Song of the Reed

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‘From the reed-flute hear what tale it tells;
What plaint it makes of absence’ ills:

“From jungle-bed since me they tore,
Men’s, women’s eyes have wept right sore.
My breast I tear and rend in twain,
To give, through sighs, vent to my pain.
Who’s from his home snatched far away,
Longs to return some future day.
I sob and sigh in each retreat,
Be’t joy or grief for which men meet.
They fancy they can read my heart;
Grief’s secrets I to none impart.
My throes and moans form but one chain,
Men’s eyes and ears catch not their train.
Though soul and body be as one,
Sight of his soul hath no man won.’

~ From “The Mesnevi of Mevl’n’ Jel’lu’d-din Muhammed er-Rumi. Book the First” ~

Translated by James W. Redhouse.
(London, 1881).

I got this wonderful poem from Vinayak’s blog. A very nice blog to keep a feed on…

Memento

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Like a reminder of this life
of trams, sun, sparrows,
and the flighty uncontrolledness
of streams leaping like thermometers,
and because ducks are quacking somewhere
above the crackling of the last, paper-thin ice,
and because children are crying bitterly
(remember children’s lives are so sweet!)
and because in the drunken, shimmering starlight
the new moon whoops it up,
and a stocking crackles a bit at the knee,
gold in itself and tinged by the sun,
like a reminder of life,
and because there is resin on tree trunks,
and because I was madly mistaken
in thinking that my life was over,
like a reminder of my life -
you entered into me on stockinged feet.
You entered – neither too late nor too early -
at exactly the right time, as my very own,
and with a smile, uprooted me
from memories, as from a grave.
And I, once again whirling among
the painted horses, gladly exchange,
for one reminder of life,
all its memories.

~Yevgeny Yevtushenko~
(1974)

Translated by Arthur Boyars amd Simon Franklin

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Epistle to Neruda

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Superb,
Like a seasoned lion,
Neruda buys bread in the shop.
He asks for it to be wrapped in paper
And solemly puts it under his arm:
“Let someone at least think
that at some time
I bought a book…”
Waving his hand in farewell,
like a Roman
rather dreamily royal,
in the air scented with mollusks,
oysters,
rice,
he walks with the bread through Valparaiso.
He says:
” Eugenio, look!
You see–
over there, among the puddles and garbage,
standing up under the red lamps
stands Bilbao-with the soul
of a poet — in bronze.
Bilbao was a tramp and a rebel.
Originally
they set up the monument, fenced off
by a chain, with due pomp, right in the center,
although the poet had lived in the slums.
Then there was some minor overthrow or other,
and the poet was thrown out, beyond the gates.
Sweating,
they removed
the pedestal
to a filthy little red-light district.
And the poet stood,
as the sailor’s adopted brother,
against a background
you might call native to him.
Our Bilbao loved cracking jokes.
He would say:
‘On this best of possible planets
there are prostitutes and politutes –
as I’m a poet,
I prefer the former.’”
And Neruda comments, with a hint of slyness:
“A poet is
beyond the rise and fall of values.
It’s not hard to remove us from the center,
but the spot where they set us down
becomes the center!”
I remember that noon,
Pablo,
as I tune my transistor at night, by the window,  now,
when a wicked war with the people of Chile
brings back the smell of Spain.
Playing about at a new overthrow,
politutes in generals’ uniforms
wanted, whichever way they could,
to hustle your poetry out of sight.
But today I see Neruda–
he’s always right in the center
and, not faltering,
he carries his poetry to the people
as simply and calmly
as a loaf of bread.
Many poets follow false paths,
but if the poet is with the people to the bitter end,
like a conscience-
then nothing
can possibly overthrow poetry.

~Yevgeny Yevtushenko~
(1973)

Translated by Arthur Boyars amd Simon Franklin

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Sonnets of the Sweet Complaint

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Never let me lose the marvel
of your statue-like eyes, or the accent
the solitary rose of your breath
places on my cheek at night.

I am afraid of being, on this shore,
a branchless trunk, and what I most regret
is having no flower, pulp, or clay
for the worm of my despair.

If you are my hidden treasure,
if you are my cross, my dampened pain,
if I am a dog, and you alone my master,

never let me lose what I have gained,
and adorn the branches of your river
with leaves of my estranged Autumn.

~Federico García Lorca~

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The Faithless Wife

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So I took her to the river
believing she was a maiden,
but she already had a husband.
It was on St. James night
and almost as if I was obliged to.
The lanterns went out
and the crickets lighted up.
In the farthest street corners
I touched her sleeping breasts
and they opened to me suddenly
like spikes of hyacinth.
The starch of her petticoat
sounded in my ears
like a piece of silk
rent by ten knives.
Without silver light on their foliage
the trees had grown larger
and a horizon of dogs
barked very far from the river.

Past the blackberries,
the reeds and the hawthorne
underneath her cluster of hair
I made a hollow in the earth
I took off my tie,
she too off her dress.
I, my belt with the revolver,
She, her four bodices.
Nor nard nor mother-o’-pearl
have skin so fine,
nor does glass with silver
shine with such brilliance.
Her thighs slipped away from me
like startled fish,
half full of fire,
half full of cold.
That night I ran
on the best of roads
mounted on a nacre mare
without bridle stirrups.

As a man, I won’t repeat
the things she said to me.
The light of understanding
has made me more discreet.
Smeared with sand and kisses
I took her away from the river.
The swords of the lilies
battled with the air.

I behaved like what I am,
like a proper gypsy.
I gave her a large sewing basket,
of straw-colored satin,
but I did not fall in love
for although she had a husband
she told me she was a maiden
when I took her to the river.

~Federico García Lorca~

Love

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Because of you, in gardens of blossoming flowers I ache from the
perfumes of spring.

I have forgotten your face, I no longer remember your hands;
how did your lips feel on mine?

Because of you, I love the white statues drowsing in the parks,
the white statues that have neither voice nor sight.

I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice; I have forgotten
your eyes.

Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to my vague memory of
you. I live with pain that is like a wound; if you touch me, you will do me irreparable harm.

Your caresses enfold me, like climbing vines on melancholy walls.

I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to glimpse you in every
window.

Because of you, the heady perfumes of summer pain me; because
of you, I again seek out the signs that precipitate desires: shooting stars, falling objects.
~ Pablo Neruda ~

I am explaining a few things…

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you are going to ask:and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them fullof apertures and birds?
i’ll tell you all the news.

i lived in a suburb,
a suburb of madrid,with bells,
and clocks,and trees.

from there you could look out
over castille’s dry face:
a leather ocean.
my house was called
the house of flowers,because in every cranny
geraniums burst:it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
remember,raul?
eh,rafael?federico,do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of june drowned flowers in your mouth?
brother,my brother!!
everything
loud with big voices,the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of arguelleswith its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres,litres,the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roof with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine,frenzied ivory of potatoes
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.

and one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings–
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
bandits with planes and moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children.

and the blood of children ran through streets
without fuss,like children’s blood.

jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the viper would abominate!

face to face with you i have seen the blood
of spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives! treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of spain
spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes.
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull’s eye of your hearts.

and you’ll ask:why doesn’t his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and great volcanoes of his native land?

come and see the blood in the streets.
come and see
the blood in the streets.
come and see
the blood in the streets!!

~ Pablo Neruda ~

Dawn

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Now the roosters are singing.
Natalia, your rooster’s already sung, sister,
Justo, yours has already sung, brother.
Get up off your cots, your bed mats.
I seem to hear the congos awake on the ohter coast.
We can already blow on the kindling – throw out the pisspot.
Bring an oil lamp so we can see the faces.
A dog in a hut yelped
and a dog from another hut answered.
Juana, it’s time to light the stove, sister.
The dark is even darker because day is coming.
Get up Chico, get up Pancho.
There’s a horse to mount,
we have to paddle a canoe.
Our dreams had us separated, in folding
cots and bed mats (each of us dreaming our own dream)
but our awakening reunites us.
The night already draws away followed by its witches and ghouls.
We will see the water very blue; right now we don’t see it. – And
this land with its fruit trees, which we also don’t see.
Wake up Pancho Nicaragua, grab your machete
there’s a lot of weeds to cut
grab your machete and your guitar.
There was a owl at midnight and a hoot owl at one.
The night left without moon or any morning star.
Tigers roared on this island and those on the coast called back.
Now the night bird’s gone, the one that says: Sc-rewed, Sc-rewed.
Later the skylark will sing in the palm tree.
She’ll sing: Compañero
Compañera.
Ahead of the light goes the shade flying like a vampire.
Wake up you, and you, and you.
(Now the roosters are singing.)
Good morning, God be with you!

~Ernesto Cardinal~
(translation by Mark Zimmerman)

——–
What can I say in my drab prose about this beautiful poem….

Just listen to those words “Our dreams had us separated, in folding
cots and bed mats (each of us dreaming our own dream)but our awakening reunites us“

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The Parrots

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My friend Michel is an army officer
in Somoto up near the Honduran border,
and he told me he had found some contraband parrots
waiting to be smuggled to the United States
to learn to speak English there.

There were 186 parrots
with 47 already dead in their cages.
He drove them back where they’d been taken from
and as the lorry approached a place known as The Plains
near the mountains which were these parrots’ home
(behind those plains the mountains stand up huge)
the parrots got excited, started beating their wings
and shoving against their cage-sides.

When the cages were let open
they all shot out like an arrow shower
straight for their mountains.

The Revolution did the same for us I think:
It freed us from the cages
where they trapped us to talk English,
it gave us back the country
from which we were uprooted,
their green mountains restored to the parrots
by parrot-green comrades.

But there were 47 that died.

~Ernesto Cardenal~

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Ernesto Cardenal, poet, revolutionary, Sandanista, Minister of Culture in the revolutionary government which came to power in Nicaragua in 1979 after deposing the dictator Somoza. Ernesto Cardenal, Catholic priest, who defied Pope John Paul’s orders to disassociate himself with the Sandanistas to stand by his people.

There was this poem of his which had these two beautiful lines:

We have always wanted something beyond what we wanted

and

The bourgeois begins to go astray at his mother’s breast

Today I post these poems by Nicanor Parra and Ernesto Cardenal to celebrate the victory of the Sandanistas in Nicaragua, to celebrate the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, to cheer the first Aymara Indian, Evo Morales, to become the President of Bolivia…

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I do not love you…

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I do not love you as if you were salt-rose or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms,
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers.
Thanks to your love a certain fragrance,
risen darkly from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride,
so I love you because I know no other way than this:
where “I” does not exist, nor “you,”
So close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
So close that your eyes close and I fall asleep.

~ Pablo Neruda ~