(no subject)

[claymedeiros.livejournal.com]

Little Clown My Heart

Little Clown my heart.
Spangled again and lopsided,
Handstands and Peking pirouettes,
Backflips snapping open like
A carpenter’s hinged ruler,

Little gimp-footed hurray,
Paper parasol of pleasures,
Fleshy undertongue of sorrows,
Sweet potato plant of my addictions,

Acapulco cliff-diver corazon,
Fine as an obsidian dagger,
Alley-oop and here we go
Into the froth, my life,
Into the flames!

Sandra Cisneros

A Whole Night; Giuseppi Ungaretti

[acreofbones.livejournal.com]

A Whole Night.

A whole night
Thrown down near a friend
Already butchered
With his mouth
Baring its teeth
Toward the full moon:
With the congestion
Of his hands
Penetrating my silence.
I've written letters,
Full of love...

Never have I been
So
Attached to life.

Giuseppi Ungaretti.

Anne Carson.

[acreofbones.livejournal.com]

Town of Finding Out About the Love of God.

I had made a mistake
Before this day
Now my suitcase is ready
Two hardboiled eggs
For the journey are stored
On the places where
My eyes were
How could it be otherwise?
Like a current
Carrying a twig
The sobbing made me
Audible to you.

Anne Carson.

Czeslaw Milosz, On Prayer.

[acreofbones.livejournal.com]

On Prayer.

You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the colour of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word is
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice: I saw we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
They will walk that aerial bridge all the same.

Czeslaw Milosz.
Translated by Robert Hass.