It was, if it was, numbers fly as balloons,
you said to me
the other day.
People need to tie everything down,
I replied,
taking my nets and ropes and twines
fastening myself into
the hollow space of your palm.

Luna

La Luna loves music, flamenco, rembetika, the sweat of the singers flung into the choked air of the dance floor. Sometimes she even dances, cigar clenched in her teeth, a rose in her hand and those dancers who do not see her, later they will swear there was something special in the air. La Luna drinks thick rum, sweet with the memory of molasses, the billow of sails and sailors laughter, brandy, cognac, anything with the scent of the cask or nameless concoctions in bottles without labels, bursting onto the tongue like gypsy music, words flying into the sky in a shower of sparks.

La Luna loves a sad story, will meet the Angel, who never sleeps, find him in his usual corner hunched over a drink, hiding his eyes an she will place a friend’s hand on his shoulder, the greeting of the otherwordly and he will begin to speak of advice rejected, help not given, lives lost and helpless. Sometimes Death will join them, wipe the seat with his handkerchief, and gently, for the Angel is a creature who still believes in hope, will tell his own stories.

La Luna cries for all the lost, all the disappointed, the heart broken but not least for herself as in her weeping comes the realisation that dawn is coming and with its light she must fade, evaporate and return once more to the blasted moon, to her lover, his empty eyes forever trapped in the gaping void.

excerpts from La Luna,
a gift from Swiss

I am fascinated with the moon, how writers have written about the moon, and how poets have been moonstruck [...] The Moon, as character here, is a performer, broken-hearted, but she still has to dress up and step onto the universal stage every night. If she doesn’t, it stays dark down here and all Chaos will ensue. This is her dilemma.

Patricia Barber

another kind of mathematics

Noi ştim că unu ori unu fac unu,
dar un inorog ori o pară
nu ştim cât face.
Ştim că cinci fără patru fac unu,
dar un nor fără o corabie
nu ştim cât face.
Ştim, noi ştim că opt
împărţit la opt fac unu,
dar un munte împărţit la o capră
nu ştim cât face.
Ştim că unu plus unu fac doi,
dar eu şi cu tine,
nu Ştim, vai, nu ştim cât facem.

Ah, dar o plapumă
înmulţită cu un iepure
face o roscovană, desigur,
o varză împărţită la un steag
fac un porc,
un cal fără un tramvai
face un înger,
o conopidă plus un ou,
face un astragal…

Numai tu şi cu mine
înmultiţi şi împărţiţi
adunaţi şi scăzuţi
rămânem aceiaşi…

Pieri din mintea mea!
Revino-mi în inimă!

Nichita Stănescu, Altă matematică

We know that one times one is one,
but an unicorn times a pear
have no idea what it is.
We know that five minus four is one
but a cloud minus a sailboat
have no idea what it is.
We know that eight
divided by eight is one,
but a mountain divided by a goat
have no idea what it is.
We know that one plus one is two,
but me and you, oh,
we have no idea what it is.

Oh, but a comforter
times a rabbit
is a red-headed one of course,
a cabbage divided by a flag
is a pig,
a horse minus a street-car
is an angel,
a cauliflower plus an egg
is an astragalus.

Only you and me
multiplied and divided
added and substracted
remain the same...

Vanish from my mind!
Come back in my heart!

(english translation by George Mustea)

it should have happened

in the other world
sometimes more real
a woman kneeling
her hair sweeping the earth
below the horizon line
it should have happened
a sky
a cloud even
birds
light breathing

it should have happened
the ivory gods
their thousand faces
prosperous in every wound
the gods refused
to walk on her flesh.

Solitary Tree

El a întins spre mine o frunză ca o mână cu degete.
Eu am întins spre el o mână ca o frunză cu dinţi.
El a întins spre mine o ramură ca un braţ.
Eu am întins spre el braţul ca o ramură.
El şi-a înclinat spre mine trunchiul
ca un umăr.
Eu am inclinat spre el umărul
ca un trunchi noduros.
Auzeam cum se-nţeteşte seva lui bătând
ca sângele.
Auzea cum se încetineşte sângele meu suind ca seva.
Eu am trecut prin el.
El a trecut prin mine.
Eu am rămas un pom singur.
El
un om singur.

Nichita Stanescu (Necuvintele)



He offered me a leaf like a hand with fingers.
I offered him a hand like a leaf with teeth.
He offered me a branch like an arm.
I offered him my arm like a branch.
He tipped his trunk towards me
like a shoulder.
I tipped my shoulder to him
like a knotted trunk.
I could hear his sap quicken, beating
like blood.
He could hear my blood slacken like rising sap.
I passed through him.
He passed through me.
I remained a solitary tree.
He
a solitary man.

(Unwords)

(for J)

M

and I sit by the stove
and try to catch time red-handed
the delicate ripple of curtains
the phosphorescence of walls
books dancing
on the wooden shelf
the abstract leaf on the rug
the Mexican flower
I enclose
in a single breath

Halina Poswiatowska

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish to be close to me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

e.e. cummings

Be quiet, Fiers

LOPAKHIN. Please attend carefully! Your estate is only
thirteen miles from the town, the railway runs by, and if the
cherry orchard and the land by the river are broken up into
building lots and are then leased off for villas you'll get at
least twenty-five thousand roubles a year profit out of it.

GAEV. How utterly absurd!

LUBOV. I don't understand you at all, Ermolai Alexeyevitch.

LOPAKHIN. You will get twenty-five roubles a year for each
dessiatin from the leaseholders at the very least, and if you
advertise now I'm willing to bet that you won't have a vacant plot
left by the autumn; they'll all go. In a word, you're saved. I
congratulate you. Only, of course, you'll have to put things
straight, and clean up. ... For instance, you'll have to pull down
all the old buildings, this house, which isn't any use to anybody
now, and cut down the old cherry orchard. ...

LUBOV. Cut it down? My dear man, you must excuse me, but you don't
understand anything at all. If there's anything interesting or
remarkable in the whole province, it's this cherry orchard of ours.

LOPAKHIN. The only remarkable thing about the orchard is that it's
very large. It only bears fruit every other year, and even then you
don't know what to do with them; nobody buys any.

GAEV. This orchard is mentioned in the "Encyclopaedic Dictionary."

LOPAKHIN. [Looks at his watch] If we can't think of anything and
don't make up our minds to anything, then on August 22, both the
cherry orchard and the whole estate will be up for auction. Make up
your mind! I swear there's no other way out, I'll swear it again.

FIERS. In the old days, forty or fifty years back, they dried the
cherries, soaked them and pickled them, and made jam of them, and
it used to happen that ...

GAEV. Be quiet, Fiers.

FIERS. And then we'd send the dried cherries off in carts to Moscow
and Kharkov. And money! And the dried cherries were soft, juicy,
sweet, and nicely scented. ... They knew the way. ...

LUBOV. What was the way?

FIERS. They've forgotten. Nobody remembers.


Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard

Als das Kind Kind war

Als das Kind Kind war,
wußte es nicht, daß es Kind war,
alles war ihm beseelt,
und alle Seelen waren eins.

When the child was a child,
it didn’t know that it was a child,
everything was soulful, and all souls were one.

Als das Kind Kind war,
erwachte es einmal in einem fremden Bett
und jetzt immer wieder,
erschienen ihm viele Menschen schön
und jetzt nur noch im Glücksfall

When the child was a child,
it awoke once in a strange bed,
and now does so again and again.
Many people, then, seemed beautiful,
and now only a few do, by sheer luck

griff im Wipfel eines Baums nach den Kirschen in einem Hochgefühl
wie auch heute noch

When the child was a child,
It reached for cherries in topmost branches of trees
with an elation it still has today

eine Scheu vor jedem Fremden
und hat sie immer noch,

has a shyness in front of strangers,
and has that even now.

wartete es auf den ersten Schnee,
und wartet so immer noch.

It awaited the first snow,
And waits that way even now.

Peter Handke
Lied vom Kindsein (Song of Childhood)

Pondering about Billoo's quote: what should have been. There is a whole world between "what should have been" and Eliot's "what might have been".
So here's looking at you, kid. The drunken soul will fly you to the in-between.

Towards the door we never opened

What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

T.S. Eliot, Quartet No. 1, Burnt Norton

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

T.S. Eliot, Quartet No. 1, Burnt Norton

and the dark red flowers are always for him... especially the floating ones.

In Praise of Shadows

We find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates.

Tanizaki (In Praise of Shadows)

her hand

brushing my hair
bitter blades of grass
fragrance of wine
ages old
rising in the night
quietly quietly
mist
her hand resting now
open
on the other side of the looking glass
pale flowers
breathing low

We shall not even know

We shall not even know that we have met.
Yet meet we shall, and part, and meet again,
Where dead men meet, on lips of living men.

Samuel Butler, Mellonta tauta

trennen wollten wir uns?

Trennen wollten wir uns? wähnten es gut und klug?
Da wirs taten, warum schröckte, wie Mord, die Tat?
Ach! wir kennen uns wenig,
Denn es waltet ein Gott in uns.

Hölderlin (Die Liebenden)

So we wanted to part, thought it clever and good,
That we did it, why did it shock us like murder, the deed?
Oh, we know ourselves little
For a god is at work in us.

(The Lovers)

and through the lattice, never and forever

you said Is
there anything which
is dead or alive more beautiful
than my body,to have in your fingers
(trembling ever so little)?
                         Looking into
your eyes Nothing,i said,except the
air of spring smelling of never and forever.

....and through the lattice which moved as
if a hand is touched by a
hand (which
moved as though
fingers touch a girl's
breast,
lightly)
      Do you believe in always,the wind
said to the rain
I am too busy with
my flowers to believe,the rain answered

e. e. cummings

as Fate approaches

Yet now as Fate
Approaches, and the Hours are breathing low,
The sands of Time are changed to golden grains.

E.A. Poe (Politian)

 A thing which fades
With no outward sign
Is the flower
Of the heart of man
In this world!

Ono no Komachi, 9th century

色見えでうつろふ物は世中の人の心の花にぞ有りける。
小野小町

So auf Erden

Aber wir, zufrieden gesellt, wie die liebenden Schwäne,
Wenn sie ruhen am See, oder, auf Wellen gewiegt,
Niedersehn in die Wasser, wo silberne Wolken sich spiegeln,
Und ätherisches Blau unter den Schiffenden wallt,
So auf Erden wandelten wir.

Friedrich Hölderlin (Menons Klagen um Diotima)

But we, contentedly joined, like the loving swans who
When they rest upon the lake, or rock upon the waves,
Look down into the waters, where silver clouds mirror themselves,
And ethereal blue moves beneath the shipping
So upon the earth did we roam.

(via http://www.hoelderlin.blogspot.com/)

浮船 Ukifune 1

Without expressing
My anguish,
Eventually I threw myself
Into the Uji River in Yamashiro.
Yet I could not sink deep enough,
And I do not know
Where I will drift to.
How lamentable is my fate!

In a tiny boat
Carrying brush and wattles,
I travel this miserable world.
When I look at the water dripping
From the end of the boatman's oar,
My thoughts turn to the past,
And my sleeves become soaked
With tears.



Song composed for koto by Mitsuhashi Kengyo (1693-1760)
(translated by Tsuge Gen'ichi)




..

浮船 Ukifune 2

In seclusion
At the quiet Ono retreat:
She was afraid to be heard
Or seen,
Even by wind from the summit
Or by a young stag,
She suppressed her voice
Modestly.

Neither the two ancient verses,
Nor something special
Has she in mind
When she seats herself
At the inkstone.
Yet it is in writing practice
That she passes her hours of idleness
And silent tears.

Song composed for koto by Mitsuhashi Kengyo (1693-1760)
(translated by Tsuge Gen'ichi)

the floating bridge of dreams

The floating bridge of dreams

of the brief spring night of love

has now broken off:

dawn sky with a wisp of cloud

taking its leave of the peak.

Haru no yo no

Yume no ukihashi

Todae shite

Mine ni wakaruru

Yokogumo no sora

(Fujiwara Teika, translation: Paul St John Mackintosh)

the floating bridge of dreams (2)

The poem alludes to the last chapter of Genji Monogatari, entitled The Floating Bridge of Dreams (Yume no Ukihashi). Ukifune (Floating Boat) tries to break loose from Kaoru's pursuite and throws herself into the Uji River. She however survives and finally decides to become a nun. But the tale is left unfinished.

Hold Infinity

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour

William Blake

my eyes

My Eyes more & more
Like a Sea without shore
Continue Expanding
The Heavens commanding

William Blake

as in your own Bosom you bear
your Heaven
And Earth, & all you behold, tho it appears Without it is
Within In your Imagination of which this World of Mortality is
but a Shadow

William Blake

If the Spectator could Enter into these Images in his
Imagination approaching them on the Fiery Chariot of
his Contemplative Thought if he could Enter into Noahs
Rainbow or into his bosom or could make a Friend &
Companion of one of these Images of wonder, which
always intreats him to leave mortal things as he must
know then would he arise from his Grave then would he
meet the Lord in the Air & then he would be happy.

William Blake

This world of Imagination is the World of Eternity it is the Divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the Vegetated body.

William Blake

quietly back

If I should live long,
Then perhaps the present days
May be dear to me,
Just as past time filled with grief
Comes quietly back in thought.

Fujiwara no Kiyosuke


ながらへば
またこの頃や
しのばれむ
憂しと見し世ぞ
今は恋しき

藤原清輔朝臣

But this evening all my flowers suddenly turned black.

Tea for Antonia

Antonia's gift. the warmth of her herringbone-coat and the glimpse of never-ending sienna hair, unseen for millenia. I didn't know how to thank her. but I could do something: make tea for her, for I knew she liked to drink tea on the gloomy mornings, especially when she couldn't decide what to do next, and the day waiting out there for her seemed a burden and not a joy. the joy was in the flowers, white and frail, floating over the tea bowl. I watched them for some time, for so long, because so much I knew: she liked to inhabit such flowers.

I opened the lid of the tea jar, and my fingers lingered to stroke the little Genji-lady, enveloped in her twenty kimono-layers, living in the black lacquer. silently so, many years passed, many years to come. the green powder rose in the air, like vapour, like mist. Antonia dwelled in the calm and stillness of the afternoon.

the touch of the tea scoop was so smooth, and the green so vibrant. boiling water. beauty being born, that very minute.

when the bamboo whisk woke the tea to its true life, to light, it seemed to me, for a moment, that I could feel Antonia's thoughts - she wanted to think hellebore-coloured thoughts on that bridge, so much I knew - turn green. the long, unending hair seemed suddenly to shine with a deeper red against the jade in the bowl. and then the thoughts were gone. the pain was gone. the purity of joy came down upon our heads. and we met somewhere below the surface, and jenseits of the word. because not everything is about voyeuristic interest, but the need and mystery of embracing the other as the whole, open world. Antonia held the bowl in her two hands for a long time, before bringing it to her lips.

when Antonia left, we both passed by the bowl which I had offered to the unseen god or maybe the unknown guest or maybe the dead, the trembling presence between us, in the room, in the garden outside. on the windowsill I had offered it, and now we both saw the rose had lost its petals and the tea had also cherished this death. Antonia's smile.

Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow

Then a woman said: "Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow."
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.

Khalil Gibran, The Prophet