A Simple New Year's Resolution...

Commit a poem to memory.

'Twas the Night Before Christmas

'Twas the Night Before Christmas

by Clement Clark Moore

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St Nicholas soon would be there.

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.
And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tinny reindeer.

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

"Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! On, Cupid! on, on Donner and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!"

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of Toys, and St Nicholas too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St Nicholas came with a bound.

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler, just opening his pack.

His eyes-how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly!

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings, then turned with a jerk.
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose!

He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight,
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!"

Primo Levi Translations.

Continuing with the theme of translation, today I share the work of another friend, Jenna Weiner, and the translations she has worked on by Primo Levi.  Her own words introduce her work better than I ever could and her prose following the poem offers sharp insight into the process and challenges of translation.

************************************************

As my final project, I chose to translate some poems by Primo Levi. Aside from being attracted to the original language of his poems (I am an Italian minor, after all), I was compelled by his experience in Auschwitz and the powerful role of bearing witness in his life and his works. While watching the documentary film about him, I was particularly struck by the urgency with which he wrote “Se Questo è un Uomo” (“If This is a Man”) upon returning from Auschwitz. A friend of his interviewed in the documentary said that Levi spoke for days and days after his return, explaining to his friends and family that he had been waiting for so long to tell everyone what he experienced. After he finished talking, he sat down to write “Se Questo è un Uomo.”

Although I am not translating that book, I can see the same sentiment carry over into his other works. I found his poems to be simple yet powerful—the language of someone who wants you to sit down and hear his incredible story. Discussing love, life, suffering, his specific experiences and the concept of bearing witness, all of Levi’s poems are marked by a kind of questioning for meaning or answers, either directly or implicitly. Searching within himself, society, the external world and God, his poems are extremely powerful and perceptive.

Regarding the classic dilemma of translating — the question of whether to make the translated poem the priority or to make the faithful translation a priority — I chose the latter. I was struck by the simplicity and effectiveness of Levi’s words, and I believe that he made the choices he did for a reason, so I tried to honor his choices as much as possible.

I have accompanied my translations with the original poem and the translations by Ruth Feldman and Brian Swann, for comparison. I have also followed the first two poems with explanations of the decisions I made while translating, to give you a sense of my thought process. It is safe to say that I continued translating the rest of the poems in the same way.

Cantare

by Primo Levi

… Ma quando poi cominciammo a cantare
Le buone nostre canzoni insensate
Allora avvenne che tutte le cose
Furono ancora com’erano state.

Un giorno non fu che un giorno:
Sette fanno una settimana
Cosa cattiva ci parve uccidere;
Morire, una cosa lontana

E i mesi passano piuttosto rapidi,
Ma davanti ne abbiamo tanti!
Fummo di nuovo soltanto giovani:
Non martiri, non infami, non santi.

Questo ed altro ci veniva in mente
Mentre continuavamo a cantare;
Ma erano cose come le nuvole,
E difficili da spiegare.

3 gennaio 1946

Singing 

translated by Jenna Weiner

... But then when we started to sing
Our beautiful senseless songs
It just so happened that everything
Was still like it always had been.

A day was nothing more than a day:
Seven make a week
Killing seemed evil to us;
Dying, something distant.

And the months pass rather quickly,
But there are still so many left!
We were again only young men:
Not martyrs, not infamous, not saints.

This and other things used to come to mind
While we kept singing;
But they were like the clouds,
And difficult to explain.

3 January 1946

Singing 

translation by Feldman and Swann

… But then when we started singing
Those good foolish songs of ours,
Then everything was again
As it always had been.

A day was just a day,
And seven make a week.
Killing seemed an evil thing to us;
Dying – something remote.

The months pass rather quickly,
But there are still so many left!
Once more we were just young men:
Not martyrs, not infamous, not saints.

This and other things came into our minds
While we kept singing.
But they were cloudlike things,
Hard to explain.

3 January 1946

In the first line, I used “sing” instead of the “singing” that Feldman and Swann used (the infinitive can be translated either way), because I thought it sounded better with “songs” in the next line. In the second line, I used “senseless” instead of Feldman and Swann’s “foolish,” because that’s literally what insensate means, and I thought it had a nice alliteration with “songs.” “Buone” can mean either good or beautiful (which speaks to the Italian culture), and I thought “beautiful senseless” had a nicer sound than “good foolish.” “Then everything” loses the “avvenne” in the Italian, which means “to happen,” so I thought a nice balance was “It just so happened that everything.” (It literally translates to “it happened that everything,” but I wanted a longer sentence to balance the rhythm.) I do not agree with Feldman and Swann’s decision to change the line break from the original (which translates to “everything / was”); I think it stands just fine as is.

In the first line of the second stanza, I stayed true to the original poem, which translates to “a day was not but a day.” I think that structure is more powerful than Feldman and Swann’s “a day was just a day.” In the next line, I stayed true to the original and did not add “And” as F&S did. In the last line of the stanza, I translated “lontana” as “distant” rather than “remote” because it has alliteration with “dying.” I did not think the change from the comma to the dash (as seen in F&S) was necessary.

In the next stanza, I kept the “and” at the beginning of the line, because clearly Levi put it there for a reason. I used “again” instead of “once more,” because it has nice internal rhyme with “men.”

In the next stanza I used “used to come to mind” to convey the imperfect verb tense (which suggests a continued or often-repeated action) of “to come;” something that “came” does not reflect. I did not see the need to turn the simple analogy of “they were things like clouds” (which is the original translation) into “cloudlike things.” I stayed with the literal translation of “difficult,” because I thought it balanced out the line length better than “hard” did.

Unfortunately, I was not able to preserve the rhyme of the original poem, which was really beautiful in the Italian.

Love America

A friend of mine, Mikaela Dunitz, worked on new translations of thirteen poems from Pablo Neruda's General Song.  I want to share them all, but will do so sporadically so as to prevent my readers from becoming too overwhelmed! 

Below is the poem in Neruda's Spanish followed by Mikaela's English translation.

Amor América
by Pablo Neruda

Antes de la peluca y la casaca
fueron los ríos, ríos arteriales,
fueron las cordilleras, en cuya onda raída
el cóndor o la nieve parecían inmóviles:
fue la humedad y la espesura, el trueno
sin nombre todavía, las pampas planetarias.
El hombre tierra fue, vasija, parpado
del barro trémulo, forma de la arcilla,
fue cántaro caribe, piedra chibcha,
copa imperial o sílice araucana.
Tierno y sangriento fue, pero en la empuñadura
de su arma de cristal humedecido,
las iniciales de la tierra estaban escritas.
Nadie pudo recordarlas después: el viento
las olvido, el idioma del agua
fue enterrado, las claves se perdieron
o se inundaron de silencio o sangre.

No se perdió la vida, hermanos pastorales.
Pero como una rosa salvaje
cayo una gota roja en la espesura
y se apago una lámpara de tierra.
Yo estoy aquí para contar la historia.
Desde la paz del bufalo
hasta las azotadas arenas
de la tierra final, en las espumas
acumuladas de la luz antártica,
y por las madrigueras despeñadas
de la sombría paz venezolana,
te busque, padre mío,
joven guerrero de tiniebla y cobre
o tu, planta nupcial, cabellera indomable,
madre caimán, metálica paloma.

Yo, incásico del légamo,
toque la piedra y dije:
Quien me espera? Y apreté la mano
sobre un puñado de cristal vacío.
Pero anduve entre flores zapotecas
y dulce era la luz como un venado,
y era la sombra como un parpado verde.
Tierra mía sin nombre, sin América,
estambre equinoccial, lanza de púrpura,
tu aroma me trepo por las raíces
hasta la copa que bebía, hasta la más delgada
palabra aun no nacida de mi boca.


Love America
by Mikaela Dunitz

Love America (1400) (164)

Before the wig and coat
were the rivers, the arterial rivers,
the mountain ranges, in whose weary wave
the condor or the snow appeared unstirring:
the thickness of the humidity, the unnamed
thunderclap, the planetary pampas.

Man was earth, a vessel, the eyelid
of the quivering clay, a form from the mud of the earth,
a Carib pitcher, a chibcha stone,
an imperial chalice or an Araucanian silica.
Tender and bleeding he was, but on the hilt
of his moist crystal weapon,
the initials of the earth were
inscribed.
No one
could remember them later: the wind
forgot them, the language of the water
interred, the keys were lost
or inundated by silence or blood.

Life was not lost, pastoral brothers.
But as a savage rose,
a red drop fell to the depths,
and the lamp of the land was extinguished.
I am here to tell history.
Since the peace of the buffalo
until the lashed sands
of final earth, in the accumulated surf
of antarctic light,
and for the burrows embedded off the cliffs
of somber Venezuelan peace,
I searched for you, my father,
young soldier of shadows and brass,
or you, nuptial plant, indomitable hair,
caiman mother, metallic dove.

I, Inca from mud,
touched the stone and said:
Who
waits for me? And I squeezed my hand
around a fistful of empty glass.
But I traveled among zapotec flowers
and the light was as gentle as a stag,
and the shade was like a green eyelid.

My earth without a name, without America,
equinoctial stamen, purple spear,
your aroma winds up my roots
into the chalice I nursed, into the finest
word still not yet born from my mouth.

Terza Rima

Terza Rima 

by Richard Wilbur

In this great form, as Dante proved in Hell,
There is no dreadful thing that can’t be said
In passing. Here, for instance, one could tell

How our jeep skidded sideways toward the dead
Enemy soldier with the staring eyes,
Bumping a little as it struck his head,

And then flew on, as if toward Paradise.

From The New Yorker.

A few years ago I had a lot of fun experimenting with various form poems -- pantoums and sestinas -- but, began to question the utility of form poetry compared to free verse.  This poem restores some of my confidence in form poetry.

Terza rima is a three-line stanza using chain rhyme in the pattern a-b-a, b-c-b, c-d-c, etc.  Poems written in terza rima end with either a single line or couplet repeating the rhyme of the middle line of the final tercet.

I like Wilbur's poem because:

a) It is self-referential and profoundly aware of its form -- in its title, opening line, and allusion to the work of Dante (famous for his use of terza rima in the Divine Comedy).  

b) Its play with fact and fiction in the last tercet reminds me of Tim O'Brien's "How to Tell a True War Story".  What is important is that the jeep could skid and run over a soldier, not whether it actually happened.  As long as there is an audience that expects war stories, narratives of war must be created, told, and retold; and, reality will extend to the limits we are willing to accept as fiction.

Polar Bear Poetry

A group of Seattle poets and poetry enthusiasts read poetry on the shore of Green Lake before plunging in for a frigid swim.  The event's organizer, "Mimi" Allin said, she wants to make poetry fun, get in the news, wake people and bring together rival camps of "page poets and stage poets."  

While mildly entertaining, and certainly a rush for all involved I'm skeptical of the effectiveness of such "guerilla" art.  

Poetry Responds to Climate Change

350 is an environmental action organization dedicated to increasing awareness about global warming and climate change.  350 parts per million is the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that must be reached to prevent huge and irreversible damage to the earth; 350's mission is to spur policy and grassroots action to reduce carbon dioxide levels.  350 calls the global community to action while promoting education and awareness about climate change.  

350 has incorporated Yu Kwang-Chung's poetry into their awareness campaign.  Below he reads his poem, "Aunt Ice, Aunt Snow".  

Aunt Ice, Aunt Snow
in memory of two beauties in the Water family

by Yu Kwang-Chung

Aunt Ice, please cry no more
Or the seas will spill all over,
And homeless will be the polar bear,
And harbors will be flooded,
And islands will go under.
Cry no more please, Aunt Ice.

We blamed you for being so cold,
Fit to behold, but not to hold.
We called you the Icy Beauty,
Mad with self-love on keeping clean,
Too proud ever to become soft.
Yet, when you cry so hard, you melt.

Aunt Snow, please hide no more
Or you will truly disappear.
Almost a stranger year after year,
When you do come, you’re less familiar,
Thinner and gone again sooner.
Please hide no more, Aunt Snow.

You were beloved as the fairest:
With such grace you used to descend,
Even more lightly than Aunt Rain.
Such pure white ballerina shoes
Drift in a whirl out of heaven
Like a nursery song, a dream.

Cry no more please, Aunt Ice.
Lock up your rich treasury,
Shut tight your translucent tower,
And guard your palaces at the poles
To keep the world cool and fresh.
Cry no more please, Aunt Ice.

Hide no more please, Aunt Snow.
“Light Snow is followed by Heavy Snow.”
Descend in avalanche, Aunt Snow!
Your show the Lunar Pageant waits.
Come and kiss my upturned face.
Hide no more please, Aunt Snow.

Yu Kwang-Chung reads "Aunt Ice, Aunt Snow"

Alexander Orion

Not explicitly poetic, except perhaps in its ability to inspire an ekfrastic response, I wanted to share the work of Alexandre Orion.  He is a Brazilian artist that challenges the relationship between painting and photography by exploring the way art is represented and perceived.

Visit his website to view/learn more about his work!

  

Sunflowers

A friend shared this poem with me and I want to pass it forward to greater readership.  I find this poem alluring: its language is internally tight, but offers the reader a powerful flexibility in interpretation.  The lack of information about the poem and the poet (futilely un-google-able) contribute to my impression that I am reading private secrets.

I was able to ascertain the following information about poet Yu Kwang-chung from an interview by KC Leung published in World Literature Today in 1991.  Yu Kwang-chung is an poet, essayist, translator, and critic born in Nanking, China, in 1928.  During the Civil War, Yu fled to Hong Kong with his family and settled in Taiwan in 1950.  Leung describes him as "Stylistically versatile, cosmopolitan, yet intensely Chinese, Yu writes on a wide variety of subjects, of which one stands out: the fate of China, an obsessive interest perhaps not unrelated to his life of many exiles.  More than anyone else, he has succeeded in fusing the classical tradition and modern poetics."

As I continue to broaden my poetic horizons, learning about gems like Yu Kwang-chung reminds me how much I still have to read.  I'm excited to learn more about him, his work in translation, and a genre of poetry I was previously unexposed to.

 

Sunflowers
by Yu Kwang-chung

The mallet raised in Christie’s room,
          Going,
          Going,
          Gone,
Comes thumping down.
So with thirty-nine million are bought
The tightened breaths in the room
And the bulging eyes in the world.
Yet forever beyond ransom
Is the ear that was sliced,
The red hair that was scorched,
The decayed teeth that went loose.
Forever sold are the thirty-seven years.
The mallet is raised at the excited crowd,
The pistol was raised at the lonely heart –


         Going, the sliced ear,
         Going, the scorched hair,
          Going, the decayed teeth,
         Going, the haunted dreams,
         Going, the fits of convulsions,
         Going, the letters and the diary,
         Going, the doctors and the sickbeds,
         Going, Dear Theo my brother –
And with a bang all, all was gone,
When the generous heart
Burst into sunflowers and flowering suns.

Performing Paul Celan

I was first exposed to Paul Celan's, "Todesfuge" a couple of months ago and have had little nuggets of the poem with me ever since.  In written verse, the lines themselves are potent, but only once I heard the poem in Celan's own German (the language he struggled so hard to reinvent) did I hear the poem in a way that has continued to echo.  

Below are two readings of Celan's poem: one is Michael Hamburger's translation read by poet Galway Kinnell and the other Celan himself in the poem's original tongue.    

Galway Kinnell

Paul Celan

Bhopal Disaster Poetry

The Bhopal Disaster occurred during the evening/early morning of December 2-3, 1984 as a result of a chemical mishap in Union Carbide's central Bhopal plant.  3,000 died immediately, but the numbers are now believed to be seven times that great.  In 1989, Union Carbide paid the Indian government $470 million as a settlement, but has failed to reach the victims or begin to cover the costs the Bhopal community has incurred as a result of this disaster.

Union Carbide has since been acquired by Dow Chemical, yet Dow has refused to inherit any of their liability.  The exact chemicals released have also never been disclosed.  

The magnitude of the disaster has also extended to the environment, and Bhopal continues to suffer in the legacy of this corporate catastrophe.  Activism surrounding the Bhopal Tragedy is strong and in 2004 two of the most prominent activists, Rashida Bee and Champa Devi Shukla (both survivors of the disaster), won the biggest environmental award given in the United States, the Goldman Prize.

Through awareness, activists hope to spur corporate accountability and restitution.  Below are some examples of poetry inspired by the Bhopal disaster.

"FLAMES NOT FLOWERS"
By Terry Allan

Har nari ki yahi ladai It is the struggle of all women
Jhadoo maro Dow ko Beat Dow with a broom
Phool nahi Chingari hain hum We are flames not flowers
Jhadoo maro Dow ko Beat Dow with a broom

Ither se maro, Uther se maro Beat from this side, beat from that side
Jhadoo maro Dow ko
Hum bhi marey tum bhi maro I beat and you also beat
Jhadoo maro Dow ko

Josh se maro, Host se maro Beat with pasión, beat fully conscious
Jhadoo maro Dow ko
Mil ke maro Takat se maro Beat together, beat with power
Jhadoo maro Dow ko

We are women of Bhopal, we are flames not flowers
We will not wilt before your corporate power
With brooms in hand we're gonna sweep you away
'Cause we'll fight for justice till our dyin' day

You're Union carbide, you cannot hide
Behind your deadly clouds of cyanide
You gassed our city with your poison factory
Cutting costs on safety making MIC
Using double standards, untried technology
And you said it's good for the economy
You ruined our lives, killed our sons and our mothers
And before we could mourn our dead sisters and brothers
You'd already denied responsibility
For the worst disaster in history.

You made a bargain, with our government
To drop the charges and take the settlement
The compensation, you said you thought was fair
"500 dollars goes pretty far over there"
Your champagne glasses you raised in the air
'Cause it only cost you 43 cents per share
Your paltry settlement sent the prices of your stock up
But we won't give up until your ass is in the lock-up

The blood we cough up
Because you screwed up
You're gonna fess up
And clean the mess up

Nineteen years later we're still suffering and dying
And you're still claiming trade secrets and lying
20,000 dead and counting is much more than a statistic
We remember every loved one's smile, our heartbreak's realistic
More than a hundred thousand still living in pain
How can you sit there and tell us that our cries are in vain
The toxic waste dumps around your factory
Are adding insult, to injury
The poisoned water that we have to drink
Ask any daughter, she knows how much it stinks.
You thought the merger with Dow Chemical
Would absolve you of liability
But for your crimes against humanity
We're gonna bring Dow Chemical to its knees.

Dow has a history, several claims to fame
It was their Napalm set Vietnam aflame.
Agent Orange causes birth defects
And using Dursban has nasty side-effects
Dioxin squirts from every mother's breast
Worldwide from north to south, east to west.
But you corporate men in your ties of silk
Can't know the horror of mothers feeding toxic breast milk
To our beautiful babies, our newborn innocents
This ain't no way to start their life experience.
You invade our bodies knowingly
Thanks to Dow, we're living poisoned daily.

If the truth be told we would rather die
Than have to live like you where every breath is a lie
Your corporate culture, for what it's worth
Has done more to ruin our planet earth
By turning humans into hollow shells
Addicted consumers in their homogenous hells.
But in your quest for profit we refuse to take part
Against all odds we'll live our lives with joy and heart
We believe in the power of the human spirit
We raise our voices together so everyone can hear it.

We are women of the world, we are flames, not flowers
We will not wilt before your corporate power
Hand in hand and heart to heart, side by side
We will fight for justice 'til the day we die.


"torture me"
By a Bhopal survivor

aim a blowtorch at my eyes pour acid down my throat strip the tissue from my lungs. drown me in my own blood. choke my baby to death in front of me. make me watch her struggles as she dies. cripple my children. let pain be their daily and their only playmate. spare me nothing. wreck my health so I can no longer feed my family. watch us starve. say it's nothing to do with you. don’t ever say sorry. poison our water. cause monsters to be born among us. make us curse God. stunt our living children’s growth. for twenty years ignore our cries. teach me that my rage is as useless as my tears. prove to me beyond all doubt that there is no justice in the world. you are a wealthy american corporation and I am a gas victim of bhopal.

"In the Sweep of Human Rights"
By Larry Dohrs
(dedicated to Champa Devi Shukla & Rashida Bee)

She sweeps like Shiva’s
universal dance against ignorance
cleaning up the toxic details
without fear of reprisals,
she sweeps the excuses
out from beneath the corporate
imported subsidy rug
where Mr. Executive Empire
piles up his indictment
to face criminal charges in India

Along with her neighbors -
the survivor widows of Bhopal
she sweeps up social responsibility
for the pesticide melt down,
cry’s out for clean up
of drinking water,
infected water with chemicals
decayed from cyanide exposure
(just like in gas chambers)

She shares the Goldman
Environmental Award (2004)
with her compatriot, together
they sweep out the evidence
gathered in stringent investigations,
sweep out the darkest grief
holding together the ten thousand-fold losses,
sweep away the social distance
concealing chronic pesticide wounds

Let us sweep
all together at their side
gather detailed answers for accountability,
sweep justice up
with this community of down-winders,
pick up full restitution
life long health care,
the simple human rights
required like bread
like a searing freedom song
for the endangered
(and the endearing)
women of Bhopal

Larry is a West Coast poet with recent work appearing in "Citizen 32" and in NthPositionDot-Com's "Poems for Madrid." Larry values a poetry of witness and contributing to a literature of justice. He is working on a book of poems called "Mural Poems." He has been a volunteer editor with Poets Against War, reads often with several poetry series, and assists Amnesty International Puget Sound with literary, and human rights events. He can be contacted at: wordheath at yahoo dot com.

For more Bhopal inspired poems and to access the poems you see posted above click here.

World AIDS Day Poetry

I'm a day late, but it just dawned on me that in honor of yesterday's 20th celebration of World AIDS Day I should have shared some poetry related to HIV/AIDS.

Here are selections from Tory Dent's "Black Milk".  Tory Dent lived with HIV for 17 years before her death in 2005 and was a famous poet and commentator on the AIDS crisis.  

Black Milk
in memory of "HIV, Mon Amour"

I.

Black trees, blue trees, white trees, bare trees --
Whatever was my life has been returned to me
in a made-of-trees coffin
killed in action like a veteran husband, its flag
a pitiful consolation,
its flag a smug presupposition,
for some greater cause more important
apart from what you know to be the most important to you:
his voice, his smile.

To me, the world now held away, irreversibly,
that once was just (now "just"?) suspended,
when I thought then there could be no greater torture.

Life's truest truth, it's that truth itself
unravels in ways that reveal less not more sense or comfort.

Consolationless is the tarmac wind, the kickback of jet fuel fume,
the bulkhead of the coffin wherein only regret to be alive
alights in contrast.

It burns like eyes burned out by cinders,
a hot poker waved amidst laughter.

It burns, a torch's temporary pathway
improvised within black trees, blue trees.

It burns like a novena unerring,
pure prayer within the black trees of longing.

It burns, the ultimate act of atonement,
the cremation of what I tried to save.

It burns in order to drown, ash in saline,
May fly rose petals of burial at sea.


II.

It burns in order to drown, ash in saline,
the May fly rose petals of burial at sea.

The regret burns like its converse property,
the hope I had (so fucking much of it) now retarded in me,
a tumor, inoperable, contained by chemo, a perverse kind of cancer
where the desire to live only prolongs the suffering --

I wish death upon this desire, I wish AIDS and cancer
upon this desire, let the desire suffer instead of me,
this pathetic willingness to live regardless of consequence,
regardless of indignation.

Who am I but the vessel, the holy vessel for this desire,
and for the natural spasms that confirm somatic reality:
vomiting, allergic reactions, orgasm, coughing;
involuntary humiliations, proof of living, of precious humanness.

In order to suffer one must divorce the pain,
divorce the vessel, until you become a slave to the vessel,
a whore to the harpy's needs, its spasms, its pathetic desires.

Its moanings must be tended, its shaking and sweating,
its fevers, its ailments, its medications -- copious, expensive.
What are these drugs but a very refined life-support system,
science at its most powerful, most phallocentric?

We were not born for this, this stainless steel,
this sanitary lack of love, this medicine-vacuum.


III.

For this, this stainless steel, this sanitary lack of love,
this medicine-vacuum, we were not born.

Yet every twelve hours I take my drugs and refuse to capitulate
to the desire, acquiesce to that most base, pre-conscious motivation
that's common to humans and dogs, from scavengers
whose howling in the distance we detect as equidistant to the canine
within us, the jubilee of inconsequential behavior.

We enjoy acoustically the disowning.

But under the weight of one life-threatening moment,
concretized and extenuated by its repercussion,
what distinguishes us as civilized, as generations apart
from the medieval acts of our ancestors, collapses,
so fragile is the rope bridge of its construction,
reducing us all to dogs.

Let no more natural light befall, thus, like shiny hair
upon pillowcase, this crying face.

Let no more jealousies assemble in my heart like migrant workers.

Take me as a life can be taken in a car accident,
or at gunpoint then exterminated,
taken from the pack, a succulent carcass extracted
from their exhilarated jaws, for too well do I identify
with the hunger, the taste, the smell.

Take the needle, arrest these senses,
excise the egg-shaped moon from my field of vision
and silence the bark.

Sections I, II, III of the 35-section title poem from Tory Dent's recently released Black Milk (Sheep Meadow Press, 2005).  Accessed via NPR. 

I invite you to look at The Body's collection of HIV/AIDS poetry.  Think about ways art enters the political and what role poetry plays as a means to instigate activism and awareness.

"A Noun Sentence"

To continue with the past two days' discussions of parts of speech, I introduce Mahmoud Darwish's, "A Noun Sentence".

A Noun Sentence

by Mahmoud Darwish

A noun sentence, no verb

to it or in it: to the sea the scent of the bed

after making love...a salty perfume

or a sour one.  A noun sentence: my wounded joy

like the sunset at your strange windows.

My flower green like the phoenix.  My heart exceeding

my need, hesitant between two doors:

entry a joke, and exit 

a labyrinth.  Where is my shadow -- my guide amid

the crowdedness on the road to judgment day?  And I

as an ancient stone of two dark colors in the city wall,

chestnut and black, a protruding insensitivity

toward my visitors and the interpretation of shadows.  Wishing 

for the present tense a foothold for walking behind me

or ahead of me, barefoot.  Where 

is my second road to the staircase of expanse?  Where

is futility?  Where is the road to the road?

And where are we, the marching on the footpath of the present

tense, where are we?  Our talk a predicate 

and a subject before the sea, and the elusive foam 

of speech the dots on the letters,

wishing for the present tense a foothold

on the pavement ...

From Mahmoud Darwish's The Butterfly's Burden translated by Fady Joudah (Copper Canyon Press: Washington, 2007), p. 255.  

I want to point out two distinct features of this poem.  

First, I am amused and comforted in the premise of a "noun sentence".  I say comforted because in the subsequent example of "noun sentences", I lose myself in his descriptions: "to the sea the scent of the bed/after making love ... a salty perfume/or a sour one."(2-4) needs no verb or action because it is complete in and of itself.  To pair a verb with that vivid image would displace the image and extend it to unnecessary associations.  

Similarly, "my wounded joy/like the sunset at your strange windows" (4-5) is a simile without legs (a verb, action) to move it from the "strange windows".  The poem exists completely in itself, in the presence and present of each line read.

This brings me to my second observation: Darwish's insistence on the present tense.  "Present tense" is made reference to explicitly thrice in the poem and the only verbs that dictate action are in the present tense in the questions of the second half of the poem.  The present tense being verbs, "is" and "are", are peppered throughout the poem's five questions.  The strict use of only being verbs is important insofar as it demonstrates the most simplistic expression of being or existence.  Appropriately, these verbs of being exist contextually to pose the reader with a series of rather existential questions: "Where is my shadow -- my guide amid/the crowdedness on the road to judgment day?" (9-10) and "Where/is my second road to the staircase of expanse?  Where/is futility?  Where is the road to the road?/And where are we, the marching on the footpath of the present/tense, where are we?" (15-19).  

The emphasis on the present tense strengthens the success of the "noun sentence" or image being read completely in the moment without concern for the image's past or future.  These vivid images succeed without verbs to take them anywhere else.  Furthermore, verbs (in their function as the predicate of the sentence) are absent from all the declarative sentences, which suggests answers are written and found in nouns.