trans. Russian Richard Lourie Whether your prey's Virgil, lark of the fields, or Baudelaire the albatross, or nightingale Verlaine, remember, no bird free as these ever yields to lures and traps without your craft and pain. Dear poet, catcher of birds, without deceit and ruses, without some violence, you don't stand a chance, though you…
Its fury undiminished, the syllogism yesterday struck down thirty-seven new victims in Paris alone. Shortsightedness at the Hôtel de Ville may plunge our nighttime streets into total darkness. The noise of the new electric-light generators has been aggravating the insomnia of the trees that line the boulevards, and last night enraged plane trees fell on…
trans. German Bruce Berlind I've sold off everything. The people climbed four flights, rang twice, out of breath, and paid me off on the floor, since the table too had been sold. While I was selling everything, five or six blocks away they expropriated the possessive pronouns and sawed off the shadows, the private ones,…
trans. Russian Judith Hemschemeyer I will leave your white house and peaceful garden. And life will be empty and bright. As for you, you I will celebrate in my poems, As a woman has never been able to do. And you will remember the dear lover For whose eyes you created this paradise, But I…
trans. French Richard Tillinghast Poetry like love is made in a bed. In her messed-up sheets the sun rises. Poetry lives in deep woods. She has all the room she needs. One whole side of the universe Is ruled by a hawk's gaze, By the dewdrop on a furled fern, By the memory of a…
trans. German Thomas Frick A field of stubble. A black wind thunders. Violet sadness unfolds, The same thoughts come back, mud surrounds the brain; Asters die, leaning on fences, And sunflowers, black and dishevelled. The dreary soul shudders silently Next to the dark and empty window.
And all day, terrified by its own moans, The crowd churns in agonized grief, And across the river, on funeral banners, Sinister skulls laugh. This is what I wrote and dreamed about, They have ripped my heart apart, As after a volley of gunfire, it's suddenly still, And death send patrols through the courtyards. Summer…
I've thought about the matter a great deal, and I'm now convinced that one of the few things that could still save our literature, not to mention the deeper life of culture at large, would be evidence – preferably in the form of direct contact – that there is other sentient life in the universe….
(Trakl's last poem) At sundown the autumn woods resound With deadly weapons, the golden fields And blue lakes, the sun Moves on seriously; The night grasps Dying soldiers, the wild cries From their shattered mouths. Red clouds gather silently Over the meadows, sent by a wrathful god, Soaking up the lost blood, cool as the…
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