Salad for the Heart, for Marilyn Basel

young spinach leaves
crunchy spicy wild rocket
young fava beans from long green pod
spring red onion chopped fine
safran pecorino balsamic vinegar
unfiltered olive oil
cloudy green from terracotta jar

barley bread and malvasia bianca
brings a smile a song from blue

from afternoon heat to fresh dew morning
from celeritous green lizard to lazy black snake
rosemary bloom ends now to thyme and sage
from calendula to poppies
from dandelion to rocket

the day spent kneeling
to rake away the weeds
to part the ferrous earth
for a hundred tomatoes
fearing for their youthful stock
in the burning midday sun

it is late you say to take arrogances seriously
you sung of Rilke as now zinnias and peas
it is the same word you sing for an old fellow
whose echoes wade into the shallows of Michigan
there is love in everything you do
no judgement no shame
just these words which sing despite themselves
and challenge the plentiful to introspection

my knees hurt now as i write these tender words
i will dream of tomato saplings and sprouting purple basil
everything needs a guardian and i know you have one
every plant i place will live within a chaotic logic
garlic on either side of every tomato
mint with the potatoes
chick peas with broad beans
all this you know
you know these weeds are far more than that
they are the answer they are the antidote
far too easy of course to listen to your wisdom
as the world sleeps into folly dreaming of monsters

i open my garden to you

The image we have of ourselves is not ours (Translation of a Juarroz poem)

One must let the negative of one's image
take shape within oneself,
the blacks and whites transformed,
the meanings transformed,
the abysses transformed.

One must allow the wrong side
to rise to the surface of oneself,
in order to see oneself differently,
to look at things differently.

One must allow the free form of oneself
rise in oneself
and let it mingle with its virtual images,
its lost images,
make it form a bouquet of all its images.

The images we have of ourselves are useless.
They undo themselves like a canvas without a frame,
they collapse like a mirror of dust
into death.
One must seek one's own negative
and instead of developing it, dig into it.

The image we have of ourselves is not ours.
We have loaned an image.
But its negative can be the path
to an image which is ours this time:
the positive side of a thought
which corrects the void.

(Roberto Juarroz, 2002, Translation Gabrielli)

Blues for Maalouf 2

so many empty chairs
when to many a stone suffices

how much to lose

on the ascent

the tumbling hoof

stones once more
falling on the innocent

i climb with you
we are here by chance
we are visitors
we are accidents
which somehow do not happen
standing still
in a future moment

i feel like kicking all the chairs down
all the stones into the blue air
punching the living daylights out of
the goon who sprayed his weed killer
on once resplendent orchids

the victory of arrogance never ceases
his will to greater
and the dying bees
and the dying snakes
in the midnight moon the lame fox
preys on the mutant mouse

the earth cries from its open wound
and we are in there
our anger is only the will to continue
is that another arrogance

wouldn't it be best to push it all
down the burning slope
a fine apocalypse finally

the bees and poetry and all our magnificent children

sometimes smiling is impossible in this south
yet the sun effaces even idiots
the Mediterranean takes the lonely coke bottle to hell
and leaves it there with my bad temper

it will rain your music on this unknown city
on this my anger

i call it blues
i take so many supreme liberties
none greater than this writing itself
which stutters
which strides
which your trumpet soothes
serenading the bees as they die
for an extra ounce of meat
for an extra litre of oil
for some meagre profit
it is always for profit
the waters ineluctably polluted
the people slowly surely
poisoned and cured by the same hand

the taxi driver will risk his and your life
to take you to where you needn't go
to smoke a cigarette under a millenary olive tree at midnight

what does it matter
don't forget your malt whisky and hashish
your raw fennel munchies

hugging the most beautiful girl in the world
you will look over the valleys
signs
still to be written
in music

the bus will take you at dawn
through the pine woods and the groves

the homeless gathering kindling
in the waterless plains

you have to take your sound with you my brother
you cannot stop at every village
you are always already leaving
you must leave your tears in your eyes

one or two heavy suitcases
to cross the historical water
the ethnic divide
our chance is to be born into ignorance
the walls will no longer come down
they will rise again the same evening
in these lands of the deaf and the blind
in these lands of suffocating beauty

if we have enemies
even they are as unknown as us

they are the common murderers of beauty
bee killers and snake assassins

man cannot rid himself of the organ which kills

the ladies in headscarves know that
as they carry the grains to market
they sit on carpets
they talk in silent signs

the men smoke

dogs bark

you play your trumpet in silence

dawn your sister on a hill top

echoes

with stripes of silver and blue

For Tomás Segovia

I heard with great sadness that Tomás Segovia has died at the age of 84 in Mexico where he was still teaching. Segovia was a tremendous poet but unfortunately very little has been translated, if anything, into English. There is a good collection in French called Cahier du Nomade. He used to post poems on his blog. His wife has kept the blog going. You can visit it here: http://tomassegovia2.blogspot.fr/. It is moving to go there and feel the signs of the passing genius. He has just flown to a land of echoes, to join with the echoes he has always left, here, the leavings of leavings, robbed from time, strange objects, outlaw meanings in a labyrinth of the precarious. Here is a translation I did of his rather complex but superlatively fascinating metaphysical poem, Don de lo Hecho. I remember sending it to him at the time and he replied in perfect English (he is very well known for his translations of Shakespeare). He said he was astonished that I had got so close to the original. I was moved and then sent him some of my own work including a piece which I dedicated to him and is now in The Parallel Body, poem 32. In fact the translation of this particular piece led me to the poem. I then send him the full collection and he wrote back immediately saying how he spontaneously enjoyed them and that my poetry was the type of poetry he immediately felt drawn to. Later when speaking with my editor, Marcus Reichert, we wondered if we might not use a sentence from his informal comment in an email for the back cover of the book. He quickly replied: "Of course you can, I do not believe in intellectual property." Truly the comment of a great and humble man. Later he invited me to the Spanish consulate in France for a talk on Cahier du Nomade. I could not make it. I wanted to go to Valencia and meet him last year. I didn't make it there either. Now it's too late. I really should have gone. Here is the stupendous poem. Tomás , sorry I never made it!



The Gift of what is Made

We should learn to forgive ourselves
for not having made the world Love you and I
to forgive the enigmatic nastiness of Time
humiliating father who never gives up
we should learn to stop fearing him
to look at his ghosts so they remain ghosts
to not die for having lived
to not be the ghosts of our ghosts
time - not love - made me
time nourished me from the sap of its betrayals
time sowed me already poisoned me with pluralism
all that time brought me was perishable
apart from the negation of myself by which I efface time
but what to do Love with this trickster
how do we play your triumphs against him
if you win against Time Love we have lost
I betrayed you since birth
I gave you lots of faces which only Time devoured
and all of them were you who were none other than him
and you always repeated yourself and you never said anything
or each time you spoke a real name
and all save the last you give to him
and once again you rip me up to give me to him so he can eat me
let's not joke Love shuffle the deck of cards
eat time and eat my life
I can tell you all your false names
and your false true names
start by speaking start at the end
don't start with the defences of fidelity
which is like building a castle with a moat of treachery
start by launching an offensive into the heart of Time to fight it
in your name I will betray my betrayals
and I will become faithful to the infidelity of Time
to you Love I can say everything
to you Love i can speak
in your name I oblige my time to speak to you
it is he and not I who will give you what he stole from me
you alone will be able to give the gift which is yours
this said for you there is nothing outside your life
and i am yours only and you alone are you

Video and Reading of Poem 22 from The Parallel Body

A big thanks to Vincent Segal and Ballake Sissoko for allowing me to use their sublime music from their recent album, Chamber Music. Hope you enjoy.

Orillas del Sar (A Translation)

ESTABAS desleida en la dulzura
de los secretos jugos de tu cuerpo
y te llevaba el agua
como a una larga cabellera verde
engendrada en los limos
obstinados del fondo.

Era tu forma ese deshacimento.
Brotar.
             Fluir.
                        Abandonarse.
Bajaba el aire hasta los limites
perfectos de tu piel.
Blancura.
Y ya oblicuo, el poniente la encendia
para nacer de ti aquella tarde
de que lugar, que tiempo, que memoria.

                                                   (Orillas del Sar)


YOU WERE diluted in the sweetness
of the secret moods of your body
and the water carried you
like long green hair
bred in the obstinate
silts of the river bed.


This disappearance was your form.
To spring.
                 To flow.
                                   To let go.
The air descended to the perfect
contours of your skin.
Whiteness.
And already oblique, the sun set it ablaze
to be born of you that night
in that place, that time, that memory.

                                                  (The banks of the Sar)