poemimage

The visual & poetic become each the other but not always.

Month: February, 2012

February 22, 2012

The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower by Dylan Thomas

         

 The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees

Is my destroyer.

And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose

My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

 The force that drives the water through the rocks

Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams

Turns mine to wax.

And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins

How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

 The hand that whirls the water in the pool

Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind

Hauls my shroud sail.

And I am dumb to tell the hanging man

How of my clay is made the hangman’s lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;

Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood

Shall calm her sores.

And I am dumb to tell a weather’s wind

How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover’s tomb

How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.












					

	

	

		

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				February 8, 2012

		

		
Tonight I Can Write by Pablo Neruda
		
		

			
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.






Write, for example, ‘The night is starry

and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’




The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.




 Tonight I can write the saddest lines.


I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.




 Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.


I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.




She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.


How could one not have loved her great still eyes.




Tonight I can write the saddest lines.


To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.




To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.


And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.




What does it matter that my love could not keep her.


The night is starry and she is not with me.




This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.


My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.




My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.


My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.




The same night whitening the same trees.


We, of that time, are no longer the same.




 I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.


My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing




Another’s. She will be another’s. As she was before my kisses.


Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.




I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.


Love is so short, forgetting is so long.




Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms


my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.




Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer


and these the last verses that I write for her.




Translated by W.S. Merwin

					

	

	

		

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