Poetry International journal, a spontaneous combustion of translation

14. June. The Monday evening Reading schedule included Roberto Juarroz, Anne Vetger, Gonzalo Mitlán, Leo Vroman… I missed Yehuda Amichai and Homero Aradjis, two poets I actually wanted to meet, but I wound up doing some spontaneous translations with two poets I met in the hospitality café. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow.

Since I wasn’t feeling up to snuff, I missed two events today, plus the beginning of the evening show. I’m not networking the way I should. I just don’t feel like chasing the stars for photos, to give them my poems, etc. it’s exhausting work, and I’m not up for it. (Not that I have anything to give—but poetry, in myriad tomgues, is the only true currency).

My poetry partner in crime, editor Herman Berlandt also never showed up for the evening event. So I was a little worried about him, but they assured me he was OK, and he was seen earlier today with a young man who must be Ton. 

A Dutch-Argentinian couple sitting at the table next to me and I spontaneously translated a Dutch poem someone left at the table. First he translated it into English and then Andrea helped with the Spanish, because his Spanish was about on par with mine. Still, it was fun to do. This is why I missed the Amichai and Aradjis reading. They won’t read again. I am bummed.  Somehow the process of translation helped to restore my nascent social skills. 

Roberto Juarroz’s work seems fine, but my mind took its own time shifting into Spanish. So I understood the words, but not the poetic sensibilities. I didn’t go to the Bal de Festival because I was feeling funky and that antisocial streak still prevails. Oh well. When it descends like a wet blanket, there’s not much I can do. Pre-party panic syndrome. Sign of a true introvert.

I met a woman from England who bought copy of Soviet Poetry Since Glasnost from me, a Helena Hinn. from England. I took down her address and she said she would send some poems nlater. It seems I am madly collecting poets addresses that the front and the back of my journal is beginning to read like a who’s who in poetry.

As it turns out, a poet I met, Victor Manuel Mendola not only knew John Oliver Simon in Mexico, but he has a copy of our chapbook, Falling to Sea Level. He asked if I was the woman of John. And I answered, no longer. We were not sure if we met at Elsa Crosses’ house in Mexico City. It certainly is possible. 

He’s done many translations of poets that I like including Valerio Magrelli, and Tomaž Reizwicž. I gave him one of our poetry tabloids on Saturday and he said that he’ll give me a book on Wednesday. Poetic reciprocity in action. God, how I love the insane babble of many audacious tongues.

(Revised for clarity—added some connective tissue, but mostly swapped paragraphs)

(PI archives.)

• Letter to Valerio Magrelli, Via Condotti, Roma

AKAD DZIB

AKAD DZIB

We climbed every pyramid in the new world.

An amber ring of melted beeswax and copal

at the foot of the stele. The New Year.

Hummingbirds keep track of 8,000 sunrises

and jaguars count katones by multiplying

the blood of generations with reed sticks.

In the temple of the Phalli,

moss-green penises, larger

than a man's head; the walls

have sanctioned innumerable couplings.

Some breathing thing makes its way

through the ruins, but no one appears

in the korbeled arches to initiate

me on the low limestone bed.

A presence of eyes staring at my back

follows me out of the jungle toward the gaggle

of tourists aiming cameras at Chac-mool.

You filled my mouth with food and jade beads

& the sky was held up by four ceiba trees.

Quetzal feathers fell from the sky

like obscure writing & we collected them

in cloth bags woven on strap looms

made of sandalwood and bone.

Chichén Itzá,
1987, Mérida, Yucatán

1988 Poet News/ Sacramento Poetry Review

1987 Falling to Sea Level (revised)

RRWG reading & book party, Falling to Sea Level at the Burbank Activity Center with John Oliver Simon, Maureen Hurley

Snyder, Whelan, Waldman at National Poetry Week

It's come to this: after an emotionally draining day, I leave John's house to photograph poets at National Poetry Week in Fort Mason. Gary Snyder is good, Will is smutty. I cringe when he reads his raven love poem. Phew, I'm off the hook. Another lover recorded in blank verse. Not me.

Will introduces me to Philip who smiles at me knowingly as I chew Will out for smoking a cigarette. Gary Snyder doesn't remember me. Again. But Phil does. And hugs me. I'm assuming Gary's just being cold. Later, he puts it all together, and says, You're Maureen Hurley who took that photo? I said, I feel stupid reintroducing myself every two years. He said, I didn't recognize you. Grief does that to you.


I recounted, Yeah last time I saw you, you cut off all your hair, and mine was long. Now yours is longer than mine was, and I've cut off all mine. Remember sitting zazen at the zendo? Gary gives my hand a warm squeeze, and says, Yes. And we talk about the nesting habits of peregrine falcons in cities and the plumpness of pigeons.

I hand Gary our chapbook, Falling to Sea Level (John Oliver Simon). David Bromige testily commented, with a bit of an edge: Yeah, I heard you two had connected up. Awkward pause. Makes me sound like a hitching post. Or a fishing rod. He didn't think I was capable of pulling one in, and landing him too? He's always ready with his subtle English digs. Doesn't want me to swim in the big poets' pond?

I was so distracted this morning, I nearly hit a parked car leaving John's house. It was difficult to arouse myself. Sleep, sweet oblivion. How desperate he was, saying, Please please please. We fought in whispers as the girls are in his daughter's room. Quarrels over relationships, and his daughter. How desperate we've both become. We cry, kiss, and cry again. Lunch sticks in my throat. I'm determined to fight it out. His daughter stays central to our conversation. It's all Oedipus and divided loyalties. We both bleed the same time each month. Tonight the full moon pulls it out of me, a few days early.

Ann Waldman knocks me over when she reads a poem called Cracks in the World. I am reeling, stunned after her reading. Imagine Snyder and Whalen and Waldman on one bill! I am already tortured. I feel shaky, in need of a friend. And I seek out my friend Will, who is busy sniffing out poontang, and he slinks off like a coyote in low profile. Duane BigEagle, too is less warm. Why do I expect lasting faithful devotion, or friendship from ex-lovers?

The other photographer at National Poetry Week turns his brown spaniel eyes on me. I want to tell him, I'm not the one. And he is smitten in less than 24 hours. Whereas I'm facing borderline mania. The bubble of grief boils over as Ann Waldman reads. I am in tears at the end of her reading. The other photographer tries to offer solace.

Herman Berlandt gives me a copy of his anthology. It's come to this: I count how many ex-lovers are included in the poetry books before I read them. It reads like a shopping list of ex-lovers. I scrutinize dates, and compare notes. I look for some grain of myself in all that male ego. Of course, John's poem is about Here, a woman, and there, a woman. What was I expecting? That his womanizing past would change?

How we remain faithful to each other is by not using a third-party option as a way out. It's not just fear of AIDS, he says, monogamy is a new leaf for me. I guess I should be honored for reforming John. He is the Bill James Encyclopedia of broken hearts. Ever the statistician, John adds up the various scores. An almost wife, I rank in at #16 in the Here a woman, there a woman, category. A dubious distinction, at best.

John Oliver Simon, Maureen Hurley to Read, Sacramento Poetry Center

LIGHTING THE ELECTRIC FIRE

       Runners dressed in skins carried embers
       in moss-lined pouches to the next hearth.
        —Jane Walsh Reilly, 1893—1987

In the dark-paneled hall
of my grandmother's house,
mother-of-pearl light switchesó
the kind you push in & out,
resounded like sprung mouse traps
& light flooded the room.
The moment after one pushed in the switch,
wires inside the light bulb glowed red
like embers from earlier fires
to keep back the wolves and the night.

It was the woman's job
to keep the hearth fires lit.
To let it go out was to let death
come into the house,
my grandmother said.

Inside the heart of the light bulb,
between horn-like filaments,
beside the finely-coiled spring,
a smoldering spark from the first hearth
is locked inside because all atoms
are recycled except the ones we've split.

The white hair of my grandmother
as she bends to read
throws off its own aura of light.

8/1986
1992 Green Fuse
        Apostrofe! (in Ukrainian)
1986-88 Falling to Sea Level
1987 Marin Poetry Review
1986 More Than Words, CPITS Anthology

HORSEFLESH

 HORSEFLESH
         —for John Oliver Simon

Sometimes as you sleep in my arms,
my hand strokes your face.
I imagine it to be nude of flesh
& bleached white by weather.
Then I can explore your eyes,
slide down the sweep of jawline,
walk through dark Bavarian forests
where horsetraders from Alsace
read the Torah by candle flame.
Somewhere near the browline,
the ancestors have marked you
in the wrinkled grey folds
where the past & future sleep.

Baja 1986

1994 H.M. Judah L. Magnus Museum, 8th Annual Anna Davidson Rosenberg Award for Poetry on the Jewish Experience
1989 Creative Discourse
1986-88 Falling to Sea Level
1988 Poetry SF, 2nd Prize, National Poetry Association
         The Paper
1987 Marin Poetry Center

Falling to Sea Level, Aldebaran Review (photo)

¡Presente! Mi corazón de los sueños. Buen viaje mi amor viejo. 23 April 1942 -16 Jan 2018

 

 Falling to Sea Level, with John Oliver Simon,  (bilingual Spanish/English, Aldebaran Review/Russian River Writers' Guild 1986, fourth ed. 1988). 

MANTLE

           —for Bob Kaufman
              April 18, 1925 to Jan 12, 1986

News travels slowly.
In the time it took God to make the earth
you died and a voice fell from the sky.
I've been looking for you
in each bent and ragged head
of those stumbling down Telegraph,
of those ranting in Brautigan Square,
of those who live in Market Street doorways.
They say Lenin's legs were blackened
when the shroud slipped off.
I saw the map of death on your face
as you wandered the outskirts of your city.
The same map in my mother's eyes
and in the faces of those in the streets
who followed me even in sleep
but who held my hand in the dark?

A crowd laughed at the screaming woman
whose hands beat against our car window
as a man dragged her into an alley.
Another woman, still drunk, comes over
and complains of lost car keys and stolen children.
And in that order.
The sky caught fire
and seven astronauts were swallowed
by a blue-mantled snail.
Film makers converge upon us,
their eyes taking in odd angles of light.
It's like watching Kennedy shot over and over
with Jackie piecing together bits of skull and memory
with ineffective hands.

Bees carry the skull of night back into the hive.
The dead have taken to scratching poems on the water.
Even if we scatter your ashes to the wind for ten years
and listen for lyrical translations from the other side
it still won't cleanse this place.
Ten years of silence is buried.
We had a vision but the map is lost.
Who will collect the messages?
We confuse pinholes of light
leaking from rotted buckets
for the ancient rain of stars.
In my dreams they are coming and the door won't lock.

While in exile, lean closer to the sun.
Become birdlike
until you land spread-eagled
on this bone of the word
and in this endless blue
your flexing soul
will be the sound deep space sings.

2/2/86      


1988 Green Fuse
1986-88 Falling to Sea Level
1987 San Francisco Bay Guardian, 2nd Prize
         Thread Winding the Loom CPITS

MANTO                                                                        

                                    —para Bob Kaufman

Las noticias viajan lentamente.

En el tiempo que le tomo a dios hacer la tierra

moriste y una voz cayo del cielo.

Te he buscado en cada cabeza agachada y harapienta

de los que tropiezan por la avenida Telegraph

de los que viven erl los zaguanes de la calle Market.

Dicein que 1as piernas de Lenin se ennegrecieron

cuando se deslizó el ataúd.

Vi el mapa de la muerte en tu cara

mientras vagabas por las afueras de tu ciudad.

El mismo mapa en los ojos de mi madre

y en las caras de aquellos en la calle

que me seguían incluso en el sueño

pero ¿quién me cogió la mano en la oscuridad?

La muchedumbre se rió de la mujer gritona

cuyas manos golpedban nuestro parabrisas

mientras un hombre la arrastraba hacia un callejón.

Otra mujer, todavía borracha, viene para

quejarse de las llaves perdidas y los niños robados.

El cielo se encendió y siete astronautas fueron tragados

por un caracol de mano azul.

Cineastes convergen sobre nosotros

sus ojos toman originales ángulos de luz .

Es como mirar a Kennedy tiroteado una y otra vez

mientras Jackie junta pedazos de la calavera

y la memoria con manos inefectivas.

Las abeias llevan la calavera de la noche a la colmena.

Los muertos ya están granando sus poemas en el agua.

Aunque esparéramos tus cenizas al viento por diez años

esperando traducciones líricas del otro lado

ni así se limpiaría este lugar.

Diez años de silencio están enterrados.

Teníamos una visión pero se perdió el mapa.

¿Quién reunirá los mensajes? Confundimos los agujeros de luz

goteando de las cubetas podridas

con la lluvia antigua de las estrellas.

Vienen en mis sueños y la puerta no se podrá cerrar.

En el destierro, inclínate al sol.

Hazte como pájaro

hasta que aterrices extendido en este hueso del mundo

en este azul sin  fin tu alma desdoblada

será el sonido que canta el espacio profundo.

2/2/86                        —traducción John Oliver Simon y Juvenal Acosta                                           

1986-88 Falling to Sea Level

TENGO DINERO

These silver fish in my pocket
sing for their supper
sing for flies and oranges
under a full moon.
At Cabo San Lucas,
the wind through the arch
is like the sighing of empty vaults.
The fishing banks are open for commerce.
"Silver sinkers from old dimes
make the best lures,"
an old Indian said.
The mines are empty.
The mines are empty.
Let's lift the moratorium.
We need silver to seed the clouds;
to line the sow's ear.
The gypsy's fortune speaks in tongues
when the fish won't bite.

12/5/1985

1989 Poetry SF Quarterly, Honorable Mention, spring issue, 

1987 Sculpture Gardens Review

         Marin Poetry Review

1986-88 Falling to Sea Level

TENGO DINERO

Aquellos peces de plata en mi bolsillo
cantan para comer
cantan para moscas y naranjas
bajo de la luna llena.
En Cabo San Lucas,
el viento por el arco
susurra como bovedas vacias.
Los bancos de las pescas
se abren para negocios.
"Los plomos de plata
de las viejas monedas
de diez centavos
son los mejores cebos,"
decia el indio viejo.
Las minas estan vacias.
Las minas estan vacias.
Levantemos el moratorio.
Necesitamos la plata para sembrar
las nubes;
para forrar la oreja la cerda.
La suerte del gitano habla en lenguas
cuando no muerden los peces.

tr. John Oliver Simon y Juvenal Acosta
needs correction accents
1985

MULEGÉ

MULEGÉ

From the guilt of eating turtle steak
we make wild love after dinner
and the snoring from the family next-door
ceases as we rise into reptilian splendor
under the full moon.

Picking my way back from the outhouse
I am startled by darkened eyes sockets
on this cold desert where a wild moon
bleaches bones and eats the night.

A young rooster cries out in a child's voice
for some light in this village.

A passing car toots its horns at shadows.

Beneath a satellite disc moon,
huge, faint shadows of tarpon stir in the river.

Before this road interrupted sleep,
palm trees kept secret dreams.

In sleep, you stir, pulling my hips towards yours.

Each day, from my turquoise necklace,
I give a piece of the sky back.

There is as much future in those stones
around the neck of a woman
as there is in the desert sand.

I cradle the dreams of my grandmother,
fragile as paper, as you gather me in.

Sand in the bed fills our eyes and mouths.

11/271985
Mulegé, Baja, California

FALLING TO SEA LEVEL

FALLING TO SEA LEVEL

              Yo no lo conocÌa, pero aveces

              me entero de uno que otro detalle.

              —Monica Mansour

                               —para John Oliver Simon

Late in the season, small avalanches begin

where our boots break a trail.

I place my feet carefully in each milk-blue hollow

and learn the distance of your stride.

We crawl up the crevice toward the sky.

Rocks tumble into the deep valley

and the space between worlds widens.

We rush to fill it with our hands, lichen & stone.

In the thin blue air above timberline

a cornice of snow gives under our weight.

We imagine it to sweep us up like swimmers

at the crest of a wave.  Wind, uncoded

from fingerprints fluxes the surface

of the lake.  The patterns carried

within us makes us recount the myths.

What passes for human

fallen off from ritual

urges us to jump.

We see beyond each mountain, a cloud;

beyond each cloud, another mountain.

By climbing on all fours, we learn to trust our hands.

Slowly, our hands lead us back to our hearts.

Our hands become small commas to separate sky from world

& the mountain watches them paying out shapes to the wind.

Clouds on the horizon have escaped us this time.

The dark thing that chased us from sleep

today, is a pale witness in snow.

Tracks of a mountain lion take on a new shape

separated from night.

We trace the origin of tracks

to a hollow beneath the last vertical face

of the mountain.

We drink from the same water

and leave rock cairns to mark a trail

no one else will follow.

Perhaps, in the future other climbers

will puzzle over this.

Hold in your hand this poem without words;

a white reminder of what we've lost.

Fur trappings slide from bare shoulders.

Glaciers scrub stones smooth again.

At sea level, the cave fire retreats

to its proper place in time.

I say, what civilized us

was the donning of clothes.

You say, No, language separated us.

And your tongue fills my mouth.

The temptation would be to stay in these mountains

and dress language in lichen & stone for vows,

but at sea level, the gods of dailiness

sweep through us and our grasp upon sky,

stones & skin loosens.  One misstep;

a false handhold could throw us back into air.

The next snowfall would bury our tracks.

When spring comes again,

they will sink back into the earth

without a trace.

The years are turning colder, I said.

There are other witnesses, you said,

The mountain lion and us.

Blue Canyon, Sonora Pass
Rosh Hoshana
Fall 9/17/1985

1986-88 Falling to Sea Level

1988 Women's Voices

1987 Creative Discourse

           Marin Poetry Center
           Poet News/ Sacramento Literary Review

CAYENDO AL NIVEL DEL MAR/FALLING TO SEA LEVEL
      Yo no lo conocía; pero a veces
      me entero de uno que otro detalle.
                        —Monica Mansour

Tarde por la estación, las avalanchas empiezan  
donde nuestras botas hacen un sendero  
en el empinado campo de nieve.  
Pongo los pies con cuidado en cada hueco  
color de leche azulado y aprendo la distancia de tu paso.  
Reptamos por la grieta hacia el cielo.  
Las rocas se derrumban en la valle profunda  
y se ensancha el espacio entre los mundos.  
Precipitamos para llenarlo con 
Las manos, los liquenas v la piedra.

En el aire azul y fino de las montañas  
luna cornisa de nieve se desploma bajo nuestro peso.  
Imaginamos que nos arrasta como nadadores  
en la cresta de una ola. El viento, descifrado  
de las huellas digitales funde el superficie  
del lago. La forma llevada  
adentro nos hace recontar los mitos.  
Lo que pasa para lo humano  
caído rel rito, nos urge saltar.  
Vemos más alla de cada montañ a, una nube;  
más allá de cada nube, otra montaña.  
Subiendo a gatas, aprendemos a confiar en las manos.  
Despacio, nuestras manos nos llevan a los corazones.  
Las manos nos hace pequeñas comas para separar cielo y mundo  
y la montaña las mira arriando formas al viento.  
Las nubes en el horizonte nos escaparon esta vez.

La cosa oscura que nos cazó del sueño  
hoy es un testigo pálido en la nieve.  
Las huellos de una pantera toman una nueva forma  
separadas de la noche.  
Trazamos el origen de huellas  
hacia un hueco abajo de la última cara vertical de la montaña.  
Bebemos de la rnisma agua  
dejamos montones de piedras para marcar un sendero  
que nadie va seguir.  
Quizás en el futuro  
otros alpinistas se preguntarán sobre esto.

Toma en la mano este poema sin palabras;  
un recuerdo blanco de lo que hemos perdido.  
Atavios de pelos nos deslizan de los hombros.  
Los glaciares suavizan las piedras otra vez.  
Al nivel del mar, la hoguera de la caverna retrocede  
         hacia su lugar apropriado en el tiempo.  
Digo, lo que nos civilizó fue la ropa.  
Dices que no, el lenguaje nos separó  
y tu lengua me llena la boca.  
La tentación sería quedarnos en las montanãs  
y vestir el lenguaje en líquenas y piedras para votos,  
pero al nivel del mar, los dioses cotidianos  
nos arrastran y nuestro asimiento en el cielo,  
las piedras, la piel relaja. Un tropezón,  
un asidero falso podria tirarnos  
en el aire. La próxima caida de nieve  
enterraría nuestras huellas.  
Cuando la primavera viene otra vez,  
hundirán en la tierra sin rastro.  
Los años se enfrían, dije.  
Hay otros testigos, dijiste,  
la pantera y nosotros.  

9/1986

1986, 87, 88 Falling to Sea Level

RETURN FLIGHT

RETURN FLIGHT

My grandmother, they planted lilies

at the foot of your bed

before I understood the meaning of loss.

A chill in the air puts summer to rest.

White against the moon, an owl takes flight

across the valley & the echo of his cry

scatters light from the stars.

To the dancers, we leave our feathers of return flight.

The small candles of barn owl feathers drift down

from the moon's edge to light the way for your feet.

The slow breathing of soil before the frost

leaves a faint trail like the undeciphered tracks of mice in snow.

This is why we dance on the graves of our grandmothers.

The earth spreads sonorous wings over you,

shakes rubies from her blood

& your long dark hair tumbles swift like a waterfall

until it turns white in the garden of your grandchildren.

& the night horses who pasture in your hair

all turned east, toward that softer danger, the sun.

At dawn the white rooster crows over sand dunes,

leaving an echo almost tasted on the tongue.

He crows, Gallo, gallo, gallo blanco.

The web that connects us moves slowly.

Wind in the cottonwoods marks a passage of time.

When my best friend was killed by a horse,

you said, “Think of all the death in the trees

and in the fields in fall.”

The rooster cried, “My insides return to earth

so that my life may continue,”

before the axe swung.

My grandmother, now I know the earth receives us.

She watches the flowers of her children catch fire in the wind.

She kindles our slow bones so they too

will send roots down deep & drink from the stream.

She stands at the lintel with arms open wide,

waiting for us to return home

so she can close the door.

The return to earth is a quiet song

when water trickles down after the storm.

8/27/83

rev. 86
this was from reading three grandfather poems in a New Mexico magazine, by Rudolfo Anayar, Estévan Arellano, and EA Mares. I later changed it to reflect my grandmother.

1990 Red Bluff Daily News, July 23
1988 Green Fuse
1986-88 Falling to Sea Level
1986 Under the Bridge of Silence
1983 Across the Generations


VUELO DE VUELTA/RETURN FLIGHT

Mi abuelo, plantaron los lirios  
al pie de tu cama  
antes de que yo entendiera  
el sentido de la pérdida.  
El aíre frio entierra al verano.

Blanco contra la luna, un buho alza el vuelo  
a través de la valle y el eco de su grito  
esparce la luz de las estrellas.

A los bailiadores dejamos nuestras plumas del vuelo de vuelta.  
Las velitas de plumas de buho flotan a la deriva  
desde el filo de la luna para aluzar el camino de tus pies.

El aliento despacio del suelo ante la escarcha  
deja huellas ligeras como rastros indecifrados  
de los ratones en la nieve.  
Por eso bailamos en las tumbas de nuestros abuelos.

La tierra extiende alas sonor as sobre tí,  
sacude los rubís de su sangre  
y tus cabellos largos v negros se caen rápida como cascada  
hasta volverse blancos en los jardines de tus nietos.

Y los caballos de noche, que pastorean en tus cabellos  
todos miraban hacia el oriente—
hacia ese peligro mas suave, el sol.

En el alba, el gallo blanco cacarea sobre la arena  
dejando un eco que casi se saborea en la lengua.  
Cacarea, "gallo, gallo, gallo blanco."

La tela que nos relaciona se mueve despacio.  
El viento en los álamos marca un pasaje del tiempo.

Cuando mi mejor amiga la mató un caballo,  
dijiste, piensa en toda la muerte en los árboles  
y en los campos del otono.

El gallo gritaba, "Mis adentros regresan a la tierra  
para que la viad continúe," antes de la hacha se cayera.

Mi abuelo, yo sé ahora que la tierra nos recibe.  
Mira las flores de sus hijos encenderse en el viento.  
Lentamente incendia nuestros huesos para que ellos también  
envíen las raices hasta lo profundo y beban del corriente.  

Se para en el dinltel con los brazos abiertos  
esperando hasta que volvamos  
para que cierre la puerta.

La vuelta a la tierra es una canción quieta  
cuando el agua discurre después de ia tormenta.
  —traduccion John Oliver Simon

1986-88 Falling to Sea Level