"Quand un salon littéraire devient un boudoir pour dames"
24 Juin 2015
O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!
Sondern laßt uns angenehmere
anstimmen und freudenvollere.
Freude! Freude!
Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,
Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligthum!
Deine Zauber binden wieder
Was die Mode streng geteilt;
Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.
Wem der große Wurf gelungen,
Eines Freundes Freund zu sein;
Wer ein holdes Weib errungen,
Mische seinen Jubel ein!
Ja, wer auch nur eine Seele
Sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund!
Und wer's nie gekonnt, der stehle
Weinend sich aus diesem Bund!
Freude trinken alle Wesen
An den Brüsten der Natur;
Alle Guten, alle Bösen
Folgen ihrer Rosenspur.
Küsse gab sie uns und Reben,
Einen Freund, geprüft im Tod;
Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben,
Und der Cherub steht vor Gott.
Froh, wie seine Sonnen fliegen
Durch des Himmels prächt'gen Plan,
Laufet, Brüder, eure Bahn,
Freudig, wie ein Held zum Siegen.
Seid umschlungen, Millionen!
Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!
Brüder, überm Sternenzelt
Muß ein lieber Vater wohnen.
Ihr stürzt nieder, Millionen?
Ahnest du den Schöpfer, Welt?
Such' ihn überm Sternenzelt!
Über Sternen muß er wohnen.
Seid umschlungen, Millionen!
Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!
Brüder, überm Sternenzelt
Muß ein lieber Vater wohnen.
Seid umschlungen,
Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt!
Freude, schöner Götterfunken
Tochter aus Elysium,
Freude, schöner Götterfunken, Götterfunken.
1.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
2.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
3.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
JOHN KEATS
Ode to Death
Come, lovely and soothing death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later, delicate death.
...Praise! Praise! Praise!
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death...
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly...
Over the tree-tops I float thee a song...
I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee, O death.
-- Walt Whitman
By the East River and the Bronx boys were singing, exposing their waists with the wheel, with oil, leather, and the hammer. Ninety thousand miners taking silver from the rocks and children drawing stairs and perspectives. But none of them could sleep, none of them wanted to be the river, none of them loved the huge leaves or the shoreline's blue tongue. By the East River and the Queensboro boys were battling with industry and the Jews sold to the river faun the rose of circumcision, and over bridges and rooftops, the mouth of the sky emptied herds of bison driven by the wind. But none of them paused, none of them wanted to be a cloud, none of them looked for ferns or the yellow wheel of a tambourine. As soon as the moon rises the pulleys will spin to alter the sky; a border of needles will besiege memory and the coffins will bear away those who don't work. New York, mire, New York, mire and death. What angel is hidden in your cheek? Whose perfect voice will sing the truths of wheat? Who, the terrible dream of your stained anemones? Not for a moment, Walt Whitman, lovely old man, have I failed to see your beard full of butterflies, nor your corduroy shoulders frayed by the moon, nor your thighs pure as Apollo's, nor your voice like a column of ash, old man, beautiful as the mist, you moaned like a bird with its sex pierced by a needle. Enemy of the satyr, enemy of the vine, and lover of bodies beneath rough cloth... Not for a moment, virile beauty, who among mountains of coal, billboards, and railroads, dreamed of becoming a river and sleeping like a river with that comrade who would place in your breast the small ache of an ignorant leopard. Not for a moment, Adam of blood, Macho, man alone at sea, Walt Whitman, lovely old man, because on penthouse roofs, gathered at bars, emerging in bunches from the sewers, trembling between the legs of chauffeurs, or spinning on dance floors wet with absinthe, the faggots, Walt Whitman, point you out. He's one, too! That's right! And they land on your luminous chaste beard, blonds from the north, blacks from the sands, crowds of howls and gestures, like cats or like snakes, the faggots, Walt Whitman, the faggots, clouded with tears, flesh for the whip, the boot, or the teeth of the lion tamers. He's one, too! That's right! Stained fingers point to the shore of your dream when a friend eats your apple with a slight taste of gasoline and the sun sings in the navels of boys who play under bridges. But you didn't look for scratched eyes, nor the darkest swamp where someone submerges children, nor frozen saliva, nor the curves slit open like a toad's belly that the faggots wear in cars and on terraces while the moon lashes them on the street corners of terror. You looked for a naked body like a river. Bull and dream who would join wheel with seaweed, father of your agony, camellia of your death, who would groan in the blaze of your hidden equator. Because it's all right if a man doesn't look for his delight in tomorrow morning's jungle of blood. The sky has shores where life is avoided and there are bodies that shouldn't repeat themselves in the dawn. Agony, agony, dream, ferment, and dream. This is the world, my friend, agony, agony. Bodies decompose beneath the city clocks, war passes by in tears, followed by a million gray rats, the rich give their mistresses small illuminated dying things, and life is neither noble, nor good, nor sacred. Man is able, if he wishes, to guide his desire through a vein of coral or a heavenly naked body. Tomorrow, loves will become stones, and Time a breeze that drowses in the branches. That's why I don't raise my voice, old Walt Whitman, against the little boy who writes the name of a girl on his pillow, nor against the boy who dresses as a bride in the darkness of the wardrobe, nor against the solitary men in casinos who drink prostitution's water with revulsion, nor against the men with that green look in their eyes who love other men and burn their lips in silence. But yes against you, urban faggots, tumescent flesh and unclean thoughts. Mothers of mud. Harpies. Sleepless enemies of the love that bestows crowns of joy. Always against you, who give boys drops of foul death with bitter poison. Always against you, Fairies of North America, Pájaros of Havana, Jotos of Mexico, Sarasas of Cádiz, Apios of Seville, Cancos of Madrid, Floras of Alicante, Adelaidas of Portugal. Faggots of the world, murderers of doves! Slaves of women. Their bedroom bitches. Opening in public squares like feverish fans or ambushed in rigid hemlock landscapes. No quarter given! Death spills from your eyes and gathers gray flowers at the mire's edge. No quarter given! Attention! Let the confused, the pure, the classical, the celebrated, the supplicants close the doors of the bacchanal to you. And you, lovely Walt Whitman, stay asleep on the Hudson's banks with your beard toward the pole, openhanded. Soft clay or snow, your tongue calls for comrades to keep watch over your unbodied gazelle. Sleep on, nothing remains. Dancing walls stir the prairies and America drowns itself in machinery and lament. I want the powerful air from the deepest night to blow away flowers and inscriptions from the arch where you sleep, and a black child to inform the gold-craving whites that the kingdom of grain has arrived.
Los animales fueron
imperfectos,
largos de cola, tristes
de cabeza.
Poco a poco se fueron
componiendo,
haciéndose paisaje,
adquiriendo lunares, gracia, vuelo.
El gato,
sólo el gato
apareció completo
y orgulloso:
nació completamente terminado,
camina solo y sabe lo que quiere.
El hombre quiere ser pescado y pájaro,
la serpiente quisiera tener alas,
el perro es un león desorientado,
el ingeniero quiere ser poeta,
la mosca estudia para golondrina,
el poeta trata de imitar la mosca,
pero el gato
quiere ser sólo gato
y todo gato es gato
desde bigote a cola,
desde presentimiento a rata viva,
desde la noche hasta sus ojos de oro.
No hay unidad
como él,
no tienen
la luna ni la flor
tal contextura:
es una sola cosa
como el sol o el topacio,
y la elástica línea en su contorno
firme y sutil es como
la línea de la proa de una nave.
Sus ojos amarillos
dejaron una sola
ranura
para echar las monedas de la noche.
Oh pequeño
emperador sin orbe,
conquistador sin patria,
mínimo tigre de salón, nupcial
sultán del cielo
de las tejas eróticas,
el viento del amor
en la intemperie
reclamas
cuando pasas
y posas
cuatro pies delicados
en el suelo,
oliendo,
desconfiando
de todo lo terrestre,
porque todo
es inmundo
para el inmaculado pie del gato.
Oh fiera independiente
de la casa, arrogante
vestigio de la noche,
perezoso, gimnástico
y ajeno,
profundísimo gato,
policía secreta
de las habitaciones,
insignia
de un
desaparecido terciopelo,
seguramente no hay
enigma
en tu manera,
tal vez no eres misterio,
todo el mundo te sabe y perteneces
al habitante menos misterioso,
tal vez todos lo creen,
todos se creen dueños,
propietarios, tíos
de gatos, compañeros,
colegas,
discípulos o amigos
de su gato.
Yo no.
Yo no suscribo.
Yo no conozco al gato.
Todo lo sé, la vida y su archipiélago,
el mar y la ciudad incalculable,
la botánica,
el gineceo con sus extravíos,
el por y el menos de la matemática,
los embudos volcánicos del mundo,
la cáscara irreal del cocodrilo,
la bondad ignorada del bombero,
el atavismo azul del sacerdote,
pero no puedo descifrar un gato.
Mi razón resbaló en su indiferencia,
sus ojos tienen números de oro.
--------------------------------------
There was something wrong
with the animals:
their tails were too long, and they had
unfortunate heads.
Then they started coming together,
little by little
fitting together to make a landscape,
developing birthmarks, grace, flight.
But the cat,
only the cat
turned out finished,
and proud:
born in a state of total completion,
it sticks to itself and knows exactly what it wants.
Men would like to be fish or fowl,
snakes would rather have wings,
and dogs are would-be lions.
Engineers want to be poets,
flies emulate swallows,
and poets try hard to act like flies.
But the cat
wants nothing more than to be a cat,
and every cat is pure cat
from its whiskers to its tail,
from sixth sense to squirming rat,
from nighttime to its golden eyes.
Nothing hangs together
quite like a cat:
neither flowers nor the moon
have
such consistency.
It's a thing by itself,
like the sun or a topaz,
and the elastic curve of its back,
which is both subtle and confident,
is like the curve of a sailing ship's prow.
The cat's yellow eyes
are the only
slot
for depositing the coins of night.
O little
emperor without a realm,
conqueror without a homeland,
diminutive parlor tiger, nuptial
sultan of heavens
roofed in erotic tiles:
when you pass
in rough weather
and poise
four nimble paws
on the ground,
sniffing,
suspicious
of all earthly things
(because everything
feels filthy
to the cat's immaculate paw),
you claim
the touch of love in the air.
O freelance household
beast, arrogant
vestige of night,
lazy, agile
and strange,
O fathomless cat,
secret police
of human chambers
and badge
of burnished velvet!
Surely there is nothing
enigmatic
in your manner,
maybe you aren't a mystery after all.
You're known to everyone, you belong
to the least mysterious tenant.
Everyone may believe it,
believe they're master,
owner, uncle
or companion
to a cat,
some cat's colleague,
disciple or friend.
But not me.
I'm not a believer.
I don't know a thing about cats.
I know everything else, including life and its archipelago,
seas and unpredictable cities,
plant life,
the pistil and its scandals,
the pluses and minuses of math.
I know the earth's volcanic protrusions
and the crocodile's unreal hide,
the fireman's unseen kindness
and the priest's blue atavism.
But cats I can't figure out.
My mind slides on their indifference.
Their eyes hold ciphers of gold.
Poetry is white: it comes from the water covered with drops, it wrinkles and piles up, the skin of this planet must be stretched, the sea of its whiteness must be ironed, and the hands move and move, the holy surfaces are smoothed out, and that is how things are made: hands make the world each day, fire becomes one with steel, linen, canvas, and cotton arrive from the combat of the laundries, and out of light a dove is born: chastity returns from the foam.
Pablo Neruda
An Ode To No One
SMASHING PUMPKINS
I'm never coming back
I'm never giving in
I'll never be the shine in your spit
I disconnect the act
I disconnect the dots
I disconnect the me in me
And you're mistaken, It's you that's faking
Living and breathing and dying too
This message is for anyoine who dares to hear a fool
You can't bring me back, you can't bring me back
Cause I give it all back to you
Thru sacred alleys, the living wrecks
Wreak their havoc upon this world
The disenchanted, the romantics,
The body and face and soul of you is gone down that deep black hole
Destroy the mind-destroy the body-but you cannot destroy the heart
And you, you make me so I need to disconnect
And you make it so real
I don't need your love to disconnect
To runaround kids in get-go cars
With vaseline afterbirths and neon coughs
Galaxies full of nobodies
Giving us the farewell runarounds
I took a virgin mary axe to his sweet baby jane,
lost my innocence to a no good girl, scratch my
face with anvil hands, and coil my tongue around a bumblebee mouth
And I give it all back to you
No way, I don't need it, I don't need your love to disconnect
And you make it, so real, I don't need your love to disconnect
No way to disconnect
And you make it so real
I don't need your love to disconnect
No way to disconnect
"Ode To Billie Joe"
(Bobbie Gentr)
It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day
I was out choppin' cotton and my brother was balin' hay
And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat
And Mama hollered out the back door "y'all remember to wipe your feet"
And then she said "I got some news this mornin' from Choctaw Ridge"
"Today Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"
'n' Papa said to Mama as he passed around the blackeyed peas
"Well Billy Joe never had a lick of sense, pass the biscuits, please"
"There's five more acres in the lower forty I've got to plow"
'n' Mama said it was shame about Billy Joe, anyhow
Seems like nothin' ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge
And now Billy Joe MacAllister's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge
'n' Brother said he recollected when he and Tom and Billie Joe
Put a frog down my back at the Carroll County picture show
And wasn't I talkin' to him after church last Sunday night?
"I'll have another piece-a apple pie, you know it don't seem right"
"I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on Choctaw Ridge"
"And now ya tell me Billie Joe's jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge"
'n' Mama said to me "Child, what's happened to your appetite?"
"I've been cookin' all morning and you haven't touched a single bite"
"That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today"
"Said he'd be pleased to have dinner on Sunday, oh, by the way"
"He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge"
"And she and Billy Joe was throwing somethin' off the Tallahatchie Bridge"
A year has come 'n' gone since we heard the news 'bout Billy Joe
'n' Brother married Becky Thompson, they bought a store in Tupelo
There was a virus going 'round, Papa caught it and he died last Spring
And now Mama doesn't seem to wanna do much of anything
And me, I spend a lot of time pickin' flowers up on Choctaw Ridge
And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge
ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE
JOHN KEATS
A rose in the high garden you desire. A wheel in the pure syntax of steel. The mountain stripped bare of Impressionist fog, The grays watching over the last balustrades. The modern painters in their white ateliers clip the square root's sterilized flower. In the waters of the Seine a marble iceberg chills the windows and scatters the ivy. Man treads firmly on the cobbled streets. Crystals hide from the magic of reflections. The Government has closed the perfume stores. The machine perpetuates its binary beat. An absence of forests and screens and brows roams across the roofs of the old houses. The air polishes its prism on the sea and the horizon rises like a great aqueduct. Soldiers who know no wine and no penumbra behead the sirens on the seas of lead. Night, black statue of prudence, holds the moon's round mirror in her hand. A desire for forms and limits overwhelms us. Here comes the man who sees with a yellow ruler. Venus is a white still life and the butterfly collectors run away. * Cadaqués, at the fulcrum of water and hill, lifts flights of stairs and hides seashells. Wooden flutes pacify the air. An ancient woodland god gives the children fruit. Her fishermen sleep dreamless on the sand. On the high sea a rose is their compass. The horizon, virgin of wounded handkerchiefs, links the great crystals of fish and moon. A hard diadem of white brigantines encircles bitter foreheads and hair of sand. The sirens convince, but they don't beguile, and they come if we show a glass of fresh water. * Oh Salvador Dali, of the olive-colored voice! I do not praise your halting adolescent brush or your pigments that flirt with the pigment of your times, but I laud your longing for eternity with limits. Sanitary soul, you live upon new marble. You run from the dark jungle of improbable forms. Your fancy reaches only as far as your hands, and you enjoy the sonnet of the sea in your window. The world is dull penumbra and disorder in the foreground where man is found. But now the stars, concealing landscapes, reveal the perfect schema of their courses. The current of time pools and gains order in the numbered forms of century after century. And conquered Death takes refuge trembling in the tight circle of the present instant. When you take up your palette, a bullet hole in its wing, you call on the light that brings the olive tree to life. The broad light of Minerva, builder of scaffolds, where there is no room for dream or its hazy flower. You call on the old light that stays on the brow, not descending to the mouth or the heart of man. A light feared by the loving vines of Bacchus and the chaotic force of curving water. You do well when you post warning flags along the dark limit that shines in the night. As a painter, you refuse to have your forms softened by the shifting cotton of an unexpected cloud. The fish in the fishbowl and the bird in the cage. You refuse to invent them in the sea or the air. You stylize or copy once you have seen their small, agile bodies with your honest eyes. You love a matter definite and exact, where the toadstool cannot pitch its camp. You love the architecture that builds on the absent and admit the flag simply as a joke. The steel compass tells its short, elastic verse. Unknown clouds rise to deny the sphere exists. The straight line tells of its upward struggle and the learned crystals sing their geometries. * But also the rose of the garden where you live. Always the rose, always, our north and south! Calm and ingathered like an eyeless statue, not knowing the buried struggle it provokes. Pure rose, clean of artifice and rough sketches, opening for us the slender wings of the smile. (Pinned butterfly that ponders its flight.) Rose of balance, with no self-inflicted pains. Always the rose! * Oh Salvador Dali, of the olive-colored voice! I speak of what your person and your paintings tell me. I do not praise your halting adolescent brush, but I sing the steady aim of your arrows. I sing your fair struggle of Catalan lights, your love of what might be made clear. I sing your astronomical and tender heart, a never-wounded deck of French cards. I sing your restless longing for the statue, your fear of the feelings that await you in the street. I sing the small sea siren who sings to you, riding her bicycle of corals and conches. But above all I sing a common thought that joins us in the dark and golden hours. The light that blinds our eyes is not art. Rather it is love, friendship, crossed swords. Not the picture you patiently trace, but the breast of Theresa, she of sleepless skin, the tight-wound curls of Mathilde the ungrateful, our friendship, painted bright as a game board. May fingerprints of blood on gold streak the heart of eternal Catalunya. May stars like falconless fists shine on you, while your painting and your life break into flower. Don't watch the water clock with its membraned wings or the hard scythe of the allegory. Always in the air, dress and undress your brush before the sea peopled with sailors and ships.
Ode to Beauty
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