Pablo Neruda: “Sonnet LXXXI”

Read by Julia Roberts & Andy Garcia.

Yehuda Amichai: “Open closed open”

Open closed open. Before we are born, everything is open
in the universe without us. For as long as we live, everything is closed
within us. And when we die, everything is open again.
Open closed open. That’s all we are.

Yehuda Amichai (1998)

Translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld

Photo credit: Red Autumn Rose by bratjerm

William Blake: “The Tyger”

Original plate for The Tyger by William Blake (b. 28 November 1757)

Glauco Pessôa: “Pulso Descalço”

“Barefoot Pulse”

Wilfred Owen: “The Parable of the Young Man and the Old”

The Parable of the Young Man and the Old

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned, both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake, and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets the trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Wilfred Owen

Image of sculpture: “Abraham and Isaac” by George Segal (b. 26 November 1924)

Rainer Maria Rilke: “Autumn Day”

HERBSTTAG

Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr groß.
Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren,
und auf den Fluren laß die Winde los.

Befiehl den letzten Früchten voll zu sein;
gieb ihnen noch zwei südlichere Tage,
dränge sie zur Vollendung hin und jage
die letzte Süße in den schweren Wein.

Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.
Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben,
wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben
und wird in den Alleen hin und her
unruhig wandern, wenn die Blätter treiben.

Rainer Maria Rilke

AUTUMN DAY

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the
evening,
and wander the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

Translated by Stephen Mitchell

Photo credit: Autumn Wind by Bob Jagendorf 

Sharon Olds: “Self Portrait, Rear View”




Self Portrait, Rear View

At first I almost do not believe it, in the hotel triple mirror
That that is my body,
In back, below the waist, and above the legs
The thing that doesn’t stop moving when I stop moving
And it doesn’t even look like just one thing
Or even one big double thing
Even the word saddlebags has a smooth calfskin feel to it
Compared to this compendium of net string bags
Shaking our booty of cellulite, fruits, and nuts
Some lumps look like bon bons translated in tact from chocolate box to buttocks
The curl on top showing slightly through my skin
Once I see what I can do with this, I do it
High-stepping to make the rapids of my bottom
Rush and ripple like a world wonder
Slowly I believe what I am seeing
A 54-year-old rear end, once a tight end
High and mighty, almost a chicken butt
Now exhausted as if tragic
But this is not an invasion
My cul-de-sac is not being used to hatch
alien cells, bald peas, gyroscopes, sacks of marbles
It’s my hoard of treasure, my good luck
Not to be dead, yet
But when I toss the main of my ass again
And see in a clutch of eggs, each egg on its own as if shell-less, shudder
I wonder if anyone has ever died looking in a mirror in horror
I think I will not even catch a cold from it
I will go to school to it, to Butt Boot Camp
To the video store where I saw in the window
My hero, my workout jelly roll model, my apotheosis–
Killer Buns.

Sharon Olds, b. 19 November 1942

Paul Celan: “Corona”

Corona
Aus der Hand frißt der Herbst mir sein Blatt: wir sind Freunde.
Wir schälen die Zeit aus den Nüssen und lehren sie gehn:
die Zeit kehrt zurück in die Schale.

Im Spiegel ist Sonntag,
im Traum wird geschlafen,
der Mund redet wahr.

Mein Aug steigt hinab zum Geschlecht der Geliebten:
wir sehen uns an,
wir sagen uns Dunkles,
wir lieben einander wie Mohn und Gedächtnis,
wir schlafen wie Wein in den Muscheln,
wie das Meer im Blutstrahl des Mondes.

Wir stehen umschlungen im Fenster, sie sehen uns zu von der Straße:
es ist Zeit, daß man weiß!
Es ist Zeit, daß der Stein sich zu blühen bequemt,
daß der Unrast ein Herz schlägt.
Es ist Zeit, daß es Zeit wird.

Es ist Zeit.

Paul Celan (b. 23 November 1920)

Corona
Autumn eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.
From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk:
then time returns to the shell.

In the mirror it’s Sunday,
in dream there is room for sleeping,
our mouths speak the truth.

My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one:
we look at each other,
we exchange dark words,
we love each other like poppy and recollection,
we sleep like wine in the conches,
like the sea in the moon’s blood ray.

We stand by the window embracing, and people
look up from the street:
it is time they knew!
It is time the stone made an effort to flower,
time unrest had a beating heart.
It is time it were time.

It is time.

Translated by Michael Hamburger

Photo credit: Moon, sea, groyne, beach by mole-volio

May Sarton: from “The Action of the Beautiful”

There is no future, past, only pure presence.
The moment of a glance is brimmed so full
It fuses consciousness to a new balance–
This is the action of the beautiful.

May Sarton, from “The Action of the Beautiful”

Photo credit: My Favorite Tree by brian doucette

Phillippe Jaccottet: “Weight of stones…”

Poids des pierres, des pensées

Songes et montagnes
n’ont pas même balance

Nous habitons encore un autre monde
Peut-être l’intervalle

Phillipe Jaccottet

Weight of stones, weight of thoughts

Dreams and mountains
do not even balance

We still inhabit another world
Perhaps the interval

Translated by Paul Auster

Photo credit: The Lonely Farm by arnitr

Lucretius: from “On the Nature of Things”

from On the Nature of Things

Another fact I wish to have you know:
When the atoms are carried straight down through the void
By their own weight, at an utterly random time
And a random point in space they swerve a little,
Only enough to call it a tilt in motion.
For if atoms did not tend to lean, they would
Plummet like raindrops through the depths of space,
No first collisions born, no blows created,
So Nature never could have made a thing.

“On the Nature of Things” (ll 217-225)
Lucretius

Translation by Anthony M. Esolen

Photo credit: Autumn Birches–Aberdeenshire by euan pics

W. H. Auden: “Musée des Beaux Arts

Musée des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

W. H. Auden 1940

Billy Collins: “Sweet Talk”

I like Liza Romero‘s take on Billy Collins’ already virtually famous poem “Sweet Talk.”

W.H. Auden: from “Many Happy Returns”

Happy Birthday, Maxim

Live beyond your income,
Travel for enjoyment,
Follow your own nose.

W.H.Auden,
from “Many Happy Returns”

Geof Huth: “Out of Character”