chrysopoeia

the blooming forest (yellow-lilac series)

one day the only darkness we’ve ever known finds light




















this is the improbable lace of new leaves
where the light breaks from their edges
and scatters among branches













this is a world inside us, but not only inside us
























the “not only” is the glint and glimmer of the clarifying forest
during a morning and an afternoon

when the busy, subtle hands of the wind
are touching thousands of little bright blossoms into place.


The Blooming Forest
by James Owens

the girl with the blue blouse

the girl with the blue blouse
she has bird-like hands
rustling through the air
as she puts down the basket
with my past days and nights
my joys and sorrows to come

the garden a flurry

gusting winds
the garden a flurry
of white blossoms
yet I the one blown away



Fujiwara no Kintsune
(thanking mt for re-working this translation with me)

not even

Soit blessure, soit bonheur, il me prend parfois l'envie de m'abîmer...
c'est qu'il n'y a plus de place pour moi nulle part, même pas dans la mort.

Roland Barthes
(Fragments d'un discours amoureux)

Be it wound or happiness, sometimes i long to sink into an abyss...
It is because there is no longer any place for me anywhere, not even in death.

Barthes (Fragments of a Lover's Discourse)

i want this music and this dawn

I don't get tired of you. Don't grow weary
of being compassionate toward me!

All this thirst equipment
must surely be tired of me,
the waterjar, the water carrier.

I have a thirsty fish in me
that can never find enough
of what it's thirsty for!

Show me the way to the ocean!
Break these half-measures,
these small containers.

All this fantasy
and grief.

Let my house be drowned in the wave
that rose last night in the courtyard
hidden in the center of my chest.

I don't want learning, or dignity,
or respectability.

I want this music and this dawn
and the warmth of your cheek against mine.

The grief-armies assemble,
but I'm not going with them.

This is how it always is
when I finish a poem.

A great silence comes over me,
and I wonder why I ever thought
to use language.


Rumi, A Thirsty Fish
(tr. by Coleman Barks)

classical Paris series (1)

O nuit! ô rafraîchissantes ténèbres! vous êtes pour moi le signal d'une fête intérieure, vous êtes la délivrance d'une angoisse! Dans la solitude des plaines, dans les labyrinthes pierreux d'une capitale, scintillement des étoiles, explosion des lanternes, vous êtes le feu d'artifice de la déesse Liberté!
Crépuscule, comme vous êtes doux et tendre! Les lueurs roses qui traînent encore à l'horizon comme l'agonie du jour sous l'oppression victorieuse de sa nuit, les feux des candélabres qui font des taches d'un rouge opaque sur les dernières gloires du couchant, les lourdes draperies qu'une main invisible attire des profondeurs de l'Orient, imitent tous les sentiments compliqués qui luttent dans le coeur de l'homme aux heures solennelles de la vie.
On dirait encore une de ces robes étranges de danseuses, où une gaze transparente et sombre laisse entrevoir les splendeurs amorties d'une jupe éclatante, comme sous le noir présent transperce le délicieux passé; et les étoiles vacillantes d'or et d'argent, dont elle est semée, représentent ces feux de la fantaisie qui ne s'allument bien que sous le deuil profond de la Nuit.


Ch. Baudelaire (Le Spleen de Paris)













O night! O refreshing dark! for me you are the summons to an inner feast, you are the deliverer from anguish! In the solitude of the plains, in the stony labyrinths of a city, scintillation of stars, outburst of gas lamps, you are the fireworks of the goddess Liberty!

Twilight, how gentle you are and how tender! The rosy lights that still linger on the horizon, like the last agony of day under the conquering might of its night; the flaring candle-flames that stain with dull red the last glories of the sunset; the heavy draperies that an invisible hand draws out of the depths of the East, mimic all those complex feelings that war on one another in the heart of man at the solemn moments of life.

Would you not say that it was one of those strange costumes worn by dancers, in which the tempered splendours of a shining skirt show through a dark and transparent gauze, as, through the darkness of the present, pierces the delicious past? And the wavering stars of gold and silver with which it is shot, are they not those fires of fancy which take light never so well as under the deep mourning of the night?

(Translated by Arthur Symons)

gentle hope

.
.

my tulips, gone mad

that kneeling woman
the hour of the wound rising in her
as the tide rises
through your thousand
unrevealed names

your face, darkening in the garden
my tulips, gone mad
bleeding, beheaded
their heads rolling down
my silvery back.