The Divorce - Hans Magnus Enzensberger

[a-healing-mind.livejournal.com]

At first it was only an imperceptible quivering of the skin-
'As you wish'- where the flesh is darkest.
'What's wrong with you?'- Nothing. Milky dreams
of embraces; next morning, though,
the other looks different, strangely bony.
Razor-sharp misunderstanding. 'That time, in Rome-'
I never said that. A pause. And furious palpitations,
a sort of hatred, strange. 'That's not the point.'
Repetitions. Radiantly clear, this certainty:
From now on all is wrong. Odourless and sharp,
like a passport photo, this unknown person
with a glass of tea at table, with staring eyes.
It's no good, no good, no good:
litany in the head, a slight nausea.
End of reproaches. Slowly the whole room
Fills with guilt right up to the ceiling.
This complaining voice is strange, only not
the shoes that drop with a bang, not the shoes.
Next time, in an empty restaurant,
slow motion, bread crumbs, money is discussed,
laughing - The dessert tastes of metal.
Two untouchables. Shrill reasonableness.
'Not so bad really.' But at night
the thoughts of vengeance, the silent fight, anonymous
like two bony barristers, two large crabs
in water. Then the exhaustion. Slowly
the scab peels off. A new tobacconist,
a new address. Pariahs, horribly relieved.
Shades growing paler. These are the documents.
This is the bunch of keys. This is the scar.

Octavio Paz, "Clear Night"

[the-grynne.livejournal.com]

from CLEAR NIGHT

The city unfolds
its face is the face of my love
its legs are the legs of a woman
Towers plazas columns bridges streets
river belt of drowned landscapes
City or Woman Presence
fan that reveals or conceals life
beautiful as the uprising of the poor
your face is delirious but I drink sanity in your eyes
your armpits are night but your breasts are day
your words are stone by your tongue is rain
your back is noon on the sea
your laughter is the sun buried in the suburbs
your hair unpinned is a storm on the terraces of dawn
your belly is the breath of the sea and the pulse of day
your name is downpour and your name is meadow
your name is high tide
you have all the names of water
But your sex is unnameable
the other face of being
the other face of time
the reverse of life
Here every speech ends
here beauty is illegible
here presence becomes awesome
folded into itself Presence is empty
the visible is invisible
Here the invisible becomes visible
here the star is black
light is shadow and shadow light
Here time stops
the four points of the compass meet
it is the lonely place and the meeting place

City Woman Presence
time ends here
here it begins


OCTAVIO PAZ

Translated from the Spanish by Eliot Weinberger

Frances Cornford (granddaughter of Charles Darwin) - To a Fat Lady Seen from the Train

[literaryrepose.livejournal.com]

O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
When the grass is soft as the breast of doves
And shivering-sweet to the touch?
O why do you walk though the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?

New England Winter, Eclipse -- Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

[ann-septimus.livejournal.com]

New England Winter, Eclipse

New England will leave you cold.
Winters raw, summer brief; just enough for the heart’s thaw.
One equinox slips quickly and quietly to the next
like so many ribbons about a maypole;
sun sun moon moon – eclipse.
The children clap to see such disappearance;
revel in the midday twilight while the grown-ups look through strange boxes,
regard portals to the universe, mysterious and dark as my heart.
They watch it pass without comment.
Three minutes of me; this is all, this is all.
Come now to brisk Autumn.
Watch us as we fall through timeless space.
Someone told me, The future is indefinite.
He said, Parallel lines meet like lovers lying down,
commingling at last, they give up the fight against true love.
Now I know – such things are better left in the abstract.
Those lines running infinitely toward an ever-receding horizon.
That’s my kind of math.
That’s my kind of love.
That’s my kind of future.
Definite variables repeating in predictable patterns.
I write this as I bend to your cosign.

~Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti