How lucky we are to have so many wonderful poems translated into English. Here’s a taste:
Little robin
bones pinned to the cosmos.
Who whistles? Who calls?
Tomaž Šalamun (tr. from Slovenian by Tomaž Šalamun and Michael Waltuch)
I wonder if it was robin in Slovenian, or another common, backyard bird.
This poem needs no explanation. Although if you don’t know Williams’ poem, The Red Wheelbarrow, read it first.
(After William Carlos Williams)
I fucking depended on you and
you left the fucking wheelbarrow
out and it’s fucking raining
and now the white chickens
are fucking filthy
Another gem from Poetry Daily. I love naming and disintegration play against each other in this poem, vowels scattered. And benthic, a wonderful word, new to me.
A long slope.
The strong sun dipped, and finally sank.
No matter how long I walked, I stayed in “the middle of the road.”
The name torn into pieces.
Just keeping on, climbing higher and higher,
I’d completely forgotten the name.
The west wind shifts the typhoon’s course,
the world, for a few hours, is thrown into confusion.
You might name one thing after another,
but each loses its name in that same moment.
Into what we call “nature.”
I stood in the middle of nature.
And something was missing, the natural was
draped in a thin shroud.
Vowels scattered,
the name went missing.
When once more the name “nature” was applied
to the desolate-as-ever landscape,
immediately, the name began to weather away.
What is still losing its name,
and what has already lost its name,
those two strands entwine
around the true name.
Those who have wings stay put,
howling out their condition over and over,
“How fragile we are!”
though no one hears them.
Thousands of ripples tell
a story of benthic anguish.
The ripples beach themselves
on the name of each anguish,
vowels scatter by the thousands
over the earth.
Shuri Kido, translated from the Japanese by Tomoyuki Endo and Forrest Gander
Another poem courtesy of Poetry Daily.
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Already the week in Costa Rica is beginning to fade in the chill morning fog of the Bay Area, but it was such a deep pleasure to experience the tropical rain forrest, a week when I was never cold, when I awoke each morning to monkeys and sometimes was awakened by them. A few times the troupe of Howler Monkeys that lived in the tall trees near the house would start their eerie and very loud calls at four in the morning. The locals said the Howlers “called the rain.” I don’t know about that, but they were compelling!
Here is your monkey poem from Amiee Nezhukumatathil, and a photo of a white-faced monkey taken from our deck–for us this was closer to our 53rd anniversary.
First Anniversary with Monkeys. Periyar Nature Preserve
There is no crumbly frozen cake to thaw.
Today, we are in the jungle. I mean mosquito. I mean
tigers and elephants sludging their way
to the lake for a drink and Don’t make sudden moves
or snakes startled from an afternoon nap
will greet you fang first. I think we are lost. Too hot
for any cold confection to survive. Even my tube
of sunblock is as warm as a baby’s bottle. You get
to those places I can’t reach, those places I dared
not even whisper before I walked down the aisle
in white. You never worried if our families
would clash, if they would clang like the clutch
of pale monkeys clanging the thin branches of the treetrops,
begging for our trail mix. You never worried
about my relatives staring at your pale, muscled calves—
things not usually seen outside of the bedroom. You wore
hiking shorts anyway. And still, they lavished ladle-fuls
of food on your plate. I think we are lost. My eyes are dark
and wet as that wild deer that walked right past us,
a little off the trail. I think we are lost, but for once
I don’t mind. Eventually you turn us back to a place
not on any map, but I know I can trace it back with my finger
if we ever need it again. We made it one year
without a compass and we’re not about to start now.
I took this photo yesterday in Manuel Antonio National Park, and then found this poem by Yuseff Komunyakaa.
If you’re one of seven
Downfalls, up in your kingdom
Of mulberry leaves, there are men
Betting you aren’t worth a bullet,
That your skin won’t tan into a good
Wallet. As if drugged in the womb
& limboed in a honeyed languor,
By the time you open your eyes
A thousand species have lived
& died. Born on a Sunday
Morning, with old-world algae
In your long hair, a goodness
Disguised your two-toed claws
Bright as flensing knives. In this
Upside-down haven, you’re reincarnated
As a fallen angel trying to go home.
This simple poem was written around the time Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Something to ponder.
In my hut this spring
There is nothing
There is everything.
Yamaguchi Sodo (tr. from Japanese by R.H. Blyth)
I am a little embarrassed that I have discovered K-dramas, the vast output of Korean soap operas on Netflix. My favorite so far is Navillera (Butterfly) about a 70-year-old retired postman who has always wanted to study ballet. I like the glimpse into modern Korea they provide. I also have discovered a Korean poet whose sensibility appeals to me, Ko Un. Here’s a sample of his work. I like how how he uses the gradual blossoming of spring flowers to knit his divided country together:
Spring. Everything’s liberated.
The news of flowers
eases the poverty of this world.
Throughout this fractured country
(some say it’s a pity,
others not so)
spring has come full force.
An azalea blooming at Cheju Island
in the very south,
after a few days
begins blossoming
across the sea
in Southern Cheolla
& Southern Kyeongsang.
A few days later
& it reaches the shore of the Han, mid-country,
& all along the Soyang River.
About a month later
around Hyesan
on the upper reaches of the Yalu, North Korea: blossoms.
At the end of May
about 2700 meters up
by a cold spring at the treeline
azaleas bloom in many colors.
This is enough.
One cannot wish for more.
Where could things be better than among the flowers of a spring day?
So with South & North: gradually, evenly.
Thanks to Ben Dolnick, I have discovered the mystery writer Lawrence Block. Oddly enough, he’s not in my local public library catalog, but only at UC Library. Unusual for a mystery writer, even one with literary talent. His books are a little hard to find. I love this passage from his Matthew Scudder mystery, Out on the Cutting Edge. In it, the narrator, an unabashed criminal is describing a young woman:
” ‘She was a nice Protestant girl from Indiana,’ he said. ‘She’d steal, but she stole for the thrill of it. You can’t trust that, it’s almost as bad as a man who kills for the thrill of it. A good thief doesn’t steal for the thrill. He steals for the money. And the best thief of all steals because he’s a thief.’ ”
In another vein entirely, but equally pleasurable, here’s a quote from Eliot Weinberger from his essay in In Translation:
“Translators sometimes feel they share in the glory of their famous authors, rather like the hairdressers of Hollywood stars.”
So much for what I’m reading today.
This is from a book called Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine. Of course, the poems here come from the 2014 war, not the current one. How sad for this poor, tattered country.
When a country of — overall — nice people
turns — slowly — fascist
nice people don’t notice this transformation all at once
As when a person we know intimately
goes, next to us, through
an imperceptible process of aging. Imperceptibly, new wrinkles
slice the skin, frightening, deep.
Nice people nod when they run into each other,
and try, more and more, to lower their eyes,
until finally, raising them becomes an inhuman gesture.
Lyudmyla Khersonska
translated by Valznya Mort
This is a daunting title for a poem, but Lynn Emanuel pulls it off:
Like Jonas by the fish I was received by it,
swung and sept in its dark waters,
driven to the deeps by it and beyond many rocks.
Without any touching of its teeth, I tumbled into it
with no more struggle than a mote of dust
entering the door of a cathedral, so muckle were its jaws.
How heel over head I was hurled down
the broad road of its throat, stopped inside
its chest wide as a hall, and like Jonas I stood up
asking where the beast was and finding it nowhere,
there in grease and sorrow I built my bower.
from Noose and Hook
This appeared in the NY Times Magazine in 2015 with the illustration above.
Watching news of the ongoing invasion of the Ukraine, where my father was born, reminds me of the fragility of the equilibrium we take for granted.
For today’s poem, I’ve selected a translation of a Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova, who also lived in troubled times. It seems appropriate for all those who are standing their ground in the Ukraine. The Russian follows the English.
And God’s luminous messenger, larger than life,
led the one righteous man along the black mountain.
But regret cried out to his wife:
“It’s not too late, you can still catch a glimpse
of Sodom, the red rooftops of home,
the square where you sang, the yard where you spun,
the tall house, its windows abandoned—
the house where your sons and daughters were born.”
She looked back—a sudden arc of pain stripped her eyes of sight,
fused her feet to the ground—
her flesh became transparent salt.
Who will mourn this nameless woman? She seems the least of all we lack.
Yet I, for one, can never forget
how she gave her life for one look back.
Anna Akhmatova, 1924
Лотова жена
И праведник шел за посланником бога, Огромный и светлый, по черной горе.
Но громко жене говорила тревога:
Не поздно, ты можешь еще посмотреть На красные башни родного Содома,
На площадь, где пела, на двор, где пряла, На окна пустые высокого дома,
Где милому мужу детей родила.
Взглянула – и, скованы смертною болью, Глаза ее больше смотреть не могли;
И сделалось тело прозрачною солью,
И быстрые ноги к земле приросли.
Кто женщину эту оплакивать будет?
Не меньшей ли мнится она из утрат?
Лишь сердце мое никогда не забудет
Отдавшую жизнь за единственный взгляд.
Translated by Meryl Natchez
Poems from the Stray Dog Cafe, 2013