THE DEPENDENCIES
This morning, between two branches of a tree
Beside the door, epeira once again
Has spun and signed his tapestry and trap.
I test his early-warning system and
It works, he scrambles forth in sable with
The yellow hieroglyph that no one knows
The meaning of. And I remember now
How yesterday at dusk the nighthawks came
Back as they do about this time each year,
Grey squadrons with the slashes white on wings
Cruising for bugs beneath the bellied cloud.
Now soon the monarchs will be drifting south,
And then the geese will go, and then one day
The little garden birds will not be here.
See how many leaves already have
Withered and turned; a few have fallen, too.
Change is continuous on the seamless web,
Yet moments come like this one, when you feel
Upon your heart a signal to attend
The definite announcement of an end
Where one thing ceases and another starts;
When like the spider waiting on the web
You know the intricate dependencies
Spreading in secret through the fabric vast
Of heaven and earth, sending their messages
Ciphered in chemistry to all the kinds,
The whisper down the bloodstream: it is time.
–Howard Nemerov (b. 29 February 1920)
Photo credit: Dew Drop Spider Web by jeffsmallwood
…seize the leap day…
29 February 2008
Posted by
matt |
Howard Nemerov |
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EPILOGUE
Those blessèd structures, plot and rhyme–
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?
I hear the noise of my own voice:
The painter’s vision is not a lens,
it trembles to caress the light.
But sometimes everything I write
with the threadbare art of my eye
seems a snapshot,
lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,
heightened from life,
yet paralyzed by fact.
All’s misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?
Pray for the grace of accuracy
Vermeer gave to the sun’s illumination
stealing like the tide across a map
to his girl solid with yearning.
We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.
–Robert Lowell
With special thanks to Richard McCann & Alison Smith.
28 February 2008
Posted by
matt |
Jan Vermeer, Robert Lowell, View of Delft |
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Dime, la rosa está desnuda
o sólo tiene ese vestido?
Por qué los árboles esconden
el esplendor de sus raíces?
Quién oye los remordimientos
del automóvil criminal?
Hay algo más triste en el mundo
que un tren inmóvil en la lluvia?
-Pablo Neruda (Libro de preguntas, III)
Read more »
26 February 2008
Posted by
matt |
Chile, Pablo Neruda, Translation |
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There, I Said
I set out from my temporary home to show my kids the place I came from.
There, I said, there I lay on the ground,
with a stone for my pillow, lower than the grass,
like the dust of the earth;
everything is preserved there.
We passed through mountains, forests, and cities that were
caves, and water gathered into pools along the way and the roads were bad.
The car lurched from ditch to ditch.
What is this sweet air? my kids ask.
What is this plaster that falls from the walls?
Oh, it’s nothing–nothing at all, explained the old woman in the window,
here, even the future is past. And she shut her parched eyes
like a bird that ascends, tucks its wings, and dives.
I was born here, I said to my kids,
my parents and ancestors were born nearby.
All are born … There was a house here,
I said to my kids and the wind passed
between me and the words.
I set out to show my kids the place I came from. And when
will we eat? my kids ask, and where
will we sleep?
–Tuvia Ruebner
Translation by M. Salomon
Photo credit: Busy Corner by ecstaticist
23 February 2008
Posted by
matt |
Hebrew, Return, Translation, Tuvia Ruebner |
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