Works and Days (For Hesiod)

I am a terrible gardener, and yet
I know what constitutes the seed of Love
I know what conditions it needs to grow--Love
is a shade plant in loose soil,
a succulent with night-grown flowers
and a vast network of stunted roots like a lattice
or a fisherman's net for stones.
I know that I must plant love
in the southwestern corner of my garden,
water it sparingly at the start, and always
turn my face away while doing so,
gluing my eyes to the rising moon.

I have read Works and Days.
I know the rules must be kept
if one wishes to appease the gods.
I know that I must rely on the divine hand
in the tending of my crops.

So I must never spit in the Garden
and ever reap only half of what I've grown
in a blindfold
with a scythe. It can't be known I sow to glean.

And last, to glut the seed of Love
I starve myself;
I live on chaff
for the first three years of winter
and content myself with weeds the rest.

Yet Love is older than Hesiod
and to live
requires an even stranger
arcanum of tasks:

To yield desire one must work
while knowing
that Love, once harvested, cannot last.

This night is a coda to a summer,
to a city in equilibrium.

With britches dropped in the wet grass
on the Oak's Bottom lookout,
I am pissing downhill in joyous abundance
at the lake, at the amusement
park's dark stars, singing
with frogs in my ears and and naughty soft
touches from the high marsh reeds
and the cool wind.

Everything but the lake
is reflected in the lake,
and tilt-a-whirl screams roll
across its sheeny surface like excited ghosts,
mingling with the peepers and the moths
as they climb the cliff where my ears
breathe the shaking spirits in like smoke.

From up here the carnival is cradled in mountains,
but I know its illness and delight in the lurch
of the careening evening.

The crematorium sits to my right,
its dread face blankly
overlooking the rites of the median strip
and the ghoulishness of neon
at midnight. Soon I will rejoin its dead world
and clamber into a dumpster
to scavenge bread like a raccoon,
but for now I am content to time the roar
of the screaming lights
to the leery frogs
in darkness,
my words made equally visible
by the street-lamp and the stars.

tongues

I am filled with purpling desire
that expands like a bloom
of vermillion ink in a clear bowl of water
sublimating the fullness of experience
into my light body,
seasoning it with the gravity of helplessness.

I am full of sex as Medusa
is of snakeskin.
The vermillion tongues of serpents
are what comprise the ink of lust
and the lucent water of my guts
roils as it is rippled through, vainly trying to keep time
with the flickering hypnotism of snake handling.

In excreta, in another world I draw the line of life
from the blood of these red tongues in me
and use its languid flux
to connect create the constellation of eggs
that will someday become my daughters and sons.

In lust I become a constellation of ashes
in the dust of ashes, the constellation of mercy
drawn onwards towards benediction
and the sinewy noose of God,
the circle in red blood,
the ova and the love.

In hunger I touch you gently
for stalking is the province of the silent
and only in the limblessness of snaky desire
can I hush.

anarchy long form

you believe that private property is theft
and you believe that your body is only yours
so perhaps it fits
that i can only have you
in a dark cave
and i can only have you
when i steal you from yourself
and in the dark carve
into your flesh
on the hunt for bones and your skin
totemizing you when you're gone
stringing your ivory on sinew
memorializing you in song
and hoping that my misdemeanors
will call you home
that my imitative witchcraft
will call you home
that my petty magic
will call you home
that my song of your stolen body
will do what I cannot
that my defilement of you
will do what i cannot
will call you home
will tug at your heart
strings til they blossom with longing
for my mystery
and full-throated themselves
respond
in song
in a love song
til they respond
in a longing of their own
to that which has gone
until in a longing of their own
for that which is gone
they respond.

I hope you know that because
i've done these things
because i have carved you into song
because your long bones are holed
under the lost island of my bed, in my home
your body is no longer only yours
and I have committed a most natural act in theft.

for in loving you
i steal from coveters
and redeem the poor

for in loving you
i liberate the property
of your form.

all light is the moon

you told me that moths follow moonlight
and so moths fall into flame
because in their minds it's always nighttime
and all light is the moon

"what if i held out a match?" i said
"what if i was light?"
"what if my body became covered in moth bodies?"
"what if my eyes were covered by wings?"

you said "well, when they settled onto you"
"they'd think they'd found the moon,
and they'd never leave you.
no, they'd never leave you."

"and if they got too close?" i said
"if they flew into my flame?"
"then they'd circle you afire," you said
"become disasters - wandering stars"

so i said: "then, your light is a candle
your light is a flame
for i know it only as the moon
i know it only as the moon

and i'll never leave you
no, i'll never leave you
i'll wrap my wings around you
and i will follow only you"

"then i'll burn you with my fire," you said
"and i'll eat you up in flames"
"for i am a disaster," you said
"i'm a wandering star"

Inténtame

Por dos semanas,
no preguntes a nada.
Por dos semanas, les da
al amor animál y la proximidad caliente.
Por catorce días, me revela
desnudo y vacío,
sus costillos arcados y extendidos
sobre un piso de lodo.

Permíteme entrarte
por un momento, por un verano.
Permíteme lécher a las gotas que constelan sus caderas
como una fauna extracta el agua de los helchos oscuros
con su lengua húmeda.

Permíteme cantar alrededor de sus hundos
como el viento, permíteme saltar
los diezmil oídos de sus labios separados.

Permíteme nadar hasta que me cego en sus cavernas--
permite mis ojos (que el mar ha blanqueada)
terminar buscando,
rodeado de su oscuridad y su piel.

Finalmente, permíteme quemar en éxtasis temporaria
y permite que mis llamas léchen a su suavidad.
Permíteme espirar como una pluma de humo desanimado.

En todas maneras elementales, te quería.
En todas las maneras que pasan las tormentas, pasaría eso.
Permite que nuestra estación termina--solo
no preventes su empieza.

Por un momento, por un verano
permíteme entrarte,
sus costillos arcados y extendidos
sobre un piso de lodo.
Desnudo y vacío, por cuarenta días,
me revela en el amor animál y la proximidad caliente.
Por dos semanas, da--no preguntes nada.
Por dos semanas,
inténtame.

Neruda Translation Project

I've been translating a lot of Neruda lately, in my free time. It's wonderful. Here are a few of the better results:

Poem Twenty

I am able to write the saddest verses tonight.

Write, for example: “The night is starry, and
they shiver, blue, the stars, far away.”

The night wind turns and moans in the sky.

I am able to write the saddest verses tonight.
I desired her, and sometimes she also desired me.

In such nights as this I held her in my arms.
I kissed her endlessly beneath the infinite sky.

She desired me, and sometimes I’d desire her.
How could I not have loved her large, staring eyes.

I am able to write the saddest verses tonight.
To think that I don’t have her. To think that I have lost her.

Listening to the immensity of the night, so much vaster without her,
verse falls from my soul like dew falls on the pasture.

What was so important that my love couldn’t chasten herself?
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is everything. Far away, someone sings. Far away.
My soul cannot contend with having lost her.

In order to draw nearer to her, my gaze searches for her.
My heart searches for her, and she is not with me.

The same night blots out the same trees.
We are no longer who we were before.

Now I don’t have her, it’s certain, but I desire her so much.
My voice searches the air hoping to reach her ears.

Another. There shall be another. As there was before my kisses.
Your voice, your radiant body. Your infinite eyes.

Now I don’t have her, it is certain, but still I desire her.
Love is so short, and forgetting boundless.

Because, during nights like this, I had her in my arms,
My soul cannot contend with having lost her.

Although this will be the last pain she causes me,
And these will be the last words I write for her.

Naked

Naked, you are as simple as one of your hands,
Smooth, earthy, minimal, rounded, transparent,
You have lines like the moon, fissures like an apple,
Naked, you are slender as a bare stalk of wheat.

Naked, you are blue as the night sky in Cuba,
You have vines and stars in your hair,
Naked, you are enormous and yellow
As summer in a gilded church.

Naked, you are small as one of your fingernails,
Curved, subtle, and rosy until day breaks
And you lay yourself in the vault under the earth

As you lay yourself in a large tunnel of suits and tasks:
Your clarity exposes itself, dresses, and expires
And yet, later on, it shall return to being your bare hand.

I like when you are quiet

I like when you are quiet because it’s as though you’re absent,
and you sound as though you’re far away, and my voice cannot touch you.
It looks as though your eyes flown elsewhere
and it seems as though a kiss sealed your mouth.

Like all the things that are full of my soul
you emerge from those things, filled with my soul.
Butterfly of dreams, you look like my soul,
and you look like a melancholy word.

I like it when you are quiet and seem distant.
And it’s as though you’re complaining, whispering butterfly.
And you hear me from far away, and my voice can’t touch you:
Make me such that I can be quieted me by your silence.

Make me such that I can also talk with you in silence
clear as a lamp, simple as a ring.
You are like the night, quiet and constellated.
Your silence is like the stars, so distant and solitary.

I like when you are quiet because it’s as though you’re absent.
Distant and painful as though you had died.
A word then, a smile suffices.
And I am filled with joy, joy from somewhere I do not know.