(Translation: Richard Zenith.)
Translated by Richard Zenith.
Translated by Kenneth Rexroth.
Translated by Kenneth Rexroth.
Translated by Kenneth Rexroth.
Translated by Kenneth Rexroth.
Translated by Kenneth Rexroth.
I’ll plunder seasons.
I’ll play with months and years.
Winter days with the red faces of summer.And down the gray road,
in the silent parade
of hard, unmoving days,
I’ll organize the blues and gymnastics.A rippling morning
of painted lips,
cool, as though just bathed,
with an autumn dawn.And I’ll catch the clouds–
red, blue, purple–
and throw them against the inexpressive paper
of the black and blue sky,
so that they’ll write a letter
in the universal language
to their good friend the wind.To help the shopkeepers,
I’ll make luminous billboards,
with spotlights of stars.Maybe I’ll assassinate a dawn
so that, bleeding,
it will stain a white cloud purple.In the shop of the seasons,
I’ll sell ripe autumn apples
wrapped in the paper of winter mists.I’ll kidnap Spring,
to have her in my house,
like a ballerina.The wind will change its schedule.
Unpredictable crossings of the clouds.And down the highway of the Future, I’ll rush toward Winter,
for the surprise of meeting it later,
mixed with Summer.On the green felt of space,
I’ll bet on days
that will roll like dice.I’ll play with months and years.
Octavio Paz’s first unpublished poem, 1931. Translated by Eliot Weinberger.
House
Two floors
Down is stove
Down is bath kitchen music
Down is stove and the stack of logs
Up is bed and the climate the tropical
Down is desk next to stove
Around and around floors windows uncurtained
Outside is snow
Unmarked northern profound white snow
Up small woman alone
Icicles
Naked
“Ballad of Birmingham” by Dudley Randall
(On the bombing of a church in Birmingham, Alabama, 1963)
“”Mother dear, may I go downtown
Instead of out to play,
And march the streets of Birmingham
In a Freedom March today?”
“No, baby, no, you may not go,
For the dogs are fierce and wild,
And clubs and hoses, guns and jails
Aren’t good for a little child.”
“But, mother, I won’t be alone.
Other children will go with me,
And march the streets of Birmingham
To make our country free.”
“No baby, no, you may not go
For I fear those guns will fire.
But you may go to church instead
And sing in the children’s choir.”
She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair,
And bathed rose petal sweet,
And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands,
And white shoes on her feet.
The mother smiled to know that her child
Was in the sacred place,
But that smile was the last smile
To come upon her face.
For when she heard the explosion,
Her eyes grew wet and wild.
She raced through the streets of Birmingham
Calling for her child.
She clawed through bits of glass and brick,
Then lifted out a shoe.
“O, here’s the shoe my baby wore,
But, baby, where are you?”
Learn more about the September 15th, 1963 terrorist attack in Birmingham, Alabama.
“Manet’s Olympia”
She reclines, more or less.
Try that posture, it’s hardly languor.
Her right arm sharp angles.
With her left she conceals her ambush.
Shoes but not stockings,
how sinister. The flower
behind her ear is naturally
not real, of a piece
with the sofa’s drapery.
The windows (if any) are shut.
This is indoor sin.
Above the head of the (clothed) maid
is an invisible voice balloon: Slut.
But. Consider the body,
unfragile, defiant, the pale nipples
staring you right in the bull’s-eye.
Consider also the black ribbon
around the neck. What’s under it?
A fine red threadline, where the head
was taken off and glued back on.
The body’s on offer,
but the neck’s as far as it goes.
This is no morsel.
Put clothes on her and you’d have a schoolteacher,
the kind with the brittle whiphand.
There’s someone else in this room.
You, Monsieur Voyeur.
As for that object of yours
she’s seen those before, and better.
I, the head, am the only subject
of this picture.
You, Sir, are furniture.
Get stuffed.
Biblioklept 