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

of course

of course, the way of the blue flower is totally different

(and yet, the same)

these autumn fields

between my withering body
and these autumn fields -
the blue.

..

twilight on the red bridge

..

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

...

oh the blooming forest -
into the blue time of my blood
come, dip your fingers.


.
.

overfull

Ich liebe Den, dessen Seele tief ist auch in der Verwundung, und der an einem kleinen Erlebnisse zu Grunde gehen kann: so geht er gerne über die Brücke.

I love him whose soul is deep even in the wounding, and may succumb through a small matter: thus goeth he willingly over the bridge.

Ich liebe Den, dessen Seele übervoll ist, so dass er sich selber vergisst, und alle Dinge in ihm sind: so werden alle Dinge sein Untergang.

I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgetteth himself, and all things are in him: thus all things become his down-going.

Fr. Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra

(tr. Thomas Common)

modern waiting in strong colours or, if you prefer, harmonic functions of blue, gold and green

the blueness of things calls out your name.
the tides of my waiting never reach your footsteps.
i remember telling you
photography is the time of death.
i remember the green edge of the light
falling on your lips,
while you answered with a smile
you only understood irrational numbers
and, on some evenings of particular haze,
irrational time signatures.
then you bent over for a kiss.

you taught me the law of gravity
attaching me to my pain.
other equations you left unsolved,
or perhaps the solution eluded you
as well.
how to prevent the sound of you
blossoming in every wound,
this is indeed no smooth manifold
with a vector of harmony.

i sit here at the table of waiting,
combing the golden sea of my hair
with a golden comb which rewrites
the laws of such poisonous
fluid dynamics.
oh perhaps things were simpler
in the old days,
or Laplace's girl had short
and curly hair,
much more luminous eyes.

don't come back, not even once.
if you do, my golden lava
will fasten your ankles,
my mouth will encircle yours
with the hunger of the last moth.
then, only then, will you perhaps grasp
the constant of sorrow.

some more - perhaps avoidable? - but certainly ffflaneur-contagious notes :-):


1. this intermezzo from my usual dark broodings (intermezzo?) is dedicated to the tech nerds who do me the honour of walking on the floating bridge. oh, and to that unknown Benjamin A. Itza-Ortiz who has won my eternal admiration for writing his PhD on the subject of: "The C*-algebras Of Irrational Time Homeomorphisms Of Suspensions". Let's just hope he won't google his dissertation to come across my humble homage :-) Because this could be read also - also! - as a homage to these bold heroes of our time, even if it looks otherwise. oh the twisted ways of that infamous 'feminine logic' which gets slandered on some blogs, in good classical company (Lermontov) :-)

2. for my other readers, who will surely not understand how they have managed to live so far with no idea whatsoever of the existence of such things as "approximation by harmonic functions" - what a lovely, irresistible name! they would be solutions to Laplace's equation, mind you - "on subsets of Riemannian manifolds", which are usually defined as "a smooth manifold" - a smooth manifold! can one find a more appealing metaphor? i am so sorry i can't take the credit for it- "with a smooth section of the positive-definite quadratic forms on the tangent bundle", i can only offer this in guise of consolation: Thomas Adès's "Piano Quintet" (2000), which apparently makes extensive use of irrational time signatures.

my redblue expressionist fury

time!
you refused to stop then.
i recant my softness
and my goodness.
the quietness of the leaf
i will break it to pieces.
time!
you refused to bend
to my siren song.
i recant the curve
of my eyebrow
the wholeness of my knee
the glow of my hip
and the ineffable
of my navel.
the grace of the flower
i will tear it apart.
my stabbing red whisper
i will hurl it at you.
time!
you will go down
you will go blind
i will strangle you
with the blue ribbon
of my blood.

blue birds (2)

you must learn to see blue birds from now, I was told. you must learn to be someone else. after the last word was spoken. without. you must learn to unfold a life on the edge of this cutting silence, I was told.

must I? asked the little marquise quietly, and jumped on her wild horse. she led her black horse, which sometimes she called her pain, away into the blue morning, where blue birds fell from the sky and opened like flowers after the rain.

shall I obey, shall I defy, shall I take my revenge at the cusp of the sky...

when she reached the horizon line, where no eyes could follow her any more, she leant inside and, quickly, no hesitation in her white fingers, she strangled the black bird becoming alive in her grave, turning blue.

hush little bird, be quiet, be still. no god has ever risen through the scent of my hair. no stone has ever unfolded at the heart of the loss. I am the keeper of your death, the sacred door to the blue nothing.

my hands soaked in his silence

i teach him summer

and red flowers

a blank poem

a blank field. a blank piece of paper. and then the snow becoming blue. the blue becoming black. burned out snow, burned out thoughts growing out of wounds. where it should have been fresh grass, the resplendent pulse of the ashes. if it be my thought, if it be my wound, if it be my black. if it be my blank poem.

Poate că spre tine-ndreptasem acest gând
devenit cuvânt
Poate că spre tine-ndreptasem acest cuvânt
devenit sânge
Poate că spre tine-ndreptasem acest sânge
devenit făptură
Poate că spre tine-ndreptasem
această iubire şi ură
Poate că spre tine-ndreptasem
această nefiinţă
pe care tu ai primit-o
şi tăcând zâmbind şi privind
ai învăţat-o să tacă
(deci să strige)
să zâmbească
(deci să plângă)
să privească
(deci să uite)
poate că tu eşti viaţa ei
(de vreme ce-i eşti
moartea uitării).

Miron Radu Paraschivescu
Poem alb

Perhaps it was towards you that I had directed this thought
that turned into a word
Perhaps it was towards you that I had directed this word
that turned into blood
Perhaps it was towards you that I had directed this blood
turned into a creature
Perhaps it was towards you that I had directed
this love and hate
Perhaps it was towards you that I had directed
this non-being
which you accepted
and keeping silent smiling and watching
you taught it to keep silent
(that is to yell)
to smile
(that is to cry)
to watch
(that is to forget)
Perhaps you are its life
(since you are to it
the death of oblivion).

(A Blank Poem, trans. by Dan Dutescu)

blue sea and green vision

blue waves

blue waves
shower of blue flowers
blue expanse
inside a blue boat

blue waves
shower of blue flowers
blue expanse
inside a blue boat
you and I
on the blue island
we, the green palms

Meenakshi

blue doors of all sorts

the blue door of my childhood, still half-open

young girl behind the blue door of waiting

the blue door of silence

where no one else can gain entry

since the entrance was assigned only to me

and I failed

as everyone else did

a day in my blue shady room

shy morning

glamorous noon

dreamy afternoon

silent evening

blue rain in town

Iubesc ploile, iubesc cu patimă ploile,
Înnebunitele ploi şi ploile calme,
Ploile feciorelnice şi ploile-dezlănţuite femei,
Ploile proaspete şi plictisitoarele ploi fără sfârşit,
Iubesc ploile, iubesc cu patimă ploile,
Îmi place să mă tăvălesc prin iarba lor albă, înaltă,
Îmi place să le rup firele şi să umblu cu ele în dinţi,
Să ameţească, privindu-mă astfel, bărbaţii.
Ştiu că-i urât să spui "Sunt cea mai frumoasă femeie",
E urât şi poate nici nu e adevărat,
Dar lasă-mă atunci când plouă,
Numai atunci când plouă,
Să rostesc magica formulă "Sunt cea mai frumoasă femeie".
Sunt cea mai frumoasă femeie pentru că plouă
Şi-mi stă bine cu franjurii ploii în păr,
Sunt cea mai frumoasă femeie pentru că-i vânt
Şi rochia se zbate disperată să-mi ascundă genunchii,
Sunt cea mai frumoasă femeie pentru că tu
Eşti departe plecat şi eu te aştept,
Şi tu ştii că te-aştept,
Sunt cea mai frumoasă femeie şi ştiu să aştept
Şi totuşi aştept.
E-n aer miros de dragoste viu,
Şi toţi trecătorii adulmecă ploaia să-i simtă mirosul,
Pe-o asemenea ploaie poţi să te-ndrăgosteşti fulgerător,
Toţi trecătorii sunt îndrăgostiţi,
Şi eu te aştept.
Doar tu ştii -
Iubesc ploile,
Iubesc cu patimă ploile, înnebunitele ploi şi ploile calme,
Ploile feciorelnice şi ploile-dezlănţuite femei...

Ana Blandiana, Descântec de ploaie

I love the rain, I passionately love the rain,
the mad rains and the gentle rains
the chaste rains and the rains like unbridled women,
refreshing rains and endless boring rains.
I love the rain, I passionately love the rain.
I like to wallow in its tall white grass,
I like to break its threads and walk with them
in my teeth
so that men watching me grow dizzy.
I know it isn't so nice to say,
'I am the most beautiful woman on earth',
it isn't nice and maybe it isn't even true,
but allow me, when it rains, only when it rains,
to say the magic words,
'I am the most beautiful woman on earth',
the most beautiful because it is raining,
and the fringes of rain in my hair become me.
I am the most beautiful woman
because the wind blows
and my dress desperately struggles to hide my knees.
I am the most beautiful woman because you
are far away, and I am waiting for you,
and you know I am waiting.
I am the most beautiful woman because I know how to wait,
and still I wait.
There's an intense scent of love in the air.
People passing by sniff the rain to catch its traces.
In such a rain, one can fall in love in an instant.
All those who pass by are in love
and I am waiting for you.
I love the rain, I passionately love the rain,
the mad rains and the gentle rains
the chaste rains and the rains like unbridled women.

Ana Blandiana
(Magic Spell of Rain)

on the blue wall

on top of the mountain,
I stand still
under the ageless tree
in the cold morning
half-awake
I wave and smile
into the floating
in-between

countless blue boats

in each sky
there is a sea
and on each sea
there are countless boats
and in each boat
there is a soul
longing to break
and in each breaking
there is a blue joy
reborn

A Painfully Blue Flame

There have been heavy rains somewhere,
in remote wild mountains
and look, today I am
so busy, very busy.
The torrents of water
have rushed down the valleys
with their millions
of hungry muzzles.

Quickly must I remove
the trees from their course
way off, up the hills -
But the trees are full of nests
and in each nest
there's a bird,
and in each bird
a flame is burning
painfully blue.
Live candlesticks are the branches
day and night giving light
insatiably within walls.
And the waters are rising.

The hoarfrost winds
are blowing on the crests.
And I must find
at least one shelter
for so many trees,
for so many nests
which ask me
for just one rotation
of the planet
with that strange mountain
more towards the sun.

Petre Ghelmez,
(translated by Dan Duţescu)

skies and snows remembered by the blue sea