DRINKING IN MOONLIGHT

DRINKING IN MOONLIGHT 

By Li Po

Translated by David Hinton

Among the blossoms, a single jar of wine.
No one else here, I ladle it out myself.

Raising my cup, I toast the bright moon,
and facing my shadow makes friends three,

though moon has never understood wine,
and shadow only trails along behind me.

Kindred a moment with moon and shadow,
I've found a joy that must infuse spring:

I sing, and moon rocks back and forth;
I dance, and shadow tumbles into pieces.

Sober, we're together and happy. Drunk,
we scatter away into our own directions:

intimates forever, we'll wander carefree
and meet again in Star River distances.

Note: Star River: Milky way

Painting : Watching the mid-autumn moon by by Xiao Yun

Li Po was one of the greatest poets of ancient China. The Chinese have valued Li Po for his gaiety, freedom, sympathy and energy for so long that he has become a sort of archetype of the bohemian artist and puckish wanderer. The story that he drowned when he drunkenly tried to embrace the moon in the river is doubtless apocryphal, but it is also delightfully apt to anyone who knows his work. This poem is no different.

Li Po made his solitary state into an ecstatic one because he knew how to transform his lonesomeness and associated sadness into joy. Life at its best, as Li Po envisions it, is a kind of intoxication, an elevation; poetry, like good wine, should help us get perspective on ourselves and put the cares of the world aside. Even nature, as Li Po likes to present it, has a kind of intoxicated quality, especially in spring. The poet's presentation of himself as drunkenly enjoying some natural setting is thus a cleverly unpretentious way of presenting transcendent states of mind and being. This idea isn't exclusive to Li Po, but he handles the metaphor of the bibulous poet in a tipsy world as well as anyone before or since.

BLACK BEANS

BLACK BEANS

By Sarah Kirsch

Translated by Anne Stokes

In the afternoon I pick up a book

In the afternoon I put a book down

In the afternoon it enters my head there is war

In the afternoon I forget each and every war

In the afternoon I grind coffee

In the afternoon I put the ground coffee

Back together again gorgeous

Black beans

In the afternoon I take off my clothes put them on

Apply make-up first then wash

Sing don't say a thing

The above poem is by Sarah Kirsch, the acclaimed East German poet who died last year, aged 78. Her selected poetry translation into English has been published for the first time this year. The book “Iced Roses: Selected Poems” is edited and translated by Anne Stokes.

In an interview with Die Zeit in 2005, Kirsch said her poems were sparked off by "optical impressions". Although Black Beans isn't primarily a visual poem, the image of the "gorgeous/ Black beans" is clearly important. It gives it its title and the key metaphor – the hopeless, Sisyphean task of putting "the ground coffee/ Back together again".

Realism rules until this point. The long, repetitive, restless afternoon is characterized by lack of concentration. A book is picked up and abandoned; then the speaker takes us into her own head, and the same thing happens to her perception ("there is war"). It's not denied that "there is war", however: it's simply that the power of some undisclosed emotion or event makes the speaker "forget each and every war".

The fantastical coffee "episode" may be an assertion of the desire for psychological control. It's the point at which the Seventh Writers' Congress spokesperson could have discerned a literal Socialist paradox. Material goods in short supply are all the more treasured – eked out, recycled, re-used whenever possible.

Then again, the poem invokes the truism that you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs – a universal law under every Ism known to mankind. The magical idea – omelette and eggs, cup of rich coffee and "gorgeous" coffee beans – is reinforced by the absence of punctuation, a feature of the whole poem, of course, but particularly assertive when it occurs inside the line: "Back together again gorgeous/ Black beans."

At this same point the anaphoric pattern ("In the afternoon") breaks down, enhancing the visual impact of the "Black beans". It's picked up once more, in line nine, a kind of punctuation-through-repetition, but then a more urgently-paced narrative takes over. The last three lines are a kind of "flash fiction". They bring us close to the speaker, generous in denotation but without filling in connective details. The pronoun "I" occurs only once in the English version, with an effect of acceleration and added mystery. If the speaker is a woman waiting for her lover, do we assume he has arrived and made love to her in between those lines? Do the making-up and washing activities bookend gratified desire, or signal the breakdown of reason?

Perhaps the last line ("sing don't say a thing") alludes to political astuteness. In a repressive society, the poet might favour the traditional "song" of love- or nature poetry in preference to political comments the censor could interpret as subversion. Singing and not speaking might also imply madness – an Ophelia-like love-dementia, where song becomes the only kind of speech available. The simple, cheery musical chime of the sing/thing rhyme in the English version lightens the mood and raises the possibility of a happy dénouement.

Black Beans may be a love poem but it's also a trenchant critique of materialism, capitalist or communist. Its narrator seems islanded among the good things of civilization, the books and information, the coffee, clothes and cosmetics. At some vital, core level of her being, she remains aloof. What drives the poem is its inner narrative – the story of an "I" who perceives, thinks, knows, forgets, and apprehends the world with both sensuous admiration and desolate boredom. In a rare meeting of inner and outer possibility, this "I" at last finds a voice, and sings.

Ref : Poem of the Week by Carol Rumens in Guardian Newspaper

Ice Roses: Selected Poems Paperback – March 1, 2014 by Sarah Kirsch (Author), Anne Stokes (Translator, Introduction)

LAMENTING THE DEAD

LAMENTING THE DEAD

By P'an Yeuh

Translated by  Burton Watson

Before I know it, winter and spring depart,
cold and heat suddenly trading places,
and she has gone to the deepest springs;
heaped earth forever seals her apart.
My secret longings I cannot fulfill;
what good would it do to linger there?
Swearing allegiance to the sovereign's command,
I turn my heart back to former tasks.
But seeing the house, I think of her;
entering its rooms, I recall the past.
Curtains and screens hold no shadow of her;
her writings the only trace that remains,
the drifting scent that never quite fades,
her things left forgotten, hung on the wall.
Dazed by longing , I think she is here,
then come to myself with twinge of pain.
We were a pair of birds winging to the wood,
mated, then suddenly one morning alone;
a pair of fish swimming the stream,
eye to eye, then parted midway.
Spring wind filters in through the cracks,
morning rain drips down from the eaves;
lying at rest, when will I forget?
Each day I sink into deeper sorrow.
Perhaps a time will come when it will fade
and I, like Chuang Tzu , can pound the tub.

P'an Yueh (247-300) , along with Lu Ji, was among the finest poets of his time, but only twenty of his poems have survived the centuries. He was born in today's Henan province to a family of officials, and he himself held a succession of important official posts. As legend has it, his extraordinary beauty was such that he was mobbed by crowds of women when driving through the streets of the capital. His involvement in a political scheme against the crown prince led to his execution in 300. His three poems to his dead wife are his most famous works, though he was also renowned as a writer of rhyme prose

Reading this beautiful lament left me misty eyed. Transition of one's beloved is something that takes years to accept, absorb and reconcile with.  Burton Watson has sensitively captured the feelings and emotions of the poem.

Note: When the Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu lost his wife, he grieved for her like other men, but in time he became reconciled and spent his days singing and pounding on a tub.

The line ending 'I cannot fulfill ' indicates his desire to join his wife by committing suicide at her grave.

Source: The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry edited by Burton Watson

From Far Away

From Far Away

By Delmira Augustini

Translated by Dr. Alejandro Caceres and Willis Barnstone

In silence I feel time passing,
Like a slow parade, cold and rhythmical . . .
Ah! When you are far away my whole life cries
And to the murmur of your steps even in dreams I smile.

I know you will return, that another dawn will shine
In my grave horizon like a somber frown;
There in my forest will live again your great sonorous smile
That gaily crossed it like the glass of a river.

One day, meeting sadly on the path,
In your pale hands I placed my destiny!
And no greater thing will anyone ever offer you!

My soul is before your soul like the sea before the sky:
Between them, like the shadow of a flight,
Storm and time, and life, and death will pass!

Delmira Agustini was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, on October 24, 1886 to wealthy parents of German and Italian descent. She published her first volume of poetry when she was twenty-one and followed with two more in the next six years: the fourth volume was a posthumous publication. Her life was cut short in 1914, when Enrique Job Reyes, her ex-husband, shot her to death and then turned the gun on himself.

She is today considered as one of the greatest Latin American Women poets. Agustini was the first woman in Latin-American literature to deal boldly with the themes of sensuality and passion. 

Dr.Alejandro and the distinguished translator Willis Barnstone have done a wonderful job in translating her poetry.

Source:Dr. Alejandro Caceres, Willis Barnstone-Selected Poetry of Delmira Agustini- Poetics of Eros (2008)

CONFIDENCES

Juan Gelman, the renowned Argentine poet and left-wing activist who was awarded the prestigious Cervantes Prize died in Mexico on 15th January. He was 83.

Juan Gelman was one of the most brilliant writers in Spanish of the 20th century.  "Gelman worked with words like they were plastic, he modeled them," says writer Vicente Muleiro. Gelman has poetry "tattooed in his bones”,  echoed by the Culture Minister César Antonio Molina  when he was awarded the Cervantes prize.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1930 to Jewish Ukrainian emigrants – his father took part in the 1905 Russian Revolution – Gelman fell in love with poetry at the age of seven on hearing his brother Boris recite verses by Pushkin in Russian, even though he could not speak the language. His first verses were as a love-struck nine-year-old: "she was called Ana", he would later recall. He passed off and sent her poems by another author as his own, then wrote his own. Neither tactic conquered Ana, but his vocation was found.

His mother initially opposed Gelman's plan to become a poet, but combined with journalism it was a decision that proved to be the right one. From 1956 onwards he published more than 20 books of poetry, translated into 14 languages, winning the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary award for work in Spanish, in 2007, along with the Juan Rulfo, Pablo Neruda and Queen Sofia poetry prizes. As for his journalism's relation to his poetry, he said, "they're like good neighbours who live on different floors in the same block of flats."

By March 1976, when Isabel Peron was deposed by a military coup, some 5,000 of the Montoneros were in jail. Gelman narrowly avoided arrest that July, but in his absence the police arrested his daughter Nora Eva, his son Marcelo and pregnant daughter-in-law Maria – 20 and 18 respectively at the time – and took them to a clandestine detention centre.

Nora Eva was released after three days, but the other two were not so lucky. Repeatedly tortured over four months, Marcelo was the first to die, shot in the head and his remains dumped in an oil drum filled with cement and thrown in a river. Maria gave birth, and lived for another two months before she was also killed – Gelman suspected in a barracks in Uruguay as part of the Operation Condor agreement between South American military dictatorships for wiping out left-wing "subversive" activity. Her child Macarena, meanwhile, was handed over to foster parents, a Uruguayan police chief and his wife, and a new birth certificate created for her bearing their name.

After tracking down the remains of his son in 1990, Gelman began a search for Macarena and in 1999 she was located. In 2000 he and his granddaughter were reunited, and in 2005 a Uruguayan judge granted Macarena the right to regain her real parents' surnames. "In this way," as Gelman said at the time, "my son and my daughter-in-law continue in her and in some way, we all continue."

"I died many times, and with each report of a murdered or disappeared friend, the pain of those lost became greater," he said during his acceptance speech of the Cervantes prize in 2008.

In one of his last interviews, with the Spanish paper El Pais, Gelman uttered dire warnings of "the development of a whole system to shred our very own spirit: the worst thing that can happen to the human being is a kind of docile acceptance: of terrorism, of genocide through hunger, of the lack of education in the world." He added, "Something will change, but I won't be alive to see it."

I loved the below poem for its honesty. It is amazing to see how the reordering of the lines of the first stanza  in the last one  gives an assertion to the profession of poetry. 

CONFIDENCES

By Juan Gelman

Translated by Joan Lindgren

he sits down at the table and writes
“with this poem you won’t take power” he says
“with these verses you won’t make the Revolution” he says
“nor with thousands of verses will you make the revolution” he says

what’s more: those verses won’t make
peons teachers wood cutters live better
eat better or him himself eat live better
nor will make a girl fall in love with him 

they won’t earn him money
they won’t get him into the movies free
he can’t buy clothes with them
or trade them for wine or tobacco

no scrarves no parrots no boats
no bulls no umbrellas can he get for them
they will not keep him dry in the rain
nor get him grace or forgiveness

“with this poem you won’t take power” he says
“with these verses you won’t make the Revolution” he says
“nor with thousands of verses will you make the revolution” he says
he sits down at the table and writes

Ref: Unthinkable Tenderness: Selected Poems: Juan Gelman, Eduardo Galeano, Joan Lindgren

CUCUMBER

CUCUMBER

NAZIM HIKMET

(trans Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk)

The snow is knee-deep in the courtyard
and still coming down hard:
it hasn't let up all morning.
We're in the kitchen.
On the table, on the oilcloth, spring —
on the table there's a very tender young cucumber,
pebbly and fresh as a daisy.

We're sitting around the table staring at it.
It softly lights up our faces,
and the very air smells fresh.
We're sitting around the table staring at it,
amazed
thoughtful
optimistic.

We're as if in a dream.
On the table, on the oilcloth, hope —
on the table, beautiful days,
a cloud seeded with a green sun,
an emerald crowd impatient and on its way,
loves blooming openly —
on the table, there on the oilcloth, a very tender young cucumber,
pebbly and fresh as a daisy.

The snow is knee-deep in the courtyard
and coming down hard.
It hasn't let up all morning.

The greatest modern Turkish poet of twentieth century, NazimHikmet (1902-1963) once wrote from prison, ``In the twentieth century / grief lasts / at most a year.'' First jailed in 1924 at the age of 22 for working on a leftist magazine, he spent 18 years incarcerated. Hikmet was awarded the World Peace Prize in 1950, the same year as he gained his release from jail, only to be exiled from Turkey in 1951 for the last 13 years of his life. 

The poet evidently never lost his faith in social justice. His love of life apparently didn't weaken, and his poems resonate with its power: ``Shot through ten years of bondage like a bullet, / . . . my heart is still the same heart, my head still the same head.'' But to consider Hikmet a political poet only is to miss his gift, and a temperament infected with joy. In  "Occupation'' he writes, ``In the afternoon heat I pick olives, / the leaves the loveliest of greens: / I'm light from head to toe.'' The translations by Blasing and Mutlu Konak convey the power and originality of the work. As Hikmet grew, he delivered a richness and humanity unparalleled in its freedom from bitterness in poems like ``Things I Didn't Know I Loved,'' ``After Getting Out of Prison'' and ``The Last Bus.''

The  poet  beautifully captures a hopeful and dreamy atmosphere in this quiet poem when a family sits around a table and watches a tender cucumber. The admiration of the cucumber because of its smell, its freshness and color leads him to much more tender and rapturous feelings . It evokes a million memories of the salad days of  his life. How beautifully the poet ruminates on the emerald cucumber (with its teeming seeds) and hopes it to become the green sun in his life too. How wondrously the poet has used 'repetition' as a way to enhance the poetic message .This poem itself is worth an emerald.

EXTINCTION

EXTINCTION

by Jorge Guillen

Translated by Cola Franzen

When love is extinguished little by little,
without the jolt of a rupture,
it is difficult to recount vicissitudes,
to carry the story to its pathetic
knot,
to stop the instant when love
turns into not love
beneath a summer's light,
a slow slow summer across skies
still glowing though the sun's now hidden,
when a barely perceptible negligence
gives the late step of the strollers
a calm of neutral peace,
and while the attention
wander among intimate fogs,
sketches of abandonment
dissolve in the dusk,
and though inspiring to the soul
those hours deeply branded
by that love remain extinct.

Jorge Guillen, one of the greatest Spanish Poets of last century, was a poet of luminous intelligence and possessed a metaphysical passion for reality. He was a poet of spacial and temporal essences, which he delineates in his passionately smart poems. " I am decidedly in favor of compound, complex poetry," the poet said in 1926, "of the poem made of poetry and other human things." 

His  ideal has always been to create pure poetry. Much of Guillén's work explores the relationship of form to matter while delighting in sensuality and clarity of perception. 

This is a lovely poem . The slow atrophy, sometimes unknowingly, of a noble emotion like love can sometimes be more catastrophic than a sudden rupture in relationship. The poet then turns his eyes into the nature with lines that speaks of summer with the Sun hidden. The poem has a meditative quality, which is a hallmark of many of his poems. He is  always concerned about the underlying essence of the cosmos.

Source : Horses in the Air and other Poems by Jorge Guillen. Translated by Cola Franzen. Publisher City Light Books