The Smallest The Smallest
It is in front of the tree. The houses around the windows are lit by it, it turns off and goes upon knees and wherever the bone is almost next to the skin. It has been defamed. It will become undernourished. It is not without end. It is not. It is not what you can let happen, or cause to happen, or has anything at all to do with happening. It happens as it exists without effect. It is the pure in pure mathematics. It is the sully in unsullied rain. It is the pain in painfully. It is also the fully. It is the light in highlight and headlight, the head in headland, the towering in towers, trees, the outstretched in shadows of mountains on plains and lakes. It is not the water in the lake, however, it is not cupped. If it exists, it is unaware of it. It could name itself however, and does. It contains alphabets. It is infinite and therefore the smallest thing.
Feb 3, 2010 / Books & the Arts / James Schuyler
(Untitled) (Untitled)
night promises to be long there we'll remain alone or maybe there we'll never be lonely artists of the impossible we hardly belong to ourselves our shadows weave the illusion of our dreams and feed with slow movements they shriek across an instant night's envelope is torn they go mad and search about in their blazing heart they need to hear once more silence's echo turned to stone (Translated from the French by Peter Thompson)
Jan 20, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Amina Saïd
Nocturnal Crossing Nocturnal Crossing
Audacity it is you who will console us least right here the animal alloy of muscle and voice in the rainy detonation of the day under the plus sign overflown by a squadron of petrels Thanks to the farmers who regale me with hatred painted on their faces days perch solely on the shoulders of women more than asleep Storm or rain the beaks that put me back between the hands of the scream will guide them laudably Covered with fresh encephalon I rise already even faster silence like the bull under the maul it is a kiss deriving lips from our clogprints (Translated from the French by A. James Arnold and Clayton Eshleman)
Jan 6, 2010 / Books & the Arts / Aimé Césaire
Untitled Untitled
We all die alone however we can, as for me I'll coil in a volcano's swooning crater or dilute myself in the path's refrains And if my heart stays till trail's end I don't see why my blood can't join the flood beneath this ark, snatching from the deluge of my human pasts, from the face each agony showed me, the cross or port's beacon we sailed from (we sought a belly in common to save us from the mass grave!) Make it so blood swamps me --better blood than brushfire! Everywhere the doe flash fire already in their eyes; these deer, they have the knack of dying lewd. (Translated from the French by Peter Thompson)
Dec 22, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Tchicaya u Tam’si
Unidentified Unidentified
Hands touch--set off another round of deals and betrayals! I only hope I don't mistake whose lips and hands! Don't mix up all these break-ups and insomnias. When we let go, I'll try, my friend, to charge my memory! So you won't languish and expire like the others in my poems (the garbage heap of all my Casanovas!). So you won't be washed by rains for millennia, buried in my breast (mass grave for a thousand breasts!)... So you won't --you, my two-starred utter dark!-- end up one more corpse, gravemarker: Unknown. (Translated from the Russian byCatherine Ciepiela)
Dec 16, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Marina Tsvetaeva
Full Harvest Full Harvest
And it seemed it was time for us to die somehow, right now, this afternoon, but the apples were abundant that year and ripened before autumn really showed what it was made of. Even the water shoots arced into branches. And now the sun is happily drinking water from the puddle at the gate and from the burdock -sized leaves of the lilac, but it's not warm enough for that, the day smacks of humidity. Again the magpie chatters in its own way, and old friends, one after another, will deny us, and we would be the last to want to hinder them, but neither to overlook this, because then how would the others cope, left high and dry, without a word from us. (Translated from the Polish by Christian Hawkey and W. Martin)
Nov 24, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Piotr Sommer
Founding Another Colony Founding Another Colony
And the news will have to be tailored to their needs with baffling opinion polls, announcements of the number of steps at the ballerina's dress rehearsal, rarefied shots of Antarctic snow, cascades in the Andes the backwash of shivering butterfly wings no breaks in transmission no voice-overs while regular slots play truant; no controllers in sight and no authorization. You'd think not dying was a la mode. With an almost creepy unconcern they'll form columns and perform exploits beyond every map and outside every schedule. (Translated from the Polish by Rod Mengham)
Nov 24, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Andrzej Sosnowski
Founding a Colony Founding a Colony
Pill boxes, patrols, protocols: this is what made the locals come running, so nothing should be disturbed. Softly, softly, we thought. That graveyard needs moving further south: chop it up among urban allotments, carve out wide boulevards and tunnels, erect viaducts, excavate canals, launch speedboats, ferries, hovercrafts and junk the heritable past; let the map heave with bulldozer silhouettes, he said (lighting a corner of the map) for this shall be our theater of war. And then what? Unlock the fog. At twilight only a boy's quick laugh in a blind back alley shall echo that time shift of desire all lost in space beyond their dreams. (Translated from the Polish by Rod Mengham)
Nov 24, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Andrzej Sosnowski
Early Capitalism Early Capitalism
they are perfecting the pillow with which you are being suffocated now it sings to you and shows you pictures--
Nov 4, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Joe Wenderoth
Identity Theft Identity Theft
If you're a down draft, I'm an escaped photograph. When you're a full moon, children disappear from home. For every nickel you turn in your fingers a bottle fly Files its nails. When you see your face reflected, it Sees you as you once were when you were elsewhere. When flocks fly for you, you let them scatter your neurons. When you were a tin can I shot you many times over. If you're a beggar, I'm turning a corner to face you. Were you a hatband, were I grosgrain ribbon, would I invite you to move into my neighborhood forest. When you're a fox, I'm a fox, we're thinking of stealing something. You are that tired old porch light someone's left burning. I'm a shy green moth short on memory and handcuffs. Silver lines you drew me through have cost me my life.
Oct 28, 2009 / Books & the Arts / Dara Wier