WandererÕs Nightsong
Over every hill
It is quiet,
In all the trees
You can hear
Hardly a breath:
Birds in the woods are silent.
Wait, soon
You too will rest.
Translated from he German of Johann Wolfgang Goethe
by Mark Irwin
THE MIDDLE OF LIFE
With yellow pears
and full of wild roses
the land hangs toward water.
And beautiful swans
drunk with kisses
dip their heads
into that holy and lucid water.
But where will I find flowers
when winter comes, and where
the sunlight
and shadows of the earth?
The walls stand
speechless and cold, in wind
the weathervanes clatter.
Translated from the German of Friedrich Hlderlin
by Mark Irwin
Two Poems by Philippe Denis
Moored to your blood,
the hollow
left by your sleep
now breathes
for you—
(wind between the last stars
flows
rooster scruffs
sputters
in the coop—
before roads begin
to swell
--like the veins
of your wrists.
Translated from the French
by Mark Irwin
Dark halo,
rag of this lamp at midnight,
wick of the heart lowered.
( the plate
is a hole on the table
Outside—
the thorn dilates
in the wind
(breathÕs foundation
Translated from the French
by Mark Irwin
Both poems from Notebook of Shadows,
Selected Poems of Philippe Denis (1974-1980).
New York: Globe Press, 1982.
First Published in France:
Cahiers dÕombres, Mercure de France, 1974.
Two Poems by Nichita
Stanescu
WINTER RITUAL
Always a cupola,
another one always.
Taking on a halo like a saint,
or only a rainbow.
Your straight body, my straight body
as during a wedding.
A wise priest made of air
is facing us with two wedding bands.
You lift your left hand, I lift my left arm:
our smiles mirror each other.
Your friends and my friends are crying
syllabic tears like Christmas carols.
They take pictures as we kiss.
Lightning. Darkness. Lightning. Darkness.
I lower one knee and fall on my arms.
I kiss your ankle with sadness.
I take your shoulder, you take my waist,
and majestically we enter the winter.
Your friends and my friends step aside.
A ton of snow overturns on us.
We die freezing. And once again, only the locks of hair
adorn our skeletons in spring.
Translated from the Romanian
by Mark Irwin & Mariana Carpinisan
lesson on the circle
On the sand you draw a circle
which you divide in two,
with the same stick of almond you divide that in two.
Then you fall on your knees,
and then you fall on your arms.
And after that you strike your forehead on the sand
and ask the circle to forgive you.
So much.
Translated from the Romanian
by Mark Irwin & Mariana Carpinisan
Both poems from Ask the Circle to Forgive You,
Selected Poems of Nichita Stanescu
((1964-1979).
New York: Globe Press, 1984.
First Published in Romania:
Starea Poeziei, Editions Minerva, 1975.
Operele Imperfecte, Editions Albatros, 1979.
Le Bateau Ivre
Arthur Rimbaud
THE DRUNKEN BOAT
As I was going down wild Rivers
I lost guide of my deck hands.
Yelping Indians had targeted and nailed
Their naked bodies to colored stakes.
I cared little for any crew, whether those
Of Flemish wheat or English cottons.
And when the ruckus and confusion ended,
The rivers gave green wish to my descent.
I ran like winter itself, dumb and aloof
As any spacey kid into the furious
Lashing of tides. Loosened peninsulas
Never survived a more wild assault.
The storm blessed my sea-skills.
Lighter than a cork I danced on waves,
Those eternal wheels of the dead—for ten nights—
Without missing the lighthouse’s stupid eye.
Sweeter than the crisp flesh of apples
Is to children, green water soaked
My bark, rinsing me of blue wine and vomit
While loosing the rudder and grappling hook.
And from then I bathed in the Sea’s
Poem, bleeding with stars, and milky,
Devouring the azure-greens where sometimes
Pale flotsam resembles one who slowly drowns;
Where delirium, slow and rhythmical,
Stronger than wine, longer than a guitar’s held
Chord, suddenly bleeds through blue, streaking
Daylight, distilling love’s sour red.
I know the lightning-shattered sky, water
Spouts, reckless waves and currents. I know
Evening, and morning light lifted on wings
Of gulls, and sometimes I’ve glimpsed what many
Claim to’ve seen. I’ve seen the oblong sun, cloud-dusk-
Stained, illumined with long violet shades clotting
Like actors’ ancient purple robes, their waves
Shuddering back with those of the sea.
I have dreamed the night, green and snow-
Dazzled, lifting its kiss to eyes of waves,
The circling drift of unknown saps, phosphor’s
Waking call, singing its blues and yellows.
I’ve followed the sea-cycle’s pregnant swells
Hysterical as cows howling at reefs
Without dreaming that any Mary’s luminous feet
Could tame the ocean’s wheezing snout.
I’ve pitched against magnificent Floridas
Where flowers seem panther eyes with human
Skin, where rainbows arc their bridle reins
Beneath the sea’s horizon toward greenish herds.
I’ve seen great swamps ferment, fish-traps
Where a Leviathan rots among reeds!
Torrents of water splice a calm so-close;
The far-away cataract toward whirlpools!
Glaciers, silvered-suns, pearled waves, dusk-
Charred skies! Brown gulfs issuing toward
Impossible strands where giant serpents devoured
By bedbugs drop from gnarled, stinking trees!
I would’ve liked to show children those sun-
Struck fish of the blue wave, fish of gold, singing
Fish. Flowers of sea foam cradled me
And incomprehensible winds winged me at times.
Sometimes a martyr, vagrant, fed up with poles
And zones, the sea whose sob created my gentle roll
Brought me dusk-flowers with yellow suckers,
And I remained like a woman on her knees . . .
An island’s guess-work, tossing its sides
Among quarrels and the scat of noisy,
Yellow-eyed birds. Yet I sailed on while drowned
Men sank back to sleep through my fragile hold.
Tossed by storms into the birdless air,
I was lost in the foliage of coves, a boat
Whose drunk carcass would not have been rescued
By Monitors or the Merchant’s League.
Flame-doused, smoking, free, alive with the violet
Fog, it was I who pierced the red-blushing sky
Like a wall bearing delicious jam for poets,
Lichens of sunlight and drooling azure;
Who ran, spotted by small incandescent moons,
A plank, wild, escorted by black sea horses
When Julys rained down their hammers
And the skies, ultramarine, burned with funnels;
Who puppeted by fear heard rutting
Whales and spitting whirlpools from fifty leagues,
Who spins eternally heaven’s blue stance, and who
Misses Europe with its ancient parapets!
I’ve seen archipelagoes peppered like stars! and islands
Whose delicious skies open to the sea nomad: In these
Depthless nights do you sleep beautifully
Exiled—a Gold million birds—a Future’s pulse?
But really, I’ve wept too much. Dawns
Rip the heart, Moons devour. In suns I expire.
Love’s butchery has left me drunken and
Blue. That I might shatter and become the sea!
If I dream of water, it’s Europe’s, the black
Cold puddle where a child sadly squats
And releases into the twilight
A boat fragile as an insect’s wings.
Lazily draped in the sea’s waves, I can
No longer follow in the cotton boats’ wake,
Approach the swagger of flags and flame,
Swim under the awful eyes of prison ships.
Translated from the French of Arthur Rimbaud
by Mark Irwin
Originally appeared in The New England Review,
Fall, 2000.