november

People say the sea is deep —
it's not as deep by half as love.
The sea at least still has its coasts, 
love's farthest reaches have no shore.
With harp in hand I'll climb the tower
To empty rooms full of the moon,
And strum the song of missing him.
My heart and harp will break as one.

Li Ye
poet-courtesan (and perhaps Daoist nun), 
8th century

(note: i borrowed the first 4 lines of the translation from Women Writers of Traditional China, while the last 4 are translated by A.Z. Foreman, i liked his version better in this case)

shake us, we, the palms of the wound

The leaves asleep under the wind

are the wounds’ ship,

and the ages collapsed on top of each other

are the wound’s glory,

and the trees rising out of our eyelashes

are the wound’s lake.
The wound is to be found on bridges

where the grave lengthens

and patience goes on to no end

between the shores of our love and death.

The wound is a sign,
and the wound is a crossing too.

If I had a harbor in the land
of dreams and mirrors, if I had a ship,
if I had the remains
of a city, if I had a city
in the land of children and weeping,
I would have written all this down for the wound’s sake,
a song like a spear
that penetrates trees, stone, and sky,
soft like water
unbridled, startling like conquest.

Rain down on our desert

O world adorned with dream and longing.

Pour down, and shake us, we, the palms of the wound,

tear out branches from trees that love the silence of the wound,

that lie awake staring at its pointed eyelashes and soft hands.

World adorned with dream and longing

world that falls on my brow

like the lash of a wound,

don’t come close—the wound is closer—

don’t tempt me—the wound is more beautiful.

That magic that your eyes had flung

on the last kingdoms—

the wound has passed over it,

passed and did not leave a single sail

to tempt toward salvation, did not leave

a single island behind.

 

from Adonis, The Wound, tr. by Khaled Mattawa, 

with my thanks to the Black Sun for this discovery

(for e.)

still summer

despite what you say, it is still summer, i need summer still, i cling to it and most of all to that gesture of yours when you slowly raised your hand, the fingers stained by the red of berries, the dress all sparkling under the sun, and made as if to touch me, through the thicket of little white flowers swaying in the wind. 

instead, you picked a flower and turned away, walking away from me with its thin stalk between your teeth.

of all the hearts

of all the hearts i've held inside this cage

this one is by far the fiercest. it wants love

to conquer death, and will settle for nothing

less, will do anything to get what it desires.

you can move closer, you will be safe.

to you it will seem a beehive and a gate.

and you will not have to do the work -

harvest the honey, pound at the gate;

honey will pour forth like a flood, and the gate

will pound like a fist to get you to enter.

poem by Andreas at Untitled

 

this heart of mine

Coming and going
I feel neither
beginning nor end…
what a strange thing
this heart of mine!
 

 

Ōtagaki Rengetsu

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.    

the imagined spring

our broken circles
our tears
the spring we had

long imagined

 -

now there is only stillness
where green should have thrust
its light, with a shiver

but with a tearing flutter

if my thoughts could turn into ravens 

fly i would whisper fly


 

(it is not with a whisper, but with a tearing flutter
that they will settle, laying the night
upon your white body)

by unfolding my flowers

they had promised there would be snow the next day. 

i woke up and ran to the window, to no avail. so i had to let my flowers rise and take over the grey, indifferent expanse. iridescence of snow, even on my skin. i knew you wouldn't notice them and yet i was longing to hear your steps, crushing them on your way to me. in the end, though, i also painted a green rectangle in the snow, perhaps i meant it just as a reminder that i should invent you like this, ruthless steps and all, every time i would be tempted to think that i could keep, by unfolding my flowers against the world, grief at a distance.

somewhere beyond the bitter

let me sit here, quietly, for a while

you must go beyond the wall.
at least once, at least one step. with your bleeding nail
you must carve out a little hole in the brick,
your eye must at last catch
a glimpse of the other side, before being blinded
by the pouring down of the golden hour.

i know.
tomorrow i will put on my golden dress,
fasten my hair with a golden ribbon, the whiteness of my shoulders
aglow in the setting sun, as i cross over, into the golden sea,
as i conjure the golden fin, kneeling down
to pray for the deepest cut, for yet another
spear of light.












i know.
before that first and last wave of gold sweeping through me,
nevertheless, let me sit here, quietly, for a while. let me know of nothing but the
humble solidity of this wall, its barren geometry enough
to make peace with necessity,
whose circumference traces the outline of what one would call 'life',
my life and yours and, don't forget, the life of these branches
as well, moving restlessly in the dry wind, the life of these shadows crawling
upon the bare face of the land. let me breathe here,
for yet a while longer, my gentleness expanding
into the gentleness of the hour,
my body draped only by the rhythmical unfolding
and receding of a soul, wishing for nothing,
knowing of no beyond.


.

black calla

they often long for what could render all questions useless, or so they seem to believe: a single, perfect - because beyond any naming, untouched by the notion of presence - flower.

at other times, though, they find themselves longing for neither the flower nor the skin against which it rests. they seem to yearn for precisely that which only a word could bring into presence, the contrast between the dark of the petal and the ivory shimmer of skin. a single word, which could, then, redeem their lives, even if for just one moment, the perfect moment when the shadow of the black calla merges with the warmth of flesh.



..

winter trilogy 2

this is a video project that i started one winter, two years ago, and which has grown ever since. i have now finished the second part, called The Waiting, which is concerned with adulthood, while the first part, First Snow, depicted childhood - as you can see, the trilogy aims at a poetical investigation into the three ages with their different stories, told using winter as a common metaphor. and from the point of view of one woman. in the second part, the girl in love with the snow queen (that you might or might not remember from the first part) has now turned into a young woman in love with long winters and waiting. this is her world.

i should warn you that this part is a little longer, about 15 minutes - don't feel bad if you don't have the patience or the time for it, there are more pressing things to do on a bleak winter day than look at even more snow! :-)

View on ExposureRoom (for HD, recommended)

for those of you who prefer and can watch it on youtube, here

..

of sumptuous reveries and demon-lovers (in the Oriental Garden)

The air in the café was thick with shadows and smoke. His face half-turned away, his eyes half-closed, at times only the cigarette seemed alive in his fingers. There is something unsettling about every effigy, i thought, and the moon, the moon in the window frame bathing him in silver, for some unknown reason i kept thinking about the moon. Then, he turned to me all of a sudden, leaned forward and i thought he would finally reach for my hand. I was pale, i think. Those who say that a body cannot wait should have lived those few seconds of waiting inside my hand, the blue veins running helplessly under the skin. The skin too was paler than the moon. I wanted to give him my wrists.

Instead, he said, "Ah, late antiquity is when we should have lived. The times were romantic, the air was pure, lilacs never died, minarets were flexible, dates, musk and myrrh were like gold dust." The coffee spoon seemed a moon ray bent by some strange magic, at times a glittery snake between his fingers and oh, how i wished for my hair to be that silvery snake, that ray of the moon bent by his dark fingers. The air between him and me, that hollow space which didn't reflect any light back.

He spoke again, and this time he looked into my eyes, and i knew i had to say something but his voice seemed to reach me from such a distance, like the moon through layers of black water. I have to say something, i thought, and became really nervous about it, as if my life itself depended upon my answer, which was rather silly actually, since he was talking of myrrh and horses and oases, none of which really existed, i mean existing in this world of mine, of ours, where the air was heavy with muffled whispers and the moon a tight seal upon my lips.

"Would you have loved to travel with me then," he asked, "on horse or camel, searching for an oasis? But why should we have traveled then, we could have just walked, or, even better, we could have just stood there and the oasis would have sprung forth around us, like a poem. Tell me."

The moon disappeared behind a cloud and the shadows on the walls suddenly faded away. When i turned my face to him, such paleness on my tongue, such hunger for one word, just one word, he was gone too, the last shadow.

Later at home, while waiting for dawn and who says that waiting cannot tear through one's blood and bones like a whip, i opened the book and read:

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

This post continues the series dedicated to the amazing Gardens of the World, which i visited in the Recreational Park Marzahn, in Berlin. You can read more here.

..

thirst

Tu t'en vas sans moi, ma vie.
Tu roules.
Et moi j'attends encore de faire un pas.
Tu portes ailleurs la bataille.
Tu me désertes ainsi.
Je ne t'ai jamais suivie.
Je ne vois pas clair dans tes offres.
Le petit peu que je veux,
jamais tu ne l'apportes.
A cause de ce manque, j'aspire à tant.
A tant de choses, à presque l'infini...
A cause de ce peu qui manque,
que jamais tu n'apportes.


Henri Michaux, Ma vie

You're going some place without me, my life.
You're rolling away.
And I'm still waiting to make my move.
You've taken the battle somewhere
Abandoning me on the way.
I never followed, I stay.
Where you are leading me,
I can't plainly see.
The very little that I want,
you never bring to me.
Because of this emptiness, I want
So many things, almost the infinite ...
Because of this emptiness,
that you never fill.

My life

..

the bench that should have been

i remember us on the bench that has never been,
the light playing on our shoulders and
what would have been our face, had we really existed.
i turn to you,
my breath tearing through you like a whip,
a silver snake in the dark.

i don't speak.
my words echo thus, but not in your mind:
on your trembling hands, your bending knees,
in your throat.

you haven't come. to what purpose disturb the dust
on a bench that has never been, i do not know.
other voices inhabit me
that you will never know, either.

i turn to you and light my cigarette
only because i know you love this burning
and mourning of ashes, this beauty of mine now,
behind the veil of flesh.
i blow the smoke, gently, into what
would have been your wound, had you been there,
my cry, that we can bear only so much paleness.

i remember the moment that should have been,
had the future been your cat's ball of speckled yarn,
my poem.

..