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Posts
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Fable
Once upon a time
there was a lonely wolf
lonelier than the angels.He happened to come to a village,
He fell in love with the first house he saw.Already he loved its walls
the caresses of its bricklayers.
But the windows stopped him.In the room sat people.
Apart from God nobody ever
found them so beautiful
as this child-like beast.So at night he went into the house.
He stopped in the middle of the room
and never moved from there any more.He stood all through the night, with wide eyes
and on into the morning when he was beaten to death.(translated by Ted Hughes from the Hungarian)
Detail from the KZ-Oratorio, Dark Heaven
Janos PilinszkyHow to Kill
Under the parabola of a ball,
a child turning into a man,
I looked into the air too long.
The ball fell in my hand, it sang
in the closed fist: ‘Open Open
Behold a gift designed to kill’.Now in my dial of glass appears
the soldier who is going to die.
He smiles, and moves about in ways
his mother knows, habits of his.
The wires touch his face: I cry
NOW. Death, like a familiar, hearsand look, has made a man of dust
of a man of flesh. This sorcery
I do. Being damned, I am amused
to see the centre of love diffused
and the waves of love travel into vacancy.
How easy it is to make a ghost.The weightless mosquito touches
her tiny shadow on the stone,
and with how like, how infinite
a lightness, man and shadow meet.
They fuse. A shadow is a man
when the mosquito death approaches.Keith Douglas
The Legs
There was this road,
And it led up-hill,
And it led down-hill,
And round and in and out.And the traffic was legs,
Legs from the knees down,
Coming and going,
Never pausing.And the gutters gurgled
With the rain’s overflow,
And the sticks on the pavement
Blindly tapped and tapped.What drew the legs along
Was the never-stopping.
And the senseless, frightening
Fate of being legs.Legs for the road,
The road for legs,
Resolutely nowhere
In both directions.My legs at least
Were not in that rout:
On grass by the roadside
Entire I stood,Watching the unstoppable
Legs go by
With never a stumble
Between step and step.Though my smile was broad
The legs could not see,
Though my laugh was loud
The legs could not hear.My head dizzied, then:
I wondered suddenly,
Might I too be a walker
From the knees down ?Gently I touched my shins.
The doubt unchained them:
They had run in twenty puddles
Before I regained them.Robert Graves
Now, Janos Pilinszky I AM familiar with, and Fable is a heart- rending piece of work. To anyone moved by it, I would recommend following up by getting hold of a copy of Desert Of Love (again..translated by Ted Hughes, whose own recommendation was all I needed to inspire me) most probably from your nearest substantial library, as I think it may well be out of print now though I could be wrong.
Meantime, please consider this review by Ted Hughes and then enjoy some more of Pilinszky’s work from THE STRAIGHT LABYRINTH
Ted Hughes -JanosPilinszky – An IntroductionNothing Is More
Nothing is more, nothing,
than the eyes of criminals,
that certain fixed stare
that is harsh like the sun,
and delineates darkly
and at the same time brightly
the sad, colorless dignity
of slaughterhouses and earthly kings.These eyes,
these glances alone
are worthy of noting death
and the transfiguration of flowers.Only they
can proclaim
all the pains of the world,
and keep God’s secret
eye to eye with the lynching mob.**************
Enough
Creation, no matter how wide,
is narrower than the sty.
From here to there. Tree, rock, house.
I come early, come late, put about.Yet sometimes somebody will enter,
and suddenly what is will reveal itself.
The sight of a face, a presence, is enough;
blood will trickle down the wallpaper.Yes, enough a hand that stirs the coffee
or is withheld from another hand,
enough for us to forget this place,
the closed row of windows, yes,
and at night, upon return to our room
to accept the unacceptable.Memory of My Father
Every old man I see
Reminds me of my father
When he had fallen in love with death
One time when sheaves were gathered.That man I saw in Gardner Street
Stumble in the kerb was one,
He stared at me half-eyed,
I might have been his son.And I remember the musician
Faltering over his fiddle
In Bayswater, London,
He too set me the riddle.Every old man I see
In October-coloured weather
Seems to say to me:
‘I was once your father.’Patrick Kavanagh
@toybulldog wrote:
The Legs
There was this road,
And it led up-hill,
And it led down-hill,
And round and in and out.And the traffic was legs,
Legs from the knees down,
Coming and going,
Never pausing.And the gutters gurgled
With the rain’s overflow,
And the sticks on the pavement
Blindly tapped and tapped.What drew the legs along
Was the never-stopping.
And the senseless, frightening
Fate of being legs.Legs for the road,
The road for legs,
Resolutely nowhere
In both directions.My legs at least
Were not in that rout:
On grass by the roadside
Entire I stood,Watching the unstoppable
Legs go by
With never a stumble
Between step and step.Though my smile was broad
The legs could not see,
Though my laugh was loud
The legs could not hear.My head dizzied, then:
I wondered suddenly,
Might I too be a walker
From the knees down ?Gently I touched my shins.
The doubt unchained them:
They had run in twenty puddles
Before I regained them.Robert Graves
Yes yes yesssss, and as we head towards the season of the paper poppy, may I urge the reading (for those of you who have not) of Robert Graves’ stunning autobiography GOOD-BYE TO ALL THAT, a timeless account on the horrors of the first world war.
On the Western Seaboard of South Uist
Los muertos abren los ojos a los que vivren
I found a pigeon’s skull on the machair,
All the bones pure white and dry, and chalky,
But perfect,
Without a crack or a flaw anywhere.At the back, rising out of the beak,
Were domes like bubbles of thin bone,
Almost transparent, where the brain had been
That fixed the tilt of the wings.With the exception of the first line, the words of ‘Perfect’ were taken from ‘Porth-y-Rhyd’, a short story in a collection by Glyn Jones entitled The Blue Bed, published in 1937.
TO THE LAKE
In Spring of youth it was my lot
To haunt of the wide world a spot
The which I could not love the less –
So lovely was the loneliness
Of a wild lake, with black rock bound,
And the tall pines that towered around.But when the night had thrown her pall
Upon that spot, as upon all,
And the mystic wind went by
Murmuring in melody –
Then – ah, then, I would awake
To the terror of the lone lake.Yet that terror was not fright,
But a tremulous delight –
A feeling not the jewelled mine
Could teach or bribe me to define –
Nor Love – although the love were thine.Death was in that poisonous wave,
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his lone imagining –
Whose solitary soul could make
An Eden of that dim lake.EDGAR ALLAN POE
@esmeralda wrote:
I pointed out that she never provides the title or the author, I said NOTHING about her pretending the works were by herself.
No you didn’t. Quite true. I take it back. It’s just you and plagiarism are forever entwined in my appreciation. I think it’s because for months every time you pretended to write something original my checking software would go mental. It has to be said, though, that you’ve been a lot better recently. You don’t even bother to pretend to write anything original much anymore.
And you’re quite right, Cath. I’ve been very naughty again and I must try harder.
I should quote a poem, really, considering where we are:
O ’tis a lovely thing for youth
To early walk in wisdom’s way;
To fear a lie, to speak the truth,
That we may trust to all they say!But liars we can never trust,
Even when they say what is true.
And he who does one fault at first
And lies to hide it, makes it two.Have we not known, nor heard, nor read
How God does hate deceit and wrong?
How Ananias was struck dead,
Caught with a lie upon his tongue?So did his wife Sapphira die,
When she came in, and grew so bold
As to confirm that wicked lie,
Which just before her husband told.The Lord delights in them that speak
The words of truth; but every liar
Must have his portion in the lake
That burns with brimstone and with fire.Isaac Watts ~ Against Lying
@pikey wrote:
@esmeralda wrote:
I pointed out that she never provides the title or the author, I said NOTHING about her pretending the works were by herself.
No you didn’t. Quite true. I take it back. It’s just you and plagiarism are forever entwined in my appreciation. I think it’s because for months every time you pretended to write something original my checking software would go mental. It has to be said, though, that you’ve been a lot better recently. You don’t even bother to pretend to write anything original much anymore.
And you’re quite right, Cath. I’ve been very naughty again and I must try harder.
I should quote a poem, really, considering where we are:
O ’tis a lovely thing for youth
To early walk in wisdom’s way;
To fear a lie, to speak the truth,
That we may trust to all they say!But liars we can never trust,
Even when they say what is true.
And he who does one fault at first
And lies to hide it, makes it two.Have we not known, nor heard, nor read
How God does hate deceit and wrong?
How Ananias was struck dead,
Caught with a lie upon his tongue?So did his wife Sapphira die,
When she came in, and grew so bold
As to confirm that wicked lie,
Which just before her husband told.The Lord delights in them that speak
The words of truth; but every liar
Must have his portion in the lake
That burns with brimstone and with fire.Isaac Watts ~ Against Lying
buga fire n brimstone , *puts lap top back in anderson shelter* grrrrrrrrrrrr lol
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