the colour of spring

Forget our fate
The pedlar sings
Set up to sell my soul
I've lived a life for wealth to bring


And yet I'll gaze
The colour of spring
Immerse in that one moment
Left in love with everything

Soar the bridges
That I burnt before
One song among us all

fears

there is the fear of waking up in the middle

of the night and not knowing what to do

and also the fear of never being able

to fall asleep again

there is the fear that life turns suddenly still

and one looks behind not knowing where

the past has gone and how it was lived, and by whom

there is also the fear

of failed encounters, even (or especially so) those

one has long dreamt of

there is the fear that the phone will ring

to let one know the child is sick again

and also the fear that the stranger one passes by 

suddenly turns around and the last thing one sees

is the silver flash of an unexplainable knife

(or, for variation, the fear of a temple blow leaving one

lying there calmly and almost gracefully, accomplished, 

as one has never been able to, 

while alive) 

there is the fear that the other has already departed, or will

soon leave, without notice

the fear that this body will never again know lust

or

it will be too frail to contain

that last overwhelming wave of desire

there are so many fears

and yet

above all these fears

there rises the soft gleam of the birch 

when spring is almost 

here.

autumn

I cross autumn fields
 In my dew-laden robes
 On my return home.
 Flowers woefully withered,
 Evening has yet to arrive.


Sōgi

the ceremony

the poet said once leopards
they break into the temple and drink to the dregs
what is in the sacrificial pitchers,
this being repeated over and over again; finally
it can be calculated in advance,
and it becomes a part of the ceremony -
 

and you said too: you can guess why i said this.

yet the ceremony was taking place there, within her body bursting free through the night, her movements, sharp and hungry, tracing the outline of the field which was the only temple and the only thing which was repeated over and over again, at dawn, was how she broke down on her knees in front of the small thicket bearing white-glimmering flowers, out of breath, bruises on her skin, and had it been possible to calculate all this in advance and make her part of an order which wasn't hers, it wouldn't have been her any longer, and their delusion would have turned back against them, eventually, their gods blind and empty, their words hollow.

ah, the summer fields (2)

.

abundance of being

It is only that this warmth and movement are like
The warmth and movement of a woman.

It is not that there is any image in the air
Nor the beginning nor end of a form:

It is empty. But a woman in threadless gold
Burns us with brushings of her dress

And a dissociated abundance of being,
More definite for what she is—

Because she is disembodied,
Bearing the odors of the summer fields,

Confessing the taciturn and yet indifferent,
Invisibly clear, the only love.

Wallace Stevens, 

The Woman in Sunshine

(for James, thanking him for introducing me to this wonderful poem)

summer-blue-lit

My songs were lit with summer-blue

And grew dark on their return.

Meine Lieder trugen des Sommers Bläue
Und kehrten düster heim.

Else Lakser-Schüler, tr. by Felix de Villiers

ah, the summer fields (1)

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Mary Oliver 

(from The Summer Day)

Ode to the Humblest of Flowers

Dandelion, ecumenic flower,

 the year obeys

your golden ardor

 to assign its happiest days

on unwritten folios.

You are worthy of a hymn,

 unregarded roadside bloom,

your one pure wish to sow

 the earth with seed --

so you blossom and fade,

 contriving the halo around

some unknown saint’s head.

Lucian Blaga, tr. by James Owens 

Odă simplisimei flori

Păpădie, ecumenică floare,
după a ta aurie ardoare
– pe nescrisele file –
anul îşi hotăreşte fericitele zile.

De un pean te-nvredniceşti,
tu, neluată în seamă, floare de rând.
Sămânţă să faci pe pământ
e tot ce doreşti. Alt gând nu porţi.
Dar înfloreşti şi asfinţeşti
alcătuind o aureolă de sfânt.

the solace of flowers

and then the colours came, and with them my endless fascination with vases - my vases full of flowers, again and again... i read in Kafka's letters to Felice that he "has no feelings for flowers", never had, flowers leave him cold, unless they come from her, and even then... 

some pages later, i read: "with the effort needed in order to keep myself alive and to not lose my mind, i could have built the pyramids". 

if only he had known the solace of flowers, it nearly burst out of me, if only ---

lurking, waiting for spring

this year i have found myself lurking in the darkest of shadows, waiting for spring, hungrier than ever before. yet the deeper, the more painful this hunger grows, the more aware i become that, when i long for spring, i in fact long for a complicated and tumultuous mixture made out of the springs i have lived through, bits of them scattered throughout my body, springs i imagine to come, springs as i want them to be, floating memories, disconnected from whatever might have given birth to them in the first place (if such a birth has ever existed), hues, words soft like silk, which i tend to taste on my tongue, while all along believing that i lurk, waiting for this spring which has to come now, which has already come, unique, pure, simple and raw. 



don't let the photograph fool you: she doesn't make this mistake. yet.