The Inner Valley

I wrote stone I wrote house I wrote town I shattered the stone I demolished the house I obliterated the town the page traces the struggles between creation and annihilation ******* ✍ Ryszard Kapuściński (Pinsk, Poland, 4 March 1932 ~ Warsaw, Poland, 23 January 2007). 

What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams? Shall she not find in comforts of the sun, In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else In any balm or beauty of the earth, Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven? Divinity must live within herself: Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow; Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued Elations when the forest blooms; gusty Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; All pleasures and all pains, remembering The bough of summer and the winter branch, These are the measures destined for her soul.  ******* ✍  Wallace Stevens (Reading, Pennsylvania, 2 October 1879 ~ Hartford, Connecticut, 2 August 1955).   ◙ Artwork: Max Ernst 

This solitary hill has always been dear to me And this hedge, which prevents me from seeing most of The endless horizon. But when I sit and gaze, I imagine, in my thoughts Endless spaces beyond the hedge, An all encompassing silence and a deeply profound quiet, To the point that my heart is almost overwhelmed. And when I hear the wind rustling through the trees I compare its voice to the infinite silence. And eternity occurs to me, and all the ages past, And the present time, and its sound. Amidst this immensity my thought drowns: And to founder in this sea is sweet to me. *******    ✍  Giacomo Leopardi (Recanati, Papal States, 29 June 1798 ~ Naples, Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, 14 June 1837).   ◙ Artwork: Caspar David Friedrich.

We’re all dreamers; we don’t know who we are. Some machine made us; machine of the world, the constricting family. Then back to the world, polished by soft whips. We dream; we don’t remember. Machine of the family: dark fur,  forests of the mother’s body. Machine of the mother: white city inside her. And before that: earth and water. Moss between rocks, pieces of leaves and grass. And before, cells in a great darkness. And before that, the veiled world. This is why you were born: to silence me. Cells of my mother and father, it is your turn to be pivotal, to be the masterpiece. I improvised; I never remembered. Now it’s your turn to be driven; you’re the one who demands to know: Why do I suffer? Why am I ignorant? Cells in a great darkness. Some machine made us; it is your turn to address it, to go back asking what am I for? What am I for? ******* ✍   Louise Elisabeth Glück (New York City, 22 April 1943). ◙ Artwork: Honoré D

There the hungry wolf with his teeth has ripped out the hot entrails. There the fugitive convict stone by stone has dug his grave. There the naked dead on a table of their bones have chopped up the moon. There the rutting stags, their antlers entangled, have turned into skeletons. There on hard arid ground sorcerers have woven a wedding feast banner from their veins. The groom is the wind, the bride is the mist. Amazingly in their cradle (a handful of earth and hope) a nameless flower opens. Let's go and name it: let it be called Dream. ******* ✍ Slavko Janevski ( Skopje, Republic of Macedonia, 11 January 1929 ~ Skopje, 20 January 2000). ◙ Artwork: Agostino Arrivabene

In the circus tent of a hurricane designed by a drunken god my extravagant heart blows up again in a rampage of champagne-colored rain and the fragments whir like a weather vane while the angels all applaud. Daring as death and debonair I invade my lion's den; a rose of jeopardy flames in my hair yet I flourish my whip with a fatal flair defending my perilous wounds with a chair while the gnawings of love begin. Mocking as Mephistopheles, eclipsed by magician's disguise, my demon of doom tilts on a trapeze, winged rabbits revolving about his knees, only to vanish with devilish ease in a smoke that sears my eyes. *******   ✍  Sylvia Plath (Boston, Massachusetts, 27 October 1932 ~ London, 11 February 1963). ◙ Artwork: George Bellows

When I die, I will see the lining of the world. The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset. The true meaning, ready to be decoded. What never added up will add Up, What was incomprehensible will be comprehended. - And if there is no lining to the world? If a thrush on a branch is not a sign, But just a thrush on the branch? If night and day Make no sense following each other? And on this earth there is nothing except this earth? - Even if that is so, there will remain A word wakened by lips that perish, A tireless messenger who runs and runs Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies, And calls out, protests, screams.  ******* ✍   Czesław Miłosz (Szetejnie, Kovno Governorate, Russian Empire, 30 June 1911~ Kraków, Poland, 14 August 2004). ◙ Artwork : Nikolai Astrup

Earth will not share the rafter's envy; dung floors Break, not the gecko's slight skin, but its fall Taste this soil for death and plumb her deep for life As this yam, wholly earthed, yet a living tuber To the warmth of waters, earthed as springs As roots of baobab, as the hearth. The air will not deny you. Like a top Spin you on the navel of the storm, for the hoe That roots the forests plows a path for squirrels. Be ageless as dark peat, but only that rain's Fingers, not the feet of men, may wash you over. Long wear the sun's shadow; run naked to the night. Peppers green and red—child—your tongue arch To scorpion tail, spit straight return to danger's threats Yet coo with the brown pigeon, tendril dew between your lips. Shield you like the flesh of palms, skyward held Cuspids in thorn nesting, in sealed as the heart of kernel— A woman's flesh is oil—child, palm oil on your tongue Is suppleness to life, and wine of this gourd From self-same timeless run of ru

Why does this written doe bound through these written woods? For a drink of written water from a spring whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle? Why does she lift her head; does she hear something? Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth, she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips. Silence - this word also rustles across the page and parts the boughs that have sprouted from the word "woods." Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page, are letters up to no good, clutches of clauses so subordinate they'll never let her get away. Each drop of ink contains a fair supply of hunters, equipped with squinting eyes behind their sights, prepared to swarm the sloping pen at any moment, surround the doe, and slowly aim their guns. They forget that what's here isn't life. Other laws, black on white, obtain. The twinkling of an eye will take as long as I say, and will, if I

He loved her and she loved him. His kisses sucked out her whole past and future or tried to He had no other appetite She bit him she gnawed him she sucked She wanted him complete inside her Safe and sure forever and ever Their little cries fluttered into the curtains Her eyes wanted nothing to get away Her looks nailed down his hands his wrists his elbows He gripped her hard so that life Should not drag her from that moment He wanted all future to cease He wanted to topple with his arms round her Off that moment's brink and into nothing Or everlasting or whatever there was    Her embrace was an immense press To print him into her bones His smiles were the garrets of a fairy palace Where the real world would never come Her smiles were spider bites So he would lie still till she felt hungry His words were occupying armies Her laughs were an assassin's attempts His looks were bullets daggers of revenge His glances were ghosts in the corner with horrible

The finger that wrote in my blood and separated my blood from its ink, said that the name of my soul is blood and ink the name of my spirit.   M y soul makes camp in its color before a red mirror, my spirit regards itself in a black mirror.   And in my heart there was a battle between blood, air and ink. Earth , and ink defeated blood and I was happy, but never again will I write in fire with a flame.                                                                       * Abraham Abulafia ******* ✍ 'The Battle' . Juan Gelman (Buenos Aires, 3 May 1930 ~ México D. F., 14 January 2014).    ◙ Artwork: Salomon Koninck * Note:  This poem was included in Gelman's 'Com/posiciones' , in which he introduces several Medieval Andalusian poets combined with poems of his own production. But in the particular case of these Medieval poets,  his literary work was not restricted to a mere translation, he claims to have been inspired by

All clocks are clouds. Parts are greater than the whole. A philosopher is starving in a rooming house, while it rains outside. He regards the self as just another sign. Winter roses are invisible. Late ice sometimes sings. A and Not-A are the same. My dog does not know me. Violins, like dreams, are suspect. I come from Kolophon, or perhaps some small island. The strait has frozen, and people are walking—a few skating—across it. On the crescent beach, a drowned deer. A woman with one hand, her thighs around your neck. The world is all that is displaced. Apples in a stall at the streetcorner by the Bahnhof, pale yellow to blackish red. Memory does not speak. Shortness of breath, accompanied by tinnitus. The poet’s stutter and the philosopher’s. The self is assigned to others. A room for which, at all times, the moon remains visible. Leningrad cafe: a man missing the left side of his face. Disappearance of the sun from the sky above Odessa. True descri

What the mouth sings, the soul must learn to forgive. A rat’s as moral as a monk in the eyes of the real world. Still, the heart is a river pouring from itself, a river that cannot be crossed. It opens on a bay and turns back upon itself as the tide comes in, it carries the cry of the loon and the salts of the unutterably human. A distant eagle enters the mouth of a river salmon no longer run and his wide wings glide upstream until he disappears into the nothing from which he came. Only the thought remains. Lacking the eagle’s cunning or the wisdom of the sparrow, where shall I turn, drowning in sorrow? Who will know what the trees know, the spidery patience of young maple or what the willows confess? Let me be water. The heart pours out in waves. Listen to what the water says. Wind, be a friend. There’s nothing I couldn’t forgive. ******* ✍  Sam Hamill ( 5 September 1943, Utah, United States). ◙ Artwork: Thomas Fearnley

When we wear out our minds, stubbornly clinging to one partial view of things, refusing to see a deeper agreement between this and its complementary opposite, we have what is called " three in the morning." What is this "three in the morning?" A monkey trainer went to his monkeys and told them: "As regards your chestnuts: you are going to have three measures in the morning and four in the afternoon." At this they all became angry. So he said: "All right, in that case I will give you four in the morning and three in the afternoon." This time they were satisfied. The two arrangements were the same in that the number of chestnuts did not change. But in one case the animals were displeased, and in the other they were satisfied. The keeper had been willing to change his personal arrangement in order to meet objective conditions. He lost nothing by itl The truly wise man, considering both sides of the question without partiality, sees them b