请用凉凉的雪水

i didn't know henri cole had his own website. but he does. maybe he got bored. idk how i feel about poets having their own websites. like, named after themselves. with big ass pics of themselves on the front page. or sometimes, on every page in somewhat smaller ass sizes. i think i don't like this too much. but maybe it will happen to me one day. maybe i will need something like that to promote myself/my work (not the same thing, but a lot of ppl conflate the two). or maybe i'll want something like that. because i am bored. and vain.

in any case, i really like henri cole's most recent collection, Blackbird and Wolf. i like coldfrontmag's review of the book. it's so intimate, complex yet totally direct, beautifully to the point. cole just says what he really needs to say.

e.g.

Birthday

When I was a boy, we called it punishment

to be locked up in a room. God's apparent

abdication from the affairs of the world

seemed unforgivable. This morning

climbing five stories to my apartment,

I remember my father's angry voice

mixed with anxiety and love. As always,

the possibilities of home--at best an ideal--

remains illusory, so I read Plato, for whom love

has not been punctured. I sprawl on the carpet,

like a worm composting, understanding things

about which I have no empirical knowledge.

Though the door is locked, I am free.

Like an outdated map, my borders are changing.


Self Portrait With Hornets

Hornets, two hornets, buzz over my head;

I'm napping and cannot keep my eyes open.

"Do you come from far away?" I ask, dozing off.

My gums are dry when I wake. A morning breeze

rakes the treetops. I can smell the earth.

The two hornets are puzzling over

something sticky on my night table,

wiping their gold heads with their arms.

Ordinary things are like symbols. My eyes are watery

and blurred. Then I lose myself again.

I'm walking slowly in a heat haze,

my vision contracting to a tiny porthole,

drawing me to it, like flourishing palms.

I can feel blood draining out of my face.


I can feel my heart beating inside my heart,

the self receding from the center of the picture.

I can taste sugar under my tongue.

All the usual human plots of ascent

and triumph appear disrupted.

Crossing my ankles, I watch the day

vibrate around me, watch the geraniums

climb toward the distant mountains

where I was born, watch the black worm

wiggling out of the window box,

hiding its head from the pale sun

that lies down on everything,

purifying it. Lord, teach me to live.

Teach me to love. Lie down on me.


**

more robert hass, from Time and Materials:

After Trakl

October night, the sun going down,
Evening with its brown and blue
(Music from another room),
Evening with its blue and brown.
October night, the sun going down.


A Supple Wreath of Myrtle

Poor Nietzsche in Turin, eating sausage his mother
Mails to him from Basel. A rented room.
A small square window framing August clouds
Above the mountain. Brooding on the form
Of things: the dangling spur
Of an Alpine columbine, winter-tortured trunks
Of cedar in the summer sun, the warp in the aspen's trunk
Where it torqued up through the snowpack.

"Everywhere the wasteland grows; woe
To him whose wasteland is within."

Dying of syphilis. Trimming a luxuriant mustache.
In love with the opera of Bizet.


Futures in Lilacs

"Tender little Buddha," she said
Of my least Buddha-like member.
She was probably quoting Allen Ginsberg,
Who was probably paraphrasing Walt Whitman.
After the Civil War, after the death of Lincoln,
That was a good time to own railroad stocks.
But Whitman was in the Library of Congress,
Researching alternative Americas,
Reading up on the curiosities of Hindoo philosophy,
Studying the etchings of stone carvings
Of strange couplings in a book.

She was taking off a blouse,
Almost transparent, the color of a silky tangerine.
From Capitol Hill Walt Whitman must have been able to see
Willows gathering the river haze
In the cooling and still-humid twilight.
He was in love with a trolley conductor
In the summer of--what was it?--1867? 1868?


Three Dawn Songs in Summer

1.

The first long shadows in the fields
Are like mortal difficulty.
The first birdsong is not like that at all.

2.

The light in summer is very young and wholly unsupervised.
No one has made it sit down to breakfast.
It's the first one up, the first one out.

3.

Because he has opened his eyes, he must be light
And she, sleeping beside him, must be the visible,
One ringlet of hair curled about her ear.
Into which he whispers, "Wake up!"
"Wake up!" he whispers.


**

z.h. lent me Nameless Flowers: Selected Poems of Gu Cheng (顾城). unfortunately this edition does not have chinese/english side-by-side, as i would like. but...just found some of 顾城's poetry online, in the original chinese/translated into english by aaron crippen: rite here. i quite like the 1st one there, esp the 2nd stanza:

from "回归 （一）"...

请用凉凉的雪水
把地址写在手上
或是靠着我的肩膀
度过朦胧的晨光

and i quite like mr. crippen's translation:

write the address
in snowmelt on your hand
or lean on my shoulder
as we pass the hazy morning

i like how he turns what's literally "cool cool snow water" into "snowmelt," although i think something is also lost there, as "snowmelt" seems somewhat more sophisticated and clever, whereas "cool cool snow water" has this wonderful childlike/dreamlike quality to it. mr. crippen dropped the "请" at the beginning of the stanza, too. i'm not sure why he made this choice. "请" often translates to "please" in imperative statements, and it has a pleasant, inviting/welcoming feeling to it. and 凉凉的雪水, being longer, has more of a cadence to it..."please use cool cool snow water." the line in chinese is kind of funny, and sweet--feelings that i think aren't conveyed in "write the address/in snowmelt..." at the same time, i do like the swift directness in mr. crippen's interpretation; there's more of an urgency in his lines.

apparently 顾城 had an interesting life, and a controversial death. he was cute, too~





呵呵 :P