Sunday, April 27, 2014

Raymond Carver / Fear


FEAR
By Raymond Carver
BIOGRAPHY

Fear of seeing a police car pull into the drive.
Fear of falling asleep at night.
Fear of not falling asleep.
Fear of the past rising up.
Fear of the present taking flight.
Fear of the telephone that rings in the dead of night.
Fear of electrical storms.
Fear of the cleaning woman who has a spot on her cheek!
Fear of dogs I've been told won't bite.
Fear of anxiety!

Fear of having to identify the body of a dead friend. 
Fear of running out of money.
Fear of having too much, though people will not believe this.
Fear of psychological profiles.
Fear of being late and fear of arriving before anyone else.
Fear of my children's handwriting on envelopes.
Fear they'll die before I do, and I'll feel guilty.
Fear of having to live with my mother in her old age, and mine.
Fear of confusion.
Fear this day will end on an unhappy note.
Fear of waking up to find you gone.
Fear of not loving and fear of not loving enough.
Fear that what I love will prove lethal to those I love.
Fear of death.
Fear of living too long.
Fear of death.


I've said that.






Thursday, April 24, 2014

César Vallejo / Black Stone on Top of a White Stone


BLACK STONE ON TOP
OF A WHITE STONE
By César Vallejo
Biography


I shall die in Paris, in a rainstorm,
On a day I already remember.
I shall die in Paris it does not bother me
Doubtless on a Thursday, like today, in Autumn.

It shall be a Thursday, because today, Thursday
As I put down these lines, I have set my shoulders
To the evil. Never like today have I turned,
And headed my whole journey to the ways where I am alone.

Cesar Vallejo is dead. They struck him,
All of them, though he did nothing to them,
They hit him hard with a stick and hard also
With the end of a rope. Witnesses are: the Thursdays,
The shoulder bones, the loneliness, the rain, and the roads...




Monday, April 21, 2014

César Vallejo / Paris, October 1936

Gésar Vallejo and Georgette Marie Phillipart
Paris, October 1936

From all of this I am the only one who leaves.
From this bench I go away, from my pants,
from my great situation, from my actions,
from my number split side to side,
from all of this I am the only one who leaves.

From the Champs Elysees or as the strange
alley of the Moon makes a turn,
my death goes away, my cradle leaves,
and, surrounded by people, alone, cut loose,
my human resemblance turns around
and dispatches its shadows one by one.

And I move away from everything, since everything
remains to create my alibi:
my shoe, its eyelet, as well as its mud
and even the bend in the elbow
of my own buttoned shirt.




Friday, April 18, 2014

César Vallejo / To My Brother Miguel In Memoriam



TO MY BROTHER MIGUEL 
IN MEMORIAM
By César Vallejo
Biography

Brother, today I sit on the brick bench of the house,
where you make a bottomless emptiness.
I remember we used to play at this hour, and mama
caressed us: "But, sons..."

Now I go hide
as before, from all evening
lectures, and I trust you not to give me away.
Through the parlor, the vestibule, the corridors.
Later, you hide, and I do not give you away.
I remember we made ourselves cry,
brother, from so much laughing.

Miguel, you went into hiding
one night in August, toward dawn,
but, instead of chuckling, you were sad.
And the twin heart of those dead evenings
grew annoyed at not finding you. And now
a shadow falls on my soul.

Listen, brother, don't be late
coming out. All right? Mama might worry.





Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Anne Sexton / When man enters woman


WHEN MAN ENTERS WOMAN
by Anne Sexton
BIOGRAPHY

When man
enters woman,
like the surf biting the shore,
again and again,
and the woman opens her mouth in pleasure
and her teeth gleam
like the alphabet,
Logos appears milking a star,
and the man
inside of woman
ties a knot
so that they will
never again be separate
and the woman
climbs into a flower
and swallows its stem
and Logos appears
and unleashed their rivers.

This man,
this woman
with their double hunger,
have tried to reach through
the curtain of God
and briefly they have,
though God
in His perversity
unties the knot.




Poems by Anne Sexton

ANNE SEXTON / SEVEN POEMS



Saturday, April 12, 2014

Hilda Hilst / I come from ancient times



I COME FROM ANCIENT TIMES

by Hilda Hilst

Translated by Lavínia Saad


I come from ancient times. Long names:
Vaz Cardoso, Almeida Prado
Dubayelle Hilst... events.
I come from your roots, breaths of you,
And I love you tiredly now, blood, wine
Unreal cups corroded by time.
I love you as if there were more and derailings.
As if we stepped on ferns
And they screamed, both our victims:
Otherworldly, vehement.
I love you small like one who wants MORE
Like one who guesses everything:
Wold, moon, fox and ancestors.
Say of me: You are mine.




Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Hilda Hilst / Verses with Much Love for a Beloved Gentleman I / Ship

Fragmentos
Foto de Triunfo Arciniegas
Hilda Hilst
Verses with Much Love 
for a Beloved Gentleman
I



Ship
Bird
Windmill
And everything else I’ll become


So that I may 
Step more gingerly
Along your path.



Hilda Hils
Trovas de muito amor para um amado senhor, 1960
Poesia: 1959-1979
São Paulo, Quíron, 1980.




Sunday, April 6, 2014

Hilda Hilst / XXII / Do not look for me there

Photo by David Young
Hilda Hilst
Translated by Lavínia Saad
XXII







Do not look for me there
Where the living call upon
The so-called dead.
Look for me
Within the deep waters
In squares
Within a heart fire
Between horses, dogs,
In the ricefields, along the high bank
Or with the birds
Or mirrored
In someone else,
Climbing a hard path

Rock, seed, salt
Life's paths. Look for me there.
Alive.




Thursday, April 3, 2014

Hilda Hilst / Ten Calls a Friend VII / This mournfulness, this restlessness


Ten Calls a Friend
by Hilda Hilst
Translated by Beatriz Bastos
VII

This mournfulness, this restlessness
the inner convulsions, an endless island,
solitude within, body dying —
all this I owe to you. And they were vast,
these plans — ships
great walls of ivory, fine words,
promises, promises. And it would be December,
a jade horse above the water,
doubly transparent, a line in mid-air —
all this undone by the trapdoor of time
in perfect silence. Some glass mornings
wind, the hollowed soul, a sun I can't see —
this too I owe to you.

Hilda Hilst

Is a poet from Brazil who writes in Portuguese.
Hilda Hilst
The Brazilian poet, Hilda Hist, was born in Jaú in 1930. She was writing for almost 50 years, during which time she was awarded collected many of the most prestigious Brazilian literary prizes. In 1962 she won the Prêmio PEN Clube of São Paulo, for Sete Cantos do Poeta para o Anjo (Massao Ohno Editor, 1962). In 1969, the play O Verdugo took the Prêmio Anchieta, one of the most important in the country at the time. The Associação Brasileira de Críticos de Arte (APCA Prize) deemed Ficções (Edições Quíron, 1977) the best book of the year. In 1981, Hilda Hilst got the Grande Prêmio da Crítica para o Conjunto da Obra, by the same Associação Brasileira de Críticos de Arte. In 1984, the Câmara Brasileira do Livro awarded the Jabuti Prize for Cantares de Perda e Predileção; the following year the same book claimed the Prêmio Cassiano Ricardo (Clube de Poesia de São Paulo). Rútilo Nada, published in 1993, took the Jabuti Prize for best short story, and finally, on August 9, 2002, she was awarded at the 47th edition of the Prêmio Moinho Santista in the poetry category. She died in February 2004.


Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Hilda Hilst / Ten Calls to a Friend I / If I seem to you nocturnal and imperfect


Hilda Hils
Ten Calls to a Friend
Translated by Lavínia Saad

I

If I seem to you nocturnal and imperfect
Look at me again. Because tonight
I looked at myself as if you were looking at me.
And it was as if water
Desired

To leave your house that is the river,
Just slipping by, not even touching the riverbank.

I looked at you. And it has been so long
That I understand that I am earth. It has been so long
That I wait
For your brotherly body of water
To stretch over mine. Pastor and naut

Look at me again. From a lesser height.
And more attentively.