Buoyantville

Corona - Paul Celan

aqss — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 16:07:57 GMT

Autumn eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.
From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk:
then time returns to the shell.

In the mirror it’s Sunday,
in dream there is room for sleeping,
our mouths speak the truth.

My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one:
we look at each other,
we exchange dark words,
we love each other like poppy and recollection,
we sleep like wine in the conches,
like the sea in the moon’s blood ray.

We stand by the window embracing, and people
look up from the street:
it is time they knew!
It is time the stone made an effort to flower,
time unrest had a beating heart.
It is time it were time.

It is time.

Translated from German by Michael Hamburger

Human Voice - Vladimir Holan

aqss — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 16:05:32 GMT

Stone and star do not force their music on us,
flowers are silent, things hold something back,
because of us, animals deny
their own harmony of innocence and stealth,
the wind has always its chastity of simple gesture
and what song is only the mute birds know,
to whom you tossed an unthreshed sheaf on Christmas Eve.

To be is enough for them and that is beyond words. But we,
we are afraid not only in the dark,
even in the abundant light
we do not see our neighbor
and desperate for exorcism
cry out in terror: 'Are you there? Speak!'

Translation from the Czech by Ian Milner

From "The Man With the Blue Guitar" - Wallace Stevens

aqss — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:17:19 GMT

II

I cannot bring a world quite round,
Although I patch it as I can.

I sing a hero's head, large eye
And bearded bronze, but not a man,

Although I patch him as I can
And reach through him almost to man.

If to serenade almost to man
Is to miss, by that, things as they are,

Say that it is the serenade
Of a man that plays a blue guitar.

A Liminal Novelist

aqss — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:35:55 GMT

Some brilliant correspondence between two writers published in the American Scholar pointed me to the work of Jame Salter. And this resulted in me slowly reading (because Salter's work can't be absolutely speed read) his novel on a marriage (and food, and cities, and the sea, and trees,...etc etc) "Light Years" over the past two weeks.

I loved it so much that I went out and bought Salter's more famous novel "A Sport & A Pastime", which is providing it's own delights. What one revels most in Salter's novels, is the density of descriptions of the surfaces, and how suddenly one is taken down below this river to a dark vein of truth.

Few underlined sentence from "Light Years":

"It took a long time, it took forever; days and nights, the smell of antiseptic, the hush of rubber wheels. This frail engine, we think, and yet what murder is needed to take it down. The heart is in darkness, unknowing, like those animals in mines that have never seen the day. It has no loyalties, no hopes; it has its task."

"-any two people when they separate, it’s like splitting a log. The pieces aren’t even. One of them contains the core."

Here is an old NYT essay Salter wrote on writing...read, and then go seek Salter's novels out (E, you in particular should carry Salter to Turkey)

First Day Of Summer

aqss — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 23:54:38 GMT

After a night of rain
Half of these long avenues
Are in shadow

And the foolish heart
At the bottom of sleep's
Stairwell keeps waking

To Adrienne's footfalls
Vanishing, vanishing
Into a summer's blaze

Of a life cleaved from
A day where it once was,
And thus desired to be always:

This first day of summer.

Seven Things I Love

aqss — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:35:59 GMT

I started making this list on my Blackberry soon after I had read my friend lucas green's list over at his wonderful new blog "Porous Borders" (now used for secret snacking in the pits of Kapitalism), and then Elizabeth went ahead and tagged me with this meme, so I couldn't put off post this any longer...

[1]
I love re-reading Nazim Hikmet's "Things I Didn't Know I Loved" once every few months - a brilliant list poem hath never been made than this one

[2]
I love how vistas curve away from sight when one is traveling by train - in Italy last year this time, a trip between La Speiza and Vernazza, the blue Mediterranean appearing and disappearing as the cliff hugging train snaked through tunnels - like watching water elide into water on a windowpane on a rainy day

[3]
I love Bach's Cello Suites - all of them, the stark punch-in-the-gut simplicity of them - Bach's Herr Jesu must exist in some form or fashion for these suites exist

[4]
I love revisiting old letters (and post late 90s, emails) written by younger selves - sleeves of time that now smell like the paws of a faithful dog - useful to “feast on your life"

[5]
I love inscriptions, notes, lists, and sometimes even poems one finds in used books - the scat of things said in place of something that always remains unsayable

[6]
I love light in autumn, the way distances open again after a long summer. And I love to "wander along the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing"

[7]
I love reading interconnected novels set in the fictional towns - R.K. Narayan's Malgudi and Wendell Berry's Port William being two notable examples – a nomadic existence’s desire for fixity I suppose

Beatrice Waking At Night...

aqss — Sun, 10 May 2009 16:27:56 GMT

To a watchful moon, and the blood
of first azaleas after sudden
snow in April, and sleep in the lighted
darkness between her breasts among
the scent of green lemons. No dreams
except those of children lost among
dreaming of other older nights, no
home either - just the silence of
his eyes and deep breathing that she
is a witness to, and this waiting for
words that he doesn't say, this man,
strange and unknown, sometimes even
in the tenderest of speech.

Silence

aqss — Sun, 10 May 2009 16:25:50 GMT

Voice's shadow that needs rescuing from
The gang-press of too many voices
All intent on listening to themselves -

This is always the case, the din
In the head, on its wheel , persistent
Like a hamster - to pay attention is

not too difficult - except the occluded
solidity called the Self that keeps
coming in the way - the all I that

Like a thunderstorm keeps flash-flooding
The more darker lava-like substance known
as the Soul into voice's shadows.

Unposted Letter

aqss — Sun, 10 May 2009 00:27:31 GMT

I still wait for the heft
of those slight notes,

those flurries in spring
like cherry blossoms falling.

For whatever reason (is it
the lambent swan I saw?)

absence of that traffic today
like a weight on the heart.

Trees are enrobing themselves
again, and no one I know here

rolls up their jeans like you
did in that evanescent season.

You could write to tell me that,
you know. But also know you won't.

Spring Graffiti

aqss — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:12:16 GMT

Spirit messages joined
At the ends on the wall
Over which rain-washed
Sunlight makes it morning

Journey - their slight diff-
rences the way tenderness
Toward the lovers differs,
Like a dish baked over

And over, with different
Shakes of salt and pepper
- those obscene yet urgent
Murals scrawled on urinal

Walls, breasts and penises and
The traffic of adolescent ardor -
"A loves B", "wanna suck C's
boobs", "my dick is bigger than E's"

- and surprise that the heart's
Snarl after these many years
Of adulthood isn't much different!

Volta

aqss — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:07:52 GMT

Stanza, in Italian, means room,
And volta - the turn

Of pleasure that comes from
Watching Radhika as she puts on

shoes like anklets, and looks up
to find him watching her dark eyes,

shaded green and sienna under
the bird-lit stanza of cotton trees.

Radhika's Heart

aqss — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 14:17:46 GMT

The heart's well with its deeps,
which no sunlight seem to reach,

now shuttled between a continent's
cities, swaddled in bag and bone,

does it reflect, i.e., feel anything,
when the snows of crab apples and magnolias

fall this late hour of an early spring day,
other than its old thirst for the ocean?

Speaking Of Sitaphal

aqss — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 16:03:16 GMT

I try to tell them
what that globular
fruit tastes like,

tell them how Banjaras
scoured it from the thorny
and mostly barren hillocks,

and brought it to our
childhood streets in their
endless autumnal caravans,

tell them how we peeled its
turtle shell back, carefully,
to sink a hungering finger

into its white custard, and
of how we savored whole
mouthfuls of pitted sweetness,

and spit to the ground endless
constellations of eye-like seeds.
Frankly though, sometimes

I don't know if I am talking about
that fruit or your memory, Kannamma.

A Tableau In April

aqss — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 15:26:34 GMT

Like sunshine stealing into
a foreign room, few bruised
mums, in white and gold

Embroider the threshold over
Which a reluctant and shy
April enters with a promise

Of earth opening once again,
After the long winter’s incubus
Of sleep and forgetting.

The absence of hunger is
Another hunger itself.
This the mums know

As they unravel, petal
By petal, on the cool wooden
Floor, on which he paces

Expectant, waiting.

Another Crank Of The Year

aqss — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 23:50:09 GMT

Sliding imperceptibly into a new decade
At the tail-end of a long winter, he watches
Dappled water - its waist embroidered
Now by the first sprigs of forsythia yellow -
Polish the untoothed mica of stones, and
Unwind its pale ribbon to the farthest coast,
Only to turn into monsoon rain on the horizon.

That is where all the loved voices reside -
Those of lost companions, unheard in years,
With all the rest - some of infants' who keep
Arriving every year like the trusting goldfinches,
And some of old friends' that keep vanishing
Like the last of geese honks rippling north.

March 7, 2009 Atlanta

A poem written after a month of no writing, to mark the day of putting distance into the third decade (first mile done), with the hopeful wish that the underground voice of the muse not attended to (in the interests of Kapital) may become only dormant but not extinct.

Night Music

aqss — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 05:54:38 GMT

For some reason, this very Buddhist song by the Eagles has been playing on the mental turntable, on repeat...a mind still very much learning how to be still.

Brutus

aqss — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 18:36:24 GMT

It is a traitor. And there
appears to be no end to its hunger.

It was to leave Adrienne behind,
but to Adrienne it returns in dreams
that populate the countries
between night and daybreak.

It breaks and breaks, dear
stupid traitorous heart.

Haikus For Doing Time

aqss — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 16:25:32 GMT

[1]
A line of shirts worn
This morning by west wind.
A lightness in being.

[2]
A flicker of crimson
In the thorn trees.
A cardinal’s wing, a memory.

[3]
The lowing of a calf
Telegraphed across barbed wire.
Separation.

[4]
A pack of coyotes howling
At the first silver of moon.
A longing for completion.

[5]
Fog at 8 am. Walking
Feet vanish from own sight.
By 9 am, a mile-wide view.

[6]
In the browned yard, milling
Feet of bound men.
One must do time.

[7]
The opalescent eye
Of a hare startled into:
A complete world contained.

[8]
Winter sunflowers pared
Back to their dark eyes.
In the grass, tiny flowers.

[9]
Starlings’ flight
Just before starlight:
Another wave in passing.

[10]
Without you
A pastoral sunset,
Some memories, some fireflies.

12/26/2008 - 01/06/2009, Dhamma Sri, Texas

Night Music

aqss — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 02:36:23 GMT

Banjaran Reshma sings "Lambi Judaai" in that old old Bollywood movie "Hero" - perhaps it is the very early darkness (winter solstice was today) encrusted with ice, some rioja on the table, a day spent reading, all of which turn the mind to this particular mode of longing. And also the realization that the self is not alone in feeling this way, as it attempts to revive hazy vernaculars and memories.

Radhika Sleeping, Against the Snow

aqss — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 21:29:56 GMT

How soon spread the stains
Over the sidewalks of snow!
Boot marks like tracks of some
Crazed insect, and yellow dog piss,
The only color visible on this
Dusk cowled tenement street.

Radhika sleeps: another whiteout
Which hides the sudden doubt
Creeping into her sleeping arms,
Wound around the sifting dark one:
Will the morning bring radiance or
Just that familiar old ache for it?

A Blind Map

aqss — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 20:47:45 GMT

Any clear thing that blinds us with surprise - Robert Lowell

In a bole of burnished coppe,r
I lean my face against the parchment
Of beech, and think distant thoughts
Of America, or rather the maps
That stand for America - one of which
I opened at the tail end of a winter,
Shivering mute - a tracery of veins
On the prairie of a waist, and cities
Dotting distances, like moles along
The gulf of a sleeping throat.

Now I find myself completely lost (or more
Precisely at a loss) in this mapped
America. Memories, and the labels that
I applied to them have gone awry
like a scrim of puddling rain drops
Tell me, do the beeches remember,
later, these leaves they shed like
A trail of hot tears? Tell me, do you
remember how I mapped you, blinded &
blind, in that far away night, Adrienne?

Morning Music - "Ya Hussein!" Edition

aqss — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:03:15 GMT

Karajan directing Movement 4 of Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 "From the New World" - perfect music for a "ya Hussein!" morning.

Halloween Haikus

aqss — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 18:03:26 GMT

(1)
The difference between solitude
And loneliness - a maple in fall
Light, and a maple in snowy shade.

(2)
The frayed yellow Virgin's cord
from Brazil finally broke today.
How forlorn is her sparrow wrist.

(3)
For revelers on the train,
Isn't tomorrow too another
Mask to wear?

(4)
I would be lying to you, love,
If I didn't confess my vampire
Blood quickened for her too.

(5)
In a night filled with poems,
What are friends but their
Beginnings and ends?

Autumn Unheld

aqss — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 13:41:04 GMT

He opens a page, a vein
of wood, and writes in royal
blue, of the blues, distracted
by the fires heaped on sidewalks.

Every tree is an omen, a burning
bush, and every line written under
their undressing shadows, a journey
back to sunlit rooms in which Adrienne's

hair veined the white snows of beds,
across the splayed cities of a continent.
He should be fleeing such devastation,
and the winters that trot at its heels.

Yet he keeps looking back, again and again,
thinking he can hold on to autumn's crimson
in its passing, forgetting his fates are
those of Orpheus's lot or Lot's wife.

Things He Carries

aqss — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 15:17:34 GMT

"“Are you carrying anything that could be dangerous to the other passengers?”At this Shahid clapped a hand to his chest and cried: “Only my heart.” ~ Amitav Ghosh in "The Ghat of the Only World”: Agha Shahid Ali in Brooklyn"

After nearly two years spent living in a cube 5x5 ft , he is migrating to a bigger cube. And this means a hallway lined with cardboard boxes - with grocery store labels "Huggies Natural Fit", "Keebler Cookie Crunch" etc drowning out his inscriptions - containing nearly all his movable (& extremely heavy) wealth, i.e., books.

There is melancholy in the empty room - dusty shelves standing empty. And a question as to whether the arc of his journey from that arrival with two suitcases, revolving round and round on a baggage carousel in a airport (even they had books - two each of fiction and poetry) to this departure (or displacement?) eight years later, with its five hundred or so books in twenty odd boxes, makes any sense?

He once wanted to read all these books (and hopefully write better as a result) but he hasn't made the effort to do so as yet. Why not? And so this question now burns on its fuse inside, and will continue to do so before inertia and time do their work. Outside a fine rain falls, autumn is at hand again. And these are the things he carries as he lifts and places in the boxes the last of his books.