Canta al mio altare interiore

by Kameron Cole, Miami Beach, 2012

quando mi hai toccato,

mio Dio!

sulla mia schiena,

per nessun motivo,

senza nessuna mano per guidarvi,

ma la mano di Dio,

ma la mano d’amore,

del vento,

del tuo cuore.

Io genuflettono, dentro di me,

canta al mio altare interiore,

cullando che un solo tocco, come fiore,

d’amore.

——————————————————————

Singing to my inner altar

when you touched me,

my God!

on my back,

for no reason,

with no hand to guide you,

but the hand of God,

but the hand of love,

of the wind,

of your heart.

I genuflect in me,

singing to my inner altar,

cradling that one touch, like a flower,

of love.

I had you at 30,so

you will know me, at 30.

30 is where the sidewalk ends.

you can call me then

at the sidewalk’s end.

and when

you turn 40, I’ll be

but a budding 70!

but you

will be depressed,

on to your second marriage, or so.

your dreams all sour,

and your bed sheets clean.

no dope in your lungs

and a cob-up-your-ass.

while I am surfing,

at 70.

and when you hit middle-age – the

big

5

0

I may finally be old.

and behave

like your father.

and brother, you will need a father!

50 is shit!

Clairaudience *

– Robert Musil (translated by Kameron Cole, Miami Beach, 2012)

I’ve gotten into bed a little early, I feel a cold coming on, indeed, maybe I even have a fever. I am looking at the ceiling, or, maybe it’s the reddish curtain hanging over the door to the balcony of the hotel room that I’m looking at. it’s hard to tell.

just as I had finished undressing, you started, too, to get undressed. I wait. I can only hear.

Incomprehensible back and forth; in this part of the room, then in the other. You come over to lay something on the bed; I don´t look, but, what could it possibly be? In the meanwhile, you open the closet, put something in, or take something out; I hear the closet door close again. You lay hard, heavy objects on the table, others on the marble countertop of the bathroom sink. You are incessantly in motion. Then I recognize the familiar sounds of the letting down of hair and of brushing. Then water splashing into the sink. And before that. slipping out of clothing. now, once more. it is incomprehensible to me, how many clothes you take off. Now you have slipped off your shoes. but then after that, your stockings continue the relentless back-and-forth across the soft carpet, just as did your shoes , before. You pour water in glasses; three, four times, one after the other; I am at a complete loss for why. I have long come to the end, in my imagination, of everything imaginable, while you apparently in reality continue to find something new to do. I hear you put on your nightgown. But that doesn’t mean it’s all over. There are still one hundred little activities. I know that you are hurrying on my behalf; apparently all of this is indeed necessary, pertains to your most intimate “Id”, and like the wordless bearing of animals, from morning till evening you reach far into a thing, with countless talons, of which you are unaware, while you hear barely a breath from me.

I feel this way coincidentally because I have a fever, and because I am waiting for you.

* (http://www.psychic.com.au/psychic-clairaudience.htm)

Hellhörigkeit

– Robert Musil

Ich habe mich vorzeiting zu Bett gelegt, ich fühle mich ein wenig erkältet, ja vielleicht habe ich Fieber. Ich sehe die Zimmerdecke an, oder vielleicht ist es der rötliche Vorhang über der Balkontür des Hotezimmers, was ich sehe. es ist schwer zu unterscheiden.

Als ich gerade damit fertig war, hast auch du angefangen, dich auszukleiden. Ich warte. Ich höre dich nur.

Unverständliches Auf- und Abgehn; in diesem Teil des Zimmers, in jenem. Du kommst, um etwas auf dein Bett zu legen; ich sehe nicht hin, aber was könnte is sein? Du öffnest inzwischen den Schrank, tust etwas hinein oder nimmst etwas heraus; ich höre ihn wieder schließen. Du legst harte, schwere Gegenstände aud den Tisch, andere auf die Marmorplatte der Kommode. Du bist unablässing in Bewegung. Dann erkenne ich die bekannten Geräusche des Öffnes der Harre und des Bürstens. Dann Wasserschwälle in die Waschbecken. Vorher schon die Abstreifen von Kleidern; jetzt wieder; es ist mir unverständlich, wieviel Kleider du ausziehst. Nun bist do uas den Schuhen geschlüpft. Danach aber gehen deine Strümpfe auf dem weichem Teppich ebenso unablässig hin un her wie vordem die Schuhe. Du schenkst Wasser in Gläser; drei-, viermal, hintereinnder; ich kann mich gar nicht zurechtfinden, wofür. Ich bin in meiner Vorstellung längst mit allem Vorstellbaren zu Ende, während du offenbar in der Wirklichkeit immer noch etwas Neues zu tun findest. Ich höre dich das Nachthemd anziehn. Aber damit is noch nicht alles vorbei. Wider gibt es hundert kleine Handlungen. Ich weiß, daß du dich meinethalben beeilst; offenbar ist das alles also notwendig, gehört zu deinem engsten Ich, und wie das stumme Gebaren der Tiere vom Morgen bis zum Abend ragst du breit, mit unzähligen Griffen, von denen du nichts weißt, in etwas hinein, wo du nie eiene Hauch von mir gehört hast!

Zufällig fühle ich es, weil ich Fieber hae und auf dich warte.

Rainer Maria Rilke : Fortschritt

Und wieder rauscht mein tiefes Leben lauter,
als ob es jetzt in breitern Ufern ginge.
Immer verwandter werden mir die Dinge
… und alle Bilder immer angeschauter.
Dem Namenlosen fühl ich mich vertrauter
Mit meinen Sinnen, wie mit Vögeln, reiche
ich in die windigen Himmel aus der Eiche,
und in den abgebrochnen Tag der Teiche
sinkt, wie auf Fischen stehend, mein Gefühl.

Progress

and once again my inner life rustles louder
as if it walked along broad banks
ever closer my kinship with things
and keener vision into all the scenes.
I know the nameless ever deeper

With my senses, as with birds,
I reach into the windy skies,
up out of the oak,
and then…
down into that “other” day, under the pondwater,
my senses sink, as if they rode on fishes.

Rainer Maria Rilke: Bewegliches Vorwärts (German)

Die tiefen Teile meines Lebens gießen vorwärts, als ob die Flußufer
sich heraus öffneten.

Es scheint, daß Sachen mehr wie ich jetzt
sind, das, das ich weit in Anstriche sehen kann.

Ich fühle näeher
an, was Sprache nicht erreichen kann.

Mit meinen Richtungen,
wie mit Vögeln,
klettere ich in den windigen Himmel,
aus der Eiche,
in den Teichen heraus,
die vom Himmel meine fallenden Wannen abgebrochen
werden, als ob, stehend auf Fischen.

The Forwards That Moves

(my translation)

the deepest parts of my life are pouring forwards,
as if the riverbank
were opening outwards.

It seems that things are more, than I now am.
things, which I see as distant brush strokes.

I feel closer to that which
speech cannot reach.

With my sense of direction,
as with birds,
I climb into the windy skies,
out of the oak
into “ponds”,out there,
which are disconnected by my sense of falling,
as though they rested on the fishes.

Vignettes from the Candelwood snooze tomb

by Kameron Cole, Candlewood Suites, Room 233. December 2011.

capped on either end by  minor harp arpeggios
this somnolent snooze capsule is a container, but also
a frame,
yes, frames
contain the art, framing  the statement discrete,
making integrity possible.
combining, then, elements of the sordid bed chambers – a dark green motel carpet filled
with lost Midwestern ambition to half-wake,
stale air, clung from the cage within,
withal, is a desire to remain half-asleep
to sleep a-full would surely be death.
within the snooze-frame I can build a dream poem,
composed only of eyes and sound
no sight, only vision,cotton-wadded:
blindfolded by the cloak of the pre-dawn,
am awake but alas not.
I compose, and am pleased, but can not repeat the performance. it is so papery without the snooze.
people would accuse me of performing water.

Spanish Love Poems: Spanish Love Poems: Pablo Neruda – Body of a Woman.

Corpo de Mujer

Cuerpo de mujer, blancas colinas, muslos blancos,
te pareces al mundo en tu actitud de entrega.
Mi cuerpo de labriego salvaje te socava
y hace saltar el hijo del fondo de la tierra.

Fui solo como un túnel. De mí huían los pájaros
y en mí la noche entraba su invasión poderosa.
Para sobrevivirme te forjé como un arma,
como una flecha en mi arco, como una piedra en mi honda.

Pero cae la hora de la venganza, y te amo.
Cuerpo de piel, de musgo, de leche ávida y firme.
Ah los vasos del pecho! Ah los ojos de ausencia!
Ah las rosas del pubis! Ah tu voz lenta y triste!

Cuerpo de mujer mía, persistiré en tu gracia.
Mi sed, mi ansia sin límite, mi camino indeciso!
Oscuros cauces donde la sed eterna sigue,
y la fatiga sigue, y el dolor infinito.

——————————————— WORK ON TRANSLATION———————————-

• 1st stanza

The first line is easy; just note that it is about “a woman”, or “women in general”. The second line is tricky.  First the verb parecir worries people because it has some reflexive quality in it; but you would never say “you look yourself” in English. It’s technically what Linguists call a “middle” – not reflexive, not intransitive.  Anyway, it’s either “look like” or “seem.”  Then, it’s just a choice of nuance – “look like” is common, “seem” would give it a slightly dreamlike feel. Finally, it’s “al mundo” which is the contraction for “a el mundo”, which must be the definite article (a disagree with translations that use “a world”.

“en tu actitud de entrega” presents another problem: while you might think a literal translation is the way to go, you have to be careful of a possible “colloquialism” hidden in this phrases – the kind of phrase that is almost an idiom, because it is used exactly the same way every time.  First of all “actitude” would be better as “postion” or “pose”, but never “attitude”.  It’s one of those “false cognates” in Spanish-to-English.  While “submissive pose” sounds possible, “entrega” really has “surrender” locked into it – you have to hand something over. In the third line, it’s just one of those historical things: we just don’t have rural laborers in any real sense now; so, “peasant”? Now way.  There haven’t been true peasants for 1000 years.  He’s talking about digging so I could go with “farmhand” . “Savage” is just too dime-store for me, like “savage love”.  I think “brutal”, related to “brute”, which has the feeling of stupid.  The hardest one is “socavar” – really means to “excavate”.  Not just digging, but digging under.  What’s worse is that it often is used figuratively to mean undermine”.  I can’t imagine that Neruda doesn’t want the connection between “entrega” and “socavar” to have some macho connotation. The last line of the stanza only makes sense if you realize – which I think NO translator on earth has yet realized! – that this poem is about a pregnancy woman.  I mean, doesn’t that fit well with “you look like a world”?  Like “the world”.  And then later, he talks about breasts filled with milk.  So, she is pregnant, and he assumes it is a son.  So, even though “saltar” means to jump, what do Spanish speakers say when the baby move in the womb?  In English, we say (without thinking about it), the baby is “kicking”.

• 2nd stanza
• 3rd stanza

———————————–MY TRANSLATION —————————————————-

Body of a Woman

Body of woman, white hills, white thighs,
you look  like the world , when you lie in surrender.
My farmhand’s body roots around in you brutishly
and makes our son kick from the center of the earth.

I was alone like a tunnel. The birds fled from me
and the night enveloped me with its crushing invasion.
To survive  I forged  you like a weapon,
like an arrow in my bow, like a stone in my sling.

But the hour of vengeance falls, and I love you.
Body of skin, of moss, of eager and firm milk.
Ah those goblets of the chest! Ah those eyes of absence!
Ah the roses of the pubis! Ah your voice slow and sad!

Body of my woman, I will persist in your grace.
My thirst, my unbounded desire, my uncertain road!
The dark river-beds that the eternal thirst follows,
that the weariness  follows, and the infinite ache.

some things are better left unsaid. it doesn’t mean what you think it means. it means I write to let some gas out of my ongoing spoken diatribe. giving us all a break. tidying up. but no losing anything valuable by being completely silent.

I’m a fabulist. nice way of saying “liar”. not really. I guess it’s a bit more subtle, or twisted, than that.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fabulists)
Fabulists are authors of fables, in the normal sense of “a narration intended to enforce a useful truth”.

That’s spot on.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fable)
A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized (given human qualities), and that illustrates a moral lesson (a “moral”), which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.

A fable differs from a parable in that the latter excludes animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as actors that assume speech and other powers of humankind.

Usage has not always been so clearly distinguished. In the King James Version of the New Testament, “μύθος” (“mythos”) was rendered by the translators as “fable”[1] in First and Second Timothy, in Titus and in First Peter.[2]

These citations are missing an important point – the fabulist is not an author, necessarily. Not like other authors, whose job it is to write. Fabulist tell fables. They may write them. But they do not separate themselves from the work, as though they controlled it, as though it were a product of their creativity.

We narrate life as it happens. If you happen to be listening, that’s your problem.