| (no subject) |
[Feb. 9th, 2008|02:24 pm] |
The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.
"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world."
And the roses were very much embarrassed.
"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose." |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 13th, 2008|12:34 am] |
Self-Portrait
by Adam Zagajewski
Translated by Clare Cavanagh
Between the computer, a pencil, and a typewriter
half my day passes. One day it will be half a century.
I live in strange cities and sometimes talk
with strangers about matters strange to me.
I listen to music a lot: Bach, Mahler, Chopin, Shostakovich.
I see three elements in music: weakness, power, and pain.
The fourth has no name.
I read poets, living and dead, who teach me
tenacity, faith, and pride. I try to understand
the great philosophers--but usually catch just
scraps of their precious thoughts.
I like to take long walks on Paris streets
and watch my fellow creatures, quickened by envy,
anger, desire; to trace a silver coin
passing from hand to hand as it slowly
loses its round shape (the emperor's profile is erased).
Beside me trees expressing nothing
but a green, indifferent perfection.
Black birds pace the fields,
waiting patiently like Spanish widows.
I'm no longer young, but someone else is always older.
I like deep sleep, when I cease to exist,
and fast bike rides on country roads when poplars and houses
dissolve like cumuli on sunny days.
Sometimes in museums the paintings speak to me
and irony suddenly vanishes.
I love gazing at my wife's face.
Every Sunday I call my father.
Every other week I meet with friends,
thus proving my fidelity.
My country freed itself from one evil. I wish
another liberation would follow.
Could I help in this? I don't know.
I'm truly not a child of the ocean,
as Antonio Machado wrote about himself,
but a child of air, mint and cello
and not all the ways of the high world
cross paths with the life that--so far--
belongs to me. |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 13th, 2008|12:25 am] |
Long Afternoons,
Those were the long afternoons when poetry left me.
The river flowed patiently, nudging lazy boats to sea
Long afternoons, the coast of ivory
Shadows lounged in the streets, haugty manikins in shopfronts
stared at me with bold and hostile eyes.
Professors left their school with vacant faces
as if the Illiad had finally done them in.
Evening papers brought disturbing news,
but nothing happened, no one hurried.
There was no one in the windows, you weren't there;
even nuns seemed ashamed of their lives.
Those were the long afternoons when poetry vanished
and I was left with the city's opaque demon,
like a poor traveler stranded outside the Gare du Nord
with his bulging suitcase wrapped in twine
and September's black rain falling.
Oh, tell me how to cure myself of irony, the gaze
that sees but doesn't penetrate; tell me how to cure myself
of silence.
- Adam Zagajewski
Translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh, Partisan Review, Spring 1998. |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 14th, 2007|02:54 am] |
Texts for "On the Transmigration of Souls" by John Adams
(except where noted, phrases come from missing persons posters photographed by Barbara Haws, archivist for the NY Phil)
1. "Missing…"
2. "Remember me. Please don’t ever forget me."
3. "It was a beautiful day."
4. "Missing: Jennifer de Jesus.
5. "Missing: Manuel Damotta
6. "I see water and buildings… "… (Quoted in numerous sources…last words of flight attendant on AA #11)
7. "We will miss you.We all love you. I’ll miss you, my brother."
8. "Jeff was my uncle"
9. "you will never be forgotten
10. "Looking for Isaias Rivera."
11. "Windows on the World"
12. "She looks so full of life in that picture
13. "it feels like yesterday that I saw your beautiful face…"
14. "I loved him from the start.
15. "You will never be forgotten."
16. "I miss his gentleness, his intelligence, his loyalty, his love."
17. "Shalom"
18. "Remember"
19. The daughter says: "He was the apple of my father’s eye." (NY Times "Portraits in Grief")
20. The father says: "I am so full of grief. My heart is absolutely shattered." (NY Times "Portraits in Grief")
21. The young man says"…he was tall, extremely good-looking, and girls never talked to me when he was around." (NY Times "Portraits in Grief")
22. The neighbor says: "She had a voice like an angel, and she shared it with everyone, in good times and bad." (NY Times "Portraits in Grief")
23. The mother says: "He used to call me every day. I’m just waiting."
24. The lover says: "Tomorrow will be three months, yet it feels like yesterday since I saw your beautiful face, saying, ‘Love you to the moon and back, forever.’" (NY Times "Portraits in Grief")
25. The man’s wife says: "I loved him from the start…. I wanted to dig him out. I know just where he is." (NY Times "Portraits in Grief")
26. "Louis Anthony Williams. One World Trade Center. Port Authority, 66th Floor. ‘We love you, Louis. Come home"
27. "Charlie Murphy. Cantor Fitzgerald. 105th Floor. Tower One North. Weight : 180 pounds. Height: 5"11". Eye color: hazel Hair color: brown. Date of birth: July ninth, 1963. Please call…’We love you, Chick.’"
28. "My sister."
29. "My brother."
30. "My daughter"
31. "My son."
32. "Best friend to many…"
33. "I love you." |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 7th, 2007|09:43 pm] |
Ordinary Life
by Adam Zagajewski
Our life is ordinary,
I read in a crumpled paper
abandoned on a bench.
Our life is ordinary,
the philosophers told me.
Ordinary life, ordinary days and cares,
a concert, a conversation,
strolls on the town’s outskirts,
good news, bad—
but objects and thoughts
were unfinished somehow,
rough drafts.
Houses and trees
desired something more
and in summer green meadows
covered the volcanic planet
like an overcoat tossed upon the ocean.
Black cinemas crave light.
Forests breathe feverishly,
clouds sing softly,
a golden oriole prays for rain.
Ordinary life desires.
(Translated, from the Polish, by Clare Cavanagh.) |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 26th, 2007|02:13 am] |
Last Answers
I wrote a poem on the mist
And a woman asked me what I meant by it.
I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist,
how pearl and gray of it mix and reel,
And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening
into points of mystery quivering with color.
I answered:
The whole world was mist once long ago and some day
it will all go back to mist,
Our skulls and lungs are more water than bone and tissue
And all poets love dust and mist because all the last answers
Go running back to dust and mist.
-- Carl Sandburg |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 6th, 2007|12:29 am] |
Haiku
scent of plum blossoms
on the misty mountain path
a big rising sun
-- Matsuo Basho |
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| (no subject) |
[Nov. 4th, 2007|03:24 am] |
The Secret Sits
We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
-- Robert Frost |
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| Orwell v.2.0 |
[Nov. 4th, 2007|01:14 am] |
The Quiet World
In an effort to get people to look
into each other's eyes more,
the government has decided to allot
each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.
When the phone rings, I put it
to my ear without saying hello.
In the restaurant I point
at chicken noodle soup. I am
adjusting well to the new way.
Late at night, I call my long
distance lover and proudly say
I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.
When she doesn't respond, I know
she's used up all her words
so I slowly whisper I love you,
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.
-- Jeffrey McDaniel |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 29th, 2007|02:43 am] |
The Builder
by Pablo Neruda
I chose my own illusion,
from frozen salt I made its likeness--
I based my time on the great rain
and, even so, I am still alive.
It is true that my long mastery
divided up the dreams
and without my knowing there arose
walls, separations, endlessly.
Then I went to the coast.
I saw the beginnings of the ship,
I touched it, smooth as the sacred fish--
it quivered like the harp of heaven,
the woodwork was clean,
it had the scent of honey.
And when it did not come back,
the ship did not come back,
everyone drowned in his own tears
while I went back to the wood
with an ax naked as a star.
My faith lay in those ships.
I have no recourse but to live. |
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| (no subject) |
[Oct. 13th, 2007|04:18 am] |
I went to tonight's performance of Ainadamar. It was so beautiful.
I am alive... |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 24th, 2007|01:14 am] |
This is a poem written by Matt Morris. He was interviewed but our English Composition class in the Summer of 2005. A quote from the interview follows the poem. I find his views on religion to be interesting.
Life of God
He cried, it rained. He shook
his rattle, thunder echoed
throughout the void. He shat upon
himself, cherubs flitted about
like flies, zealous to change
his sacrosanct diaper, safety
pins pursed on pious
lips. In school, He made friends
readily—out of Popsicle sticks, elbow
macaroni & plenty
of Elmer’s. For His science
project—while Buddha fussed
over a Styrofoam
solar system & Vishnu
ate paste—the Almighty showed off
His awe-inspiring, infinite,
fully functional, complete
with flickering lights & soiled humanity,
universe. Lousy
at sports, He counted on angels, rough
& tumble, blackened feathers
flying, to smite the mocking
jocks yoked in the ritual
of pantsing & dragging
His pimply, omnipotent ass
around heaven’s high school track. He aced
the LSATs, raced through
His J.D., resisted
the devilish temptation of politics, opting
instead for a position with Fidelity
Life, where He rose faster
than Jesus. Married,
He bought a bungalow, mortgaged
beyond redemption, in the burbs, engaged once
or twice in extramarital hoo-hahs, divorced,
remarried, begat 2.5
billion children, who, spawned
in his image, disappointed
him in His dotage. He tossed off sacramental
wine like water, the stubby black
stogy of lost glory clenched
between sin-stained
partials. /Is this
how you want to go?/ Mrs. God
ragged over supper, His wizened
face slumped in a cold bowl
of something, & sure enough.
"Religion’s funny. While it wants to unite everyone under God’s big tent, it drives
wedges between people instead. For example, Christians believe that non-Christians
will be cast for eternity into a fiery pit where there will be wailing and the gnashing of
teeth. That offends me, especially since a person’s religion is often predicated by the
happenstance of one’s birth.
But, for the religious, believing and knowing are synonymous. I could argue that my
believing in mystical, magical dragons doesn’t make them real, no matter how much I
want it to be so. No doubt there are differences between gods and dragons, but
there’s no evidence that either exists.
Since religion is faith-based, all belief is interpretation. In today’s political climate,
religion is used as the bastion of intolerance. In truth, God is too complex a concept to
wrap our heads around. Omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence create
paradoxes that many resolve with faith that’s never questioned for fear of damnation.
It’s Linus sitting in the pumpkin patch, afraid to register any doubt, lest the Great
Pumpkin pass him by." |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 22nd, 2007|06:19 pm] |
I saw a good film last night...Eastern Promises.
Traces of The Godfather and The Departed.
Has that typical gangster movie feel, but with a compelling plot. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 22nd, 2007|06:17 pm] |
Interesting poem found in The New Yorker
Resignation
by J. D. McClatchy
I like trees because they seem more resigned
to the way they have to live than other things do.
—Willa Cather
Here the oak and silver-breasted birches
Stand in their sweet familiarity
While underground, as in a black mirror,
They have concealed their tangled grievances,
Identical to the branching calm above
But there ensnared, each with the others’ hold
On what gives life to which is brutal enough.
Still, in the air, none tries to keep company
Or change its fortune. They seem to lean
On the light, unconcerned with what the world
Makes of their decencies, and will not show
A jealous purchase on their length of days.
To never having been loved as they wanted
Or deserved, to anyone’s sudden infatuation
Gouged into their sides, to all they are forced
To shelter and to hide, they have resigned themselves. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 12th, 2007|02:01 am] |
Ten Ways to Avoid Lending Your Wheelbarrow to Anybody
1 PATRIOTIC
May I borrow your wheelbarrow?
I didn't lay down my life in World War II
so that you could borrow my wheelbarrow.
2 SNOBBISH
May I borrow your wheelbarrow?
Unfortunately Lord Goodman is using it.
3 OVERWEENING
May I borrow your wheelbarrow?
It is too mighty a conveyance to be wielded
by any mortal save myself.
4 PIOUS
May I borrow your wheelbarrow?
My wheelbarrow is reserved for religious ceremonies.
5 MELODRAMATIC
May I borrow your wheelbarrow?
I would sooner be broken on its wheel
and buried in its barrow.
6 PATHETIC
May I borrow your wheelbarrow?
I am dying of schizophrenia
and all you can talk about is wheelbarrows.
7 DEFENSIVE
May I borrow your wheelbarrow?
Do you think I'm made of wheelbarrows?
8 SINISTER
May I borrow your wheelbarrow?
It is full of blood.
9 LECHEROUS
May I borrow your wheelbarrow?
Only if I can fuck your wife in it.
10 PHILOSOPHICAL
May I borrow your wheelbarrow?
What is a wheelbarrow?
-- Adrian Mitchell
HAHA! |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 12th, 2007|01:59 am] |
Jimmy Giuffre Plays 'The Easy Way'
A man plodding through blue-grass fields.
He's here to decide whether the grass needs mowing.
He sits on a mound and taps his feet on the deep earth.
He decides the grass doesn't need mowing for a while.
-- Adrian Mitchell
My current attitude. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 12th, 2007|01:46 am] |
Coda
Perhaps to love is to learn
to walk through this world.
To learn to be silent
like the oak and the linden of the fable.
To learn to see.
Your glance scattered seeds.
It planted a tree.
I talk
because you shake its leaves.
-- Octavio Paz
to love, to learn, to walk, to be silent, to see
scattered, planted, talk, shake
general to specific
i like it |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 8th, 2007|02:26 am] |
Ample Make This Bed
Ample make this bed.
Make this bed with awe;
In it wait till judgment break
Excellent and fair.
Be its mattress straight,
Be its pillow round;
Let no sunrise' yellow noise
Interrupt this ground.
-- Emily Dickinson |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 8th, 2007|02:17 am] |
Fan-Piece, For Her Imperial Lord
O fan of white silk,
clear as frost on the grass-blade,
You also are laid aside.
-- Ezra Pound
Oh, imagism. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 8th, 2007|01:56 am] |
This Is Just To Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.
-- William Carlos Williams
Better or worse than Red Wheelbarrow?
haha
anyway, what a sorry attempt at an apology
or does the lack of remorse in this note reflect the unconditional love in a family?
Or is the this about Adam?
Is this poem even worth this much thought? |
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