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

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 ---

ten little spells to conjure my colours back

*from the Chinese Garden in Berlin

however eager

she was set on sharpening her pencils
this time she had decided never to stop
until she had all the colours, all hues ready
to get the big task done
the task for which she had been preparing
as long as she could remember:
to make the rainbow, though not just the image of the rainbow,
the whole rainbow, the real rainbow,
blossom on every sky.
she just hadn't expected so many colours,
it was simply maddening.
so busy was she, fidgeting on and on
that she failed to notice she had shed an eyelash,
and that the eyelash and the rainbow
had become, from a certain point onward,
indistinguishable.




go to: however series

the golden beyond

.

come spring

..

in the end...

in the end it is only colours that matter. they remind me of you at sunset, when light turns upon itself and autumn comes to die upon your skin, lingers for a while in your eyes then suddenly sinks into you to make your bones glow from within, for just a while longer.


in the end it is only the bird's flight that matters. it reminds me of nothing but itself. this and...


the promise of the sky at dawn?


no, just its emptiness. this and the emptiness of the sky.

..

these autumn fields

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

..

yellow

despair is yellow - said the blue peacock -
you poets live off metaphors, i laughed.
with sweet disdain forsythia bloomed everywhere,
my dress glimmered with little yellow butterflies
which made you smile.

despair is yellow. i ask you to come to my throat
like a knife, i sweep through you recklessly,
once more, before the last.

time spreads in us both its peacock tail.
we fumble for the fall of leaves, for the thinned blood,
we live off metaphors, once more, before the last.

..

this harsh, fiery spring

i walk through the fields of spring

in search of myself.
i carry:
the luxurious maps of being,
drawn with meticulous exactness.
a mirror, to make sure i never forget
whom exactly i look for.
a rope to jump, in case i find myself
a child again, flooded with the joy of living.
a handful of seeds to scatter, from time to time
(though more out of boredom, really,
than eagerness to become).

i make lists. i am very precise,
the same precision i use to extract dreams
out of my warm blood. for example,
what it is that stands between me and myself:
these fields, the line of burning, when
they meet the sky. this sunlit wound of waiting.
this freshly cut grass, this bird's wing.
my shadow, when you left.
the dazzling music of each step.
this endless fluttering back and forth,
again and again.

or rather this thought here, now.
the belief that i am still
- and gloriously - alive,
piercing through the heart
of this harsh, fiery spring.

..

mutilated by a dream

I injured a butterfly
in a dream.
And now I don't know what to do
to keep from dreaming about it again.

Another butterfly
came close to me while I was awake:
it was the same butterfly.

Perhaps a pact
between dreaming and waking will keep me
from recognizing
any other butterfly in the future.

Or mutilated by a dream now
I can only see
that single butterfly.


Roberto Juarroz
tr. Mary Crow

Lastimé una mariposa
durante un sueño.
Y no sé ahora cómo hacer
para no soñarla de nuevo.

Otra mariposa
se me acercó despierto:
era la misma mariposa.

Tal vez un pacto
entre el sueño y la vigilia
me impida en adelante
reconocer otra.

O mutilado por un sueño
ya sólo puedo ver
esa única mariposa.

..