in the riverbed
i bend to wash my hands
as water-worked stones
in the forest
i scratch my face against the ghost of moss
constricted upon the poplar's coarse bark
as the morning lifts
i breathe
readying my bloody heart
oh, my dirty dirty soul
oh, my one tooth in time
- living
somewhere there exists a quiet and empty room
it calls me back through the slag of my matrixed marrow
yes, it says, one day, yes
perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow
i have just recently found this gorgeous translation by James Wright from the Spanish of Jorge Guillen,
ReplyDeleteI Want to Sleep
I shall be still stronger,
Still clearer, purer, so let
The sweet invasion of oblivion come on.
I want to sleep.
If I could forget myself, if I were only
A tranquil tree,
Branches to spread out the silence,
Trunk of mercy.
The great darkness, grown motherly,
Deepens little by little,
Brooding over this body that the soul -
After a pause - surrenders.
It may even embark from the endless world,
From its accidents,
And, scattering into stars at the last,
The soul will be daybreak.
Abandoning myself to my accomplice,
My boat,
I shall reach on my ripples and mists
Into the dawn.
I do not want to dream of useless phantoms,
I do not want a cave.
Let the huge moonless spaces
Hold me apart, and defend me.
Let me enjoy so much harmony
Thanks to the ignorance
Of this being, that is so secure
It pretends to be nothing.
Night with its darkness, solitude with its peace,
Everything favors
My delight in the emptiness
That soon will come.
Emptiness, O paradise
Rumored about so long:
Sleeping, sleeping, growing alone
Very slowly.
Darken me, erase me,
Blessed sleep,
As I lie under a heaven that mounts
Its guard over me.
Earth, with your darker burdens,
Drag me back down,
Sink my being into my being:
Sleep, sleep.
xo
erin
That call is part of the world around us, we can attend to it or not but we can not remain insensitive to your image and what it conveys.
ReplyDeleteThanks Erin
damaso, it seems so evident and easy, your statement that we can attend to it or not, and this is true! it is this evident and easy and so i laugh at my own struggles over the years. we cause all the pain and friction in our choices, don't we?
Deleteand so now i learn to live inside this body, in this earthly being and allow myself the pull toward the void. just this simple.)
i love fog. somehow when it conceals it also reveals.
xo
erin
there is always this paradox -- in our conversations, yes, but in the world, too, i believe ... else the conversations might be irrelevant -- we enter the most complete being by losing ourselves, we become most truly awake by falling asleep. understanding this means a lifetime of reading writing seeing thinking being, and even then understanding is likely enough impossible, but what else is there except the attempt?
ReplyDeleteand how consonant with you the guillen translation is -- when i first heard it, i thought not only that it was wright but not wright -- i also thought it was you but not you, a different angle, a different slant of light through the words ...
the photo is form so delicate that it is almost not form (as you recently said about something else). capturing such a moment, the shift or intimation of shift when shape becomes out of mist -- this, i think, is what we mean when we use the always difficult word beauty....
paradox seems to be the mesh of every moment and truth, of every element. i imagine a grapevine ball and we name this paradox. all existence seems to take shape around this, becoming form.
Deletewithout paradox, then what? nothing? but even nothing demands paradox, else it become something.
i just now begin to see.
(and you and i know that while neither of us existed as this photograph came into being, both you and i stood in the ditch alongside of the elusive fog. imagine! imagine this)))
xo
erin
what a gorgeously evocative shot. utterly a mirror to my psyche this past week.
ReplyDeletei wonder about the "one tooth in time"
'i want to sleep' is mesmerising in spanish.
never having wanted to speak spanish before, this poem is so incredibly rich that i can not help but yearn. you speak spanish, monica)) you are very lucky to have this experience, although i feel james wright's version is rich as well. i wonder how far they are separated?
Deletexo
erin
I wonder if your image is the light from the blue moon last night dancing on the grass,,,
ReplyDeletemichael, i laugh a little in the innocent deception, context inferring things that are not true. i took this photograph a couple weeks ago in the morning along the side of the road in thick fog. the moon is a solar flare against the fog. there is a lesson inside of this for us, i think.
Deletexo
erin
This photo is breathtaking! The details of the grass losing itself in the fog. The fog always amazes me, as if the world is a newborn again. I love fog too, an old band where i sang in was called MIST.
ReplyDeleteYour poem also amazes my heart, wondering how you always capture the feelings of intense emotions deep inside us.
Sweet greetz to you dear Erin.
An image full of poetic grace, mystery, is it of the mist, the rain. A representation has the magic, poetic atmosphere, and original.
ReplyDeleteThank you for having passed, it is very nice from your part I miss strangely your time(weather), to comment, me to intèresser has the other forms of ideas of photos, I have to reconcile, recording and work < especially that I have the second photoblog in colors which has just begun since May, 2012..
The good beginning of week erin.