TC: Vicente Huidobro: Poetry Is a Celestial Transgression

Beech tree graffiti. None of the usual initials inside a heart shape are on this tree by the B6397 near Smailholm. The smooth thin bark on a beech tree has always been a target for youngsters with a penknife: photo by Walter Baxter, 9 February 2008

I'm not here but at the depths of this not being here
There is a waiting for myself
And this vigil is another way of being here a waiting
For myself to come back into myself
While waiting I go out
Into other
Objects
In this going out I give away a little of my life
To certain trees certain stones
That have been waiting for me
All these years

Tired of waiting they have given up hope and fallen back
Into themselves

I'm not and I am
I'm not here and I am here
In a waiting
State
They wanted
My language
To express them
And I wanted theirs
To express
Them
And in this lay the mistake the great
Error

This pathetic state
Carving myself deeper into these plants
My clothes falling away from my bones
My bones reclothing themselves in bark
I'm beginning to feel like I've become
A tree I've been changing myself
Into so many other things how dolorous
How tender

I could cry out but this cry would frighten away the desired
Transubstantiation
Must keep silent Waiting completely
Silent


 
Vicente García-Huidobro Fernández (1893-1948): La Poesía es un atentado celeste from Últimos Poemas (Later Poems), 1948; English version by Tom Clark

Vicente Huidobro: Juan Gris, c. 1917

Yo estoy ausente pero en el fondo de esta ausencia
Hay la espera de mí mismo
Y esta espera es otro modo de presencia
La espera de mi retorno
Yo estoy en otros objetos
Ando en viaje dando un poco de mi vida
A ciertos árboles y a ciertas piedras
Que me han esperado muchos años

Se cansaron de esperarme y se sentaron

Yo no estoy y estoy
Estoy ausente y estoy presente en estado de espera
Ellos querrían mi lenguaje para expresarse
Y yo querría el de ellos para expresarlos
He aquí el equívoco el atroz equívoco

Angustioso lamentable
Me voy adentrando en estas plantas
Voy dejando mis ropas
Se me van cayendo las carnes
Y mi esqueleto se va revistiendo de cortezas
Me estoy haciendo árbol Cuántas cosas me he ido convirtiendo en otras cosas...
Es doloroso y lleno de ternura

Podría dar un grito pero se espantaría la transubstanciación
Hay que guardar silencio Esperar en silencio

Vicente Huidobro (1893-1948): photographer unknown, n.d. (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid)
 

Tumba Vicente Huidobro, Cartagena (Chile): photo by provinciasanantonio, 10 August 2009



Vicente Huidobro -- Tout à coup: Pablo Picasso, 1921; image by Iliazd, 30 January 2009

Cienfuegos #33, Santiago, donde vivió Vicente Huidobro: photo by romántica santiaguina (Sara Ruiz), 23 October 2012

TC: Giuseppe Ungaretti: A Red Dress (12 September 1966)

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Seated Woman: Egon Schiele, Vienna, 1913

You popped up at the gate
In a red dress
To tell me you're the flame
That consumes, yet ignites again.

A thorn from your carmine
Rose has pricked my finger
So that you may taste my blood, as though
It were already yours.

Loitering at the end of that street
That breaks open
The sky from within, I had already known
Long ago that, in suffering
With reckless faith for love,
Age counts as nothing.

That was on a Monday,
To hold hands
And talk pleasantly
We could find refuge only
In a sad garden
Of the convulsive city.

Nude with orange-red cloth: Egon Schiele, c. 1913

12 Settembre 1966

Sei comparsa al portone
in un vestito rosso
per dirmi che sei fuoco
che consuma e riaccende.

Una spina mi ha punto
delle tue rose rosse
perché succhiasse al dito,
come già tuo, il mio sangue.

Percorremmo la strada
che lacera il rigoglio
della selvaggia altura,
ma già da molto tempo
sapevo che soffrendo con temeraria fede,
l’età per vincere non conta.

Era di lunedì,
per stringerci le mani
e parlare felici
non si trovò rifugio
che in un giardino triste
della città convulsa.

Standing Woman in Red: Egon Schiele, 1913
 



The Green Stocking: Egon Schiele, 1914



Wally with a Red Blouse: Egon Schiele, c. 1913

Giuseppe Ungaretti: 12 Settembre 1966 (12 September 1966) from Dialogo (Dialogue), 1968: translated by TC

TC: Wallace Stevens: Tea at the Palaz of Hoon

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Purple-ground baluster and cover: Unknown potter, German, c. 1730, porcelain, height 40 cm (private collection)

 Not less because in purple I descended
 The western day through what you called
 The loneliest air, not less was I myself.

 What was the ointment sprinkled on my beard?
 What were the hymns that buzzed beside my ears?
 What was the sea whose tide swept through me there?

 Out of my mind the golden ointment rained,
 And my ears made the blowing hymns they heard.
 I was myself the compass of that sea:

 I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
 Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
 And there I found myself more truly and more strange.




Wallace Stevens: Tea at the Palaz of Hoon, from Harmonium, 1921

TC: James Schuyler: December

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Hanging Christmas decorations in Providence, Rhode island: photo by Jack Delano, December 1940
 

........................................................................Il va neiger dans quelques jours

........................................................................FRANCIS JAMMES

The giant Norway spruce from Podunk, its lower branches bound,
this morning was reared into place at Rockefeller Center.
I thought I saw a cold blue dusty light sough in its boughs
the way other years the wind thrashing at the giant ornaments
recalled other years and Christmas trees more homey.
Each December! I always think I hate “the over-commercialized event”
and then bells ring, or tiny light bulbs wink above the entrance
to Bonwit Teller or Katherine going on five wants to look at all
the empty sample gift-wrapped boxes up Fifth Avenue in swank shops
and how can I help falling in love? A calm secret exultation
of the spirit that tastes like Sealtest eggnog, made from milk solids,
Vanillin, artificial rum flavoring; a milky impulse to kiss and be friends
It’s like what George and I were talking about, the East West
Coast divide: Californians need to do a thing to enjoy it.
A smile in the street may be loads! you don’t have to undress everybody.
..................................“You didn’t visit the Alps?”
..................................“No, but I saw from the train they were black
..................................and streaked with snow.”
Having and giving but also catching glimpses
hints that are revelations: to have been so happy is a promise
and if it isn’t kept that doesn’t matter. It may snow
falling softly on lashes of eyes you love and a cold cheek
grow warm next to your own in hushed dark familial December.


James Schuyler: December, from May 24th or So, 1966

Ice skating in Rockefeller Center, New York, New York: photo by John Collier, December 1941

TC: That time of year

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Boy beside store window display of Christmas ornaments: photographer unknown [Jack Delano?], December 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

Delmore Schwartz: The Winter Twilight, Glowing Black and Gold



That time of year you may in me behold
When Christmas trees are blazing on the walk,
Raging amid stale snow against the cold
And low sky's bundled wash, senseless as chalk.
Hissing and ravenous the brilliant plant,
Rising like eagerness, a rushing pyre
(As when the tutti bursts forth, and the chant
Soars up -- hurrahing! -- from the Easter choir).

But this is only true at four o'clock,
At noon the fifth year is once more abused,
I bring a distant girl apples and cake,
Pictures, secrets, lastly my swollen heart,
Now boxed and tied by what I know of art
-- But as before accepted and refused.



Delmore Schwartz: The Winter Twilight, Glowing Black and Gold, from Vaudeville for a Princess and Other Poems, 1950

Boys looking at store window display of toys: photographer unknown [Jack Delano?], December 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)

William Shakespeare: Sonnet 73: That time of yeeare thou maiſt in me behold

William Shakespeare: Sonnet 73 (1609 quarto)

That time of yeeare thou maiſt in me behold,  
When yellow leaues, or none, or fewe doe hange  
Vpon thoſe boughes which ſhake againſt the could,  
Bare rn'wd quiers, where late the ſweet birds ſang.
In me thou ſeeſt the twi-light of ſuch day,  
As after Sun-ſet fadeth in the Weſt,  
Which by and by blacke night doth take away,  
Deaths ſecond ſelfe that ſeals vp all in reſt.
In me thou ſeeſt the glowing of ſuch fire,  
That on the aſhes of his youth doth lye,  
As the death bed, whereon it muſt expire,  
Conſum'd with that which it was nurriſht by.
   This thou perceu'ſt, which makes thy loue more ſtrong,
   To loue that well, which thou muſt leaue ere long.

 William Shakespeare: Sonnet 73: That time of yeeare thou maiſt in me behold, from 1609 Quarto

Christmas trees and wreaths in store window display, photographer unknown [Jack Delano?], December 1941 (Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection, Library of Congress)



Shoppers walk through fake snow on Oxford Street during a traffic-free Christmas shopping day in central London: photo by Olivia Harris/Reuters, 24 November 2012

TC: Waning Crescent Moon

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Yumiharizuki (Bow-shaped moon), from Tsuki nijūhakkei no uchi: 28 views of the moon: Hiroshige Ando (1797-1858), [185-, printed later] (H. Irving Olds Collection/Japanese Prints and Drawings, Library of Congress)

Later the light
spike heel hoof
click
of the California mule

Deer
cantering
up the middle
of Colusa

In deep night
under a waning
crescent
moon

Bird flying with faint crescent moon in background: artist unknown, between 1870 and 1920, from series of illustrated sheets (Japanese Fine Prints, Library of Congress)



Red sun surrounded by feathers above the ocean: artist unknown, between 1870 and 1920, from series of illustrated sheets (Japanese Fine Prints, Library of Congress)

The thin gold shaving of the moon floating slowly downwards had lost itself on the darkened surface of the waters, and the eternity beyond the sky seemed to come down nearer to the earth, with the augmented glitter of the stars, with the more profound sombreness in the lustre of the half-transparent dome covering the flat disc of an opaque sea.  The ship moved so smoothly that her onward motion was imperceptible to the senses of men, as though she had been a crowded planet speeding through dark spaces of ether behind the swarm of suns, in the appalling and calm solitudes awaiting the breath of future creations.
Joseph Conrad: Lord Jim, 1900

TC: Now She Dwells Here

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Old growth European Beech forest, Biogradska National Park, Montenegro: photo by Snezana Trifunovic, 2007

It was the work of fortune

which brings joy and not pain only.

But can a winged thing become less?

She lived on E. 75^th Street

to speak plainly.

I mean: in the divisiveness of love

two people pass through

the same instant separately

for all their awareness sighs

for life and not for each other

but in doing that it does.

(1968)