Soul

Ditty of First Desire

In the green morning
I wanted to be a heart.
A heart.


And in the ripe evening
I wanted to be a nightingale.
A nightingale.


(Soul,
turn orange-colored.
Soul,
turn the color of love.)


In the vivid morning
I wanted to be myself.
A heart.


And at the evening's end
I wanted to be my voice.
A nightingale.


Soul,
turn orange-colored.
Soul,
turn the color of love.

Gacela of the Dark Death

I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to withdraw from the tumult of cemetries.
I want to sleep the dream of that child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.


I don't want to hear again that the dead do not lose their blood,
that the putrid mouth goes on asking for water.
I don't want to learn of the tortures of the grass,
nor of the moon with a serpent's mouth
that labors before dawn.


I want to sleep awhile,
awhile, a minute, a century;
but all must know that I have not died;
that there is a stable of gold in my lips;
that I am the small friend of the West wing;
that I am the intense shadows of my tears.


Cover me at dawn with a veil,
because dawn will throw fistfuls of ants at me,
and wet with hard water my shoes
so that the pincers of the scorpion slide.


For I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to learn a lament that will cleanse me to earth;
for I want to live with that dark child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.

Debussy [with English translation]

Mi sombra va silenciosa
por el agua de la acecia.


Por mi sombra están las ranas
privadas de las estrellas.


La sombra manda a mi cuerpo
reflejos de cosas quietas.


Mi sombra va como inmenso
cínife color violeta.


Cien grillos quieren dorar
la luz de la cañavera.


Una luz nace en mi pecho,
reflejado, de la acequia.
~~~~~~~
My shadow glides in silence
over the watercourse.


On account of my shadow
the frogs are deprived of stars.


The shadow sends my body
reflections of quiet things.


My shadow moves like a huge
violet-colored mosquito.


A hundred crickets are trying
to gild the glow of the reeds.


A glow arises in my breast,
the one mirrored in the water.

Translations And Adaptations From Heine

FROM ‘DIE HEIMKEHR'


I
Is your hate, then, of such measure?
Do you, truly, so detest me?
Through all the world will I complain
Of how you have addressed me.


O ye lips that are ungrateful,
Hath it never once distressed you,
That you can say such awful things
Of any one who ever kissed you?


II
So thou hast forgotten fully
That I so long held thy heart wholly,
Thy little heart, so sweet and false and small
That there's no thing more sweet or false at all.


Love and lay thou hast forgotten fully,
And my heart worked at them unduly.
I know not if the love or if the lay were better stuff,
But I know now, they both were good enough.


III
Tell me where thy lovely love is,
Whom thou once did sing so sweetly,
When the fairy flames enshrouded
Thee, and held thy heart completely.


All the flames are dead and sped now
And my heart is cold and sere;
Behold this book, the urn of ashes,
Tis my true love's sepulchre.


IV
I dreamt that I was God Himself
Whom heavenly joy immerses,
And all the angels sat about
And praised my verses.


V
The mutilated choir boys
When I begin to sing
Complain about the awful noise
And call my voice too thick a thing.


When light their voices lift them up,



Bright notes against the ear,
Through trills and runs like crystal,
Ring delicate and clear.


They sing of Love that's grown desirous,
Of Love, and joy that is Love's inmost part,
And all the ladies swim through tears
Toward such a work of art.


VI
This delightful young man
Should not lack for honourers,
He propitiates me with oysters,
With Rhine wine and liqueurs.


How his coat and pants adorn him!
Yet his ties are more adorning,
In these he daily comes to ask me:
'Are you feeling well this morning?'


He speaks of my extended fame,
My wit, charm, definitions,
And is diligent to serve me,
Is detailed in his provisions.


In evening company he sets his face
In most spirituel positions,
And declaims before the ladies
My god-like compositions.


what comfort is it for me
To find him such, when the days bring
No comfort, at my time of life when
All good things go vanishing.


TRANSLATOR TO TRANSLATED
O Harry Heine, curses be,
I live too late to sup with thee!
Who can demolish at such polished ease
Philistia's pomp and Art's pomposities!


VII
SONG FROM 'DIE HARZREISE'
I am the Princess Ilza
In Ilsenstein I fare,
Come with me to that castle
And we'll be happy there.


Thy head will I cover over



With my waves' clarity
Till thou forget thy sorrow,
wounded sorrowfully.


Thou wilt in my white arms then
Nay, on my breast thou must
Forget and rest and dream there
For thine old legend-lust.


My lips and my heart are thine there
As they were his and mine.
His? Why the good King Harry's,
And he is dead lang syne.


Dead men stay alway dead men.
Life is the live man's part,
And I am fair and golden
With joy breathless at heart.


If my heart stay below there,
My crystal halls ring clear
To the dance of lords and ladies
In all their splendid gear.


The silken trains go rustling,
The spur-clinks sound between,
The dark dwarfs blow and bow there
Small horn and violin.


Yet shall my white arms hold thee,
That bound King Harry about.
Ah, I covered his ears with them
When the trumpet rang out.


VIII
NIGHT SONG
And have you thoroughly kissed my lips;
There was no particular haste,
And are you not ready when evening's come?
There's no particular haste.


You've got the whole night before you,
Heart's-all-beloved-my-own;
In an uninterrupted night one can
Get a good deal of kissing done.

The Tree

I stood still and was a tree amid the wood,
Knowing the truth of things unseen before;
Of Daphne and the laurel bow
And that god-feasting couple old
that grew elm-oak amid the wold.
'Twas not until the gods had been
Kindly entreated, and been brought within
Unto the hearth of their heart's home
That they might do this wonder thing;
Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood
And many a new thing understood
That was rank folly to my head before.

The Flame

‘Tis not a game that plays at mates and mating,
Provençe knew;
'Tis not a game of barter, lands and houses,
Provençe knew.
We who are wise beyond your dream of wisdom,
Drink our immortal moments; we 'pass through'.
We have gone forth beyond your bonds and borders,
Provençe knew;
And all the tales of Oisin say but this:
That man doth pass the net of days and hours.
Where time is shrivelled down to time's seed corn
We of the Ever-living, in that light
Meet through our veils and whisper, and of love.


O smoke and shadow of a darkling world,
These, and the rest, and all the rest we knew.
'Tis not a game that plays at mates and mating,
'Tis not a game of barter, lands and houses,
'Tis not 4of days and nights' and troubling years,
Of cheeks grown sunken and glad hair gone gray;
There is the subtler music, the clear light
Where time burns back about th' eternal embers.
We are not shut from all the thousand heavens:
Lo, there are many gods whom we have seen,
Folk of unearthly fashion, places splendid,
Bulwarks of beryl and of chrysoprase.


Sapphire Benacus, in thy mists and thee
Nature herself's turned metaphysical,
Who can look on that blue and not believe?


Thou hooded opal, thou eternal pearl,
O thou dark secret with a shimmering floor,
Through all thy various mood I know thee mine;
If I have merged my soul, or utterly
Am solved and bound in, through aught here on earth,
There canst thou find me, O thou anxious thou,
Who call’st about my gates for some lost me;
I say my soul flowed back, became translucent.
Search not my lips, O Love, let go my hands,
This thing that moves as man is no more mortal.
If thou hast seen my shade sans character,
If thou hast seen that mirror of all moments,
That glass to all things that o'ershadow it,
Call not that mirror me, for I have slipped
Your grasp, I have eluded.

The Altar

Let us build here an exquisite friendship,
The flame, the autumn, and the green rose of love
Fought out their strife here, 'tis a place of wonder;
Where these have been, meet 'tis, the ground is holy.

Speech For Psyche In The Golden Book Of Apuleius

All night, and as the wind lieth among
The cypress trees, he lay,
Nor held me save as air that brusheth by one
Close, and as the petals of flowers in falling
Waver and seem not drawn to earth, so he
Seemed over me to hover light as leaves
And closer me than air,
And music flowing through me seemed to open
Mine eyes upon new colours.
O winds, what wind can match the weight of him!

Song in the Manner of Housman

O woe, woe,
People are born and die,
We also shall be dead pretty soon
Therefore let us act as if we were
dead already.


The bird sits on the hawthorn tree
But he dies also, presently.
Some lads get hung, and some get shot.
Woeful is this human lot.
Woe! woe, etcetera . . . .


London is a woeful place,
Shropshire is much pleasanter.
Then let us smile a little space
Upon fond nature's morbid grace.
Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera . . .

Silet


When I behold how black, immortal ink
Drips from my deathless pen - ah, well-away!
Why should we stop at all for what I think?
There is enough in what I chance to say.


It is enough that we once came together;
What is the use of setting it to rime?
When it is autumn do we get spring weather,
Or gather may of harsh northwindish time?


It is enough that we once came together;
What if the wind have turned against the rain?
It is enough that we once came together;
Time has seen this, and will not turn again;


And who are we, who know that last intent,
To plague to-morrow with a testament!

Sennin Poem By Kakuhaku

The red and green kingfishers
flash between the orchids and clover,
One bird casts its gleam on another.
Green vines hang through the high forest,
They weave a whole roof to the mountain,
The lone man sits with shut speech,
He purrs and pats the clear strings.
He throws his heart up through the sky,
He bites through the flower pistil
and brings up a fine fountain.
The red-pine-tree god looks at him and wonders.
He rides through the purple smoke to visit the sennin,
He takes 'Floating Hill' by the sleeve,
He claps his hand on the back of the great water sennin.


But you, you dam'd crowd of gnats,
Can you even tell the age of a turtle?

Quies


This is another of our ancient loves.
Pass and be silent, Rullus, for the day
Hath lacked a something since this lady passed;
Hath lacked a something. 'Twas but marginal.

Prayer For His Lady’s Life

FROM PROPERTIUS, ELEGIAE, LIB. III, 26
Here let thy clemency, Persephone, hold firm,
Do thou, Pluto, bring here no greater harshness.
So many thousand beauties are gone down to Avernus,
Ye might let one remain above with us.


With you is lope, with you the white-gleaming Tyro,
With you is Europa and the shameless Pasiphae,
And all the fair from Troy and all from Achaia,
From the sundered realms, of Thebes and of aged Priamus;
And all the maidens of Rome, as many as they were,
They died and the greed of your flame consumes them.


Here let thy clemency, Persephone, hold firm.
Do thou, Pluto, bring here no greater harshness.
So many thousandfair are gone down to Avernus,
Ye might let one remain above with us.

Poetic Eggs

I am a grave poetic hen
That lays poetic eggs
And to enhance my temperament
A little quiet begs.


We make the yolk philosophy,
True beauty the albumen.
And then gum on a shell of form
To make the screed sound human.

Post Mortem Conspectu

A brown, fat babe sitting in the lotus,
And you were glad and laughing
With a laughter not of this world.
It is good to splash in the water
And laughter is the end of all things.

Piere Vidal Old

When I but think upon the great dead days
And turn my mind upon that splendid madness,
Lo! I do curse my strength
And blame the sun his gladness;
For that the one is dead
And the red sun mocks my sadness.


Behold me, Vidal, that was fool of fools!
Swift as the king wolf was I and as strong
When tall stags fled me through the alder brakes,
And every jongleur knew me in his song,
And the hounds fled and the deer fled
And none fled over long.


Even the grey pack knew me and knew fear.
God! how the swiftest hind's blood spurted hot
Over the sharpened teeth and purpling lips!
Hot was that hind's blood yet it scorched me not
As did first scorn, then lips of the Penautier!
Aye ye are fools, if ye think time can blot


From Piere Vidal’s remembrance that blue night.
God! but the purple of the sky was deep!
Clear, deep, translucent, so the stars me seemed
Set deep in crystal; and because my sleep
Rare visitor came not, the Saints I guerdon
For that restlessness Piere set to keep


One more fool's vigil with the hollyhocks.
Swift came the Loba, as a branch that's caught,
Torn, green and silent in the swollen Rhone,
Green was her mantle, close, and wrought
Of some thin silk stuff that's scarce stuff at all,
But like a mist wherethrough her white form fought,


And conquered! Ah God! conquered!
Silent my mate came as the night was still.
Speech? Words? Faugh! Who talks of words and love?!
Hot is such love and silent,
Silent as fate is, and as strong until
It faints in taking and in giving all.


Stark, keen, triumphant, till it plays at death.
God! she was white then, splendid as some tomb
High wrought of marble, and the panting breath
Ceased utterly. Well, then I waited, drew,
Half-sheathed, then naked from its saffron sheath
Drew full this dagger that doth tremble here.


Just then she woke and mocked the less keen blade.
Ah God, the Loba! and my only mate!
Was there such flesh made ever and unmade!



God curse the years that turn such women grey!
Behold here Vidal, that was hunted, flayed,
Shamed and yet bowed not and that won at last.


And yet I curse the sun for his red gladness,
I that have known strath, garth, brake, dale,
And every run-away of the wood through that great
madness,
Behold me shrivelled as an old oak's trunk
And made men's mock'ry in my rotten sadness!


No man hath heard the glory of my days:
No man hath dared and won his dare as I:
One night, one body and one welding flame!
What do ye own, ye niggards! that can buy
Such glory of the earth? Or who will win
Such battle-guerdon with his 'prowesse high' ?


O age gone lax! O stunted followers,
That mask at passions and desire desires,
Behold me shrivelled, and your mock of mocks;
And yet I mock you by the mighty fires
That burnt me to this ash.


Ah! Cabaret! Ah Cabaret, thy hills again!


Take your hands off me! . . . [Sniffing the air.
Ha! this scent is hot!

Paracelsus In Excelsis

‘Being no longer human, why should I
Pretend humanity or don the frail attire?
Men have I known and men, but never one
Was grown so free an essence, or become
So simply element as what I am.
The mist goes from the mirror and I see.
Behold! the world of forms is swept beneath-
Turmoil grown visible beneath our peace,
And we that are grown formless, rise above-
Fluids intangible that have been men,
We seem as statues round whose high-risen base
Some overflowing river is run mad,
In us alone the element of calm.'

Ortus


How have I laboured?
How have I not laboured
To bring her soul to birth,
To give these elements a name and a centre!
She is beautiful as the sunlight, and as fluid.
She has no name, and no place.
How have I laboured to bring her soul into separation;
To give her a name and her being!


Surely you are bound and entwined,
You are mingled with the elements unborn;
I have loved a stream and a shadow.
I beseech you enter your life.
I beseech you learn to say ‘I’
When I question you;
For you are no part, but a whole,
No portion, but a being.

Ole Kate

When I was only a youngster,
Sing: toodle doodlede ootl
Ole Kate would git her 'arf a pint
And wouldn't' giv' a damn hoot.


'Them stairs! them stairs, them gordam stairs
Will be the death of me/
I never heerd her say nothin'
About the priv'lege of liberty.


She'd come a sweatin' up with the coals
An a-sloshin' round with 'er mop,
Startin' in about 6 a.m.
And didn't seem never to stop.


She died on the job they tells me,
Fell plump into her pail.
Never got properly tanked as I saw,
And never got took to jail,


Just went on a sloshin'
And totin' up scuttles of coal,
And kissin9 her cat fer diversion,
Cod rest her sloshin’ soul.


‘Gimme a kissy-cuddle'
She'd say to her tibby-cat,
But she never made no mention
Of this here proletariat.

Of Jacopo Del Sellaio

This man knew out the secret ways of love,
No man could paint such things who did not know.
And now she's gone, who was his Cyprian,
And you are here, who are ‘The Isles’ to me.


And here's the thing that lasts the whole thing out:
The eyes of this dead lady speak to me.

Night Litany

O Dieu, purifiez nos cceurs!
Purifiez nos coeurs !


Yea the lines hast thou laid unto me
in pleasant places,
And the beauty of this thy Venice
hast thou shown unto me
Until is its loveliness become unto me
a thing of tears.


O God, what great kindness
have we done in times past
and forgotten it,
That thou givest this wonder unto us,
O God of waters?


O God of the night,
What great sorrow
Cometh unto us,
That thou thus repayest us
Before the time of its coming?


O God of silence,
Purifiez nos coeurs,
Purifiez nos coeurs,
For we have seen
The glory of the shadow of the
likeness of thine handmaid,


Yea, the glory of the shadow
of thy Beauty hath walked
Upon the shadow of the waters
In this thy Venice.
And before the holiness
Of the shadow of thy handmaid
Have I hidden mine eyes,
O God of waters.


O God of silence,
Purifiez nos coeurs,
Purifiez nos coeurs,
O God of waters,
make clean our hearts within us,
For I have seen the
Shadow of this thy Venice
Floating upon the waters,
And thy stars


Have seen this thing, out of their far courses
Have they seen this thing,
O God of waters,
Even as are thy stars



Silent unto us in their far-coursing,
Even so is mine heart
become silent within me.


Purifiez nos coeurs,
O God of the silence,
Purifiez nos coeurs,
O God of waters.

Na Audiart

Though thou well dost wish me ill
Audiart, Audiart,
Where thy bodice laces start
As ivy fingers clutching through
Its crevices,
Audiart, Audiart,
Stately, tall and lovely tender
Who shall render
Audiart, Audiart,
Praises meet unto thy fashion?
Here a word kiss !
Pass I on
Unto Lady ‘Miels-de-Ben’,
Having praised thy girdle's scope
How the stays ply back from it;
I breath no hope
That thou shouldst . . .
Nay no whit
Bespeak thyself for anything.
Just a word in thy praise, girl,
Just for the swirl
Thy satins make upon the stair,
'Cause never a flaw was there
Where thy torse and limbs are met
Though thou hate me, read it set
In rose and gold.
Or when the minstrel, tale half told,
Shall burst to lilting at the praise
'Audiart, Audiart' . .
Bertrans, master of his lays,
Bertrans of Aultaforte thy praise
Sets forth, and though thou hate me well,
Yea though thou wish me ill,
Audiart, Audiart.
Thy loveliness is here writ till,
Audiart,
Oh, till thou come again.
And being bent and wrinkled, in a form
That hath no perfect limning, when the warm
Youth dew is cold
Upon thy hands, and thy old soul
Scorning a new, wry'd casement,
Churlish at seemed misplacement,
Finds the earth as bitter
As now seems it sweet,
Being so young and fair
As then only in dreams,
Being then young and wry'd,
Broken of ancient pride,
Thou shalt then soften,
Knowing, I know not how,
Thou wert once she



Audiart, Audiart
For whose fairness one forgave
Audiart,
Audiart
Que be-m vols mal.

Middle-Aged


‘Tis but a vague, invarious delight
As gold that rains about some buried king.


As the fine flakes,
When tourists frolicking
Stamp on his roof or in the glazing light
Try photographs, wolf down their ale and cakes
And start to inspect some further pyramid;


As the fine dust, in the hid cell
Beneath their transitory step and merriment,
Drifts through the air, and the sarcophagus
Gains yet another crust
Of useless riches for the occupant,
So I, the fires that lit once dreams
Now over and spent,
Lie dead within four walls
And so now love
Rains down and so enriches some stiff case,
And strews a mind with precious metaphors,


And so the space
Of my still consciousness
Is full of gilded snow,


The which, no cat has eyes enough
To see the brightness of.

Mauberley


I
Turned from the 'eau-forte
Par Jaquemart'
To the strait head
Of Messalina:


'His true Penelope
Was Flaubert,'
And his tool
The engraver's.


Firmness,
Not the full smile,
His art, but an art
In profile;


Colourless
Pier Francesca,
Pisanello lacking the skill
To forge Achaia.


II
For three years, diabolus in the scale,
He drank ambrosia,
All passes, ANANGKE prevails,
Came end, at last, to that Arcadia.


He had moved amid her phantasmagoria,
Amid her galaxies,
NUKTIS 'AGALMA


Drifted . . . drifted precipitate,
Asking time to be rid of ...
Of his bewilderment; to designate
His new found orchid. . . .


To be certain . . . certain . . .
(Amid aerial flowers) . . . time for arrangements-
Drifted on
To the final estrangement;


Unable in the supervening blankness
To sift TO AGATHON from the chaff
Until he found his sieve . . .
Ultimately, his seismograph:


Given that is his 'fundamental passion',
This urge to convey the relation
Of eye-lid and cheek-bone
By verbal manifestations;
To present the series
Of curious heads in medallion



He had passed, inconscient, full gaze,
The wide-branded irides
And botticellian sprays implied
In their diastasis;


Which ansethesis, noted a year late,
And weighed, revealed his great affect,
(Orchid), mandate
Of Eros, a retrospect.


Mouths biting empty air,
The still stone dogs,
Caught in metamorphosis, were
Left him as epilogues.