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Monday, March 17th, 2014
2 poemas con referencias biblicas --
No me parece tan necesario
Estar siempre listo
Para lo que venga;
Mejor, pienso, que se deje
Sorprender
Y hasta confundir
Por lo nuevo.
Mejor, pienso, volver,
Y otra vez volver,
En este momento señalado
Para toda cosa
Debajo del sol.
insensible
por The Modesto Kid
insensible
como las cenizas
a la llama
arde
y miro la paja en el ojo ajeno
y no atiendo la viga en el mÃo propio
ayúdame a mÃ, por favor --
me desespero
tengo viga en el ojo
lo reconozco
¿es ceniza? ¿es llama? arde.
ilumina
espérame a mà momento, por favor --
espera
a confesarme
inmediato,
instantáneo
arde.
...y uno sino:
Vuelve ahora atrás,
quien me una vez
ávidamente buscó:
me persigue,
quien iba corriendo.
posted evening of March 17th, 2014: 1 response
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Sunday, March 16th, 2014
por J Osner
La pregunta se plantea
ahora
de hacer verso,
de narrar poesÃa --
¿puedes conjuntarles
tus palabras
como melodÃa? puedes
describir la imagen
al otro lado de tus párpados
del mundo
entero?
posted morning of March 16th, 2014: Respond
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Saturday, March 15th, 2014
por J Osner
Ninguna palabra
puedo decir
intento decir
que me enmudezco
que me quedo quieto
que me detengo.
There's not a word
that I can say
I mean to say
that I'm made mute,
I'm quiet,
that I stop.
posted evening of March 15th, 2014: Respond
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por J Osner
Tenemos defectos todos nosotros
Y razones también
Para seguir nuestros senderos.
Tenemos ojos todos nosotros
Casi todos
Ojos que no pueden ver
Por la senda abajo.
Siguen en sus senderos
Los pájaros que volaban
En la última luz
Del anochecer:
Buscan nido.
(a Marta Aponte)
Las paredes de mi casa se extienden
largas y derechas,
dijo la loca. Se cruzan
en ángulos rectos. Afuera
lo que deseo. Afuera también
lo que temo.
Las paredes de mi casa,
dijo la loca,
me rodean a mÃ
y todos mÃos. Salgo.
posted morning of March 15th, 2014: Respond
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Saturday, March 8th, 2014
Mantener enteras las cosas
Soy la ausencia
del campo
en el campo.
Así es
siempre.
A dondequiera que estoy
soy lo que falta.
Al avanzar
divido el aire
y siempre
entra el aire otra vez
para llenar los vacíos
que ha dejado mi cuerpo.
Tenemos todos motivos
para movernos.
Me muevo
para que se mantengan enteras las cosas.
posted afternoon of March 8th, 2014: 1 response
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from Funeral oration, at the death of JoaquÃn Pasos
by Carlos Martinez Rivas
tr. Jeremy Osner
The drum beat echoing across
the little parade ground,
as if we were at the funeral of some Hero:
that's how I'd like to begin. And just
as must be done, in these Rituals of Death, I'd like
to forget his death; to look to his life --
to the lives of all the heroes now extinguished,
heroes who just like him lit up the night down here --
for many is the young poet who has died in our time.
Across the centuries they call out and we hear
their voices blazing, their distant canticle --
from the depths of the night they call out and reply.
There's not so much that we can know of them: that they were young,
that their feet strode upon this earth. That they knew how to play some instrument.
That they felt the ocean breeze across their forehead,
and looked up to the hills. They loved some girl,
and scribbled all this down til late at night, and crossed lines out,
and one day died. And now their voices blaze in the night.
posted morning of March 8th, 2014: Respond
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Thursday, February 27th, 2014
Here is a poem I have been working on this week. The genesis is as follows: I was thinking about my poem Analogies for Time, and also about the Persistence of Memory. I thought, well, the Persistence of Memory is a suspension of time, time does not progress in a painting, the time on the melting watch will always be 6:55 and the watch will never melt away -- from all this came the line "No hay rÃo para correr a través de este paisaje soñado" -- it's a landscape without a river. Well: a promising line. I spent a while tossing it around and it is seeming not to be so much a poem about that painting, but about a landscape that is outside of time. (Possibly this landscape could be the setting for the eternal city in "El inmortal".) Here is what I've got so far:
No river flows through this immortal landscape, dry and still.
No hunter seeks the spoor of his hallucinated prey.
The jagged cliffs look down on desert -- cliffs of granite, dreary desert --
static sands untouched by wind or moisture, waiting still
for time eternal, the imagined camera pans and zooms
but finds no hint of motion, no decay,
no sign of change for good or ill.
posted evening of February 27th, 2014: Respond
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Saturday, February 22nd, 2014
Two short, untitled poems I wrote this week open the same way:
So he tells you
how her ears perked up
and she strained at the leash
as they walked beneath
the rustling maples.
He wondered
what the dog was sensing,
what presence unfelt by her master
the animal knew.
She shook her head and her collar jingled,
and they quickened their pace.
So he tells you
how she looked at the ice
hanging from the eaves of his house
and said it looked like daggers.
("like daggers" is not exactly right, that ending still needs some work.)
I'm kind of enchanted with this form, which seems like it would work for fiction as well -- It brings you into the past tense very naturally and sets up a framework of person -- narrator, reader, characters. The narrator here is identified as "he" and the reader as "you", and implicitly "I" am the author, prior to the shift of frame of reference that occurs on the second line; and there does not really need to be any mention of "him" or of "you" after this first clause, depending -- he can refer to himself in the first person and tell his story as "I", or I the author can keep referring to him in the third person.(Note I don't think this form would work with an omniscient 3rd-person perspective, which is something I have never tried.)
posted morning of February 22nd, 2014: 2 responses
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Saturday, February 15th, 2014
This time in my native tongue! Happy Valentine's Day, Ellen!
posted afternoon of February 15th, 2014: Respond
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¿Recuerdas bien cuando nos encontramos
en Gomorra? Cuando aún no tenÃas barba --
y yo engrasaba el pelo, iluminada por el farol antes de
verte; éramos jóvenes y con esa juventud nos sonrojábamos
como frutas magulladas. ¿Nos interesó entonces
lo que pasara entre los vecinos
en la oscuridad?
Mientras nos nacÃa la primera hija
al lado del rÃo Jordán, mientras
la rosada cabeza de la segunda
se esforzaba, saliendo de mi cuerpo
como promesa ¿nos preocupó
cómo usaran la lengua
los amigos?
O ¿cuáles grietas nuevas encontraran
para lamer el amor? o ¿cuál carne extraña
encontraran para empujar el placer? En llamarlo
entonces a uno sodomita,
sólo quisimos decir
vecino.
Cuando nos mandaron los ángeles correr
de la ciudad, te acompañé;
pero eses ángeles sabÃan también
que mira la mujer siempre atrás.
Déjame asà decirte, Lot,
cómo lucÃa tu ciudad en llamas
puesto que tú nunca te volviste para mirarla.
Los dedos pegajosos del azufre se arrastraban sobre la piel
de nuestros compatriotas. A pelo quemado apestaba
y a huevos rancios. Observé a los amigos sacando trozos
ardiendo de sus rostros. ¿Hay una forma
tan obscena de amar?
Cúbrete los ojos con fuerza,
hombre, hasta que veas las estrellas. Convéncete
de que miras el cielo.
Pues el hombre que es bastante débil para cerrar los ojos mientras
se castiga a los vecinos por la forma en que se aman merece a un dios
malévolo.
Todo esto te lo dirÃa, Lot,
si no se me hubiera secado océano en la lengua.
En lugar de eso me quedaré aquÃ; mi cuerpo soplará
grano a grano de regreso a la tierra de Canaán
Voy a quedarme aquÃ
y te veré
correr.
posted afternoon of February 15th, 2014: 2 responses
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