The Red Poppy

 

 Kukuh Nugroho

The great thing

is not having

a mind. Feelings:

oh, I have those; they

govern me. I have

a lord in heaven

called the sun, and open

for him, showing him

the fire of my own heart, fire

like his presence.

What could such glory be

if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters,

were you like me once, long ago,

before you were human? Did you

permit yourselves

to open once, who would never

open again? Because in truth

I am speaking now

the way you do. I speak

because I am shattered.

Louise Glück

in, The Wild Iris

The Encounter

 

freepik

You came to the side of the bed

and sat staring at me.

Then you kissed me-I felt

hot wax on my forehead.

I wanted it to leave a mark:

that’s how I knew I loved you.

Because I wanted to be burned, stamped,

to have something in the end-

I drew the gown over my head;

a red flush covered my face and shoulders.

It will run its course, the course of fire,

setting a cold coin on the forehead, between the eyes.

You lay beside me; your hand moved over my face

as though you had felt it also-

you must have known, then, how I wanted you.

We will always know that, you and I.

The proof will be my body.

Louise Gluck

in,  The Triumph of Achilles

Civilization

 

Jason Peterson

It came to us very late:

perception of beauty, desire for knowledge.

And in the great minds, the two often configured as one.

To perceive, to speak, even on subjects inherently cruel—

to speak boldly even when the facts were, in themselves, painful or dire—

seemed to introduce among us some new action,

having to do with human obsession, human passion.

And yet something, in this action, was being conceded.

And this offended what remained in us of the animal:

it was enslavement speaking, assigning

power to forces outside ourselves.

Therefore the ones who spoke were exiled and silenced,

scorned in the streets.

But the facts persisted. They were among us,

isolated and without pattern; they were among us,

shaping us—

Darkness. Here and there a few fires in doorways,

wind whipping around the corners of buildings—

Where were the silenced, who conceived these images?

In the dim light, finally summoned, resurrected.

As the scorned were praised, who had brought

these truths to our attention, who had felt their presence,

who had perceived them clearly in their blackness and horror

and had arranged them to communicate

some vision of their substance, their magnitude—

In which the facts themselves were suddenly

serene, glorious. They were among us,

not singly, as in chaos, but woven

into relationship or set in order, as though life on earth

could, in this one form, be apprehended deeply

though it could never be mastered.

Louise Glück

Celestial Music

 

I have a friend who still believes in heaven. 

Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to god. 

She thinks someone listens in heaven. 

On earth, she's unusually competent. 

Brave, too, able to face unpleasantness. 

We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it. 

I'm always moved by weakness, by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality.

But timid, also, quick to shut my eyes. 

Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out 

according to nature. For my sake, she intervened,

brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down across the road. 

My friend says I shut my eyes to god, that nothing else explains 

my aversion to reality. She says I'm like the child who buries her head in the pillow 

So as not to see, the child who tells herself 

that light causes sadness -

My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me 

to wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person -

In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We're walking 

on the same road, except it's winter now; 

she's telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music: 

look up, she says. When I look up, nothing. 

Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees 

like brides leaping to a great height - 

Then I'm afraid for her; I see her 

caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth - 

In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set; 

from time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall. 

It's this moment we're trying to explain, the fact 

that we're at ease with death, with solitude. 

My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn't move. 

She's always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image 

capable of life apart from her. 

We're very quiet. It's peaceful sitting here, not speaking, the composition 

fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air 

going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering -

it's this stillness we both love. 

The love of form is a love of endings.

Louise Glück

From A Journal

 

I had a lover once, 

I had a lover twice, 

easily three times I loved. 

And in between 

my heart reconstructed itself perfectly 

like a worm. 

And my dreams also reconstructed themselves. 

After a time, I realized I was living 

a completely idiotic life. 

Idiotic, wasted -

And sometime later, you and I 

began to correspond, inventing 

an entirely new form. 

Deep intimacy over great distance! 

Keats to Fanny Brawne, Dante to Beatrice -

One cannot invent 

a new form in 

an old character. The letters I sent remained 

immaculately ironic, aloof 

yet forthright. Meanwhile, I was writing 

different letters in my head, 

some of which became poems. 

So much genuine feeling! 

So many fierce declarations 

of passionate longing! 

I loved once, I loved twice, 

and suddenly 

the form collapsed: I was 

unable to sustain ignorance. 

How sad to have lost you, to have lost 

any chance of actually knowing you 

or remembering you over time 

as a real person, as someone I could have grown 

deeply attached to, maybe 

the brother I never had. 

And how sad to think 

of dying before finding out 

anything. And to realize 

how ignorant we all are most of the time, 

seeing things 

only from the one vantage, like a sniper. 

And there were so many things 

I never got to tell you about myself, 

things which might have swayed you. 

And the photo I never sent, taken 

the night I looked almost splendid. 

I wanted you to fall in love. But the arrow 

kept hitting the mirror and coming back. 

And the letters kept dividing themselves 

with neither half totally true. 

And sadly, you never figured out 

any of this, though you always wrote back 

so promptly, always the same elusive letter. 

I loved once, I loved twice, 

and even though in our case 

things never got off the ground 

it was a good thing to have tried. 

And I still have the letters, of course. 

Sometimes I will take a few years' worth 

to reread in the garden, 

with a glass of iced tea. 

And I feel, sometimes, part of something 

very great, wholly profound and sweeping. 

I loved once, I loved twice, 

easily three times I loved. 

Louise Glück

Afterword

 

Reading what I have just written, I now believe 

I stopped precipitously, so that my story seems to have been 

slightly distorted, ending, as it did, not abruptly 

but in a kind of artificial mist of the sort 

sprayed onto stages to allow for difficult set changes. 

Why did I stop? Did some instinct 

discern a shape, the artist in me 

intervening to stop traffic, as it were? 

A shape. Or fate, as the poets say, 

intuited in those few long ago hours -

I must have thought so once. 

And yet I dislike the term 

which seems to me a crutch, a phase, 

the adolescence of the mind, perhaps -

Still, it was a term I used myself, 

frequently to explain my failures. 

Fate, destiny, whose designs and warnings 

now seem to me simply 

local symmetries, metonymic 

baubles within immense confusion -

Chaos was what I saw. 

My brush froze - I could not paint it. 

Darkness, silence: that was the feeling. 

What did we call it then? 

A "crisis of vision" corresponding, I believed, 

to the tree that confronted my parents, 

but whereas they were forced 

forward into the obstacle, 

I retreated or fled -

Mist covered the stage (my life). 

Characters came and went, costumes were changed, 

my brush hand moved side to side 

far from the canvas, 

side to side, like a windshield wiper. 

Surely this was the desert, the dark night. 

(In reality, a crowded street in London, 

the tourists waving their colored maps.) 

One speaks a word: I. 

Out of this stream 

the great forms -

I took a deep breath. And it came to me 

the person who drew that breath 

was not the person in my story, his childish hand 

confidently wielding the crayon -

Had I been that person? A child but also 

an explorer to whom the path is suddenly clear, for whom 

the vegetation parts -

And beyond, no longer screened from view, that exalted 

solitude Kant perhaps experienced 

on his way to the bridges -

(We share a birthday.) 

Outside, the festive streets 

were strung, in late January, with exhausted Christmas lights. 

A woman leaned against her lover’s shoulder 

singing Jacques Brel in her thin soprano -

Bravo! the door is shut. 

Now nothing escapes, nothing enters -

I hadn’t moved. I felt the desert 

stretching ahead, stretching (it now seems) 

on all sides, shifting as I speak, 

so that I was constantly 

face to face with blankness, that 

stepchild of the sublime, 

which, it turns out, 

has been both my subject and my medium. 

What would my twin have said, had my thoughts 

reached him? 

Perhaps he would have said 

in my case there was no obstacle (for the sake of argument) 

after which I would have been 

referred to religion, the cemetery where 

questions of faith are answered. 

The mist had cleared. The empty canvases 

were turned inward against the wall. 

The little cat is dead (so the song went). 

Shall I be raised from death, the spirit asks. 

And the sun says yes. 

And the desert answers 

your voice is sand scattered in wind.

Louise Glück

A rosa branca

 

Isto é a terra?

Então não sou daqui

Quem és tu na janela acesa,

agora à sombra

das folhas trêmulas do viburno?

Podes sobreviver onde não vou durar

Além do próximo verão?

A noite inteira os galhos esguios da árvore

movem-se e sussurram à janela iluminada.

Explica a minha vida,

tu que não fazes sinal algum,

embora eu chame por ti na noite:

não sou como tu, tenho apenas

meu corpo como voz; não posso

desaparecer no silêncio —

E na manhã fria

sobre a superfície escura da terra

vagueiam ecos da minha voz,

brancura que firme se consome em escuridão

como se finalmente fizesses um sinal

para me convencer de que também

não pudeste sobreviver aqui

ou para me mostrar que não és

a luz que chamei

mas o breu atrás dela.

Louise Glück

in, “Antologia de Poesia Norte-Americana Contemporânea”

PAISAGEM

 

O tempo passou, transformou tudo em gelo.

Sob o gelo, o futuro bulia.

Se caísses lá dentro, morrias.

Era um tempo

de espera, de acção suspensa.

Eu vivia no presente, que era

a parte do futuro que podíamos ver.

O passado pairava sobre a minha cabeça,

como o sol e a lua, visível mas inalcançável.

Era um tempo

governado por contradições, como

Não sentia nada e

tinha medo.

O inverno esvaziou as árvores, voltou a enchê-las de neve.

Como eu nada sentisse, a neve caiu, o lago gelou.

Como se eu tivesse medo, permaneci imóvel;

o meu bafo era branco, uma descrição do silêncio.

O tempo passou, e uma parte dele tornou-se isto.

E outra parte evaporou-se simplesmente;

podíamos vê-la a pairar sobre as árvores brancas,

formava partículas de gelo.

Esperas a vida inteira pelo momento oportuno.

Depois o momento oportuno

revela-se acção consumada.

Eu via mover-se o passado, uma fila de nuvens a avançar

da esquerda para a direita ou da direita para a esquerda,

consoante o vento. Por vezes

não havia vento. As nuvens pareciam

ficar onde estavam,

como uma pintura do mar, mais imóveis do que reais.

Por vezes o lago era um lençol de vidro.

Sob o vidro, o futuro murmurava,

modesto, convidativo:

tinhas de te concentrar para o não ouvires.

O tempo passou; chegaste a ver parte dele.

Os anos que levou eram anos de inverno;

ninguém lhes sentiria a falta. Por vezes

não havia nuvens, como se

as fontes do passado tivessem desaparecido. O mundo

perdera a cor, como um negativo; a luz atravessava-o

de lado a lado. Depois

a imagem apagava-se.

Por cima do mundo

só havia azul, azul em toda a parte.

Louise Glück

in,“Telhados de vidro”

Violetas

 

 

Porque em nosso mundo

alguma coisa sempre escondida,

pequena e branca,

pequena e o que chamas

pura, não lamentamos

como lamentas, caro

mestre sofredor; tu

não estás mais perdido

do que nós, sob

o pilriteiro, o pilriteiro que sustenta

harmónicas bandejas de pérolas: o que

te trouxe entre nós

que te ensinaríamos, embora

ajoelhes e chores,

juntando tuas grandes mãos,

em toda a tua grandeza nada

sabendo da natureza da alma,

que nunca há de morrer: pobre deus triste,

ou nunca tiveste uma

ou nunca perdeste uma.

Louise Glück

in, “Antologia de Poesia Norte-Americana Contemporânea”

Flores silvestres

 

O que dizem? Que querem
vida eterna? Seus pensamentos são mesmo
tão arrebatadores assim? Com certeza
não olham para nós, não nos ouvem,
em sua pele mancha de sol, pó
de botões-de-ouro: estou a falar
com vocês, vocês que olham fixamente
por entre os talos de grama alta agitando
o pequeno guizo — Ó alma! alma! Basta
olhar para dentro? Desdém
pela humanidade é uma coisa,
mas por que desprezar o vasto campo,
seu olhar elevando-se acima das nítidas cabeças
dos botões-de-ouro silvestres em direção a quê?
Sua pobre ideia de céu: ausência
de mudança. Melhor que a terra? Como
saberiam, se não estão nem
aqui nem lá, eretas entre nós?

Louise Glück

in, “Antologia de Poesia Norte-Americana Contemporânea”

Matins

 

 Unreachable father, when we were first

exiled from heaven, you made

a replica, a place in one sense

different from heaven, being

designed to teach a lesson: otherwise

the same — beauty on either side, beauty

without alternative — Except

we didn’t know what was the lesson. Left alone,

we exhausted each other. Years

of darkness followed; we took turns

working the garden, the first tears

filling our eyes as earth

misted with petals, some

dark red, some flesh colored —

We never thought of you

whom we were learning to worship.

We merely knew it wasn’t human nature to love

only what returns love. 

Louise Glück

The Wild Iris

 

Kasia Derwinska

 At the end of my suffering

there was a door.

Hear me out: that which you call death

I remember. 

Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.

Then nothing. The weak sun

flickered over the dry surface.

It is terrible to survive 

as consciousness

buried in the dark earth.

Then it was over: that which you fear, being

a soul and unable 

to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth

bending a little. And what I took to be

birds darting in low shrubs.

You who do not remember 

passage from the other world

I tell you I could speak again: whatever

returns from oblivion returns

to find a voice: 

from the center of my life came

a great fountain, deep blue

shadows on azure seawater. 

Louise Glück 

O Poder de Circe

 

The Dancing Pig

1907

Nunca transformei ninguém em porco.

Algumas pessoas são porcos; faço-os

parecerem-se a porcos.

Estou farta do vosso mundo

que permite que o exterior disfarce o interior.

Os teus homens não eram maus;

uma vida indisciplinada

fez-lhes isso. Como porcos,

sob o meu cuidado

e das minhas ajudantes,

tornaram-se mais dóceis.

Depois reverti o encanto,

mostrando-te a minha boa vontade

e o meu poder. Eu vi

que poderíamos ser aqui felizes,

como o são os homens e as mulheres

de exigências simples. Ao mesmo tempo,

previ a tua partida,

os teus homens, com a minha ajuda, sujeitando

o mar ruidoso e sobressaltado. Pensas

que algumas lágrimas me perturbam? Meu amigo,

toda a feiticeira tem

um coração pragmático; ninguém

vê o essencial que não possa

enfrentar os limites. Se apenas te quisesse ter

podia ter-te aprisionado.

Louise Glück

in, Meadowlands

ADORMECI NUM RIO

 

Adormeci num rio, acordei num rio,

da minha misteriosa

incapacidade de morrer nada sei

dizer-te, nem

de quem me salvou ou por que razão –

Havia um silêncio imenso.

Nenhum vento. Nenhum som humano.

O século amargo

tinha chegado ao fim,

o glorioso, o duradouro,

o sol frio

persistia como uma antiqualha, um memento,

com o tempo a correr por detrás –

O céu parecia muito límpido,

como no inverno,

o solo seco, inculto,

a luz oficial atravessava

calmamente uma fresta no ar

digna, complacente,

desfazia a esperança,

subordinava imagens do futuro aos sinais da passagem do futuro –

Julgo que caí.

Só à força pude tentar levantar-me,

tão estranha me era a dor física –

Tinha esquecido

a dureza destas condições:

a terra, não obsoleta,

mas quieta, o rio frio, pouco profundo –

Do meu sono não recordo

nada. Quando gritei,

a minha voz trouxe-me um inesperado consolo.

No silêncio da consciência, perguntei-me:

porque rejeitei a minha vida? E respondi

Die Erde überwältigt mich:

a terra derrota-me.

Tentei ser exacta nesta descrição,

para o caso de alguém me seguir. Posso garantir

que o pôr-do-sol no inverno é

incomparavelmente belo e a memória dele

dura muito tempo. Julgo que isto significa

que não havia noite.

A noite estava dentro de mim.

Louise Glück

in,“Telhados de vidro”