https://alteritas.net/pastis/translations/distraught-dream/
https://alteritas.net/GXL/?p=3502
Alba https://alteritas.net/pastis/inventory/alba/
Ggl:
A dusty cloud passed over the sun
and laid the mountainside down
to a winter camp
for my beloved
and her lover.
A bridge swayed beneath my feet
but my steps
had no direction.
It was as far over the bridge
as I had come from my childhood.
So death had to be found
somewhere between me and the gray willows
on the opposite bank.
It all lasted less than a minute
but the rest of the world.
DISTRAUGHT DREAM
Me:
A burst of dust obscured the sun,
spilled down the mountain slopes
to the winter lair
of my love
and her lover.
A footbridge swayed under
my steps as I stumbled
on without direction.
Just as far over that span
have I come since childhood,
so death will be met in its place
somewhere between me now
and those grey willows on the opposite shore.
This all lasted less than an instant
– what remains of being.
En støvet sky gik for solen
og lagde bjergsiden ned
til et vinterleje
for min elskede
og hendes elsker.
En bro gungrede under mine fødder,
men mine skridt
havde ingen retning.
Der var lige så langt over broen
som jeg var kommet fra min barndom.
Så døden måtte findes
et sted mellem mig og de grå pile
på den modsatte bred.
Det hele varede mindre end et minut
men resten af verden.
https://alteritas.net/pastis/inventory/tethering-for-davo/
https://alteritas.net/GXL/?p=3444
2015
Our official wedding portrait. Thirty-nine years ago. 🔥♥️😸 Tempus fugit cum gaudes / when you’re having fun.
Submit Shinny somewhere
https://alteritas.net/GXL/?p=4537 Un chat parmi
https://alteritas.net/pastis/plaint-of-a-slovak-poet-1976/
At a conference in Budapest in 1976, I fell in with some young Slovak scholars, tentatively, I imagined, in love with one of them. I wrote this poem recapitulating their description of their lives, trapped in Iron Curtain domesticity.
Later, back in Canada, I glued a copy of Sylvia Plath’s latest collection into the covers of Alice in Wonderland and, per instructions of the one who had caught my eye, mailed it to Bratislava.
Never heard back if it made it through the censors
This was the same folks about whom I did up a limerick, which read at the last session of the conference
There once came some Slovaks to Budapest
To sttend a big conference on the Metatext
The lectures were deadly
By we hung on steadily,
And stuck up friendship twist East and West.
Later in the same trip I was in Prague visiting Paul Wilson, an occasional member of the Plastic People of the Universe.
Occasional poetry
https://alteritas.net/pastis/inventory/still-life/
Collations (2nd edition)
https://alteritas.net/pastis/pushkins-plea/
Danishness : https://alteritas.net/GXL/?p=3502
https://alteritas.net/GXL/?p=3480
Latin lesson of the day.
Sine pecunia tyrannus superare populum Romanum non poterit.
A tyrant will not be able to overcome the Roman people without money.
https://alteritas.net/pastis/translations/the-strangest-of-all/
This deliberately flat anti-metaphysical poem by Alberto Caiero.
https://comofazerumpoema.com/poemas-de-alberto-caeiro-poesia/
I have tried to echo the deliberate flatness in this poem by one of Fernando Pessoa’s heteronyms, Alberto Caiero, whose works are “marked by rationality and objectivity”.
Do not be deceived by its ostensible simplicity, which can, in Portuguese, rely on the subjunctive in its last two lines.
Do animals other than humans get Parkinson’s?
In othrrer wordd, is PD aspecific to oit species?
https://alteritas.net/pastis/inventory/dementia/
https://alteritas.net/pastis/translations/a-lamb-of-the-lord/
From today, but forever,
I know: The earth is truly warm-
I give back the sting to the nettle
and the thorns to the hedgehog.
From today, everything is my patron saint
and the whole world a willow cradle
in which the gust of wind rocks us together
and knots our breath.
From now on and forever
I know that Earth is truly warm.
I give its sting back to the nettle,
to the hedgehog its thorn.
From now on, the whole world
is my Protector, a cradle of willow
where breezes rock and lull us
knitting our breath together.
After Christine Lavant
Seit heute, aber für immer,
weiß ich: Die Erde ist wirklich warm-
ich gebe der Nessel den Brand zurück
und dem Igel die Stacheln.
Seit heute ist alles mein Schutzpatron
und die ganze Welt eine Weidenwiege,
darin uns der Windstoß zusammenschaukelt
und unsren Atem verknotet.
***
Christine Lavant was an Austrian poet whose life was a vale of tears. Fortunately, for us, she discovered poetry after a mentor passed her a volume of Rilke. Christian mystics are these days few and far between, alas. She was one.