A Un Gato | To A Cat

Irish Fairy Tales, The Story of Tuan Mac Cairill: Every beast pursued me... so that I got no rest, Arthur Rackham.

A un gato

No son más silenciosos los espejos
ni más furtiva el alba aventurera;
eres, bajo la luna,
esa pantera que nos es dado divisar de lejos.

Por obra indescifrable de un decreto divino,
te buscamos vanamente;
más remoto que el Ganges y el poniente,
tuya es la soledad, tuyo el secreto.

Tu lomo condesciende a la morosa caricia de mi mano.
Has admitido, desde esa eternidad que ya es olvido,
el amor de la mano recelosa.
En otro tiempo estás.
Eres el dueño de un ámbito cerrado
como un sueño.

~Jorge Luis Borges

To a Cat

The mirrors have not more silence,
nor more wile a wandering dawn;
you are, beneath the moon,
that obscure panther in the distance.

By undecipherable work of divine decree;
remoter than the Ganges and the sunset
yours is the solitude, yours is the secret;
we look for but cannot see.

Your langour lets my hand caress your entirety.
You have permitted, until this now forgotten eternity,
the love of a suspicious hand.

You are of a different time.
You are the lord of a private land,
like a dream.

~Jorge Luis Borges

I translated this on someone’s insistence. Although I quite enjoyed the experience, it took me longer than normal since my Spanish, not very good to begin with, is rusty.

Image source:
Arthur Rackham at Artsy Craftsy

Filed under: Poetry, Translations

Conversation with Vesta

The Tambourine Player by Charles-Émile-Hippolyte Lecomte-Vernet | Joseph Friedman Ltd.

And they once told you it was too late—
You watch the fire talking, telling you
“Dance! Bang drums, Climb walls! Don’t stop!”
You must respect remarks from virgin goddesses
Who stare at you past leftover bacchanalia
That you had thought you could control
But know the helplessness of truth.

It was in another’s dream: the Hunters
And dogs had chased the stag into water,
Then looked up at where the other gods
Staring down at them from the tree tops
Pointed with their lips towards a cave
(They’re funny in that way, these dream gods)
And going in they saw the goddess, crudely carved
Asking where everybody went. She blamed
The new Virgin, and the kid with the curly locks
In the stone building on top of the hill.

The Hunters were of a different past from hers
And couldn’t understand her words — they shrugged
And caught the deer and neglected the future.

Filed under: Artes, Objects I Like, Poetry

File:Nebra Scheibe.jpg – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

File:Nebra Scheibe.jpg – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Now all the stars have gone, as now and always
passengers glance around in wrong directions,
watching the coffee slowly pouring sideways
as if this were some newly made invention,
alternating, then exchanging fun–
Yet not knowing, how all the stars have gone.

Filed under: Artes, Objects I Like, Poetry , celestial

The Poems of Sappho, Part I

Ilya Zomb, The Moon's Maid, ©1987, 32x32in / 80x80cm Oil on canvas

Then in my bosom my heart wildly flutters,
And, when on thee I gaze never so little,
Bereft am I of all power of utterance,
My tongue is useless.

The Poems of Sappho, Part I.

Filed under: Poems I Like, Sapphic , sappho

Stones

The white stones were mountains, then they went traveling.
The pink stones also were part of a mountain before
the glacier’s tongue gathered them up.
Now they lie resting under the waves.
The green stones are lovelier than the blue stones, I thought for a little while,
then I changed my mind.
Stones born of the sediments tell what ooze floated down the outwash once.
Stones born of the fire have red stars inside their bodies, and seams of white quartz.
Also I admire the heft, and the circularities
as they lie without wrist or ankles just under the water.
Also I imagine how they lie quietly all night
under the moon and whatever passes overhead–say, the floating lily of the night-heron.
It is apparent also how they lie relaxed under the sun’s golden ladders.
Each one is a slow-wheeler.
Each one is a tiny church, locked up tight.
Each one is perfect–but none of them is ready quite yet
to come to the garden, to raise corn
or the bulb of the iris.
If I lived inland I would want to take one or two home with me
just to look at in that long life of dust and grass,
but I hope I wouldn’t.
I hope I wouldn’t take even one like a see from the sunflower’s face,
like and ant’s white egg from the warm nursery under the hill.
I hope I would leave them, in the perfect balance of things,
in the clear body of the sea.
– Mary Oliver

Filed under: Objects I Like, Poems I Like, Poetry

Celestial #1

Celestial #1

Soon enough,  soon enough, the World
Shall be too small to contain that distance
And Oceans shall part, and all around applaud
The Art! No more resistance.

Filed under: Poetry, Sapphic

You’d think that he was just one of them fellas

You’d think that he was just one of them fellas
Looking everywhere for places shady.
(This poet shows us far too many umbrellas.)

His page is white as half the hair of Cruella
(Now there was one! A real crazy lady!)
You’d think that he was just one of them fellas.

His words are good they make me say “Que bella!”
Like architecture as convoluted as Gaudi
(This poet shows us far too many umbrellas.)

Want poems? He sends them squirting out like jello
Or spreading them on toast just like a baby
You’d think that he was just one of them fellas.

He makes me laugh like Abott & Costello
(Betcha he sings lot’s like a buncha Brady’s)
While showing us ’bout far too many umbrellas

And at the end he gets us all so mellow
From hanging out with coffee and crumbly pastry
You’d think that he was just one of them fellas
(But what the heck’s with all of them umbrellas?!)

Filed under: Poetry, villanelle , Amicus

Two Impatience

All stars, that when broke out in garrulous joy,
While infinite lives watched longing, in their ways
That only they and Nameless could employ,
Made two had met should share forever days,
That so, despite what shadows might englaze
Or bring between, or distractions deploy,
Their purpose passioned further, and to join
Was all the necessary, from their rays
Impatiently await each others gaze.

from the Dhara Dhevi fragments

Filed under: Poetry, Spencerian Stanza , Eros

Fire Drill

The News predicted days for rain with heat;
supposedly the driest time of year.
Outside, my shirt would snatch and to stick to it—
my skin—but they had called us out for fear
against some future fire. I calmly trudged
down long flights of stairs—as ground grew near
I grew excited!—the workday now I judged
disposable; a welcome break in time,
a pinprick point, a final force that nudged
me out from many months that groped like grime—
I birthed myself into a brilliant light.
My eyes finally adjusted—it was sublime
euphoria for a long moment; bright
day announced itself, as trees I’d forgotten
were there, now basked with me in loss of night.
“They had captured my spirit” as something rotten
crept away from thought—I was again
as neighbor with the earth and others beholden.
Something stirred the elements, then the rain
fell gently on our assembly. Lesser sports
evading this dashed back into their pain
avoiding confrontation, back to forts
that they imagined kept them cold and safe.
While those of us who stayed, became dangerous sorts
that forgot to return, despite the comfort of reports.

Filed under: Poetry, Sententia, terza rima

But What?

But what, what? do we make of liberty?
That freedom found from lines of various length
And accidents of rhymes, that though our strength
Would rather fail, we scarce admit sincerity
While wishing for… what? Did Whitmanian alacrity
Serve us in the end? Did taste for slant
Replace those even cadences of cant?
Is this the end of Imagist democracy?
I cannot speak for poets past who wrote
With blazing precision, nor for those who started
Rules (those indecent things) we love to quote,
And wonder at how revolutions departed
From their purpose, as now we just enjoy
Those coldly curious curses they employ.

Filed under: Poetics, sonnet