I longed to visit the eastern cliff
countless years until today
I finally grabbed a vine and climbed
but halfway there met mist and wind
the trail was too narrow for clothes
the moss too slick for shoes
I stopped beneath this cinnamon tree
and slept with a cloud for a pillow
from Jealousy
Now the shadow of the southwest column— at the corner of the veranda on the bedroom side— falls across the garden. The sun, still low in the eastern sky, rakes the valley from the side. The rows of banana trees, growing at an angle to the direction of the valley, are everywhere quite distinct in this light.
From the bottom to the upper edge of the highest sectors, on the hillside facing the one the house is built on, it is relatively easy to count the trees; particularly opposite the house, thanks to the recent plantings of the patches located in this area.
The valley has been cleared over the greater part of its width here: there remains, at present, nothing but a border of brush (some thirty yards across at the top of the plateau) which joins the valley by a knoll with neither crest nor rocky fall.
The line of separation between the uncultivated zone and the banana plantation is not entirely straight. It is a zigzag line, with alternately protruding and receding angles, each belonging to a different patch of different age, but of a generally identical orientation.
Just opposite the house, a clump of trees marks the highest point the cultivation reaches in this sector. The patch that ends here is a rectangle. The ground is invisible, or virtually so, between the fronds. Still, the impeccable alignment of the boles shows that they have been planted only recently and that no stems have as yet been cut.
Rain
Mr. Yousouf forgot his umbrella
Mr. Yousouf lost his umbrella
Madame Yousouf, someone stole her umbrella
There was an ivory handle on her umbrella
What stuck in my eye was the end of an umbrella
Somewhere, haven’t I left my umbrella
Didn’t I leave my umbrella
Last night in your umbrella-stand?
I shall have to buy myself an umbrella
I never really use an umbrella
I have a duster with a hood for the rain
Mr. Yousouf you are lucky to dispense with
translation by Elizabeth Bishop
Melancholy
to Domingo Bolívar
You with the light, give me my own.
It’s like I’m blind. I grope around in the darkness,
I’m stuck beneath tempests and storms,
blinded by dreams and crazy with harmony.
That’s my curse, to dream. Poetry
is an iron straitjacket with thousands of spikes
that I wrap around my soul. Drops of melancholy
fall from the bloody spines.
And this is how I roam this bitter world, blind and crazy;
sometimes it seems the road is almost endless,
and sometimes that it’s very short …
And in this hesitation between inspiration and agony
I’m loaded with burdens that I can hardly bear.
Don’t you hear the drops of my melancholy falling?
translation by Stuart Cooke
In Autumn
I know there are those who ask: Why does he not
sing with the same wild harmonies as before?
But they have not seen the labors of an hour
the work of a minute, the prodigies of a year.
I am an aged tree that, when I was growing.
uttered a vague, sweet sound when the breeze caressed me.
The time for youthful smiles has now passed by:
now, let the hurricane swirl my heart to song!
translator unknown
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Pablo Picasso
The weapons of sleep have dug into the night Marvelous trenches keeping our heads apart.
Seen through the diamond, all medals are false, The earth is invisible under the blazing sky.
The face of the heart has lost its colors
And the sun seeks us out and the snow is blind.
The horizon has wings, if we turn away,
And looking into the distance we dispel mistakes.
Georges Braque
A bird flies away
Throwing off the clouds like a useless veil, He was never afraid of the light,
Enclosed in his flight,
He's never had a shadow.
Shells of the harvests broken by the sun.
Every leaf in the woods says yes, all they know how to say is yes, All questions, all answers
Deep in the yes runs the dew.
A man with weightless eyes describes the sky of love.
He gathers up the wonders of it Like leaves in a wood,
Like birds in their wings
And people in their sleep.
Max Ernst
Devoured by feathers and subject to the sea, He has let his shadow pass by in the flight Of the birds of freedom.
He has left
The ramp to those falling under the rain,
He has left their roof to all those proving themselves.
His body was in order,
The body of others came to disperse
This prescription he kept
From the first imprint of his blood on the earth.
His eyes are in a wall
And his face in their heavy ornament.
One more lie of the day
One more night, no more blind men.
portrait by Man Ray (1936)
Blindfolded by its eye
the crowbar
says hello soft lard
hello hard breast
sweetheart
handcart
water lily of suspenders
It’s sunny in the drawers
and the protruding chins sleep deeply
at the edge of the wheat fields
where the well-seasoned pipes frolic
and white and pink like a turnip
lean gallantly
against the blooming cherry trees
Wouldn’t you say that the locksmiths come back from fishing for whales
their hands full
and their looks ecstatic
like a skeleton under the dusty remains of his mother
who trembles at seeing his father appear
