lamiantoine

[lamiantoine]

N’bamje

më duket e kam njohur të vërtetën. në dritare të autobusit, natën, (bashkë me njerëz të tjerë) vetëm. në oazat e dritës që të ndjekin për pak, mandej treten. në frymëmarrje të njerëzve në lëvizje të durve në rrahje të zemrës… në tinguj që nuk prekin më larg se në atë që asht në lëkurë, në inde; larg qenies. në një copë bezi të shtrirë jo ma të madhe se aq sa mundesh me e pa ti e në fije bari të vyshkuna që magjishëm marrin formën e asaj që e ke në mendje. më duket kam qenë aty. 60 në orë, zgjut e në ëndërr në të njëjtën kohë; këtu! t’u marr formë magjishëm nga ajo që e kam në mendje. KUSHTRIM THAÇI

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Athens 1970

In these streets people walk; people hurry, they are in a hurry to go away, to get away (from what?), to get (where?)—I don’t know—not faces— vacuum cleaners, boots, boxes— they hurry. In these streets, another time, they had passed with huge flags, they had a voice (I remember, I heard it), an audible voice. Now, they walk, they run, they hurry, motionless in their hurry— the train comes, they board, they jostle; green, red light; the doorman behind the glass partition; the whore, the soldier, the butcher; the wall is grey higher than time. Even the statues can’t see. YANNIS RITSOS Selected Poems: Yannis Ritsos. Penguin Books, 1974. Translated from the Greek by Nikos Stangos.

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Moonlight Sonata

A spring evening. A large room in an old house. A woman of a certain age, dressed in black, is speaking to a young man. They have not turned on the lights. Through both windows the moonlight shines relentlessly. I forgot to mention that the Woman in Black has published two or three interesting volumes of poetry with a religious flavor. So, the Woman in Black is speaking to the Young Man: Let me come with you. What a moon there is tonight! The moon is kind—it won’t show that my hair has turned white. The moon will turn my hair to gold again. You wouldn’t understand. Let me come with you. When there’s a moon the shadows in the house grow larger, invisible hands draw the curtains, a ghostly finger writes forgotten words in the dust on the piano—I don’t want to hear them. Hush. Let me come with you a little farther down, as far as the brickyard wall, to the point where the road turns and the city appears concrete and airy, whitewashed with moonlight, so indifferent and insubstantial so positive, like metaphysics, that finally you can believe you exist and do not exist, that you never existed, that time with its destruction never existed. Let me come with you. We’ll sit for a little on the low wall, up on the hill, and as the spring breeze blows around us perhaps we’ll even imagine that we are flying, because, often, and now especially, I hear the sound of my own dress like the sound of two powerful wings opening and closing, and when you enclose yourself within the sound of that flight you feel the tight mesh of your throat, your ribs, your flesh, and thus constricted amid the muscles of the azure air, amid the strong nerves of the heavens, it makes no difference whether you go or return and it makes no difference that my hair has turned white (that is not my sorrow—my sorrow is that my heart too does not turn white). Let me come with you. I know that each one of us travels to love alone, alone to faith and to death. I know it. I’ve tried it. It doesn’t help. Let me come with you. This house is haunted, it preys on me— what I mean is, it has aged a great deal, the nails are working loose, the portraits drop as though plunging into the void, the plaster falls without a sound as the dead man’s hat falls from the peg in the dark hallway as the worn woolen glove falls from the knee of silence or as a moonbeam falls on the old, gutted armchair. Once it too was new—not the photograph that you are staring at so dubiously— I mean the armchair, very comfortable, you could sit in it for hours with your eyes closed and dream whatever came into your head —a sandy beach, smooth, wet, shining in the moonlight, shining more than my old patent leather shoes that I send each month to the shoeshine shop on the corner, or a fishing boat’s sail that sinks to the bottom rocked by its own breathing, a three-cornered sail like a handkerchief folded slantwise in half only as though it had nothing to shut up or hold fast no reason to flutter open in farewell. I have always had a passion for handkerchiefs, not to keep anything tied in them, no flower seeds or camomile gathered in the fields at sunset, nor to tie them with four knots like the caps the workers wear on the construction site across the street, nor to dab my eyes—I’ve kept my eyesight good; I’ve never worn glasses. A harmless idiosyncracy, handkerchiefs. Now I fold them in quarters, in eighths, in sixteenth to keep my fingers occupied. And now I remember that this is how I counted the music when I went to the Odeion with a blue pinafore and a white collar, with two blond braids —8, 16, 32, 64— hand in hand with a small friend of mine, peachy, all light and pink flowers, (forgive me such digressions—a bad habit)—32, 64—and my family rested great hopes on my musical talent. But I was telling you about the armchair— gutted—the rusted springs are showing, the stuffing— I thought of sending it next door to the furniture shop, but where’s the time and the money and the inclination—what to fix first?— I thought of throwing a sheet over it—I was afraid of a white sheet in so much moonlight. People sat here who dreamed great dreams, as you do and I too, and now they rest under earth untroubled by rain or the moon. Let me come with you. We’ll pause for a little at the top of St. Nicholas’ marble steps, and afterward you’ll descend and I will turn back, having on my left side the warmth from a casual touch of your jacket and some squares of light, too, from small neighborhood windows and this pure white mist from the moon, like a great procession of silver swans— and I do not fear this manifestation, for at another time on many spring evenings I talked with God who appeared to me clothed in the haze and glory of such a moonlight— and many young men, more handsome even than you, I sacrificed to him— I dissolved, so white, so unapproachable, amid my white flame, in the whiteness of moonlight, burnt up by men’s voracious eyes and the tentative rapture of youths, besieged by splendid bronzed bodies, strong limbs exercising at the pool, with oars, on the track, at soccer (I pretended not to see them), foreheads, lips and throats, knees, fingers and eyes, chests and arms and thighs (and truly I did not see them) —you know, sometimes, when you’re entranced, you forget what entranced you, the entrancement alone is enough— my God, what star-bright eyes, and I was lifted up to an apotheosis of disavowed stars because, besieged thus from without and from within, no other road was left me save only the way up or the way down.—No, it is not enough. Let me come with you. I know it’s very late. Let me, because for so many years—days, nights, and crimson noons—I’ve stayed alone, unyielding, alone and immaculate, even in my marriage bed immaculate and alone, writing glorious verses to lay on the knees of God, verses that, I assure you, will endure as if chiselled in flawless marble beyond my life and your life, well beyond. It is not enough. Let me come with you. This house can’t bear me anymore. I cannot endure to bear it on my back. You must always be careful, be careful, to hold up the wall with the large buffet to hold up the buffet with the antique carved table to hold up the table with the chairs to hold up the chairs with your hands to place your shoulder under the hanging beam. And the piano, like a closed black coffin. You do not dare to open it. You have to be so careful, so careful, lest they fall, lest you fall. I cannot bear it. Let me come with you. This house, despite all its dead, has no intention of dying. It insists on living with its dead on living off its dead on living off the certainty of its death and on still keeping house for its dead, the rotting beds and shelves. Let me come with you. Here, however quietly I walk through the mist of evening, whether in slippers or barefoot, there will be some sound: a pane of glass cracks or a mirror, some steps are heard—not my own. Outside, in the street, perhaps these steps are not heard— repentance, they say, wears wooden shoes— and if you look into this or that other mirror, behind the dust and the cracks, you discern—darker and more fragmented—your face, your face, which all your life you sought only to keep clean and whole. The lip of the glass gleams in the moonlight like a round razor—how can I lift it to my lips? however much I thirst—how can I lift it—Do you see? I am already in a mood for similes—this at least is left me, reassuring me still that my wits are not failing. Let me come with you. At times, when evening descends, I have the feeling that outside the window the bear-keeper is going by with his old heavy she-bear, her fur full of burrs and thorns, stirring dust in the neighborhood street a desolate cloud of dust that censes the dusk, and the children have gone home for supper and aren’t allowed outdoors again, even though behind the walls they divine the old bear’s passing— and the tired bear passes in the wisdom of her solitude, not knowing wherefore and why— she’s grown heavy, can no longer dance on her hind legs, can’t wear her lace cap to amuse the children, the idlers, the importunate, and all she wants is to lie down on the ground letting them trample on her belly, playing thus her final game, showing her dreadful power for resignation, her indifference to the interest of others, to the rings in her lips, the compulsion of her teeth, her indifference to pain and to life with the sure complicity of death—even a slow death— her final indifference to death with the continuity and the knowledge of life which transcends her enslavement with knowledge and with action. But who can play this game to the end? And the bear gets up again and moves on obedient to her leash, her rings, her teeth, smiling with torn lips at the pennies the beautiful and unsuspecting children toss (beautiful precisely because unsuspecting) and saying thank you. Because bears that have grown old can say only one thing: thank you; thank you. Let me come with you. This house stifles me. The kitchen especially is like the depths of the sea. The hanging coffeepots gleam like round, huge eyes of improbable fish, the plates undulate slowly like medusas, seaweed and shells catch in my hair—later I can’t pull them loose— I can’t get back to the surface— the tray falls silently from my hands—I sink down and I see the bubbles from my breath rising, rising and I try to divert myself watching them and I wonder what someone would say who happened to be above and saw these bubbles, perhaps that someone was drowning or a diver exploring the depths? And in fact more than a few times I’ve discovered there, in the depths of drowning, coral and pearls and treasures of shipwrecked vessels, unexpected encounters, past, present, and yet to come, a confirmation almost of eternity, a certain respite, a certain smile of immortality, as they say, a happiness, an intoxication, inspiration even, coral and pearls and sapphires; only I don’t know how to give them—no, I do give them; only I don’t know if they can take them—but still, I give them. Let me come with you. One moment while I get my jacket. The way this weather’s so changeable, I must be careful. It’s damp in the evenings, and doesn’t the moon seem to you, honestly, as if it intensifies the cold? Let me button your shirt—how strong your chest is —how strong the moon—the armchair, I mean—and whenever I lift the cup from the table a hole of silence is left underneath. I place my palm over it at once so as not to see through it—I put the cup back in its place; and the moon’s a hole in the skull of the world—don’t look through it, it’s a magnetic force that draws you—don’t look, don’t any of you look, listen to what I’m telling you—you’ll fall in. This giddiness, beautiful, ethereal—you will fall in— the moon’s a marble well, shadows stir and mute wings, mysterious voices—don’t you hear them? Deep, deep the fall, deep, deep the ascent, the airy statue enmeshed in its open wings, deep, deep the inexorable benevolence of the silence— trembling lights on the opposite shore, so that you sway in your own wave, the breathing of the ocean. Beautiful, ethereal this giddiness—be careful, you’ll fall. Don’t look at me, for me my place is this wavering—this splendid vertigo. And so every evening I have a little headache, some dizzy spells. Often I slip out to the pharmacy across the street for a few aspirin, but at times I’m too tired and I stay here with my headache and listen to the hollow sound the pipes make in the walls, or drink some coffee, and, absentminded as usual, I forget and make two—who’ll drink the other? It’s really funny, I leave it on the windowsill to cool or sometimes I drink them both, looking out the window at the bright green globe of the pharmacy that’s like the green light of a silent train coming to take me away with my handkerchiefs, my run-down shoes, my black purse, my verses, but no suitcases—what would one do with them? Let me come with you. Oh, are you going? Goodnight. No, I won’t come. Goodnight. I’ll be going myself in a little. Thank you. Because, in the end, I must get out of this broken-down house. I must see a bit of the city—no, not the moon— the city with its calloused hands, the city of daily work, the city that swears by bread and by its fist, the city that bears all of us on its back with our pettiness, sins, and hatreds, our ambitions, our ignorance and our senility. I need to hear the great footsteps of the city, and no longer to hear your footsteps or God’s, or my own. Goodnight. The room grows dark. It looks as though a cloud may have covered the moon. All at once, as if someone had turned up the radio in the nearby bar, a very familiar musical phrase can be heard. Then I realize that “The Moonlight Sonata,” just the first movement, has been playing very softly through this entire scene. The Young Man will go down the hill now with an ironic and perhaps sympathetic smile on his finely chiselled lips and with a feeling of release. Just as he reaches St. Nicholas’, before he goes down the marble steps, he will laugh—a loud, uncontrollable laugh. His laughter will not sound at all unseemly beneath the moon. Perhaps the only unseemly thing will be that nothing is unseemly. Soon the Young Man will fall silent, become serious, and say: “The decline of an era.” So, thoroughly calm once more, he will unbutton his shirt again and go on his way. As for the Woman in Black, I don’t know whether she finally did get out of the house. The moon is shining again. And in the corners of the room the shadows intensify with an intolerable regret, almost fury, not so much for the life, as for the useless confession. Can you hear? The radio plays on: YANNIS RITSOS The Fourth Dimension. Princeton University Press, 1993. Translated from the Greek by Peter Green and Beverly Bardsley.

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Late in life I came to you

Late in life I came to you filtered through many doors reduced by stairs till almost nothing remained of me. You are such a surprised woman living with half courage, a wild woman wearing spectacles— those elegant reins of your eyes. “Things like to get lost and be found again by others. Only human beings love to find themselves,” you said. After that you broke your whole face into two equal profiles: one for the far distance, the other for me— as a souvenir. And you went. YEHUDA AMICHAI Time. Harper & Row, 1979. Translated from the Hebrew by the author with Ted Hughes.

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Advice for good love

Advice for good love: Don’t love those from far away. Take yourself one from nearby. The way a sensible house will take local stones for its building, stones which have suffered in the same cold and were scorched by the same sun. Take the one with the golden wreath around her dark eye’s pupil, she who has a certain knowledge about your death. Love also inside ruins like taking honey out of the lion’s carcass that Samson killed. And advice for bad love: With the love left over from the previous one make a new woman for yourself, then with what is left of that woman make again a new love, and go on like that until nothing remains for you. YEHUDA AMICHAI Time. Harper & Row, 1979. Translated from the Hebrew by the author with Ted Hughes.

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May 25

One morning I’ll open the door and go out to the street like I did yesterday. And all I’ll think is a bit about my father and a bit about the sea—each has left me a little— and the city. The city that’s been left to rot. And the friends who are gone. One morning I’ll open the door like I did yesterday, jump straight into the fire yelling “fascists!!” erect barricades and throw rocks, with a red flag held high, shining in the sun. I’ll throw open the door and— not that I’m scared— but what I need to tell you is I didn’t make it and what you need to learn is how to stop going into the street without a weapon, like I did— because I didn’t survive— because then you’ll get turned like me into drops of saltwater and pieces of childhood and red flags. One morning I’ll open the door and vanish into a dream of revolution into the vast solitude of burning streets into the vast solitude of paper barricades marked—don’t believe what they say!— Provocateur. KATERINA GOGOU Three Clicks Left, 1978. Translated from the Greek by ΔT and JC.

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I Stand for Anarchy

Don’t stop me. I’m dreaming. We’ve been through centuries of injustice. Centuries of loneliness. Not now—don’t stop me. Now here forever and everywhere. I’m dreaming of freedom. Gorgeous unique anyone, let’s restore harmony to the universe. Let’s play. Knowledge is joy. It’s not mandatory schoolwork— I dream because I love you. Big dreams of the sky, of workers with their own factories who contribute to the global chocolate industry. I dream because I KNOW and CAN. Banks give birth to “robbers,” prisons to “terrorists,” loneliness to “misfits,” products to “needs,” borders to armies. Ownership gives birth to all of it. Violence gives birth to violence. Don’t ask. Don’t stop me. It’s on us now to make justice the ultimate act. Let’s make a poem from life. Let’s make life an action. That’s my dream and I can I can I can I LOVE YOU Don’t stop my dreaming. Live. I open my hands to love to solidarity to freedom. 24/7, from the very beginning, I stand for ANARCHY. KATERINA GOGOU Translated from the Greek by ΔT and JC.

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In Dark Times

They won’t say: when the walnut tree shook in the wind But: when the house-painter crushed the workers. They won’t say: when the child skimmed a flat stone across the rapids But: when the great wars were being prepared for. They won’t say: when the woman came into the room But: when the great powers joined forces against the workers. However, they won’t say: the times were dark Rather: why were their poets silent? BERTOLT BRECHT Poems, 1913–1956. Methuen Books, 1976. Translated from the German by Humphrey Milnes.

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On Hearing That a Mighty Statesman Has Fallen Ill

If the indispensable man frowns Two empires quake. If the indispensable man dies The world looks around like a mother without milk for her child. If the indispensable man were to come back a week after his death In the entire country there wouldn’t be a job for him as a hall-porter. BERTOLT BRECHT Poems, 1913–1956. Methuen Books, 1976. Translated from the German by Derek Bowman.

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Poetic Memory

The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful. From the time he met Tereza, no woman had the right to leave the slightest impression on that part of his brain. Tereza occupied his poetic memory like a despot and exterminated all trace of other women. … His adventure with Tereza began at the exact point where his adventures with other women left off. It took place on the other side of the imperative that pushed him into conquest after conquest. He had no desire to uncover anything in Tereza. She had come to him uncovered. He had made love to her before he could grab for the imaginary scalpel he used to open the prostrate body of the world. Before he could start wondering what she would be like when they made love, he loved her. Their love story did not begin until afterwards: she fell ill and he was unable to send her home as he had the others. Kneeling by her as she lay sleeping in his bed, he realized that someone had sent her downstream in a bulrush basket. I have said before that metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory. MILAN KUNDERA Excerpt from The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Faber and Faber, 1984. Translated from the Czech by Michael Henry Heim.