one small fish swimming alone, then next to one big fish, then they become three, later four and in the end many colourful stories

—
‿  ‿
—  —  —
‿  ‿  ‿  ‿
—  —  —
‿  ‿  ‿  ‿
—  —  —
‿  ‿  ‿  ‿
—  —  —
‿  ‿  ‿  ‿
—  —  —
‿  ‿
—

Christian Morgenstern (Fisches Nachtgesang)

—
‿ ‿
— — —
‿ ‿ ‿ ‿
— — —
‿ ‿ ‿ ‿
[sorry, I seem to be floundering for words. -The translator]
‿ ‿ ‿ ‿
— — —
‿ ‿ ‿ ‿
— — —
‿ ‿

—

Fish's Night Song
(English translation from Fish Language,
by Emily Ezust)

Das Vollkommene zu kommentieren ist eine unfruchtbare Übung. Jeder unbefangene Leser wird diesem Satz zustimmen. Aber gibt es das: einen unbefangenen Leser? Goethes wohlgemeinter Ratschlag, das Unerforschliche ruhig zu verehren, ist bei Philologen und Kritikern stets auf taube Ohren gestoßen. Also meinetwegen! [...]
Lakonischer als "Fisches Nachtgesang" kann ein Gedicht nicht sein; das Wort einsilbig wäre bereits eine Übertreibung. [...]
Das Gedicht, soviel steht fest, hat keine Silbe zuviel und keine Silbe zuwenig.
Es ist das außerdem einzige Gedicht, das ich auswendig rezitieren kann.

Hans-Magnus Enzensberger



To analyse perfection is a sterile exercise. Every unprejudiced reader cannot but agree. But is there such a thing as an unprejudiced reader? Goethe's well-meant advice, that one should adore the inscrutable silently, has always fallen on deaf ears when it comes to philologists and literary scholars. Well then... [...]
A poem can hardly be more laconic than 'Fish's Night Song'; the word 'monosyllabic' would already be an exageration. [...]
The poem, so much is clear, has no syllable too many or too few. Furthermore, it is the only poem that I can recite by heart.


Hans-Magnus Enzensberger, when asked to write about this poem

she could be

she could be flotsam
tossed up
from a troubled sea
washed ashore
her hair black weed
her fingers
fragile anchors
dug into the sand

she could be sleeping
numbed into slumber
by the drowsy sun
as the shore steals
upon her
the salt water
seeping into her
landlocked flesh
and with a flick
of her tail
she is no longer
beachbound
but a sea creature
mer-woman
whose song entrances
the strongest sailor

or she is a swimmer
dragged herself back
exhausted, to shore
and spent, spreads
her arms wide
not sleeping
not dreaming
but listening
to the great pulse
of the sea
as it washes
back and forth
back and forth
through her


swiss (she could be)

pare să plutească
purtată de mare
până la ţărm
aruncată pe plajă
spălată de apă
alge pletele-i negre
mâinile ancoră
subţire-n nisip


pare să doarmă
furată de malul
fără sfârşit
legănată-n vis
de un soare moale
de sarea-nflorind
în carnea ei
devenită pământ
coada ei caldă
c-o unică lovitură
o poate întoarce
în apă oricând
femeia mării
renaşte vrăjind
vajnicul călător


ori a înotat poate
până în zări
pe mal obosită
s-a-ntins să audă
departe de somn
departe de vis
s-asculte doar
marele ritm
al mării cea mare
cum trece prin ea
val după val
înainte înapoi
înapoi înainte

pare să

(my translation)

Note:

I had posted this picture before but I wasn't happy with it and I took it down soon afterwards. Little did I know that swiss had already spotted it :-) inspired by it, he wrote this poem, that I did my best to translate into Romanian. More important than the images themselves, I think what matters here most is the rhythm imitating the waves, and I tried to get this 'sound' right (repetitions and alliterations being a precious way to achieving that). I am pretty satisfied with the result :-) and open to suggestions. And grateful to swiss, but he already knows it.

if white-fingered

Cu degete albe dacă bat în fereastră

Voi credeţi că ninge şi nu m-ascultaţi

Mircea Dinescu

If white-fingered I tap the window
You will think me the snow and won't listen

trans. James Owens

is love a flame

Te mistuie iubirea? Credeai că-i o păpuşă, Să-ţi faci un joc cu toane, ca în copilărie. Când ea-ţi cerea o fire de salamandră vie, În tainica-i văpaie să arzi făr' de cenuşă. Ea nu stă-n trup, stăpână a cărnii şi-a plăcerii, Înflăcăratu-i spirit, urgie, le consumă; Îşi cată-n noi duh geamăn... şi, de-l îmbii cu humă, Rămâi o biată urnă cu zgurile durerii... Te ispiteşte jindul să-mbraci şi fericirea Cum pui, pentru petreceri, o rochie de brocarte? Dar trebuie-nfruntată cu spaimă, ca o moarte... Căci ea, ca să pătrundă, îţi sparge-alcătuirea, Preface în genune lăuntrul tău, anume Ca să încapă-acolo, cu ea, întreaga lume.

CLXXIII  de Vasile Voiculescu (Ultimele sonete închipuite ale lui Shakespeare în traducere imaginara de Vasile Voiculescu)

Is love a flame? You thought it was a doll,

To play with, like a child, with fickle glee,

A salamander she wants you to be,

Devour’d by the same flame in which you fall.

She is the cruel mistress of the flesh,

And pleasure, as her spirit both consumes;

Twin soul she seeks in our heart's frail bloom...

Don’t tempt her, or you’ll end up in her mesh,

A slag-filled urn of pain. Does your lust claim

To dress your joy as though a party dress?

You dread her like she’s death and nothing less…

For, to succeed, she breaks your human frame,

         It turns you into an abyss, so there

         She and th’entire world will worm a lair.

CLXXIII

by Vasile Voiculescu 

(from Shakespeare's Last Imagined Sonnets, in the fictional translation of Vasile Voiculescu)

trans. Cristina Hanganu-Bresch

Kubla  wrote this poem after seeing my pictures, I am both honoured and grateful:

your hair blown across your face

I see the white of your eyes from a distance I see the hair blown across your face and how you blow this sunset to pieces how your hair shades your face and what I would give to live in that shade under the shade of your hair blown across your face

witness this blown sunset witness too the falling shadows after the shade after the visible white of your 

eyes have shaded everything that lives inside me and now the peripheral night is gathering its 

gloomy shade but what can it know of a face that is shaded by 

hair what does it know of shade and hair and your 

face and the visible invisible white of your eyes

your lips too are covered with the blown strands of your hair that has blown this sunset to pieces 

and has shaded every shade into nothingness and 

how silent everything seems now and how loud this silence 

is

duck series

I see them clearly in the transparent air
a line of grey and silver ducks
they walk slowly into the distant time
of the lake, free from doubt or regret,
they return home, each one smaller
than the one before it,
a quiet death in each footstep.
















Acum, pe-ntregul câmp n-ai să citeşti
Decât cuneiforme păsăreşti.

Dar spre-a fi scrise, trebuia să vină
Din cer, transport de linişti şi lumină.

Atâta alb, atâta dăruire,
Ca un ecou din nemărginire.

Atâta alb, tot alb jur împrejur,
Dând celor vii şi mai exact contur.

Miron Radu Paraschivescu (Zăpezi)

Th’entire field has turned, from tree to tree,
Into a bird cuneiform marquee.

One needs, however, to properly write,
A heavenly cargo of quiet and light.

Such selfless white, such generosity,
--A boundless echo from infinity.

So white, so white is all around, so pure,
Giving the living a finer contour.


Snow
trans. by Cristina Hanganu-Bresch

petals

I am fascinated by this 99th pensum revolution of everyday life:

"there were days too
when nothing needed to be said
when the game was simply
to watch the petals fall"

Most surprisingly, I had exactly the same thought - or, should I say, feeling - when I looked at this picture of mine. I say 'surprisingly' because of the obvious difference in style and tone that separates the two photos. His maintains a very characteristic Japanese sensitivity - what could be more Japanese than this image of idling away one's time by contemplating the fall of petals? I think of a passage in a novel by Mishima in which the hero has an insight into the nature of things that is to change the course of his life while looking at the fallen petals floating on the water of a bowl. An insignificant detail, which goes practically unnoticed.

I also wonder about this 'too'. What if one would or could discard it, and make each day just that, a simple game of watching petals fall? What could be said about such a life? (and I don't even dare ask: how could be such a life lived?)

Yet when I took the picture I didn't think about any of these questions. I stood there in amazement at such a marvellous impossibility brought forth by life in my parents' garden, that a tulip could bend over a fern and its red embrace the green and the petals fall in exactly that place, which, by its very nature, seemed to constitute a kind of shelter for the frailty of this world.

And yet - another yet, as if one followed a spiral down to the core of things - when I changed the focus and looked closer, I stood there thoughtless, connected as if by a strange musical tune to the pure vibration of colours and patterns unfolding before my eyes.

"Art, in short, has no other goal, no other meaning than to express those subjective determinations that constitute the ground of our being and perhaps of being itself, the soul of things and of the universe—if it is true that all entities, all objective appearances have their own inner resonance and initially repose within it. It is because this subjective dimension of Being is identical to the essence of the universe and the abstract content, in other words absolutely real, that art wants to express it, that Kandinsky could call it “cosmic depth” and say that “the genesis of a work of art is of a cosmic character.”

The aim of art is indeed not to express a subjective state understood as a state of fact, a state of affairs, and it is in this sense that Kandinsky could say, “I do not paint the states of the soul.” Art paints life, in other words a capacity for growth, for life as subjectivity, that is as experiencing itself, is the power of attaining oneself and thus of expanding oneself at each moment. That is why each eye wants to see further and each force swells, becoming more efficient and stronger. Art is the endless attempt to resume carrying each of life’s powers to its highest degree of intensity and thus of pleasure, it is the response given by life to its most intimate essence and to the will which inhabits it—to its desire for excess (surpassement)."

excerpts from Michel Henry, Kandinsky and the Meaning of the Work of Art, translated by Michael Tweed and generously made available by pensum here

two autumns

yuku ware ni
todomaru nare ni
aki futatsu

Buson

for the one leaving
for the one staying
two autumns

erasing that tree

All the new thinking is about loss.

In this it resembles all the old thinking.

The idea, for example, that each particular erases

the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-

faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk

of that black birch is, by his presence,

some tragic falling off from a first world

of undivided light.

from a poem by Robert Hass

I wanted to write about these lines that I had received some days ago, from somebody who is very dear to me. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't come up with something more beautiful (and 'beautiful' means here 'round', or 'whole', too) than the gift that I had been given along with this poem, and which is this small confession:

'I want all the little details of the world, I want to see them and touch them with something like love, the woodpecker and the knots and hollows of the birch - but, at the same time, I long for that “undivided light” so much that my eyes fill with tears and I ache with a feeling like thirst. I fear myself a little, because I think I might be willing to erase the birch and the woodpecker (a terrible, terrible thought) if that meant I could stand in this light.'

Tonight, looking at the tree in this picture, my friend's words have come back to me (they hadn't left me at all, to tell the truth). I remember how I stood on the shore of the frozen lake and opened the back side of my camera, slowly, letting the light in. The unbearable light of the winter sun.

And then other words have come, ancient words, that I had thought long forgotten, the words of the God echoing thus, in my mind:

'The Blessed Lord said: There is a banyan tree which has its roots upward and its branches down and whose leaves are the Vedic hymns. One who knows this tree is the knower of the Vedas.

The branches of this tree extend downward and upward, nourished by the three modes of material nature. The twigs are the objects of the senses. This tree also has roots going down, and these are bound to the fruitive actions of human society.

The real form of this tree cannot be perceived in this world. No one can understand where it ends, where it begins, or where its foundation is. But with determination one must cut down this tree with the weapon of detachment. So doing, one must seek that place from which, having once gone, one never returns, and there surrender to that Supreme Personality of Godhead from whom everything has began and in whom everything is abiding since time immemorial.'

Bhagavad Gita, from Chapter 15

in the small hours of the morning
when mist is the chosen path of the thorn
she breathes the world
in and out
until things lose their names
like a flower its petals
in early winter.

las olas que faltan para morir

Como el náufrago metódico que contase las olas
que faltan para morir,
y las contase, y las volviese a contar, para evitar
errores, hasta la última,
hasta aquella que tiene la estatura de un niño
y le besa y le cubre la frente,
así he vivido yo con una vaga prudencia de
caballo de cartón en el baño,
sabiendo que jamás me he equivocado en nada,
sino en las cosas que yo más quería.

Luis Rosales (AUTOBIOGRAFÍA)









Like the methodical shipwrecked man
who counts how many waves he needs to die
and he counts them and he counts them again,
to avoid mistakes, until he gets to the last one
the one that is the height of a small child
and he kisses it and covers its forehead
that is how I have lived with a strange sort of care
like a cardboard horse in a bath
knowing that I have never made any mistakes
apart from the really important ones.


translation by Rachel Fox

autobiographical

from luis rosales

as i am shipwrecked
castaway
counting the waves
one by one
book-keeper
of tides
methodical
empirical
as the white crests
fall and die

and to count
to return to
the safety of the count
to have method
to avoid mistakes
to be unequivocal
to catalogue
until that last one
the last wave
in a calming sea
gentle as child
kisses the shore
extinguished

so i have always lived
with a vague care
a prudence
so i illustrate myself
simple, precise
adrift
sure in all things
un-mistaken
except in those precious
un-nameable
beyond count
beyond measure
my fingers flail
in the grasp
of the blue ocean

'translation' by swiss

I'd like to thank Rachel and Swiss for this collaboration - their very different approaches to translation prove once again what a Sisyphic challenge poetry translation is and how controversial the translator's choices can be. I too have tried my own hand at it lately and yes, I agree with you, Rachel, it is a maddening affair. And, still puzzled by the many philosophical and poetical issues at stake, I remember Novalis tonight:

'The transforming translations [which, by the way, are not yet the ideal ones, these being only the 'mythical translations', but because they are impossible to achieve anyway, I left them aside], if they are to be authentic, require the highest poetic spirit. They easily lapse into travesty, like Bürger's iambic Homer, Pope's Homer, and the French translations in their entirety. The true translator of this kind must in effect be the artist himself, able to render the idea of the whole in this or in that manner as he pleases. He must be the poet of the poet, able to let him speak simultaneously according to the poet's idea and to his own. The genius of humanity stands in a similar relation to each individual man'.

Night had fallen in Lancre, and it was an old night. It was not the simple absence of day, patrolled by the moon and stars, but an extension of something that had existed long before there was any light to define by its absence. It was unfolding itself from under tree roots and inside stones, crawling back across the land.

Terry Pratchett

How can anything present itself truly to us since its synthesis is never completed? How could I gain the experience of the world since none of the views or perceptions I have of it can exhaust it and the horizons remain forever open? Open to continual renewal ... a flight from the old, solid, concept of necessity. A centre must emerge, a centre is allowed to emerge.

Merleau-Ponty


(thank you, Manuela and Black Sun, for the quotes and the darkness posts which have inspired mine today)

Numinous

I am free
in the evening
the door is open
to the wind
inside
your thoughts travel
on the distance.

I know them
they are old thoughts
and I am new.

I don’t remember
it is not memory
it is now
I feel the breeze
of your thoughts.

Distance has
carried me
closer
and I am enjoined to you.

I am free
alone in the evening
I feel your breeze
as I could
blow on your skin.

I do not know
how this is so
I relax and catch
your words
they are soundless
beautiful.


Peter Bradburn
(From Mercurius, Poems On Change & Union)

(my deep gratitude to merc, the poet and painter, for allowing me to post this wonderful poem.

I know that my picture cannot compare with his drawing accompanying it on his blog,
but then I am telling myself that this is not a matter of comparing, but of searching for different ways of expressing
a - perhaps - similar feeling. and of being true to it.)

soft rain, healing rain

the loneliness of birds

more or less anonymous walls, windows and doors, even if windows and doors are said to be no good in winter

ogives of Horezu monastery, built around 1690







old house on my street, surrounded by tall grass whose name I don't know, 2008







Bran Castle (now said to be Dracula's), built between 1377 and 1395






defence wall of the fortress-church in Prejmer, near Brasov, first mentioned in 1240







doors to the monks' chambers, fortress-church in Prejmer, near Brasov, first mentioned in 1240






walls of a communist building, left unattended after 1989 and conquered by the mountain meadow






wall of Horezu monastery, built around 1690, in front of which a nun hesitates in the rain, 2007