Itee Pootoogook (1951-2014): A Tribute in Poems
Posted: March 26, 2014 Filed under: English, IMAGES | Tags: Itee Pootoogook: a tribute in poems Comments Off on Itee Pootoogook (1951-2014): A Tribute in Poems
Itee Pootoogook_After Midnight_coloured pencil_2007
Itee Pootoogook, an Inuk and artist from Kimmirut, Baffin Island, was born in 1951 to Ishuhungitok and Paulassie Pootoogook. His drawings are characterized by an uncluttered gaze that sees what is directly before it, and an ability to find the profound in the simple. He died earlier this month of cancer; he was 63 years old.
Some artists are rooted in a place; this was Itee Pootoogook, very much so, and his drawings depict life in Nunavut. But great art travels, becomes universal. And so we have gathered poems from Germany, Russia, India and the USA, to accompany a selection of Itee’s drawings…
. . .
Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)
On a Journey
.
Don’t be downcast, soon the night will come,
When we can see the cool moon laughing in secret
Over the faint countryside,
And we rest, hand in hand.
.
Don’t be downcast, the time will soon come
When we can have rest. Our small crosses will stand
On the bright edge of the road together,
And rain falls, and snow falls,
And the winds come and go.
. . .
Hermann Hesse
How Heavy the Days
.
How heavy the days are,
There’s not a fire that can warm me,
Not a sun to laugh with me,
Everything bare,
Everything cold and merciless,
And even the beloved, clear
Stars look desolately down
– Since I learned in my heart that
Love can die.
.
Translations from the German: James Wright
. . .
Itee Pootoogook_Floe Edge, Winter
Mohan Rana (born 1964, Delhi, India)
After Midnight
.
I saw the stars far off,
as far as I was from them,
in this moment I saw them,
in a moment of the twinkling past.
In the boundless depths of darkness,
these hours hunt the morning through the night.
.
And I can’t make up my mind:
am I living this life for the first time?
Or repeating it, forgetting as I live,
that first breath – every time?
.
Does the fish too drink water?
Does the sun feel the heat?
Does light see the dark?
Does the rain also get wet?
Do dreams ask questions about sleep – as I do?
.
I walked a long, long way…
and when I saw, I saw the stars – close by.
Today it rained all day long
and words washed away from your face.
.
Translation from Hindi: Lucy Rosenstein and Bernard O’Donoghue
. . .
Itee Pootoogook_The ground is wet for it’s been raining during the night…It is early fall and it’s early morning_pencil crayon on paper_2010
Itee Pootoogook_Water and Ice_coloured pencil on paper_2012
Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (1892-1941)
from: Poems for Blok (1916)
.
Your name is a—bird in my hand,
a piece of ice on my tongue.
The lips’ quick opening.
Your name—four letters.
A ball caught in flight,
a silver bell in my mouth.
A stone thrown into a silent lake
is—the sound of your name.
The light click of hooves at night
—your name.
Your name at my temple
—sharp click of a cocked gun.
Your name—impossible—
kiss on my eyes,
the chill of closed eyelids.
Your name—a kiss of snow.
Blue gulp of icy spring water.
With your name—sleep deepens.
.
Translation from the Russian original: Ilya Kaminsky and Jean Valentine
. . .
Angelyn Hays (Texas/Florida, USA)
One of the Cardinal Seasons
After the hardest snow of the year
the birches huddle in rows.
Ice breaks their wooden bones,
and hangs them by the thumbs
in a March sun too weak to heal them.
Birds call to each other
from the tangle of bare arms.
A red-dark Cardinal feasts in my backyard,
singing to warm his lungs. He enters
just as I am ready to leave.
I had stopped the clock,
put away my mother’s china,
and wanted to sink to timeless black.
But the bird came for me,
signaling me to rise, recall his password.
The window is framed by trees, no longer trees,
sky, no longer sky, but now a watch
by which I measure my days.
Shouting the weight of his pleasure
from fevered beak, he rolls a black eye
and we click off the minute.
Then he swoops over my white garden,
drunk as Li Po, his floating path
a dance on an empty swingset of wind.
Itee Pootoogook_Electric fan in an abandoned shack_2012
Itee Pootoogook_Frozen Tarp_coloured pencil_2013
Michael Valentine (Maryland, USA)
A Meadow in March
.
Early Spring snowfall
dusts late Winter bloom
crystalline fractals piling gently
all around
to rest upon vibrant petal
leaf
stem
and ground.
The field now
a riot of pixelated colour
struggling to be seen under
blank canvas tarp of
Winter’s last throes.
Portrait of Nature’s perfect balance
Yin meeting Yang
flowing together
each becoming the other
flower melts snow into water flowing into flower.
Demonstration of Tao
in this limbo-time between the seasons
that is no longer Winter
and not yet Spring,
when the Universe gives lessons
to remind us that
there is no such thing as
“impossible”.
. . .
Mitchell Walters (Temecula, California, USA)
The Shack
.
I walked to the river and back.
Something told me I should.
I saw things I hadn’t seen before:
A dog. A deer. A stream.
.
I saw an old abandoned shack.
It was made entirely of wood.
I walked to the shack and opened the door.
And that was the start of my dream.
. . . . .
Kerbel, Terada, Nauman: three Wordy conceptual artists – But Wait, There’s More!
Posted: March 25, 2014 Filed under: English, IMAGES | Tags: Wayne Reuben: Honest Ed's signpainter Comments Off on Kerbel, Terada, Nauman: three Wordy conceptual artists – But Wait, There’s More!
Janice Kerbel_one page of A letter by Rodolphe Boulanger de Huchette to Emma Bovary written by Gustave Flaubert in my hand
Currently, at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, Canada, there are works from the permanent collection on view by three conceptual artists who use words – just a phrase, or a crammed page – as the locus of their art. The artists are: Janice Kerbel (born 1969, Canada, now living in London, England); Ron Terada (also 1969, Canada); and Bruce Nauman (born 1941, USA).
Kerbel’s 5-poster series Remarkable, from 2007, presents the viewer with silkscreened prints on what is known as campaign poster paper – something used for 19th-century traveling circus billboard “announcements” or for election hoardings. Using bold black letters on white, Kerbel describes The Regurgitating Lady and The Human Firefly, as if inviting us in to a carnival side-show. Yet her characters are imaginary and so we become completely involved in the artist’s sometimes archaic use of language and her strong typographical arrangements.
Janice Kerbel_silkscreen print on campaign poster paper_The Temperamental Barometric Contortionist_2007
Vancouver-based Ron Terada has been very precisely focused in his art on phrases, sentences, written presentation. Twenty years ago he did a series of “ad paintings” that were a branching out of monochromatic minimalism in visual art. He worked in other media for several years then returned in 2010 with the large-scale white-on-black chapter pages of “Jack” (from a biography of painter Jack Goldstein, Jack Goldstein and the CalArts Mafia). Each chapter page is a painting – not a print. To the individual pages of a book, Terada brings the discipline of a serious painter.
Ron Terada_Jack_2010_acrylic on canvas
Ron Terada_born 1969_neon text sculpture_It is what it is It was what it was
Ron Terada’s neon text sculpture, It Is What It Is, It Was What It Was, reflects on present-day use of language, offering a general critique of complacency in society. Severe High makes reference to threat definitions for Homeland Security in the USA.
Bruce Nauman is a multimedia artist who has been heavy on “concept” and “performance”. The online, user-driven encyclopedia Wikipedia describes Nauman’s “practice” as being “characterized by an interest in language, often manifesting itself in a playful, mischievous manner.” And: [Nauman is] fascinated by the nature of communication and language’s inherent problems, as well as the role of the artist as a supposed communicator and manipulator of visual symbols.”
Among the A.G.O.’s pieces are two lithographs, Ah Ha (1975) and Pay Attention (1973):
The reproduction of Pay Attention shown here (copied many times around the internet) is marred by the lack of print clarity in the word attention, which affects the viewer’s – reader’s ! – ability to quickly “get it”, that is, the power of the statement itself: Pay Attention, Motherfuckers! Interestingly, the print of Pay Attention that belongs to the A.G.O. is much clearer, so that all four words hit the mark. Which is important, especially since the statement is presented to us as a mirror image i.e. backwards.
Some of Nauman’s works now seem dated or stilted, but others have a fresh power in 2014 that comes out of our being awash now in “text” – as all words seem to be called these days – and “text” often without “context”. People’s ubiquitous use of :-) and, most especially, ;-), is indicative of the fact that words and phrases themselves are no longer adequate. What’s the tone – what’s the tone? It’s there you’ll find the meaning. The most effective of all the Nauman works at the A.G.O. is a 1985 videotape installation, Good Boy Bad Boy. There are two older-model TV sets side by side, and each shows its own videocassette of a man – mid-40s black guy, and a woman – mid-40s, white – each of whom speaks a set group of short sentences which are statements, and then does it all over again, but altering the vocal tone. To hear each of them “perform” these statements twice, changing his/her tone, is a simple and clear demonstration of the complexity and muddiness of Language. The man says: I was a bad girl. You were a bad girl. We were baaad girls. We were baaaaad! And he’s enjoying remembering being a slut. The woman says the same things and she is a scolding puritan; she may be speaking of a pet dog who pooped on the Persian carpet, or of two 12 year olds caught smoking cigarettes. Same phrases – entirely different meanings. A good contemporary example of this is two words: Hello and Whatever. Both have pleasant or neutral uses in conversation but both also can be altered via tonal change, pitch, even syllable stress, to communicate irate impatience or deliberate rudeness (Hello); and casual defiance or a kind of hybrid attitude of blasé and crass (Whatever).
Nauman is quoted at the A.G.O. exhibit: “When language begins to break down a little bit it becomes exciting and communicates in nearly the simplest way that it can function. You are forced to be aware of the sounds and the poetic parts of words.”
Some of Honest Ed’s iconic handpainted signs on display in 2012_Wayne Reuben has been, for decades, that man with the calligraphy brush and the poster paints.
Honest Ed’s signpainter, Wayne Reuben, at work in July 2013_photograph by Darren Calabrese, National Post
To whom shall we give the last Word? Why, Wayne Reuben – of course!
Wayne Reuben is the man behind the sometimes wacky ads, proclamations, commands and price cards at Honest Ed’s discount store, the building structure of which is a vivid Toronto landmark, what with the thousands of marquee bulbs that light up its red and yellow exterior. It’s Reuben’s handiwork when, out on the sidewalk, you read: Come In And Get Lost! And it’s Reuben’s blue and red paint letters that tell you, once you’re inside: Don’t Just Stand There – Buy Something!
Two weeks ago, hundreds of Torontonians lined up around the block to get the chance to pore over Mr. Reuben’s thousand-plus handpainted signs that Ed’s never trashed over the decades. The lucky buyer might’ve come away with Fancy Panties or Men’s Mesh Tops, a sign in the shape of a Hallowe’en pumpkin that reads WIGS $6.99, lovingly handpainted price boards for tinned sardines, coconut milk, hair grease or pomades – even Justin Bieber-photosilkscreened pyjamas. Along with Doug Kerr, the left-handed Reuben writes/paints in something like a serif font (and sans serif), to spell out Ed’s commercial message; and the tempera paint palette is strong and basic: blue, red, yellow, black.
So why would people line up to buy ephemeral signboards for 5 to 40 dollars? Is it nostalgia for the handmade? Or the curvilinear ease of Reuben’s brushstroke? No. It’s because Honest Ed Is For The Birds: Cheap Cheap Cheap!
;-)
Haiku harusamu 寒き春（さむきはる） / Haiku for This Cold Spring…Kyoshi & Issa
Posted: March 20, 2014 Filed under: English, Issa, Japanese, Kyoshi | Tags: Spring Haiku Comments Off on Haiku harusamu 寒き春（さむきはる） / Haiku for This Cold Spring…Kyoshi & Issa
Takahama Kyoshi (1874-1959)
Translations by Katsuya Hiromoto
.
春風や闘志いだきて丘に立つ
harukaze ya / tohshi idaki te / oka ni tatsu
.
Spring wind:
Full of fight
I stand on the hill
.
眼つむれば若き我あり春の宵
Me tsumureba / wakaki ware ari / haru no yoi
.
Shutting my eyes
I find a young me found
In the spring evening
.
この庭の遅日の石のいつまでも
Kono niwa no / chijitsu no ishi no / itsumademo
.
The rocks in this garden
Remain forever
In the lengthening days of spring
.
何事も知らずと答へ老の春
Nanigoto mo / shirazu to kotae / oi no haru
.
”I know nothing”
Is my answer:
Spring in my old age
.
これよりは恋や事業や水温む
kore-yori wa / koi ya jigyoh ya / mizu nurumu
.
From this time on
Love, enterprise, and such:
Water has warmed up
. . .
The following haiku by Kyoshi were translated by Aya Nagayama and James W. Henry:
.
時ものを解決するや春を待つ
Toki mono o kaiketsu suru ya haru o matsu
.
May time solve
Worries and difficulties –
Awaiting the spring
(1914)
.
金の輪の春の眠りにはひりけり
Kin no wa no haru no nemuri ni hairikeri
.
I have entered
The golden circle of
Spring slumber
(1942)
.
闘志尚存して春の風を見る
Tohshi nao sonshite haru no kaze o miru
.
Steadfast in my soul
My fighting spirit remains
And I see the spring breeze
(1950)
.
独り句の推敲をして遅き日を
Hitori ku no suikou o shite osoki hi o
.
In your solitude
Honing and perfecting your haiku –
On a slow spring day
(1959)
. . .
Plus: two by Issa – to have with your cup of tea :-)
(Issa was the haiku pen-name of Kobayashi Nobuyuki Yataro. Issa means Cup of Tea.)
Issa / 一茶 (1763-1828)
.
まん六の春と成りけり門の雪
manroku no haru to nari keri kado no yuki
.
some “proper spring”
this is!
snow at the gate
(1822)
.
春立や愚の上に又愚にかへる
haru tatsu ya gu no ue ni mata gu ni kaeru
.
spring begins –
more foolishness
for this fool
(1823)
. . . . .
Thomas Moore: “A Canadian Boat Song”
Posted: March 17, 2014 Filed under: English, Thomas Moore | Tags: Poems for Saint Patrick's Day Comments Off on Thomas Moore: “A Canadian Boat Song”
Irish songbook_published in 1892 in the USA, with an engraving of Thomas Moore on the cover
.
Thomas Moore (Irish poet, singer, songwriter, born Dublin, 1779-1853)
”A Canadian Boat Song” (1804)
. . .
Thomas Moore, who would later be renowned for poems and songs such as “The Minstrel Boy”, “The Last Rose of Summer” and “Believe Me, If All Those Endearing Young Charms”, visited Canada when he was 25 years old. He wrote “A Canadian Boat Song” during his time here in 1804.
.
*St. Anne’s: Moore visited this church – Ste-Anne-du-Bout-de-l’île–located in the town of Ste. Anne de Bellevue, on the tip of Montreal Island where the St. Lawrence River joins the Ottawa River.
*Utawa: an 18th/early 19th-century spelling of Ottawa
*“this green isle”: Montreal Island (L’île de Montréal )
The Lachine Rapids, near Montreal Island_early 20th century postcard_These are The Rapids that Thomas Moore wrote about in his A Canadian Boat Song.
. . .
Zocalo Poets Editor’s Note:
My mother Eileen is a native of Belfast, Northern Ireland, though her family emigrated to Canada more than sixty years ago. Ma is in her eighties now, and she most definitely lives in the “here and now”. Yet she has powerful memories of those early years in the new country. She tells me: “I learned A Canadian Boat Song in the early 1950s, after coming to Canada. It was a camp song for the Eaton’s Girls’ Club up at Shadow Lake near Uxbridge. …I also have a memory from back in Ireland: the sound of a marching flute band going by. As children, we simply followed the band, and whistled and sang, as they marched along. They were playing “The Minstrel Boy” by Thomas Moore – and all of it on flutes!”
.
For more favourite poems of my mother, click on the following ZP link:
.
Montreal celebrated its 191st St.Patrick’s Day Parade on Sunday, March 16th, 2014.
. . . . .
Seamus Heaney: ”El Subterráneo”: versión de Óscar Paúl Castro
Posted: March 17, 2014 Filed under: English, Seamus Heaney, Spanish Comments Off on Seamus Heaney: ”El Subterráneo”: versión de Óscar Paúl Castro
1980s photograph from Bob Mazzer’s decades-long “camera journal” about London’s subway system a.k.a. The Underground_Bob Mazzer, fotógrafo_foto del Metro o Subterráneo de Londres, años 1980
Seamus Heaney (Poeta irlandés, 1939-2013)
”El Subterráneo” (versión de Óscar Paúl Castro)
.
Corríamos envueltos por la bóveda del túnel,
Tú ibas adelante, llevabas puesto tu abrigo bueno,
Y yo, como un ágil dios, ya casi lograba darte alcance
Cuando repentinamente viraste al advertir una brizna de hierba
.
O alguna una blanca flor reciénnacida, jaspeada de rojo,
Tu abrigo se plegó con violencia y uno tras otro
Se desprendieron los botones, marcando el camino
Que va del Subterráneo al Albert Hall.
.
Era nuestra luna de miel, pasamos el día vagando y se nos hizo
Tarde para el concierto de los Proms, el eco de nuestros pasos aún
Muere en ese corredor; por eso ahora vuelvo, como Hansel bajo la luz
De la luna desandando el camino de piedras, recogiendo botón tras botón
.
Hasta llegar a esta fría estación iluminada con luz artificial
De la que ya han partido todos los trenes, las desnudas vías ―como mi ser―
Están tensas y empapadas, toda mi atención concentrada en el eco
De tus pasos tras de mí, la maldición caerá sobre nosotros si miro atrás.
. . .
Óscar Paúl Castro, traductor (Culiacán, México,1979): Sr. Castro ha publicado traducciones en las revistas TextoS, Punto de Partida, Periódico de Poesía de la UNAM, en Refundación, Espiral y Timonel.
.
Bob Mazzer, photographer_from his London subway series, 1980s_Bob Mazzer, fotógrafo_foto del Metro o Subterráneo de Londres, años 1980
”The Underground” (1984)
.
There we were in the vaulted tunnel running,
You in your going-away coat speeding ahead
And me, me then like a fleet god gaining
Upon you before you turned to a reed
.
Or some new white flower japped with crimson
As the coat flapped wild and button after button
Sprang off and fell in a trail
Between the Underground and the Albert Hall.
.
Honeymooning, moonlighting, late for the Proms,
Our echoes die in that corridor and now
I come as Hansel came on the moonlit stones
Retracing the path back, lifting the buttons
.
To end up in a draughty lamplit station
After the trains have gone, the wet track
Bared and tensed as I am, all attention
For your step following and damned if I look back.
. . . . .
Seamus Heaney: “Ruedas dentro de ruedas”: versión de Miguel A. Montezanti
Posted: March 17, 2014 Filed under: English, Seamus Heaney, Spanish Comments Off on Seamus Heaney: “Ruedas dentro de ruedas”: versión de Miguel A. Montezanti
Un extracto del comentario por el traductor Miguel A. Montezanti:
”La traducción debería presentarse por sí sola, criatura libre…Pero diré que Seamus Heaney es un poeta difícil de traducir: apenas puede aspirarse a reproducir lo que dice, lo cual en poesía, como se sabe, puede no ser lo más importante. [Importan mucho] su autorreferencialidad lingüística, asentada sobre la dialéctica sutil entre el gaélico y el inglés, su riqueza sonora, y su rescate de formas sucintas pero complejas…”
.
Seamus Heaney
(nacido en “Mossbawn”, Castledawson, Condado de Londonderry, Irlanda del Norte, 1939-2013)
Ruedas dentro de ruedas
I.
La primera captación en serio que tuve de las cosas.
fue cuando aprendí el arte de pedalear
(con la mano) una bici, colocada al revés
e impulsé la rueda trasera preternaturalmente ligero.
Yo amaba la desaparición de los rayos
el modo como el hueco entre el eje y la llanta
susurraba transparente. Si le arrojabas
una papa, el aire enmarcado en el aro
revolvía papilla y te la salpicaba en la cara;
si lo tocabas con una paja, la pajita chasqueaba.
Algo acerca del modo de esos impulsos pedaleros
funcionaba al principio muy palpablemente en tu contra
y luego comenzaba a impeler tu mano hacia delante
hacia un envión nuevo…; todo eso entraba en mí
como un acceso de poder libre, como si la fe
capturara y revolviera los objetos de la fe
en una órbita lindera con la añoranza.
II
Pero lo bastante no era bastante. ¿Quién ha visto
alguna vez el límite de lo otorgado?
En unos campos más allá de casa había un pozo
(lo llamábamos “El pozo”. Era más que un agujero
con agua, con espinos pequeños
de un lado, y del otro, un fango cenagoso
todo pisoteado por ganado).
También amaba eso. Amaba el olor turbio,
la vida sumidera del lugar como aceite viejo de cadena.
Allí, acto seguido, llevé la bicicleta.
coloqué el asiento y el manubrio
en el fondo suave, hice que las cubiertas
tocaran la superficie del agua y luego di vuelta los pedales
hasta que, como una rueda de molino arrojando con el pedaleo,
(pero aquí a la inversa y azotando una cola de caballo)
la rueda trasera sumergida, refrescando el mundo
revolvía un rociado y espuma de suciedad ante mis ojos
y me bañaba con mis propios barros regenerados.
Durante semanas hice un nimbo de viejo destello.
Luego el eje se engranó, las llantas se oxidaron, la cadena se cortó.
III
Nada igualó esa ocasión después de aquello
hasta que en el circo, entre tambores y spots,
chicas vaqueras giraron, cada una inmaculada
en el centro inmóvil de un lazo.
Perpetuum mobile. Pura pirueta
Acróbatas, funambuleros. Volteretas. Stet!
. . .
Wheels within wheels
I / The first real grip I ever got on things / Was when I learned the art of pedalling / (By hand) a bike turned upside down, and drove / Its back wheel preternaturally fast. / I loved the disappearance of the spokes, / The way the space between the hub and rim / Hummed with transparency. If you threw / A potato into it, the hooped air / Spun mush and drizzle back into your face; / If you touched it with a straw, the straw frittered. / Something about the way those pedal treads / Worked very palpably ay first against you / And then began to sweep your hand ahead / Into a new momentum – that all entered me / Like an access of free power, as if relief / Caught up and spun the objects of belief / In an orbit coterminous with longing.
II / But enough was not enough. Who ever saw / The limit in the given anyhow? / In fields beyond our house there was a well / (‘The well’ we called it. It was more a hole / With water in it, with small hawthorn trees / On one side, a muddy, dungy ooze / On the other, all tramped through by cattle). / I loved that too. I loved the turbid smell, / The sump-life of the place like old chain oil. / And there, next thing, I brought my bicycle. / I stood its saddle and its handlebars / Into the soft bottom, I touched the tyres / To the water’s surface, then turned the pedals / Until like a mill-wheel pouring at the treadles / (But here reversed and lashing a mare’s tail) / The world-refreshing and immersed back wheel / Spun lace and dirt-suds there before my eyes / And showered me in my own regenerate clays. / For weeks I made a nimbus of old glit. / Then the hub jammed, rims rusted, the chain snapped.
III / Nothing rose to the occasion after that / Until, in a circus ring, drumrolled and spotlit, / Cowgirls wheeled in, each one immaculate / At the still centre of a lariat. / Perpetuum mobile. Sheer pirouette. / Tumblers, jongleurs. Ring-a-rosies. Stet !
. . . . .
Robert Leighton & Henry Van Dyke: “Late Spring” / John Clare: “The Winter’s Spring”
Posted: March 16, 2014 Filed under: English, John Clare, Robert Leighton Comments Off on Robert Leighton & Henry Van Dyke: “Late Spring” / John Clare: “The Winter’s Spring”
Robert Leighton (born Dundee, Scotland, 1822-1869)
Late Spring
.
Spring is with us by the sun,
Yet it has not given us one
Little snow-drop to remind us
That the flowery days are near:
For the winds are blowing chilly,
And the firstling of the year
Slumbers with the sleeping lily,
‘Neath their coverlet, the sere
And sodden mortcloth that old Autumn
Lay with on her bier.
.
Spring is with us by the date,
And Winter cancell’d: yet we wait
Balmly fingers to unbind us,
Roots and budlets to unfold.
But the herald larks are roaming
Up the heights of blue and gold:
They can see the Spring a-coming
While we shiver in the cold.
Hark! they sing to Him who taught them
Notes so sweet and bold.
Henry Van Dyke (born Germantown, Pennsylvania, USA, 1852-1933)
Late Spring (excerpt)
Come, put your hand in mine,
True love, long sought and found at last,
And lead me deep into the Spring divine
That makes amends for all the wintry past.
For all the flowers and songs I feared to miss
Arrive with you;
And in the lingering pressure of your kiss
My dreams come true;
And in the promise of your generous eyes
I read the mystic sign
Of joy more perfect made
Because so long delayed,
And bliss enhanced by rapture of surprise.
Ah, think not early love alone is strong;
He loveth best whose heart has learned to wait:
Dear messenger of Spring that tarried long,
You’re doubly dear because you come so late.
John Clare (born Helpston, Northamptonshire, England, 1793-1864)
The Winter’s Spring
.
The winter comes; I walk alone,
I want no bird to sing;
To those who keep their hearts their own
The winter is the spring.
No flowers to please–no bees to hum–
The coming spring’s already come.
.
I never want the Christmas rose
To come before its time;
The seasons, each as God bestows,
Are simple and sublime.
I love to see the snowstorm hing;
‘Tis but the winter garb of spring.
.
I never want the grass to bloom:
The snowstorm’s best in white.
I love to see the tempest come
And love its piercing light.
The dazzled eyes that love to cling
O’er snow-white meadows see the spring.
.
I love the snow, the crumpling snow
That hangs on everything,
It covers everything below
Like white dove’s brooding wing,
A landscape to the aching sight,
A vast expanse of dazzling light.
.
It is the foliage of the woods
That winters bring–the dress,
White Easter of the year in bud,
That makes the winter Spring.
The frost and snow his posies bring,
Nature’s white spurts of the spring.
Las Desaparecidas canadienses: El Día Internacional de la Mujer 2014 / International Women’s Day 2014
Posted: March 8, 2014 Filed under: Anna Marie Sewell, English, Spanish, ZP Translator: Alexander Best Comments Off on Las Desaparecidas canadienses: El Día Internacional de la Mujer 2014 / International Women’s Day 2014
Ceremonia de Fresa (“Baya de Corazón”) por Las Mujeres Indígenas – Desaparecidas o Matadas – en Canadá_Lugar: en frente de la sede central de policía en Toronto_14 de febrero, 2014_Strawberry Ceremony 2014_For Missing or Murdered Aboriginal Women in Canada_Toronto, Canada
.
Anna Marie Sewell
“Lavando el Mundo”
.
En la oscuridad al fin de este año,
hay tanto amontanado contra la luz entre nosotros,
contra las “apuestas”,
a pesar de las lágrimas, en el viento amargo de esta estación;
Escucha el sueño en que las abuelas se mantienen
– hombro con hombro –
al borde de una colina,
inclinándose al unísono, agarrando una cosa – juntas.
Pregúntales, en su mundo de sueños: ¿Porqué lloran ustedes?
Y te mostraron sus chales en muchos colores, extenderán sus alas,
te barrerán dentro de ellas para enseñarte como
– una vez, cada año –
cuando hace el tiempo más oscuro,
lavamos el mundo entero durante solamente un día.
Un día para llorar.
.
De un alba al próximo:
recordando a los caídos,
lamentando a los destrozados,
gimiendo por nuestros arrepentimientos.
El amor perdido, las palabras injustas y acciones malas;
momentos desequilibrados…
y todas las rajaduras entre corazón y corazón,
entre padre y criatura,
entre el amante y su querida amiga,
entre nación y nación,
animal – y animal del otro tipo.
.
Por lo que escogemos y lo que descuidamos,
por lo que deseamos que habíamos sabido,
por cada mano soltado / cada lengua desenfrenada,
un susurro quedándose corto y inaúdito;
el pan lejos del hambre;
la disculpa;
el desconcierto;
el camino fracturado.
.
Estas cosas que recogemos en esta cobija
– pardo, carmelito, canela –
Lavamos el Mundo, y entre nosotros
agarramos la cobija, llenándola con lágrimas.
Y cuando hemos llorado
– de un alba al próximo –
pues subiremos y bailaremos,
acunando un océano de tinieblas amargas que nos cura.
.
Déjales poner tus manos sobre la verdad de una belleza perdida
– intensa pero blanda como musgo –
y esta cobija lleno de las lágrimas del polvo y de los moribundos
se vuelve
– al momento que llega la luz del amanecer –
la promesa lavada y limpia por nuestra pena.
No es – tanto – la redención
sino la lógica de las estaciones que
clama por la justicia, para recuperar el ritmo.
Algun día, los legisladores tendrán que salir de sus salones de ecos, y
juntarse con la danza de la abuela,
para llevarla y llorarla – limpiada – hasta que
la luz pasa a través de sus cuerpos y
traduce a un arco de iris a lo largo de la tierra.
Ella me dice éso – y sus ojos están rojos.
Y encoge los hombros.
Y camina arduamente por el manto profundo de nieve
que cubre este resto de un otro año
esperando.
.
Versión de Alexander Best
. . .
Anna Marie Sewell
“Washing the World”
.
In the dark at this end of the year,
so much stacked up against the light
between us, against the odds,
despite the tears, in this season’s bitter wind,
listen to a dream
in which grandmothers stand
shoulder to shoulder, on the rim of a hill,
they bend as one, and grasp one thing together.
Ask them, in the dream world, why
do they cry?
And they will show you in reply:
their shawls of many colours, spread these wings,
sweep you in and teach you how
once a year, in the dark of the year,
we wash the whole world in a day.
For one day, we cry.
.
From one dawn to the next:
remembering the fallen
mourning for the broken
wailing for regrets.
Love lost, wrong words, wrong actions,
unbalanced moments and all the cracks
between heart and heart, parent and child,
lover and beloved friend, nation and nation,
creature, and creature of another kind.
.
For what we choose and what we neglect to choose,
for what we wish we’d known,
for each hand unclasped,
the tongue unbridled,
one whisper falling short of heard,
the bread far from the hunger,
the apology,
the confusion,
the broken road.
.
These things we gather in this blanket,
brown and sand and beige,
we wash the world, between us
we hold this blanket, fill it with our tears,
and when we have cried
from one dawn to the next,
then we will rise, and we dance
cradling this ocean, bitter, healing, dark.
Let them lay your hands upon the truth of beauty lost,
heavy, soft as moss,
this blanket full of tears and dust and dying
becomes, as the light is returning,
the promise,
washed clean
by our sorrow.
Not so much redemption
as the logic of seasons
calls for justice, to restore the rhythm
one day, the lawmakers must exit
their echoing halls, fall in
with the grandmother’s
dancing,
carrying it,
cry it clean,
until light through their bodies
translates to rainbows strung over the land.
She tells me that – her eyes all red.
And shrugs.
And trudges off through the deep
snow blanket that covers
this end of another year
waiting.
. . .
Anna Marie Sewell is Ojibway, and Mi’kmaw from Listuguj Mi’kmaw First Nation in Québec – Polish, too! She is the author of Fifth World Drum (Frontenac House, 2009) and was Edmonton’s 4th Poet Laureate (2011-2013). She has other work as well – as part of The Learning Centre Literacy Association at http://prairiepomes.com/tag/anna-marie-sewell/.
Sewell will be opening for Joy Harjo at the Edmonton Poetry Festival – April 20th, 2014.
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As with Las Mujeres de Juarez in México, so too in Canada, Native Women who are poor and therefore invisible become “Las Desaparecidas canadienses” (The Vanished Canadian Women). They are our oh-so-progressive country’s Open-Secret Shame. Women from small towns and Reserves, faceless in big Canadian cities; the roll call of missing or dead along British Columbia’s “Highway of Tears”…There are eight hundred Native and Inuk women who have gone missing – or have been found murdered – often without resolution of the crime – in the last two decades in Canada. This has occurred in a nation with statistically low murder rates nationally. The pattern is a systemic one; the disappearance of these women and girls is not important enough in Canadian society for a concerted effort at crime-solving; their lives are expendable because they are not “mainstream”. With all due respect to her untimely end, they are no Jane Creba.
Jorge Antonio Vallejos, a.k.a. Black Coffee Poet, has been concerned with just such human-rights issues for several years now. For a committed perspective about this national tragedy – violence against women – visit Vallejos’ site: http://blackcoffeepoet.com/.
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Zócalo Poets 