Richard Eberhart / The Eclipse

The Eclipse 

by Richard Eberhart

I stood out in the open cold
To see the essence of the eclipse
Which was its perfect darkness.

I stood in the cold on the porch
And could not think of anything so perfect
As mans hope of light in the face of darkness.

Octavio Paz / Touch

Touch 
by Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz / Palpar

Translated by Eliot Weinberger

My hands
open the curtains of your being
clothe you in a further nudity
uncover the bodies of your body
My hands
invent another body for your body

Jaime Sabines / The Lovers

The Lovers 

by Jaime Sabines

Translated by W.S. Merwin

Jaime Sabines / Los amorosos

The lovers say nothing.
Love is the finest of the silences,
the one that trembles most and is hardest to bear.
The lovers are looking for something.
The lovers are the ones who abandon,
the ones who change, who forget.
Their hearts tell them that they will never find.
They don't find, they're looking.

The lovers wander around like crazy people
because they're alone, alone,
surrendering, giving themselves to each moment,
crying because they don't save love.
They worry about love. The lovers
live for the day, it's the best they can do, it's all they know.
They're going away all the time,
all the time, going somewhere else.
They hope,
not for anything in particular, they just hope.
They know that whatever it is they will not find it.
Love is the perpetual deferment,
always the next step, the other, the other.
The lovers are the insatiable ones,
the ones who must always, fortunately, be alone.

The lovers are the serpent in the story.
They have snakes instead of arms.
The veins in their necks swell
like snakes too, suffocating them.
The lovers can't sleep
because if they do the worms ear them.

They open their eyes in the dark
and terror falls into them.

They find scorpions under the sheet
and their bed floats as though on a lake.

The lovers are crazy, only crazy
with no God and no devil.

The lovers come out of their caves
trembling, starving,
chasing phantoms.
They laugh at those who know all about it,
who love forever, truly,
at those who believe in love as an inexhaustible lamp.

The lovers play at picking up water,
tattooing smoke, at staying where they are.
They play the long sad game of love.
None of them will give up.
The lovers are ashamed to reach any agreement.

Empty, but empty from one rib to another,
death ferments them behind the eyes,
and on they go, they weep toward morning
in the trains, and the roosters wake into sorrow.

Sometimes a scent of newborn earth reaches them,
of women sleeping with a hand on their sex, contented,
of gentle streams, and kitchens.

The lovers start singing between their lips
a song that is not learned.
And they go on crying, crying
for beautiful life.

Jaime Sabines / The Moon

The Moon 

Jaime Sabines 

Translated by W. S. Merwin 

You can take the moon by the spoonful
or in capsules every two hours.
It's useful as a hypnotic and sedative
and besides it relieves
those who have had too much philosophy.
A piece of moon in your purse
works better than a rabbit's foot.
Helps you find a lover
or get rich without anyone knowing,
and it staves off doctors and clinics.
You can give it to children like candy
when they've not gone to sleep,
and a few drops of moon in the eyes of the old
helps them to die in peace.

Put a new leaf of moon
under your pillow
and you'll see what you want to.
Always carry a little bottle of air of the moon
to keep you from drowning.
Give the key to the moon
to prisoners and the disappointed.
For those who are sentenced to death
and for those who are sentenced to life
there is no better tonic than the moon
in precise and regular doses.

José Emilio Pacheco / High Treason

Zempasuchitl
Lagunilla, México, 2013

Photo by Triunfo Arciniegas

HIGH TREASON

By José Emilio Pacheco 

I do not love my country. Its abstract splendor
is beyond my grasp.
But (although it sounds bad) I would give my life
for ten places in it, for certain people,
seaports, pinewoods, fortresses,
a run-down city, gray, grotesque,
various figures from its history
mountains
(and three or four rivers).

Jose Emilio Pacheco / The best poet

José Emilio Pacheco

THE BEST POET

by José Emilio Pacheco
(1939 - 2014)

I’m not the best poet in Mexico, not even of my neighborhood.

Félix Grande / The only true words

Félix Grande

Félix Grande

(1937 -2014)

The only true words
are the irreparable ones.

Yoko Tawada / The Flight of the Moon

THE FLIGHT OF THE MOON

bY YOKO TAWADA

Translated by Bruno navaski

I was singing on the toilet
when the moon
came rolling in

bare naked
on a bicycle
racing through a forest of metaphor
the moon came to meet me.

Along the road outside
a beautiful woman walks by, brushing her teeth.
On a park bench
a man in a maternity dress is drinking apple juice.
At the end of the century health is always in full phase.

A hole in the sky drops open.
Distress like the moon, a gloom like the moon are gone
and the likes
fly brightly round and round that hole.

The deep folds of the abyss smooth.
Across the now-blank suffering face
poets start to skate.

The moon... mine... another.

Naomi Shihab Nye / Daily

Photo by Irving Penn

DAILY

by Noami Shihab Nye

These shriveled seeds we plant,
corn kernel, dried bean,
poke into loosened soil,
cover over with measured fingertips
These T-shirts we fold
into perfect white
squares
These tortillas we slice and fry to crisp strips
This rich egg scrambled in a gray clay bowl
This bed whose covers I straighten
smoothing edges till blue quilt fits brown blanket
and nothing hangs out
This envelope I address
so the name balances like a cloud
in the center of the sky
This page I type and retype
This table I dust till the scarred wood shines
This bundle of clothes I wash and hang and wash again
like flags we share, a country so close
no one needs to name it
The days are nouns: touch them
The hands are churches that worship the world

Julia Hartwig / Poetry

Julia Hartwig

POETRY

My way poetry is a long way.

“My way of poetry is a long way,” Julia Hartwig told me on a hot August night in her Warsaw apartment.

Her comment is at once enigmatic and precise. Precise because the poet, who turns ninety this year, has been writing for eight decades, since she was ten. She has been publishing collections of her poems since the 1956 thaw over half a century ago. Yet her long career is still in glorious late flower.

Enigmatic, too: her range of vision roams through centuries, continuing a conversation with her recently dead colleagues, literary forebears, and friends throughout time. All great poetry does that, really—but in Hartwig’s case the search is direct and unambiguous.

THE BOOK HAVEN

Juan Gelman / Confianzas

CONFIANZAS

by Juan Gelman

He sits down at the table and writes /
'with this poem you will not reach power' he says / 
'with these verses you will not make a Revolution' he says / 
'not even with thousands of verses could you make a Revolution' he says // 

what's more: those verses will not serve to make lumberjack laborers live better / 
eat better or to make himself eat or live better / 
nor will they serve to make a woman fall in love with him // 

he will not earn money with them / 
he will not get free movie tickets / 
he will not be given clothes for them / 
he will not get cigarettes or wine for them //

nor bedpans or scarves or boats /
not bulls or umbrellas will he get for them /
if it were up to them, the rain would soak him / 
he will not obtain pardon or grace for them // 

'with this poem you will not attain power' he says / 
'with these verses you will not make a Revolution' he says / 
'not even with thousands of verses could you make a Revolution' / 
he sits down at the table and writes".

Juan Gelman / Saint Theresa

SAINT THERESA

by Juan Gelman

Translated by Hardie St. Martin

and with many birds and their songs in the /
highest part of the mind or head / and rumblings
in it like the sea / or laments /
or winds or movements / suns

that clash / go out / then burn again / or powers
like thousands of animals that track
up the suburbs of the soul / suffering
terrible ordeals i mean / even so

the soul goes on whole in its quiet state /
or desire / or clear light untouched
by sorrow / scorn / misery /
suffering or ruin / so

what is this peace without vengeance / or memory
of a future heaven / or tenderness
coming down from your hands / spring water
where birds in the highest part of the mind

rally to drink / sing sweetly / or are silent
like light issuing from you / wing
flying softly above war and fatigue
like the flight of passion itself?

Juan Gelman / He was born on the edge of a disastrous day

HE WAS BORN 
ON THE EDGE OF A DISASTROUS DAY
 by Juan Gelman

Translated by Hardie St. Martin

he was born on the brink of a disastrous day
face to face with another just like it but
in the split or opening between the two
he had a kind of warm feeling so

he saw happiness
as a sudden break
in the heart of those identical
doomed barren painful times

when his life was snuffed out
his eyes were soft with subdued anger
or were falling like autumn leaves
in hard transparent sheets

that toured the world
and toured the heart
yet no one breathed a word
to sergeant MacIntire about this

Juan Gelman / The Perfidious Woman

The Perfidious Woman

by Juan Gelman

Translated by Lisa Rose Bradford  

                 

she has left me / climbed to heaven /

the one whose throat’s bejeweled with beauty /

her lips are of the sweetest /

though she is bitterness itself /

she draws swords from her eyes /

lances whetted to murder hapless men /

with beckoning eyes / she bursts

with longing / thirsty as a deer /

her eyebrows / archer’s bows / or rainbows /

remind you of Noah’s pact / the sign

the flood had ended / if you are parched /

she commands her clouds to flood your heart with crystal shards/

Juan Gelman / Alone

Photo by José María Machado

ALONE

by Juan Gelman

Translated by Hardie St. Martin

you're alone / my country / without
the comrades you lock up and destroy / you hear
them slowly being emptied of the love
they have left / they loosen their grip

on their turn to die / dream they're being dreamed / quieted /
they'll never see other faces growing /
leaning out / continued / in this sun /
some day in the sun of justice