the same tower, a different story

post-rapture city, night-drive

Have you ever considered, beloved Other, how invisible we all are to each other? Have you ever thought about how little we know each other? We look at each other without seeing. We listen to each other and hear only a voice inside ourself.

 

The words of others are mistakes of our hearing, shipwrecks of our understanding. How confidently we believe in our meanings of other people’s words. We hear death in words they speak to express sensual bliss. We read sensuality and life in words they drop from their lips without the slightest intention of being profound.

The voice of brooks that you interpret, pure explicator … The voice of trees whose rustling means what we say it means … Ah, my unknown love, this is all just us and our fantasies, all ash, trickling down the bars of our cell!












from: The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa

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.

across the yellow fields of summer

.

another kind of sleep

The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest.
The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being.
Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms.

In the morning we must sweep out the shadows.









from The Poetics of Reverie (Gaston Bachelard)



..

elegy for the last poppies

Sage – wie ich bin?
Überall wollen Blumen aus mir.


Else Lasker-Schüler

tell me - what am i?

everywhere, flowers want to burst from me.

..

... and shatter me with Dawn

At last, to be identified!
At last, the lamps upon thy side
The rest of Life to see!

Past Midnight! Past the Morning Star!
Past Sunrise!
Ah, What leagues there were
Between our feet, and Day!

Behind Me—dips Eternity—
Before Me—Immortality—
Myself—the Term between—
Death but the Drift of Eastern Gray,
Dissolving into Dawn away,
Before the West begin—

Not knowing when the Dawn will come,
I open every Door,
Or has it Feathers, like a Bird,
Or Billows, like a Shore—

The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—

poems by Emily Dickinson



..

who would know, who (in homage to Ono no Komachi)

waiting for you all night.
two moons lit up my skin,
my dry rose blossomed anew.
only you didn't come.
towards dawn, a big blue bird
flew home and crushed, its chest open,
against my window.
who would know, who
that i was the bird
and you were the temple in which,
suddenly, all flutter had ceased.

..

unbearable fullness

that night, before leaving, i stood in front of the window for a long time,
staring into the night, or what should have been the night.

yet life was still there, unbearably full, clinging to me like algae to a dead body.

..

moving through dreams

the city is still celebrating.
a maze of lights, faint odour and whisper,
the languid body of human desire.
only i, like a cat who's become one
with the music of her prey,
move through dreams, eyes wide-open,
oblivious of my claws, my smooth arched back.


oh, the stillness of the snowed-in garden.

..

silent dance

We rarely hear the inward music,
but we’re all dancing to it nevertheless.


Rumi



..

become the lamp

Why be human if being human
is so difficult? Become the lamp
by the roadside that quietly sheds
its light on man.
Be as it is, for as it is
he will always have a human face.
Be good to him, this man,
and impartial like a lamp
that quietly illuminates the faces
of drunkards, vagabonds and students
along the solitary road.

Be a lamp
if you can't be human,
for being human is difficult.
A human has just two hands
but he should help thousands.
So be a lamp by the roadside
shining on a thousand happy faces,
shining for the lonely, the aimless.
Be a lamp with a single light,
man in a magic square
signaling with a green arm.
Be a lamp, a lamp,
a lamp.


Srecko Kosovel

.
.

how much

How much I desire!
Inside my little satchel,
the moon, and flowers

Bashō
(tr. Sam Hamill)



.
.

and if i...

none of the roads i knew led to him.
the doors wouldn't open,
they didn't seem to be closed, either.

one of the old masters said:
'To learn bamboo painting,
take a branch of bamboo
and let its shadow fall upon a white wall
on a moonlit night,
then the true shape of the bamboo will emerge.'

and if i took one of his gestures -
those gestures detached of whatever
they were supposed to hold,
for which i was unable to find a name -
and let its shadow fall upon the white skin
of my moonlit night,
would then, oh master Kuo Hsi,
the true shape of his absence emerge?

classical Paris series (1)

O nuit! ô rafraîchissantes ténèbres! vous êtes pour moi le signal d'une fête intérieure, vous êtes la délivrance d'une angoisse! Dans la solitude des plaines, dans les labyrinthes pierreux d'une capitale, scintillement des étoiles, explosion des lanternes, vous êtes le feu d'artifice de la déesse Liberté!
Crépuscule, comme vous êtes doux et tendre! Les lueurs roses qui traînent encore à l'horizon comme l'agonie du jour sous l'oppression victorieuse de sa nuit, les feux des candélabres qui font des taches d'un rouge opaque sur les dernières gloires du couchant, les lourdes draperies qu'une main invisible attire des profondeurs de l'Orient, imitent tous les sentiments compliqués qui luttent dans le coeur de l'homme aux heures solennelles de la vie.
On dirait encore une de ces robes étranges de danseuses, où une gaze transparente et sombre laisse entrevoir les splendeurs amorties d'une jupe éclatante, comme sous le noir présent transperce le délicieux passé; et les étoiles vacillantes d'or et d'argent, dont elle est semée, représentent ces feux de la fantaisie qui ne s'allument bien que sous le deuil profond de la Nuit.


Ch. Baudelaire (Le Spleen de Paris)













O night! O refreshing dark! for me you are the summons to an inner feast, you are the deliverer from anguish! In the solitude of the plains, in the stony labyrinths of a city, scintillation of stars, outburst of gas lamps, you are the fireworks of the goddess Liberty!

Twilight, how gentle you are and how tender! The rosy lights that still linger on the horizon, like the last agony of day under the conquering might of its night; the flaring candle-flames that stain with dull red the last glories of the sunset; the heavy draperies that an invisible hand draws out of the depths of the East, mimic all those complex feelings that war on one another in the heart of man at the solemn moments of life.

Would you not say that it was one of those strange costumes worn by dancers, in which the tempered splendours of a shining skirt show through a dark and transparent gauze, as, through the darkness of the present, pierces the delicious past? And the wavering stars of gold and silver with which it is shot, are they not those fires of fancy which take light never so well as under the deep mourning of the night?

(Translated by Arthur Symons)