Matsuo Bashō, ‘The Records of a Travel-Worn Satchelʼ (after The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches, edited and translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa)
.
.
Showing posts with label fluttering curtains. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fluttering curtains. Show all posts
11.24.2016
wind-swept spirit
In this mortal frame of mine which is made of a hundred bones and nine orifices there is something, and this something is called a wind-swept spirit for lack of a better name, for it is much like a thin drapery that is torn and swept away at the slightest stir of the wind.
8.18.2014
6.09.2013
5.15.2013
5.14.2013
3.14.2013
3.03.2013
2.18.2013
2.07.2013
2.06.2013
1.30.2013
12.15.2012
7.02.2012
moving and still both, like a white curtain blowing
He is here, come down to look for you.
It is the song that calls you back,
a song of joy and suffering
equally: a promise:
that things will be different up there
than they were last time.
You would rather have gone on feeling nothing,
emptiness and silence; the stagnant peace
of the deepest sea, which is easier
than the noise and flesh of the surface.
You are used to these blanched dim corridors,
you are used to the king
who passes you without speaking.
The other one is different
and you almost remember him.
He says he is singing to you
because he loves you,
not as you are now,
so chilled and minimal: moving and still
both, like a white curtain blowing
in the draft from a half-opened window
beside a chair on which nobody sits.
from
Eurydice, by Margaret Atwood
It is the song that calls you back,
a song of joy and suffering
equally: a promise:
that things will be different up there
than they were last time.
You would rather have gone on feeling nothing,
emptiness and silence; the stagnant peace
of the deepest sea, which is easier
than the noise and flesh of the surface.
You are used to these blanched dim corridors,
you are used to the king
who passes you without speaking.
The other one is different
and you almost remember him.
He says he is singing to you
because he loves you,
not as you are now,
so chilled and minimal: moving and still
both, like a white curtain blowing
in the draft from a half-opened window
beside a chair on which nobody sits.
from
Eurydice, by Margaret Atwood
4.14.2012
1.08.2012
the wind in the curtains tells the future
The music is Bach, unaccompanied violin.
The sun's up, the same unruly Sunne
unwelcomed by the languorous John Donne
flaccid after too much love or sex.
His pigeons' kin say Yes with all their necks
still not smart enough to say or show
when they mean No.
The sun comes early here and stays late.
Just after nine at night, the night must wait
as Christ Church summons with bells her hundred and one.
That ghostly roll call occupies the sun
while the college clocks bicker toward ten.
Even England is tired of sun by then
and glad to watch the last light ratchet down
all over town.
Atop this house, my two rooms make an aerie,
a teacher's nest, a writer's solitary.
The curtains whip in air both brisk and sunny.
I make the tea and sweeten the day with honey.
Here, messages abound: in the sostenuto
of Merton's bells, the Italian choir on radio.
The wind in the curtains tells the future and more
but in semaphore.
but in semaphore.
The whole world's a code I have not broken.
Because she cannot speak, she has not spoken
except in tones for which there is no tongue
except I sing the music she might have sung.
Now, at the end of century number twenty,
so many have plenty of nothing, I nothing of plenty.
Midway through my fifty-seventh year
she is not here.
John Stone, 5 am, sleepless in merton street
1.07.2012
metaphysical curtains
It comes about that the drifting of these curtains
Is full of long motions, as the ponderous
Deflections of distance; or as clouds
Inseparable from their afternoons;
Or the changing of light, the dropping
Of the silence, wide sleep and solitude
Of night, at which all motion
Is beyond us, as the firmament,
Up-rising and down-falling, bares
The last largeness, bold to see.
Deflections of distance; or as clouds
Inseparable from their afternoons;
Or the changing of light, the dropping
Of the silence, wide sleep and solitude
Of night, at which all motion
Is beyond us, as the firmament,
Up-rising and down-falling, bares
The last largeness, bold to see.
The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician
Wallace Stevens
..
1.06.2012
1.03.2012
across the pulsating curtains...
The lascivious air of Spring
Overflows the narrow garden
Beyond my open windows.
Across the pulsating curtains
Confused flower shadows flicker.
All alone in the summer house,
Wordless, I stroke a rose jade lute.
Far off in the lingering early
Twilight a cliff falls from a mountain.
The faint wind breathes with a light rain,
Delicate as a falling shadow.
O, pepper plant, you do not need
To bow and beg pardon of me.
I know you cannot hold back the day.
Li Ch’ing Chao, trans. by Rexroth
..
Overflows the narrow garden
Beyond my open windows.
Across the pulsating curtains
Confused flower shadows flicker.
All alone in the summer house,
Wordless, I stroke a rose jade lute.
Far off in the lingering early
Twilight a cliff falls from a mountain.
The faint wind breathes with a light rain,
Delicate as a falling shadow.
O, pepper plant, you do not need
To bow and beg pardon of me.
I know you cannot hold back the day.
Li Ch’ing Chao, trans. by Rexroth
..
12.21.2011
12.20.2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)