From The Unknown University, the complete poems of Roberto Bolaño. From New Directions and translated by Laura Healy.
“Rooms”
by Gertrude Stein
Act so that there is no use in a centre. A wide action is not a width. A preparation is given to the ones preparing. They do not eat who mention silver and sweet. There was an occupation.
A whole centre and a border make hanging a way of dressing. This which is not why there is a voice is the remains of an offering. There was no rental.
So the tune which is there has a little piece to play, and the exercise is all there is of a fast. The tender and true that makes no width to hew is the time that there is question to adopt.
To begin the placing there is no wagon. There is no change lighter. It was done. And then the spreading, that was not accomplishing that needed standing and yet the time was not so difficult as they were not all in place. They had no change. They were not respected. They were that, they did it so much in the matter and this showed that that settlement was not condensed. It was spread there. Any change was in the ends of the centre. A heap was heavy. There was no change.
Burnt and behind and lifting a temporary stone and lifting more than a drawer.
The instance of there being more is an instance of more. The shadow is not shining in the way there is a black line. The truth has come. There is a disturbance. Trusting to a baker’s boy meant that there would be very much exchanging and anyway what is the use of a covering to a door. There is a use, they are double.
If the centre has the place then there is distribution. That is natural. There is a contradiction and naturally returning there comes to be both sides and the centre. That can be seen from the description.
The author of all that is in there behind the door and that is entering in the morning. Explaining darkening and expecting relating is all of a piece. The stove is bigger. It was of a shape that made no audience bigger if the opening is assumed why should there not be kneeling. Any force which is bestowed on a floor shows rubbing. This is so nice and sweet and yet there comes the change, there comes the time to press more air. This does not mean the same as disappearance.
His Day Is Done: A Nelson Mandela Tribute is a slim hardback book of a poem that takes fewer than five minutes to recite.
Here are the opening lines:
I’m restraining myself here but oh dear lord this is pretty bad poetry and there’s something that strikes me as utterly crass about the whole business of this little book, although I have no doubt that Angelou’s intentions are the purest (and even publisher Random House’s)—but yeesh.
Biblioklept 