cities / poesies

this poem was half of a word exchange with my beautiful and ever ebullient kb (other half was diane diprima) ... hayes pioneered the translation of latin american poetry into english and here captured something that i instantly recognized ...

M A N H A T T A N

i have eaten the city.
i have seen myself in a thousand doorways,
simple as light,
single as crowds,
the air extinguishes my footsteps.
my skin surrounds the shadow of the
monument.
the long afternoon,
burning with women's beautiful dresses,
flows with the tide of my blood.
among the public privacies of the sunset
i can hear the dust falling.
the reflection of voices
struggles to rise
like a bird without wings.

i have eaten the city,
surrounded by musical silence,
i have swallowed crowds of pigeons.
grass grows on my eyelids,
my body is full of windows.

--H.R. Hays

jason's drawing

the greatest lyrical monument of our time

ma negritude n'est pas une pierre,
sa surdite ruee contre la clameur du jour
ma negritude n'est pas une taie d'eau morte
sur l'oeil mort de la terre
ma negritude n'est ni une tour ni une cathedrale
elle plonge dans la chair rouge du sol
elle plonge dans la chair argente du ciel
elle troue l'accablement opaque de sa droite patience

-- Aimé Césaire, excerpted from notes on a return to the native land

i've seen this poem translated so many different ways and each conveys a different mood and sometimes vastly different meanings ... so i'm posting one that i think comes close to preserving the meaning and beauty of this short passage, my favorite since i first heard it spoken in high school (who says urban public education is bankrupt?)

My negritude is not a stone,
Its deafness hurled against the clamor of the day
My negritude is not a speck of dead water
on the earth's dead eye
My negritude is neither tower nor cathedral
It plunges into the red flesh of the soil
It plunges into the ardent flesh of the sky
It perforates opaque dejection with its upright patience.

b my love ...

guess to the what styles! sadly i am not going to san fran, i am instead headed back home to new york state style (the same state that you live in ) in sept, like the 5th or so. SO that means that little cupid styles will probably be visiting you soon!!! HHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! oh hell yea! i am doing well i guess dealing with the fact that v leaves for espana this tuesday and that i have no friends in the city of albany, well actually 2 but they are nothing like my loves from m. this is short as well but basically i will see you soon, very soon. i hope your real job life style is treating you way well. i think i wll send you a shirt that says "cupid loves me", so that you can wear it until i reach you in nyc. i will give you info when i get there, address and number and all that. and actually i can proabably call you soon. so i will do that. oh and very soon i am shaving head which i am way excited about, fuck vanity and beauty and dudes. me = excited.

love you like a cupid should,

lady a

p.s. why are you leaving manhatt, why brooklyn?

p.p.s. get the letter to me soon lady, 'cause here in texas, love styles, dreadlocks, and ladies are not loved they way they are back home.

origins

one of the earliest beginnings:

"a mood of quiet beauty"

the evening light was like honey in the trees
when you left me and walked to the end of the street
where the sunset abruptly ended.
the wedding-cake drawbridge lowered itself
to the fragile forget-me-not flower.
you climbed aboard.

burnt horizons suddenly paved with golden stones,
dreams i had, including suicide,
puff out the hot-air balloon now.
it is bursting, it is about to burst
with something invisible
just during the days.

we hear, and sometimes learn,
pressing so close.

and fetch the blood down, and things like that.
museums then became generous
they live in our breath.

- john ashbery (who has quite a magical way with words provoking exaltation exultation)

masquerading

talking to you

you - the oceanic monstrous myth that lives
inside me, stirring panic and unyielding
bouts of sudden spasms that wrack the body
until i'm wrung out, wailing
bare bones exposed in the rolling receptacle
coasting along the highway until i'm sure they'll
pull me over and commit me.
it doesn't matter - i understand less
of what i fill my days with than what i know
from three minutes at your side;
the old songs fill my ears
with dilated silences

we're all contortionists,
i'm afraid the sunlight blazing
in your room that day might
revisit me, and i - by some cosmic fluke -
will combust and disintegrate,
a star bursting into dust
at your feet. i know
people don't keep well, all
angles of light and skin
stretched across bones,
face and eyes yellowing
i know you don't want mourning
but i don't have any other word

first encountered this poem in a translation class. read aloud it makes one of the most beautiful soundscapes i've ever heard and etched into my heart are many recitations to myself and others, especially mary, one in particular while waiting for the bus in front of the rockies on a warm spring day when allofasudden baptised by a sunshower, smiles all over. it was perfect. belongs in the infamous category of poetry i mumble to myself at night, perhaps in place of prayer

MAÇÃ

Por um lado te vejo como um seio murcho

Por outro como um ventre

Cujo umbigo pende ainda o cordão placentário

És vermelha como o amor divino

Dentro de ti em pequenas pevides

palpita a vida prodigiosa

Infinitamente...

E quedas tão simples

Ao lado de um talher

Num quarto pobre de hotel.

truth and snark

this in from V, who's becoming quite the loquacious and debonair little dilettante http://www.salon.com/feb97/loveslave970210.html

in fact i'd venture that almost everything on http://redwoolenshirts.blogspot.com/ is worth a read

oh wait, i forgot

reading is dead

non?