RihlaJourney

Samuel Johnson

robjbell — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:07:15 +0000

The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

A City Winter, Frank O’Hara

robjbell — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:04:38 +0000

1
I understand the boredom of the clerks
fatigue shifting like dunes within their eyes
a frightful nausea gumming up the works
that once was thought aggression in disguise.
Do you remember? then how lightly dead
seemed the moon when over factories
it languid slid like a barrage of lead
above the heart, the fierce inventories
of desire. Now women wander our dreams
carrying money and to our sleep’s shame
our hands twitch not for swift blood-sunk triremes
nor languorous white horses nor ill fame,
but clutch the groin that clouds a pallid sky
where tow’rs are sinking in their common eye.

2
My ship is flung upon the gutter’s wrist
and cries for help of storm to violate
that flesh your curiosity too late
has flushed. The stem your garter tongue would twist
has sunk upon the waveless bosom’s mist,
thigh of the city, apparition, hate,
and the tower whose doves have, delicate,
fled into my blood where they are not kissed.

You have left me to the sewer’s meanwhile,
and I have answered the sea’s open wish
to love me as a bonfire’s watchful hand
guards red the shore and guards the hairy strand,
our most elegant lascivious bile,
my ship sinking beneath the gutter’s fish.

3
How can I then, my dearest winter lay,
disgorge the tasty worm that eats me up
falling onto the stem of a highway
whose ardent rainbow is the spoon’s flat cup
and in the vilest of blue suited force
enamored of the heated needle’s arm
finds the ministrant an own tongue’s remorse
so near the blood and still so far from harm,
thus to be eaten up and gobbled down
volcanoes of speedometers, the strike
that heats the iris into flame and flow’rs
the panting chalice so a turning pike:
you are not how the gods refused to die,
and I am scarred forever neath the eye.

4
What are my eyes? if they must feed me, rank
with forgetting, in the jealous forest
of lustrous blows, so luminously blank
through smoke and in the light. All faint, at rest,
yet I am racing towards the fear that kills
them off, friends and lovers, hast’ning through tears
like alcohol high in the throat of hills
and hills of night, alluring! their black cheers
falling upon my ears like nails. And there
the bars grow thick with onanists and camps
and bivouacs of bears with clubs, are fair
with their blows, deal death beneath purple lamps
and to me! I run! closer always move,
crying my name in fields of dead I love.

5
I plunge deep within this frozen lake
whose mirrored fastnesses fill up my heart,
where tears drift from frivolity to art
all white and slobbering, and by mistake
are the sky. I’m no whale to cruise apart
in fields impassive of my stench, my sake,
my sign to crushing seas that fall like fake
pillars to crash! to sow as wake my heart

and don’t be niggardly. The snow drifts low
and yet neglects to cover me, and I
dance just ahead to keep my heart in sight.
How like a queen, to seek with jealous eye
the face that flees you, hidden city, white
swan. There’s no art to free me, blinded so.

Versailles, Šalamun Tomaž

robjbell — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 15:18:42 +0000

The borders of the countries on the earth’s crust
hold less than the frostwork on my window. The tree
gets dressed. Breaks. You whisper and splash with ice.
I hug you and brush you. I remove your teeth,
like piano keys, then put them in again. Now you are
different: evolution has leveled the trauma.
They will bite again and flash, they’ll rob you
of your sadness. I’ll blow you up and pop you again

and again, don’t be afraid, I won’t get tired. The skin
needs care and bait. And sometimes you have twelve
floors
and we have to figure out immediately if you’re a
match.

To cut deeper and deeper into your taste. And also: to
gently
herd them back, the pedestrians who tumbled out of
your wing
at the silliest hour. You are Slovenian, therefore sad.

Translated by The author and Chris Merrill

Black Regions, Udovič Jože (1912-62)

robjbell — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 15:09:09 +0000

A region where the air
still smells
of burnt sacrifices.
I hang
funeral wreaths
above it
on every cloud.
A region where
weapons of death
have ravaged meadows
hugging stone.
Above it I unfurl
a fabric of verse,
weave memory
and the smoldering dark
together.

A region where betrayal
has forged its knives.
I sprinkle it with dew,
cover it with ashes,
and bound,
pitch headlong in.

In a Torched Village, Kocbek Edvard (1904-1981)

robjbell — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 15:02:29 +0000

I lean on a wall
still hot
from the long fire,
nowhere a villager,
nowhere a villain,
the ground gives way,
the universe sways
stars perish.
There is a surge, suddenly,
of the scent of violets.
I begin to hear
gentle voices:
grass rising
for new footsteps,
ashes cohering
to a new strength.

A spring gushes into
its stone trough,
a cat returns
to its scorched doorstone.
I grow more and more,
become a giant,
now I see over
the horror’s shoulders.

Translated by Michael Biggins

Bosnian Elegy, Debeljak Aleš

robjbell — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 14:58:49 +0000

for Miljenko Jergovič

Sing, young poet, touch my inflamed skin, tanned by lengthy treks
through trackless hills to the world’s end. Don’t give up now,
though the gunners’ feverish lenses stare at damp stains on the facades
of libraries and palaces that constantly call memories of a cruel century to mind.

Simply list what’s left: flocks of swallows twittering
beneath bygone arches and campaniles, the eternal wisdom of a French novel
we read in bomb shelters, the downy blond fuzz on the earlobes
of babes that disappears so suddenly, dull thuds from Pannonia’s plains.

The smell of gunpowder irritates human lungs. We have not crossed the threshold.
So speak now when deep pools of never consecrated water
make waves. Rings glow in the depths. Things past are joyous.

Believe me, truly: I am ready, sing to me for the last time
of love’s tempests, of the mysteries of women’s shadows, and
marble stairs. Sing, as you sang before you turned gray!

Translated by Andrew Wachtel

D.H.Lawrence

robjbell — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 13:51:09 +0000

When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.

Kyoshi

robjbell — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 13:50:09 +0000

Walking around

an early spring garden–

going nowhere.

Winter: A Dirge, Robert Burns

robjbell — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:31:26 +0000

The wintry west extends his blast,
And hail and rain does blaw;
Or the stormy north sends driving forth
The blinding sleet and snaw:
While, tumbling brown, the burn comes down,
And roars frae bank to brae;
And bird and beast in covert rest,
And pass the heartless day.

“The sweeping blast, the sky o’ercast,”
The joyless winter day
Let others fear, to me more dear
Than all the pride of May:
The tempest’s howl, it soothes my soul,
My griefs it seems to join;
The leafless trees my fancy please,
Their fate resembles mine!

Thou Power Supreme, whose mighty scheme
These woes of mine fulfil,
Here firm I rest; they must be best,
Because they are Thy will!
Then all I want-O do Thou grant
This one request of mine!-
Since to enjoy Thou dost deny,
Assist me to resign.

My Last Farewell to Stirling, Robert Burns

robjbell — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:28:38 +0000

Nae lark in transport mounts the sky
Or leaves wi’ early plaintive cry,
But I will bid a last good-bye,
My last farewell to Stirling O.

Chorus:

Tho’ far awa, ma hert’s wi’ you.
Our youthful ‘oors, upon wings they flew
But I will bid a last adieu
A last farewell to Stirling O.

Nae mair I’ll meet ye in the dark
Or gang wi’ you to the King’s Park
Or raise the hare from oot their flap
When I gae far fae Stirling O.

Nae mair I’ll wander through the glen,
Disturb the roost o’ the pheasant hen.
Or chase the rabbits tae their den
When I gae far fae Stirling O.

Their one request before I go
And this is to my comrades all:
My dog and gun I’ll leave to you
When I gae far fae Stirling O.

So fare thee well my Jeannie dear
For you I’ll shed a bitter tear.
I hope you’ll find another, dear,
When I gae far fae Stirling O.

So fare thee well, for I am bound
For twenty years to Van Diemen’s Land.
But think of me, and what I’ve done
When I gae far fae Stirling O.