TC: Marcel Proust: Night Train

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The Gare d'Argenteuil: Claude Monet, 1872 (Musée Tavet-Delacour / Musée de Luzarches, Conseil général de Val d'Oise)

For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say "I'm going to sleep." And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François I and Charles V. This impression would persist for some moments after I was awake; it did not disturb my mind, but it lay like scales upon my eyes and prevented them from registering the fact that the candle was no longer burning. Then it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must be to a reincarnate spirit; the subject of my book would separate itself from me, leaving me free to choose whether I would form part of it or no; and at the same time my sight would return and I would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and restful enough for the eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which it appeared incomprehensible, without a cause, a matter dark indeed. 

I would ask myself what o'clock it could be; I could hear the whistling of trains, which, now nearer and now farther off, punctuating the distance like the note of a bird in a forest, shewed me in perspective the deserted countryside through which a traveller would be hurrying towards the nearest station: the path that he followed being fixed for ever in his memory by the general excitement due to being in a strange place, to doing unusual things, to the last words of conversation, to farewells exchanged beneath an unfamiliar lamp which echoed still in his ears amid the silence of the night; and to the delightful prospect of being once again at home. 

I would lay my cheeks gently against the comfortable cheeks of my pillow, as plump and blooming as the cheeks of babyhood. Or I would strike a match to look at my watch. Nearly midnight. The hour when an invalid, who has been obliged to start on a journey and to sleep in a strange hotel, awakens in a moment of illness and sees with glad relief a streak of daylight showing under his bedroom door. Oh, joy of joys! it is morning. The servants will be about in a minute: he can ring, and some one will come to look after him. The thought of being made comfortable gives him strength to endure his pain. He is certain he heard footsteps: they come nearer, and then die away. The ray of light beneath his door is extinguished. It is midnight; some one has turned out the gas; the last servant has gone to bed, and he must lie all night in agony with no one to bring him any help.

A la recherche du temps perdu: Du coté de chez Swann, first galley proof, handwritten revisions by Marcel Proust

Marcel Proust, from Du coté de chez Swann (Swann's Way), 1913: Volume One of A la recherche du temps perdu (Remembrance of Things Past), translated by  C. K. Scott Moncrieff, 1922

TC: All

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View from the Dunes with Beach and Piers, Domburg: Piet Mondrian, 1909 (Museum of Modern Art, New York)

With Bob and Joanne then, rounding
the cliffs from Wharf Road
to the beach one idle late summer
afternoon, as if time were endless,
sitting down then to rest
as if at home, at water’s

edge, the seabirds swooping,
the beach empty, the talk lapping,
inconsequential, nothing brings
consequence, all happens, all this
sweet nothing. The moments flood back,
a blurring tide, and then withdraw

again into the ever
accumulating pool of ebbing
attentions, lost hopes, forgotten so
called dreams. No longer here to live,
simply to snatch another breath.
Three sat talking on the beach, one

doesn’t know what was meant,
one doesn’t know what was
said. But the faces, the voices
come for a moment clear. There, in
that light. Here. The tide incoming.
So it was then as the sun went down.

for Robert Creeley (1926-2005)

VANITAS 6: LATINITAS IS OUT!!

The sixth issue of VANITAS takes on the omnipresent influence of Latin language, thought, and culture in various vectors in the contemporary world. New poems and translations by Micah Ballard, Steve Dalachinsky, Clayton Eshleman, Elaine Equi, Alan Halsey, Bob Holman, Ron Horning, John Latta, David Lehman, Joel Lewis, Lyn Lifshin, Gerard Malanga, David Meltzer, Amanda Nadelberg, Stephen Ratcliffe, Ariana Reines, Raphael Rubinstein, Hal Sirowitz, Christopher Stackhouse, Mónica de la Torre, Tony Towle, John Tranter, Terence Winch, Jeffrey Cyphers Wright, and many more provide active exploration via works from the Ladino, Martial's epigrams, Baudelaire, divertimenti, Sakra Boccata, Brazilian desserts, the immigration problem, ars poetica, fragmentos ibericos, Mario Schifano, Elsa Morante, Lorca, Blanchot, Venice (CA), les demoiselles, sortes virgilianae, tango criollo, Ovid, Pamplona, and Pino Solanas. Featured artwork by Rafael Ferrer and Juan Uslé, plus works by Vivien Bittencourt, Saint Clair Cemin, Juan Gómez and Jan Henle. Available through Small Press Distribution.

Don't miss the VANITAS 6 launch reading!!

Featuring Elaine Equi, Adam Fitzgerald, Drew Gardner, Bob Holman, Joel Lewis and Tony Towle.

May 31, 2012
6:00 pm
FREE! 

The Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery
(Between Houston and Bleecker)
F train to 2nd Ave, 6 to Bleecker
mail@bowerypoetry.com
Event Page

TC: Giuseppe Ungaretti: What would I want with images?

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Waves on sandy beach, Cabo Polonio, Uruguay: photo by Johntex, 2006

These wandering landscapes of the ocean's

Shifting surface, the incisive

Candour of daybreak on these

Or those leaves: these things no longer

Draw me; nor can my old eyes make

Out light from shade against the stones.




Forgot, what would I want

With images?

Leaves of European Birch (Fagus): photo by The cat, 2006

Non più m'attragano i paesaggi erranti

Del mare, né dell'alba il lacerante

Pallore sopra queste o quelle foglie;

Nemmeno più contrasto col macigno,

Antica notte che sugli occhi porto.

Le immagini a che prò

Per me dimenticata?

Foggy sunset with Brown Pelicans: photo by Mila Zinkova, 2009

Giuseppe Ungaretti: Poem IX (Non più m'attragano i paesaggi erranti) from Cori descrittivi di stati d'animo di Didone (Choruses Descriptive of the State of Mind of Dido), in La terra promessa (The Promised Land), 1950; translation by TC

TC: Ángel de piedra

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Angel: relief carving, 1689, above north entrance to Church of the Assumption, Anauri, Italy (image by Vladimir Shioshvili, 2006)

The angel asked, as his shoulders were pressed into the stone
Why me?  And taken from the inhabited body,
Like the lyric voice rustling from memory forests,
Childhood rushes toward death, a wind in those woods,
Crashing through trees, dying out,
Settling like a white mist over everything.

Angel: relief carving, Romanesque period (12th c.), Pécs Cathedral, Hungary (image by Takk, 2009)

TC: To A Certain Friend

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Forest area and prairie at Cooper Mountain Nature Park, Oregon: photo by Aboutmovies, 2009

Presence comes before everything, even before being
The you to whom everything once belonged
If by everything one means the fullness of nature's beauty
You must remember now that much has been taken from you
Grief too will go from you as from sorrowing songs
Sorrow goes, leaving nothing for you after a while
But the memory of the melody, some old familiar tune
That's lingered on long past the moment you first sailed
Gracefully into the room, as if all the modern languages
Were coming down to me so that I could say these things

Ercall Wood Nature Reserve, near Arleston, Telford And Wrekin, Great Britain: photo by Bob Bowyer, 2003



Moore Nature Reserve, England: photo by andy, 2005

TC: Les Etoiles

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Orion Nebula (M42 / NGC 1976): image made in 2006 from Hubble Space Telescope observations taken between 2004 and 2005 (NASA / ESA / M. Robberto)

These globes of gold, islands of light,
sought by the eye in dreams,
flash up from fugitive shadow
glittering dust on the roads of night,

and the breath of evening dying
blows them away

Heliosheath in Orion Nebula: Hubble Space Telescope image, 2006 (NASA / ESA)