Posts Tagged: Poetry

Collerette anglaise

The mangroves

The mangroves

As I said before, I am living now
in a warm place, surrounded by
mangroves. Mostly I walk beside
them, they discourage entrance.
The black oaks and the pines
of my northern home are in my heart,
even as I hear them whisper, «Listen,
we are trees too.» Okay, I’m trying. They
certainly put on an endless performance
of leaves. Admiring is easy, but affinity,
that does take some time. So many
and so leggy and all of them rising as if
attempting to escape this world which, don’t
they know it, can’t be done. «Are you
trying to fly or what?» I ask and they
answer back, « We are what we are, you
are what you are, love us if you can.»

Mary Oliver

Myth and poetry

Lines written in the days of growing darkness

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends

into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don’t say
it’s easy, but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?
So let us go on, cheerfully enough,
this and every crisping day,

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.

MARY OLIVER
A Thousand Mornings

Calligraphie

Naming these things is the love-act and its pledge;

title from In The Hospital
by Patrick Kavanagh

Oh Clavis, Oh Key! Gol’s Stavkirke

«Set me free, cut to the quick to fit, the master key.»

Oh Clavis, Oh Key!
Malcolm Guite
photo : Gol stavkyrkje, Oslo

Trochę o duszy / A Few Words on the Soul – Wisława Szymborska

Trochę o duszy

Duszę się miewa.
Nikt nie ma jej bez przerwy
i na zawsze.

Dzień za dniem,
rok za rokiem
może bez niej minąć.

Czasem tylko w zachwytach
i lękach dziecińśtwa
zagnieżdża się na dłużej.
Czasem tylko w zdziwieniu,
że jesteśmy starzy.

Rzadko nam asystuje
podczas zajęć żmudnych,
jak przesuwanie mebli,
dźwiganiewalizek
czy przemierzanie drogi w ciasnych butach.

Przy wypełnianiu ankiet
i siekaniu mięsa
z reguły ma wychodne.

Na tysiąc naszych rozmów
uczestniczy w jednej,
a i to niekoniecznie,
bo woli milczenie.

Kiedy ciało zaczyna nas boleć i boleć,
cichcem schodzi z dyżuru.

Jest wybredna:
niechętnie widzi nas w tłumie,
mierzi ją nasza walka o byle przewagę
i terkot interesów.

Radość i smutek
to nie są dla niej dwa różne uczucia.
Tylko w ich połączeniu
jest przy nas obecna.

Możemy na nią liczyć,
kiedy niczego nie jesteśmy pewni,
a wszystko nas ciekawi.

Z przedmiotów materialnych
lubi zegary z wahadłem
i lustra, które pracują gorliwie,
nawet gdy nikt nie patrzy.

Nie mowi skąd przybywa
i kiedy znowu nam zniknie,
ale wyraźnie czeka na takie pytania.

Wygląda na to,
że tak jak ona nam,
równiez i my
jesteśmy jej na coś potrzebni.

A Few Words on the Soul

We have a soul at times.
No one’s got it non-stop,
for keeps.

Day after day,
year after year
may pass without it.

Sometimes
it will settle for awhile
only in childhood’s fears and raptures
Sometimes only in astonishment
that we are old.

It rarely lends a hand
in uphill tasks,
like moving furniture,
or lifting luggage,
or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out
whenever meat needs chopping
or forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations
it participates in one,
if even that,
since it prefers silence.

Just when our body goes from ache to pain,
it slips off-duty.

It’s picky,
it doesn’t like seeing us in crowds.
our hustling for a dubious advantage
and creaky machinations make it sick.

Joy and sorrow
aren’t two different feelings for it.
It attends us
only when the two are joined.

We can count on it
when we’re sure of nothing
and curious about everything.

Among the material objects
it favors clocks with pendulums
and mirrors, which keep on working
even when no one is looking.

It won’t say where it comes from
or when it’s taking off again,
though it’s clearly expecting such questions.

We need it
but apparently
it needs us
for some reason too.

Translation Stanislaw Baranczak

A call carved on a prison wall

Ars poetica

всяко свое стихотворение
ти създавай като последно.
В този век. наситен със стронций,
зареден с тероризъм,
литнал с ултразвукова скорост,
все по внезапно идва смъртта.
Всяка своя дума изпращай
както сетно писмо пред разстрел,
врязан зов в зида на затвор.
Нямаш право ти на лъжа,
даже на малка игра красива.
Няма просто време да имаш
свойта грешка сам да изправиш.
Лаконично и безпощадно
всяко свое стихотворение
с кръв написвай като прощално.
Блага Николова Димитрова
“Обратно време: стихове”, Български писател, 1966

Ars poetica

Write each of your poems
as if it were your last.
In this century, saturated with strontium,
charged with terrorism,
flying with supersonic speed,
death comes with terrifying suddenness.
Send each of your words
like a last letter before execution,
a call carved on a prison wall.
You have no right to lie,
no right to play pretty little games.
You simply won’t have time
to correct your mistakes.
Write each of your poems,
tersely, mercilessly,
with blood—as if it were your last.
–Blaga Dimitrova (translated by Ludmilla G. Popova-Wightman)

La coupe immense

oh ! que je viderais, ce soir , avec amour, la coupe immense et bleue où le firmament rôde !

Paul Fort