Angel Gonzalez (1925-2008)

Dogs Against the Moon

Dogs against the moon, very far away,

bring close

the restlessness of the murmuring

night. Clear

sounds, once inaudible,

are now heard. Vague echoes,

shreds of words, creaking

hinges,

disturb the shadowed circle.

Scarcely without space,

the silence, the silence

you can't hold, closed in

by sounds, presses

against your arms and legs,

rises gently to your head,

and falls through your loosened hair.

It's night and the dream: don't be uneasy.

The silence has grown like a tree.

          ─Translated from the Spanish by Steven Ford Brown and Gutierrez Revuelta

(from Palabra sobre palabra, 1964)

Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841)

The Grave Of Ossian

1834

In my beloved Scottish highlands,
Under a curtain of cold mists,
Between the sky of storms and dry sands,
The grave of Ossian exists.
My dreaming heart flies to its stone
To breathe in native air puffs
And take from it the priceless loan -
The treasure of the second life.


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, October, 2000
Edited by Dmitry Karshtedt, May, 2001

William Blake (1757-1827)

The Human Abstract

From Songs of Experience

Pity would be no more
If we did not make somebody poor,
And Mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we.

And mutual fear brings Peace,
Till the selfish loves increase;
Then Cruelty knits a snare,
And spreads his baits with care.

He sits down with holy fears,
And waters the ground with tears;
Then Humility takes its root
Underneath his foot.

Soon spreads the dismal shade
Of Mystery over his head,
And the caterpillar and fly
Feed on the Mystery.

And it bears the fruit of Deceit,
Ruddy and sweet to eat,
And the raven his nest has made
In its thickest shade.

The gods of the earth and sea
Sought through nature to find this tree,
But their search was all in vain:
There grows one in the human Brain.

Tuli Kupferberg (1923-2010)

Flower Passion

I want to fuck flowers
Flowers want to suck me
Kinsey should have given me a chapter
I would go down in fucken history
Daffodils and tiger lilies
Open up their fleshly lips
I would dare the thorns of horror
For a taste of red rose hips
You may keep you birds and wild bees
You may keep your soft does eyes
Nor can sweetgirls passion equal
Sweat peas coming through the rye

-Tuli Kupferberg

Tomas Transtromer (1931-2015)

Allegro

After a black day, I play Haydn,

and feel a little warmth in my hands.

The keys are ready. Kind hammers fall.

The sound is spirited, green, and full of silence.

The sound says that freedom exists

and someone pays no tax to Caesar.

I shove my hands in my haydnpockets

and act like a man who is calm about it all.

I raise my haydnflag. The signal is:

“We do not surrender. But want peace.”

The music is a house of glass standing on a slope;

rocks are flying, rocks are rolling.

The rocks roll straight through the house

but every pane of glass is still whole.

Lew Welch (1926-1971)

Dear Joanne

Dear Joanne,

Last night Magda dreamed that she,
you, Jack, and I were driving around
Italy.

We parked in Florence and left
our dog to guard the car.

She was worried because he
doesn't understand Italian.


 Lew Welch :

Jorge Plaza

What must the stone be thinking…

What must the stone be thinking
that crowns the high peak of Kilimanjaro?
Does it feel fortunate for his glory
for being high among the heights of this world?
Or might it consider that honor misfortune
that banishes it to desolation?
And if by virtue of their massiveness
stones were to speak a different language?
And were the stone to speak with its wake
while shattered it rolls through the kosmos?
And were it to speak with beacon light?
(When it reaches land, I will know.)