A Pity, We Were Such a Good Invention
They amputatedYour thighs off my hips.As far as I’m concernedThey are all surgeons. All of them.
They dismantled usEach from the other.As far as I’m concernedThey are all engineers. All of them.
A pity. We were such a goodAnd loving invention.An aeroplane made from a man and wife.Wings and everything.
We hovered above the earth.
We even flew a little.
Yehuda Amichai; from Now in the Uproar, translated from the Hebrew by Assia Gutmann
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Love
Two thousand cigarettes.A hundred milesfrom wall to wall.An eternity and a half of vigilsblanker than snow.
Tons of wordsold as the tracksof a platypus in the sand.
A hundred books we didn’t writeA hundred pyramids we didn’t build.
Sweepings.Dust.
Bitteras the beginning of the world.
Believe me when I sayit was beautiful.
Miroslav Holub; from Selected Poems, translated from the Czech by Ian Milner and George Theiner
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Myself and My Person
There are momentswhen I feel more clearly than everthat I am in the companyof my own person.This comforts and reassures me,this heartens me,just as my tridimensional bodyis heartened by my own authentic shadow.
There are momentswhen I really feel more clearly than everthat I am in the companyof my own person.
I stopat a street corner to turn leftand I wonder what would happenif my own person walked to the right.
Until now that has not happenedbut it does not settle the question.
Anna Swir; from Talking to My Body, translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan
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It Is That Dream
It’s that dream that we carry with usthat something wonderful will happen,that it has to happen,that time will open,that the heart will open,that doors will open,that the mountains will open,that wells will leap up,that the dream will open,that one morning we’ll slip into a harbor that we’ve never known.
Olav Håkonson Hauge; from The Winged Energy of Delight, translated from the Norwegian by Robert Bly
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Letter From a Reader
Too much about death,too many shadows.Write about life,an average day,the yearning for order.
Take the school bellas your modelof moderation,even scholarship.
Too much death,too muchdark radiance.
Take a look,crowds packedin cramped stadiumssing hymns of hatred.
Too much music,too little harmony, peace,reason.
Write about those momentswhen friendship’s footbridgesseem more enduringthan despair.
Write about love,long evenings,the dawn,the trees,about the endless patienceof the light.
Adam Zagajewski; from Without End, translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Renata Gorczynski, Benjamin Ivry, and C.K. Williams
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The blue sky is blue.That says everythingabout the blue sky.
These flying rebuses however—although the answer changes all the time,anyone can decipher them.
They are intangible, so high above,nebulous. And the gentlenessof their dying! So painless
few things here can match it. The cloudshave no fear, as if they knew:they’ll come into this world again and again.
Hans Magnus Enzensberger; from A History of Clouds (#3), translated from the German by Esther Kinsky and Martin Chalmers
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We Do Not Know How to Say Goodbye
We do not know how to say goodbye.Shoulder to shoulder, we walk and walk.Already it is dusk, and IAm silent, while you are lost in thought.
Let’s go into this church. What will we see?A baptism, wedding, burial-service.Without looking at each other, we shall leave —Why is our life not like this?
Or else, let’s go into the graveyard. ThereYou will pick up a stick and lightly traceIn the trodden snow we crouch on, sighing,Houses where we shall be together always.
Anna Akhmatova; from 20th Century Russian Poetry, translated from the Russian by Daniel Weissbort
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—When They Sleep
All people are children when they sleep.There’s no war in them then.They open their hands and breathein that quiet rhythm heaven has given them.
They pucker their lips like small childrenand open their hands halfway,soldiers and statesmen, servants and masters.The stars stand guardand a haze veils the sky,a few hours when no one will do anybody harm.
If only we could speak to one another thenwhen our hearts are half-open flowers.Words like golden beeswould drift in.—God, teach me the language of sleep.
Rolf Jacobsen; from The Roads Have Come to an End Now, translated from the Norwegian by Robert Hedin
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The Meaning of Simplicity
I hide behind simple things so you’ll find me;If you don’t find me, you’ll find the things,you’ll touch what my hand has touched,our hand-prints will merge.
The August moon glitters in the kitchenlike a tin-plated pot (it gets that way because of what I’m saying to you),it lights up the empty house and the house’s kneeling silence—always the silence remains kneeling.
Every word is a doorwayto a meeting, one often cancelled,and that’s when a word is true: when it insists on the meeting.
Yannis Ritsos; from Repetitions, Testimonies, Parentheses, translated from the Greek by Edmund Keeley
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By Writing
By writing I wantedTo save my soul.I tried to make poemsIt did not work.I tried to tell storiesIt did not work.You cannot writeTo save your soul.Given up, it drifts and does the singing.
Marie Luise Kaschnitz; from Selected Later Poems, translated from the German by Lisel Mueller
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Ancient Winter
Desire of your brighthands in the flame’s half-light;flavour of oak, rosesand death.
Ancient winter.
The birds seeking the grainwere suddenly snow.
So words:a little sun; a haloed glory,then mist; and the treesand us, air, in the morning.
Salvatore Quasimodo; from Selected Poems, translated from the Italian by Jack Bevan
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Fire Graffiti
Throughout those dismal months my life was only sparked alight when I made love to you.As the firefly ignites and fades, ignites and fades, we follow the flashesof its flight in the dark among the olive trees.
Throughout those dismal months, my soul sat slumped and lifelessbut my body walked to yours.The night sky was lowing.We milked the cosmos secretly, and survived.
Tomas Tranströmer; from The Deleted World, translated from the Swedish by Robin Robertson
Photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash
