Ποιήματα

Personals Ad

"I will send a picture too
if you will send me one of you"
-R. CREELEY

Poet professor in autumn years
seeks helpmate companion protector friend
young lover w/empty compassionate soul
exuberant spirit, straightforward handsome
athletic physique & boundless mind, courageous
warrior who may also like women & girls, no problem,
to share bed meditation apartment Lower East Side,
help inspire mankind conquer world anger & guilt,
empowered by Whitman Blake Rimbaud Ma Rainey & Vivaldi,
familiar respecting Art's primordial majesty, priapic carefree
playful harmless slave or master, mortally tender passing swift time,
photographer, musician, painter, poet, yuppie or scholar-
Find me here in New York alone with the Alone
going to lady psychiatrist who says Make time in your life
for someone you can call darling, honey, who holds you dear
can get excited & lay his head on you heart in peace.

October 8, 1987
Allen Ginsberg

 

Αιδώς Αργείε. Υπέροχο το άσμα ασμάτων, αλλά πρέπει να τα νιώθεις ή να τα υποστηρίζεις αυτά που λες για την αγάπη, αλλιώς κάνεις τα όμορφα λόγια κούφια...

 

by

The Hollow Men

T. S. Eliot

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death’s dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind’s singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death’s dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death’s twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Αφιερωμένο στο "πάντα" και στο "ποτέ". This is the way the world ends.

 

William Shakespear's Sonett no 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.
Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.
Or bends with the remover to remove.
Oh no! It is an ever fixed mark
that looks on tempests and is never shaken;
it is the star to every wandering bark,
whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
within his bending sickle's compass rome;
love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
but bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me proved
I never writ, nor no man ever loved..


Θα μου λείψεις kitty-face, ας είσαι τόσο χαρούμενη όσο σε έκανα κάποτε εγώ...

 

Burning the Letters - Sylvia Plath

I made a fire: being tired
Of the white fists of old
Letters and their death rattle
When I came too close to the wastebasket
What did they know that I didn't?
Grain by grain, they unrolled
Sands where a dream of clear water
Grinned like a getaway car.
I am not subtle
Love, love, and well, I was tired
Of cardboard cartons the color of cement or a dog pack
Holding in it's hate
Dully, under a pack of men in red jackets,
And the eyes and times of the postmarks.

This fire may lick and fawn, but it is merciless:
A glass case
My fingers would enter although
They melt and sag, they are told
Do not touch.
And here is an end to the writing,
The spry hooks that bend and cringe and the smiles, the smiles
And at least it will be a good place now, the attic.
At least I won't be strung just under the surface,
Dumb fish
With one tin eye,
Watching for glints,
Riding my Arctic
Between this wish and that wish.

So, I poke at the carbon birds in my housedress.
They are more beautiful than my bodiless owl,
They console me--
Rising and flying, but blinded.
They would flutter off, black and glittering, they would be coal angels
Only they have nothing to say but anybody.
I have seen to that.
With the butt of a rake
I flake up papers that breathe like people,
I fan them out
Between the yellow lettuces and the German cabbage
Involved in it's weird blue dreams
Involved in a foetus.
And a name with black edges

Wilts at my foot,
Sinuous orchis
In a nest of root-hairs and boredom..
Pale eyes, patent-leather gutturals!
Warm rain greases my hair, extinguishes nothing.
My veins glow like trees.
The dogs are tearing a fox. This is what it is like
A read burst and a cry
That splits from it's ripped bag and does not stop
With that dead eye
And the stuffed expression, but goes on
Dyeing the air,
Telling the particles of the clouds, the leaves, the water
What immortality is.
That it is immortal.

 

ΑΠ' ΤΗΝ ΤΡΟΠΟΛΟΓΙΑ ΤΟΥ ΣΥΓΚΕΚΡΙΜΕΝΟΥ
ΠΩΣ ΝΑ ΜΗΝ ΓΡΑΦΕΤΕ ΕΝΑ ΠΟΙΗΜΑ

Κατ' αρχήν να μην αρχίζετε απο πάνω
προς τα κάτω
αλλά πάντοτε
απο κάτω προς τ' απάνω
απο δεξιά προς αριστερά
απο το τέλος στην αρχή
και μάλιστα βουστροφηδών
το αλφάβητο έχει μόλις
εφευρεθεί
το μεταχειρίζονται
οι έμποροι
και όσοι φτειάχνουν
αγγεία
αν σας έρχεται στο νού
μια φράση
ξεχάστε την
θυμηθείτε κάτι
που δεν μπορείτε
να θυμηθείτε
όπως την γέννηση σας
αγαπήστε την αγάπη
μόνο αλλά κανέναν
άλλον/άλλην
να μασουλάτε την ρίμα
σα νάταν τσίχλα
να μετράτε τις συλλαβές
με το χάρακα
και τους στίχους
με τον διαβήτη
κι όταν απερνάτε κάτω
απ' το παράθυρο της
να κραυγάζετε
ακατάληπτες
βωμολοχίες
ώσπου να βγεί
απ' το παράθυρο
το στρογγυλό
κεφάλι
της
σελήνης
χαμογελώντας
σε κατάσταση
ακράτητου
σεληνιασμού

Νάνος Βαλαωρίτης, αθήνα Οκτ. 2004
(ΔΕΛΕΑΡ, Εγχειρίδιο Ελληνικής και Ξένης Ποίησης, τευχος 7ο)

 

Θραύσματα γυναίκας ανασηκώνονται
στροβιλίζονται
αποκτούν ξανά μορφή.
Πιο όμορφη από πριν.

(Για την Neeva)

 

Απάντηση: Ποιήματα

If I could have just one wish,
I would wish to wake up everyday
to the sound of your breath on my neck,
the warmth of your lips on my cheek,
the touch of your fingers on my skin,
and the feel of your heart beating with mine...
Knowing that I could never find that feeling
with anyone other than you.

- Courtney Kuchta -

 

How to get on in Society

Are the requisites all in the toilet?
The frills round the cutlets can wait
Till the girl has replenished the cruets
And switched on the logs in the grate.

It's ever so close in the lounge dear,
But the vestibule's comfy for tea
And Howard is riding on horseback
So do come and take some with me.

(Του John Betjetman. Απόσπασμα. Για τη φίλη Ντόρα.)

 

Απάντηση: Ποιήματα

At Your Feet

Where are you tonight my love?
What is it that you do?
It's true my heart is torn apart
When I'm not with you
What enchanted thoughts swim through your head?
Are any of them of me?
When, my dear, you go to bed
Is it my face you see?

Who is honoured with your presence now?
And do they even care?
The thought of you not being admired
Fills me with despair
Do they appreciate your loveliness?
Do they marvel at your splendor?
Do they love to hear your velvet voice?
Do they adore your smile so tender?

If they do not
Then they all are fools
and had you been with me
Every day, my love, you'd be a king
because that's what you are to me

I'm at your feet
and I come with gifts
my body, heart, and soul
They're yours to do with as you please
to command and to control

I give myself with all my heart
I'm yours for all of time
Your slave, your queen, your anything
only say that you are mine

- Taryn Grace -

 

For DocHeart

The Space Heater

On the then-below-zero day, it was on,
near the patients' chair, the old heater
kept by the analyst's couch, at the end,
like the infant's headstone that was added near the foot
of my father's grave. And it was hot, with the almost
laughing satire of a fire's heat,
the little coils like hairs in Hell.
And it was making a group of sick noises-
I wanted the doctor to turn it off
but I couldn't seem to ask, so I just
stared, but it did not budge. The doctor
turned his heavy, soft palm
outward, toward me, inviting me to speak, I
said, "If you're cold-are you cold? But if it's on
for me..." He held his palm out toward me,
I tried to ask, but I only muttered,
but he said, "Of course," as if I had asked,
and he stood up and approached the heater, and then
stood on one foot, and threw himself
toward the wall with one hand, and with the other hand
reached down, behind the couch, to pull
the plug out. I looked away,
I had not known he would have to bend
like that. And I was so moved, that he
would act undignified, to help me,
that I cried, not trying to stop, but as if
the moans made sentences which bore
some human message. If he would cast himself toward the
outlet for me, as if bending with me in my old
shame and horror, then I would rest
on his art-and the heater purred, like a creature
or the familiar of a creature, or the child of a familiar,
the father of a child, the spirit of a father,
the healing of a spirit, the vision of healing,
the heat of vision, the power of heat,
the pleasure of power.

Sharon Olds

 

Ένα χάικου για την Dora.


kuraki yori kuraki ni iru ya neko no koi

In from the dark
and out into the dark-
that's a cat in love!

Issa (1762-1826 Kobayashi Issa. His pseudonym means "one cup of tea". Born in a farm, he was raised by a harsh stepmother and dogged by misfortune and poverty, yet found comfort in the companionship of the smallest living creatures with whom he empathised.)
The British Museum Haiku, 2002, edited by David Cobb)

και απο την Plath αν και δεν την αγαπώ πολύ, σου διαλέγω αυτό το μελωδικό τελείωμα που το χει πετύχει όμορφα στο Lady Lazarus.


...
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

 

Ζωγραφισμένα- Κ.Π. Καβάφης

Την εργασία μου την προσέχω και την αγαπώ.
Μα της συνθέσεως μ’ αποθαρρύνει σήμερα η βραδύτης.
Η μέρα μ’ επηρέασε. Η μορφή της
όλο και σκοτεινιάζει. Όλο φυσά και βρέχει.
Πιότερο επιθυμώ να δω παρά να πω.
Στη ζωγραφιάν αυτή κυττάζω τώρα
ένα ωραίο αγόρι που σιμά στη βρύσι
επλάγιασεν, αφού θ’ απέκαμε να τρέχει.
Τι ωραίο παιδί· τι θείο μεσημέρι το έχει
παρμένο πια για να το αποκοιμίσει. —
Κάθομαι και κυττάζω έτσι πολλήν ώρα.
Και μες στην τέχνη πάλι, ξεκουράζομαι απ’ την δούλεψή της.