo.

Song, as you teach it, is not desire,
nor the announcement of something finally attained.
Song is existence. For God it is easy.
But when are we? And when will he turn

the earth and the stars toward our being?
It is not this that you love, young one, even if
voice forces open your mouth, -- learn

to forget that you are singing yourself empty. This shall pass.
In truth singing is just another breath.
A breath for nothing. A sighing in God. A wind.

The Duino Elegies (1912-22)

The First Elegy

Who then, if I cried out, would hear me from the order
of angels? and supposing one of them took
a sudden interest in me: I should wither from his
more powerful being. For the beautiful is nothing

but terror's beginning, which we yet bear unbowed,
and we marvel at it, as it calmly disdains

to disturb us. Every angel is terrible.
And so I restrain myself and swallow down the siren call
of dark convulsion. O whom then are

we able to need? Neither angels, nor men, 

and the clever beasts note this well, 

that we are not so solidly at home 
in the world as construed. There remains to us,

perhaps, a tree on the hillside that we see again 
daily; there remain to us yesterday's streets, and

the loyalty, which is forgiven, to a habit
t
hat suited us well, and thus stayed, and did not go. 
O and the night, the night, when the wind, full of world,
wears down our faces--, for whom would she not remain, desired,

gently disappointing, she who lies painfully in store for

the solitary heart? Is she softer on those who love?
Oh, they only hide with one another in their fate.
Do you still not know it? Throw from your arms
into space the emptiness that we breath; perhaps 
the birds feel the expanded air with an inward flight.

Yes, the springtimes well needed you. Many a star
expected you to sprint. A wave 
raised itself up in the past, or,
so that you should drop by the open window,
a violin gave itself up. All this was the task.
But did you manage it? Were you not always
scattered in expectation, as a beloved heralded
it all to you? (Where will you hide her,
so that these great strange thoughts of yours 
should come in and out, and stay more often the night?)
If you must sing of lovers, still is their
famed feeling by far not immortal enough. 
You almost envy these abandoned ones, whom you 
found so much more loving than those who were appeased.
Always begin anew the acclaim that is never to be attained;
think: the hero maintains himself, even the downfall 
was for him only a pretext for being: his final birth.
But exhausted nature takes the lovers back
into her, as if the strength to carry this off
could not come twice. Have you thought enough
then of Gaspara Stampa, that any girl passed up
by her beloved, on the aggravated example
of these lovers, feels: that I might be like her?
Should these oldest pains not at last become
more fruitful to us? Is it not time that we lovingly
free ourselves from the beloved, and tremblingly withstand,
as the arrow withstands the string, in order in launching
to be more than itself? For remaining is nowhere.

Voices, voices. Hear, my heart, as else only
saints have heard: that they raised the great
call from the ground; but they knelt
again, impossible, and paid it no mind.
Thus did they listen. Not that you would bear
the voice of God, not by far. But listen to the blowing,
the uninterrupted news that is made up of silence. 
It is rustling now, from those young dead ones, to you.
Wherever you entered, did their fate not calmly 
address you in the churches of Rome and Naples? 
Or an inscription was loftily borne to you,
as of late that tablet in Santa Maria Formosa.
What do they want of me? Gently shall I 
shrug off the semblance of injustice that the pure
motion of their spirits sometimes hinders a little. 

It is indeed peculiar to inhabit the earth no longer,
not to exercise skills barely learned, nor to give
to roses, and to other things that promise themselves,
the significance of a human future;
not to be what one was in infinitely
anxious hands, and to leave behind
even one's own name like a broken toy.
Peculiar, to no longer wish wishes. Peculiar, 
to see everything fluttering that hung
so loosely in space. And being dead is laborious
and full of catching up, so that one gradually senses
a bit of eternity. -- But all of the living make
this mistake, that they distinguish too sharply.
The angels (it is said) would often not know, whether
they were moving among the living or the dead. 
The eternal current always pulls all the ages 
along with it through both domains,
and drowns them out in both. 

In the end they need us no longer, the early departed,
one is gently weaned of the earthly, as one meekly
grows away from the mother's breast. But we who need
such large secrets, for whom blissful progress 
so often springs from mourning--: could we be without them? 
The story is in vain, that once in the lament for 
Lino's daring first music, barren torpor crept in;
that first in the stunned space, into which an almost divine youth
suddenly entered forever, did the emptiness shift into that 
vibration, that now thrills us and comforts and helps.

*

Stefan George

From Das Buch der hängenden Gärten (1895)

Speak not always 
Of the leaves · 
Violent breeze · 
Of the smashing 
Of ripe quinces · 
Of the coming 
Of destroyers 
At year's end. 
Of the quiver 
Of the darters 
In bad weather 
And the lights 
With the flicker 
Transient.

From Der siebente Ring (1907)

May you still by night and day
Demand your share · you trace ·
In all my joys to have your place ·
From every yield to take your pay? 

My desire still awakens by your suck
Me, whose ore you scraped out ·
Me, whose wine you slurped out–
In the loss do I still shiver at my luck? 

Am I, now that you are slake,
Mean with what I gave?
Do I force you down in the grave ·
Do I drive through your heart with a stake?

From Der Stern des Bundes (1914)

Is this the lad of ancient lore
Who came from thence with flatterer's eyes
With rosy soft virgin's members
With sumptuous tissues enticing?
His trunk was slim and taut. He grasps ·
He tempts no more · has no jewels.
Shines with grit and lust for battle
His look . . his kiss is short and burning.
His seed now shot from the holy shaft
He pushes into pain and danger.

From Das neue Reich (1928)

The Man and the Faun

The Man

A waterfall blocks the narrow creekbed--
Who now extends a hairy leg
From this cliff's dribblingly fat moss?
A horn peeks from a bushy ruffled head . . 
For as long as I have hunted in the mountain forest
I have never met his likes… Be still
Your path has shifted • conceal nothing
Through a clear wave a goat's foot shows.

The Faun

Neither you nor I will be happy that you found me.

The Man

I knew indeed of your sort of people.
From tales of old -- but not that today
Such a needlessly ugly monster still lives.

The Faun

If you drive off the last of my kind
You will look in vain for noble creatures
You will have nothing but rodents and worms
And when you pierce into the deepest thicket
The spring you need most will be dry.

The Man

So far beneath me you deign to teach? Our spirit
Has brought down hydra giant dragons
Has cleared barren high forest
Where bogs stood fields of corn now heave
In the juicy green our tame cattle graze
And there is still enough forest for hart and doe--
We raised the treasures from sea and ground
Stones called out our victories to the heavens…
What do you want you leftover of cruel wilderness?
The light the order follow our trace.

The Faun

You are only a man .. where your wisdom ends
Ours begins • you see the edge only
Where you have been punished for crossing it
When your grain ripens your cattle flourish
The holy trees give oil and grapes
You imagine this comes only from your cunning
The earths that breath in the dull primordial night
Never perish • they are always disposed
They dissolve when a member escapes.
For a good while your reign goes well •
Now hurry back! you have seen the Faun.
You do not know your worst: if your sense
Which can do much is caught in the clouds
The bond has been broken with beast and clod--
Disgust and desire movement and such 
And dust and sunbeam and dying and growing
Can be comprehended in the course of things no more.

The Man

Who told you so? This is the concern of the gods.

The Faun

We speak not of them yet in your madness
You believe that they themselves help you. Unmediated
Have they never approached you. You become you die--
Whose true creature you are you never learn. 

The Man

Soon there will be no room left for your licentious game.

The Faun

Soon you will call inside what outside you malign.

The Man

You poisonous fiend with crooked mouth
In spite of your misshapenness you are too close
To us • otherwise you would get to know my weapon ..

The Faun

The beast knows no shame the man no thanks.
With all the arts you still never learn 
What you most need .. but we still serve.
So hear just this: wiping us out, you erase yourselves.
Where our tufts grow alone comes milk
Where our hooves kick not there grows no straw.
If your spirit alone had been at work: if long ago
Your beat had been muffled with all you had done
Your wood had withered and your crops gone to seed ..
Only by magic does life stay awake.

Found Poetry

So the other day I passed by Montreal's best bookstore, Le Port de Tête, and picked up a used copy of Tristan Tzara's 1931 epic poem, L'homme approximatif. When I got it home, I noticed there was a slip of paper inserted between pages 52 and 53, and on it there was an anonymous poem, typed out and printed in that mimeographic purple ink I recall from childhood:

Whom do I know?

Scattered nobodies.

Whom do I love?

Your mother.

What don't I have?

A brother.

And where did he go?

We don't know.

What follows the night?

Light.

And how should I write? 

(Slight):

As smooth as the silk of the worms of Cathay,

and as rhythmic as Edna St. Vincent Millay. 

I Googled various lines of the poem, and nothing came up. It's evidently just some amateur trifle, yet something about it sticks with me, even more than anything I've found so far in Tzara's own poem. What was it doing there, between those pages? Why was it mimeographed decades ago? Who is the questioner? Who the respondent? Wby should one write in the recommended way? I would be delighted if, miraculously, the person with the answers were to step forward.