TO WRITE after Bei Dao

TO WRITE
—after Bei Dao

It began in a dream
ending at the source,
a reign of ice. Melting glaciers
become part of the story
of water returning to the source.
But an alien rain is falling
on the icefields of Greenland,
the first time ever,
it opens the sluices, veins of time,
and Shasta stands naked, without snow—
another first within living history.
New rivers seeking the sea
all at once, a cacophany of stories
unleashed from the beginnings of time,
the last tear falling
from the corners of the eye,
that saline bath, words
worn smooth as stone.

8/21/21

WHILE TRANSLATING LORCA DURING THE WILDFIRE

Translating Lorca, from one of John Oliver Simon’s poetry recipes, my mind went way south. Rather than uselessly cry jetlag inspired tears in a Petaluma parking lot, as Sinead gets her hair done, I bought eye drops, & wrote a poem to the Mayacamas range, still burning. My throat is raw. I am careful to take small sips of air, as my N95 mask was packed away from the Tubbs fire. I foolishly thought I wouldn’t need it again. And here we go, again.

Madre, llévame a los campos
con la luz de la mañana,
a ver abrirse las flores
cuando se mecen las ramas.

Mother, take me to the countryside
with the light of morning
to see the flowers open
when the branches sway.
—Translation of Frederico García Lorca

WHILE TRANSLATING LORCA DURING THE WILDFIRE

My imagination wants to take me to the mountains
to witness the incandescent light of morning
to see the late blossoms opening their small hands
to the Diablo winds trembling the harp strings of reeds
in the marshes where the egrets and herons
patrol its dark depths for fatted frogs and curled snails.
My mind wants to fly to where the branches sway
to the rhythm of dark sap coursing
to the song of distant rivers and birdsong.
But the sodden sky is the color of putty,
all the trees have been reduced
to their lowest common denominator,
carbon and smoke and ash
as the wildfire devours the ridges,
barns, and vineyards with an insatiable hunger
and a prodigious thirst that cannot be quenched.
No birdsong, only the dark wind whispering
secrets into the pale ear of the sky.
A lone raven caws his one warning note
over and over again.

FROM THE FRISIAN

FROM THE FRISIAN 

                    DOWEN Albertina Soepboer 

Here it is, heading west, there's no mistaking it

the rigors of the pen writing samscaras.

It requires wading in, holding the pen flat, like a spade

the only way to carve out a track to lead out back.

The frission it creates when you think you're done

but the pen enters the house of memory at will

Reminding you it harkens a memory of two women

in an abandoned house, furrowing their brows at dusk.

4/16/2013

SAVED POEM

Wáng Wéi translations BIRDS

Myriad Birds Calling in the Ravine
—Interlinear translation of Wáng Wéi's Niāo Míng Jiàn

I am lost amid the falling petals of the cassia tree
calm spring night in the deserted hills
rising moon startles the mountain birds
birds singing forever deep in the ravine.

—2nd translation
Lulled by a sweet drift of cassia petals
night nestles on the empty ridges
moonrise startles the mountain birds
a cascade of birdsong floods the steep ravine.

Water Ousels in the Gorge
—after Wáng Wéi's Niāo Míng Jiàn
(freewrite transliteration)

They hide between shining trees
A stone hut in the distance
A woman's thoughts like the moon
trapped in the pines
Windows, so like the sun, or eyes
Clouds upon clouds, mountains
and the moon, hidden in the mist
Ousels skim across reflected light
the river mouth singing.


Poetry Inside Out workshop
Niǎo Míng Jiàn
Wáng Wéi 699-759

Rén xián guìhuā luò,
Yèjìng chūnshān kōng.
Yuèchū jīng shān niǎo,
Shí míng chūn jiàn zhōng.

To see the Chinese Mountain Song

DUN I, IONA

DUN I, IONA
(after a translation from the Ohlone)

I dreamed you were a sliver
of light glinting on the curve of the sea
On the machair, the rabbits
cleansed their scalloped sand porches
while amid the lambs, the hares stood sentinel
I dreamed of you dreaming me
on the granite dome of Dun I,
at the center of the island
between a rowan and an oak
in a crevice at the well of age,
the falcon's eye, a distant sun
dancing on the edge of the world.

2/5/12

published in A MOUSE THE COLOR OF MOUSE ©2012
Poetry Inside Out, Center for the Art of Translation
Medusa's Kitchen, 2012

2 FREEWRITES WITH PICASSO

GOD IS IN THE CRACKS

In a world of no
there is no room for conflagration
astral core samples, the hunger to know.
In the beginning was the crenulation of the brain.
What came first, the universe or the blackhole?

A psalm story
Earth-based spirituality
Dogs speaking from the other side.
Death is an illusion, or so people say
Heaven is a place that cannot be found.

God is in the cracks, a tiny crack
that separates this world from the next.

7/8 of everything there is is invisible.

Your feet know the way to the other world.

You can't just chase the invisible.

There is only one thing we all equally possess,
and that is our loneliness.

Like fortitude, the struggle with the angels,
where would the words go, the strength of mind,
will, or choice, what we represent.
We are here for the the lesson of fate, or of passion,
what arises out of consciousness
and oppression is art. Solely art.


AH, PICASSO, PICASSO

Ah, Picasso, Picasso,
painting is just another way of keeping up,
another way of keeping a dark circle
on the head of the horse rendered
in dappled beauty while the dancers take flight.
On the table, a frugal meal is laid out,
a white potato, an apple. Some wine
for La Celestina.

A scarf, the laying of the brush.
Oh death and las damseilles.
Azure landscapes with two figures.
Every act of creation is too strong
of an act of destruction.

Painting is a form of magic
designed as a mediator
between the strange and hostile world.

Picasso said: it took me four years
to paint a rock like Rafael
but I know how to paint something.
When I paint I feel that all art
is in the past.

Let's go dancing, it's in the cards,
she said, the city folds in on itself.
The sound of an empty room.
After she left, they were thick as thieves
at the circus.

She pulls the self-portrait over her lips,
his eyes follow her every move,
but the viper was just a pipe,
it's in the cards, she said.

A small blue door,
two women running on the beach
22 breasts adrift in the breeze.
Such blue to contend with,
such monumental flesh,
Ruben's women turned to stone.

Picasso said: Art is never chaste.
A nude in the garden, and green cats.
Portrait of Dona Maar
the hands, tuberous clusters.
Weeping women in red dresses.
Art is that which makes us realize the truth.
Said the weeping women.

A cat and a bird, an unequal war.
Art is something of the senses,
a weapon of self defense against the enemy,
the symbolization of women
in the studio in Algiers.

Picasso said: painting is stronger than me.
It makes me want what it wants.
Oh the Women at Dachau and the Minotaur,
finally the Minotaur, the bullfight,
the disembodied horse, a goat skull,
an empty bottle, the candle of war,
and of course, Guernica,
that is the dissolution of life, of art.

transcribed and revised, 10/17/14
 

FOUND POEMS FROM THE IRISH: (A WOMAN’S LAMENT)

FOUND POEMS FROM THE IRISH:

(A WOMAN’S LAMENT)

I composed a poem on the bottom of the sea:

It’s only a story of a story. An old one, at that.

You know how it ends.
I saw him once in a vision.
And it was then I knew.

I remember him standing in the white heather.

He was my hero, my lively lad,

Skin as white as snow.

Eyes, bright moons,

Arm in arm with the sun.

A shaft of sunlight fell on him.

Like windows opening on the sky.

Out of the ordinary—that quicksilver moment.

Both old and young, we were caught between two times.

What’s destiny to me? Not a honeymoon.

The walls of the otherworld are listening.

Oh love of my heart,

Can you not sing of this life?

From sunset to sun up,

He’d make a nest in your ear.

We had the current and wind with us,

We had the sun and moon with us,

But he said naught of dew nor rain.

We were waiting for spring

But the bottom fell out of the sky.

When we made a knot with our tongues,

We couldn’t untie with our teeth.

Grá. Oh pulse of my heart. Love.

I dropped that word on the ground.
And it shattered like a vessel.

He’s taken the music from the world.

There wasn’t a word left for me.

The music of the sun on the sea and land—

The birds are singing

The daftness of our words

In the face of the wind.

The three drops of a wife:

the drop of blood,

the milk of tears

the milk of sweat.

I have no cause to stay.

He’s a rock of a man, hard

and deaf as stone.

He has not rent, nor concern nor sorrow.

He wants both the hide and its price.

A man hears only what he wants to hear.

Not: You’re my music.

Not: I love you.

It’s not possible to serve two shores.

There are always longer horns on the cattle overseas.

Clear out of my net.

I have plenty else to do.

The sea was rough today.

No fair mouthings (sweet talk).

No bird music—

I had spoken harshly to him.

The heat wilted the flowers.

My garden’s a wilderness again.

No herbs nor healing against death.

The puca’s pissed on the berries.

Don’t let me hear another word!

God’s tears in the web of the little wild ox (spider)

And my mother’s fingers gulping rosary beads.

clocha paidrín.

The tide is ebbing.

The sun’s slipping under.

There’s always a bitter blade of wind.

He never said goodbye to me.

It’s not worth the wait now

(for) a place beyond death.

This world’s closing in on me.

Pray for my sake.

3/9/98

EERSTE LIG (AUBADE, I)

EERSTE LIG (AUBADE, I)
   —a fake translation of Breyten Breytenbach's poem, from the Afrikaans
 
Dawn light strokes the sky of the sea
chasing shadows from our heads
urgent dreams, bright, restless
against the lingering slumber
of your body next to mine. 

The uneasy origin of poet’s work
trapped within the childish speech
wants to reinvent the world
where flight was not lost to the struggle of defeat
Our mouths open, tonguing
the fleeting warmth of your throat

How certain love seemed in the morning
I held the fading eye of your body
against that deeper sleep

But you threw open the balcony windows
the blind angel trampled
the circle of light

scattering mirrored words
on the new song of the wind

visual translation from the Afrikaans

FROM THE EGYPTIAN

FROM THE EGYPTIAN

Like young chicks without feathers, 

the wet birds skim under the moon

three nights later

a hawk measures the sky 

with invisible ropes

and in this deep pool

where the young calf dances

people come to drink

A heron raking the water with his legs

drags a stream of tulips

veed feathers of water in his wake.

2/7/1987

a transliteration from the Egyptian

BEYOND THE REEF

BEYOND THE REEF

The siren in the night

The calling of a whale

And beyond the reef

A thunderhead gathers

and takes in the sea.
I am breathing beside my body

The distant earth is my blood.

The heart of this universe is pale.

White blood of the galaxy

And this crayon of the sea colors the air.

And I am working hard

Looking for something
beyond the reef.

2/7/1987
a transliteration

FROM THE EGYPTIAN

FORGETFUL Rilke transliterations

        —after Rilke

I have been a fawn amid the ferns

I won't die when the wind comes
I see her wandering with the darkness
on such a night like this.
The turf is sleeping, saintlike,
and in the morning the road
is still the first pattern of the night
and the stream's answer is not there.
Then waking the storm to let the egrets fly
across the sea and I braid my eyes
so that they will fall like hair into yours
and from that we will drink
and gaze into the broken storm.

6/24/1986

Fragments

When I come to your command
and watch you rise up to meet me
like the boat of evening and we ride
each other's swell until your face
is like an empty mirrored sea
upon which the dragons of memory sleep.

To say come out of darkness for me
for three meals a day: one in heaven,
and two on earth. Bounty.
He wore a lion's helmet: one red as blood.
the other green as grass.

Until we reach four mountain passes
and have nothing but a point of light
to guide us from the darkness,
we will have no more handholds.
Be not afraid because the time that will come
is no different from that of the past.

In my wearied soul
drifting under an inflamed sky
the punishing slickness,
troubling for those among us
who are tired, and for those who follow me.
A fiery hand is goading me onward
under the weight of the nebulous sea.

6/24/1986
The damage was so extensive on the last stanza, I was only able to resurrect one word in five. added, rev. 9/17

Three Transliterations from Rilke's Vorgetful

SHADOWS
      —after RIlke

Shadows carry us through the hard times
when the sky falls, and the moon fills
with green leaves like quaking cottonwoods.
With this verdant light comes hope,
clusters of sunlight fill the sky.
Sunlight so bright that it shatters the darkness
into mirrored shards and light surpasses stars
chasing them through eons of space and time;
time which cannot be brought back to itself.
Ah, to catch the world in the palm of the hand.
Shadows dissolve, and the souls of gods
reincarnate in the glistening rivers
which once stood for time indefinite.

1/8/1986

TRANSLITERATIONS
     —from Rilke's Vorgetful

I've been waiting in a frenzy
but underneath the slick exterior
I am the dying wind
falling under the spell of the music of love
while wandering the knotted trails
along the cliffs of the Dingle Peninsula
under the suchness of night
that magic was afoot.
The crenulated turrets teething the wind
are keening, and the red deer stands
frozen in time, the forest slips into the night
and the sun no longer shines.
The well is silent in the storm
and the tall egrets look out to sea like sailors.
One bright glance might let them fall behind,
and the wives without the strength of gazelles
will always gaze into those green trees.

1/8/1986


THE GRIEF OF GREEN LEAVES

When clusters of sunlight
shatter the darkness into fifths
the shadows of the moon
carries us through the hard times.
The moon fills up with green leaves
and time cannot be brought back to itself.
Shadows dissolve and the gods
have reincarnated in the ageless rivers.
With the light comes hope.

1/8/1986
MWS Mrs. Milia's class
added, rev. slightly 3/18
fake translations

UNDER THE FOUL MARBLE OF JUNE SKIES, and LOOKING EAST, automatic writing

UNDER THE FOUL MARBLE OF JUNE SKIES
                        —for Jason, who was a sailor

                            (from a visual translation of Rimbaud's Fleurs)

Beyond the greasy corduroy gaze of skies,
green velour over stormy seas,
and crystal waves of flotsam bronzed by sunsets
an ordinary fleece floats on the surface.

The digital voices of harpies
like flagrant sergeants floating in the shipping lanes
clicking a welcome to oil tankers
and, asleep, you sail past the gates of Hercules.

Beyond the Golden Gate where ocean agates and akajou pillars
support the emerald dome of sky,
night virgins, smelling of roses, joust for rubies
under bouquets of white satin clouds.

Tell me, what can you do with these enormous fleets?

Blue sheep, and various forms of night.

The ceiling of the sea is tired and harassed.

Under the foul marble of June skies

40 roses are blooming on golden sheepskins
while Jason sleeps.

11/1981
added 10/16

LOOKING EAST

Looking east along the quaking river,
mouse whiskers tremble in the breeze.

Tiny tracks are seen in the silt along the shore.

The ivy creeps along the stone faces
and takes root in the fissures of memory.

Herons silently spear fish is in the shallow sandbars.
Along the bank, sunflowers hide their heads, afraid of ivy.

This coiled river bends almost back on itself
like a blind snake ready to strike.

It runs north, south, then west to the ocean
and its cloudy surface, gray like the coats of mice,
trembles in the slightest breeze.

While overhead, an osprey waits patiently
for the surface to clear.

11/1981
added 10/16

Automatic writing

Summer birds singing 

dark sunlight 

navy blue bell tolls 

sweet dust motes drifting 

Jason passing the gates of Hercules 

picture perfect meadows 

baby birds 

butterflies sinking ships 

large bells 

soaring kites 

bluebells 

tree sparrows 

the ocean pounding on the sides of the glass 

hummingbirds hovering on the brink of a waterfall 

ship horns cutting through the fog 

baby sparrows 

thunder crashing on the right 

carnavals in the rain 

the elephants are escaping 

tigers with wet feet 

elephants afraid of mice 

rain dripping over the edge of my collar 

lightning 

I am afraid of thunder 

slow breathing of streams after rain

11/24/1981

added 10/16

BENEATH THE WEIGHT OF COWS, and DEPART

BENEATH THE WEIGHT OF COWS

Beneath the weight of cows

The water, churning down
from the Swiss Alps flows by me.
The sound of the nightingale
is lost under the white roar of waterfalls.

Centuries of snowmelt
loosing from sky blue glaciers
slipped by me. I have never heard
a nightingale singing.

In the lizard heat of the sun,
I sit on a rock and listen
to the drowsy hum of bees
as alpine clover is crushed
beneath the weight of cows,
their heavy dank breath
exuding chlorophyll and trembling sunlight.

They cease their chewing a moment.

Their ears pivot towards the scaled notes
of the nightingale wavering
by this icy, ancient stream at dusk.

11/23/1981

SC Stump 1981

DEPART
    —from a visual translation of Rimbaud's poem Depart

So say you,
visions recanted in trees.

Toes of the air,
so say I. Rumors spread like valleys.

O parting night and morning sun,
today, they say
arrest life.
O rumors of visions
departing on the dance of affection
in the bright night,
trees swaying,
toes of the air.

11/23/1981
added 10/16