poetry

Sonnet by Elizabeth Bishop

/ zdunno03 / 6 Comments

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breadth, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.

from 90 North by Randall Jarrell

/ zdunno03 / 6 Comments

I reached my North and it had meaning.
Here at the actual pole of my existence,
Where all that I have done is meaningless,
Where I die or live by accident alone–

Where, living or dying, I am still alone;
Here where North, the night, the berg of death
Crowd me out of the ignorant darkness,
I see at last that all the knowledge

I wrung from the darkness–that the darkness flung me–
Is worthless as ignorance: nothing comes from nothing,
The darkness from the darkness. Pain comes from the darkness
And we call it wisdom. It is pain.

an Eskimo song of the sea

/ zdunno03 / 6 Comments

The great sea
Has sent me adrift,
It moves me as the weed in a great river,
Earth and the great weather
Move me,
Have carried me away
And move my inward parts with joy.

translated into Danish by Knud Rasmussen
translated from Danish into English by W.E. Calvert

an Inca song

/ zdunno03 / 7 Comments

My mother bore me,
Ah!
Within a raincloud,
Ah!
That I might weep with the rain,
Ah!
That I might whirl with the cloud,
Ah!

translated from the Quechua into French by R. & M. d’Harcourt
translated from the French into English by John Bierhorst

a Quiche poem about home: The Face of My Mountains

/ zdunno03 / 3 Comments

My voice speaks out
to your lips,
to your face:
give me thirteen times twenty days,
thirteen times twenty nights,
to bid farewell
to the face of my mountains,
the face of my valleys,
where once I roamed
to the four world-ends,
the four world-quarters,
seeking and finding
to feed me
and live.

translated into Spanish by Prologo de Francisco Monterde, then into English by John Bierhorst