Pierre Reverdy

  

        portrait by Alberto Giacometti (1962)

the taste of reality

He took one step at a time, not knowing where he should place the next. Turning the corner, the wind swept up the dust and its greedy mouth engulfed all of space.

He began to run, hoping to take flight from one moment to the next, but along the gutter the cobblestones were slippery and his flailing arms couldn’t hold him. As he fell he understood that he was heavier than his dream and he loved, then, the weight that brought him down.

                                    (Translated by Michael Tweed)

Zbigniew Herbert

 

Elegy Of Fortinbras

for C.M.

Now that we're alone we can talk prince man to man
though you lie on the stairs and see no more than a dead ant
nothing but black sun with broken rays
I could never think of your hands without smiling
and now that they lie on the stone like fallen nests
they are as defenceless as before The end is exactly this
The hands lie apart The sword lies apart The head apart
and the knight's feet in soft slippers

You will have a soldier's funeral without having been a soldier
the only ritual I am acquainted with a little
There will be no candles no singing only cannon-fuses and bursts
crepe dragged on the pavement helmets boots artillery horses drums drums I know nothing exquisite
those will be my manoeuvers before I start to rule
one has to take the city by the neck and shake it a bit

Anyhow you had to perish Hamlet you were not for life
you believed in crystal notions not in human clay
always twitching as if asleep you hunted chimeras
wolfishly you crunched the air only to vomit
you knew no human thing you did not know even how to breathe

Now you have peace Hamlet you accomplished what you had to
and you have peace The rest is not silence but belongs to me
you chose the easier part of an elegant thrust
but what is heroic death compared with eternal watching
with a cold apple in one's hand on a narrow chair
with a view of the ant-hill and the clock's dial

Adieu prince I have tasks a sewer project
and a decree on prostitutes and beggars
I must also elaborate a better system of prisons
since as you justly said Denmark is a prison
I go to my affairs This night is born
a star named Hamlet We shall never meet
what I shall leave will not be worth a tragedy

It is not for us to greet each other or bid farewell we live on archipelagos
and that water these words what can they do what can they do prince

Zbigniew Herbert

 

Architecture

Over a delicate arch—
an eyebrow of stone—

on the unruffled forehead
of a wall

in joyful and open windows
where there are faces instead of geraniums

where rigorous rectangles
border a dreaming perspective

where a stream awakened by an ornament
flows on a quiet field of surfaces

movement meets stillness a line meets a shout
trembling uncertainty simple clarity

you are there
architecture
art of fantasy and stone

there you reside beauty
over an arch
light as a sigh

on a wall
pale from altitude

and a window
tearful with a pane of glass

a fugitive from apparent forms
I proclaim your motionless dance

Zbigniew Herbert

 

Pebble

The pebble

is a perfect creature

equal to itself

mindful of its limits

filled exactly

with a pebbly meaning

with a scent which does not remind one of anything

does not frighten anything away

does not arouse desire

its ardor and coldness

are just and full of dignity

I feel a heavy remorse

when I hold it in my hand

and its noble body

is permeated by false warmth

— Pebbles cannot be tamed

to the end they will look at us

with a calm and very clear eye

(Translated from the Polish by Peter Dale Scott and Czeslaw Milosz)

Zbigniew Herbert

 

Objects

Inanimate objects are always correct and cannot, unfortunately, be reproached with anything. I have never observed a chair shift from one foot to another, or a bed rear on its hind legs. And tables, even when they are tired, will not dare to bend their knees. I suspect that objects do this from pedagogical considerations, to reprove us constantly for our instability.

Ranier Maria Rilke

 

The Panther

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,

has grown so weary that it cannot hold

anything else. It seems to him there are

a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,

the movement of his powerful soft strides

is like a ritual dance around a center

in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils

lifts, quietly—. An image enters in,

rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,

plunges into the heart and is gone.

(Translated by Stephen Mitchell)

Vicente Huidobro

 

(Dying sun / There is a breakdown in the motor / And a springlike aroma / Remains in the air on passing / Some place / a song / WHERE ARE YOU / One evening like this / I looked for you in vain / Over the mist of all the roads / I kept on running into myself / And in the smoke of my cigar / There was a lost bird / No one would answer / The last shepherds had drowned / And the confused sheep / Were eating flowers and giving no honey / The wind that was passing by / Piles up the wool / Among the clouds / Wet from my tears / Why cry again / over the already lamented / And since the sheep are eating flowers / Sign that you have just passed by)

Huidobro himself has explicated this poem, or at least tried to. When he was in Chile in 1919, spreading the word about the new aesthetic, he was taken for an iconoclast. Seeking to correct this misinterpretation, he visited Hernán Díaz Arrieta, his conservative-minded friend from the days of Musa Joven and Azul, and then critic for the influential weekly Zig-Zag. As evidence of his classicism, he pointed out «Égloga» and tried to explain its imagery. The critic, although unconvinced, has fortunately left us a record of the attempt:(7)

After a long conversation with the author [of «Égloga»], we have arrived at the following conclusions. The dying sun offers no difficulty; it could be creationist, just as well as classicist, or even romantic. It is the same old sun that dies out every afternoon. The breakdown in the motor? I first took that to mean that the poet had gone on a trip and that his car had broken down. But no; the breakdown is suffered by the sun and it is for this reason that it is dying. That's what Huidobro says. Alright. At bottom, it is not really an important issue. Continuing along in the poem, one hears a lost song, someone is looking for something, remembers, feels alone. All this is stated in a rather extravagant manner; but when have poets ever expressed themselves like the rest of us? Suddenly, «in the smoke of my cigar a lost bird». And this? What is it? No one replies; the last shepherds are drowned, in other words they are silenced. Someone, then goes on calling out for someone else. One comes across some sheep strangely confused. Up above, the clouds pile up like mountains of wool. A reflection of contentment. And the explanation for the sheep eating flowers: someone special had just been there . . .
— Do you understand now?
— Very little.
— But this is a translation of an eclogue of San Juan de la Cruz!
— It doesn't surprise me; if you had translated 

translation by Rene Dacosta 

Vicente Huidobro

MINUIT

Les heures glissent
Comme des gouttes d’eau sur une vitr                                                                    Silence de Minuit

La peur se déroule dans l’air 

Et le vent

                se cache au fond du puits

                            OH

                        C’est une feuille
                            on pense que la terre va finir

                            Le temps

                                                        remue dans l’ombre

tout le monde dort

                                    UN SOUPIR

Dans la maison quelqu’un vient de mourir

                                                                    translated by the author from the original Spanish

                                                                     (From Horizon Carré, Paris : Paul Birault, 1917.)                

Vicente Huidobro

Vladimir Mayakovsky

Clouds up to tricks

High
       in the sky
                      sailed clouds.
Just four of them —
                                 none of your crowds.
From the first to the third
                                       they looked men,
while the fourth
                         was a camel.
                                              Then,
when they were well adrift,
they were joined
                          on the way
                                            by a fifth,
from which,
                   absolutely irrelevant,
ran elephant
                     after elephant.
Till —
       perhaps a sixth