“How Can I Begin?”: poems from Milk Stone by Pat Lowther
Posted: September 13, 2014 Filed under: English, Pat Lowther Comments Off on “How Can I Begin?”: poems from Milk Stone by Pat Lowther
“How Can I Begin?”: poems from Milk Stone by Pat Lowther
. . .
How Can I Begin
.
How can I begin?
So many skins
of silence upon me
Not that they blunt me,
but I have become
accustomed to
walking like a pregnant woman
carrying something
alive yet remote.
My thoughts,
though less articulate
than image,
still have in them
something like a skeleton,
a durable beginning
waiting for
unpredicted flesh
and deliverance.
I would ask
you: learn as I learn
patience with mine
and your own silence.
. . .
String-figure man outside the door
.
Didn’t I too catch the sun
in a cradle spun
of my own gut string?
If now outside my house some thing
makes a sound like dry skins scraping,
should my bones dissolve to jelly
in my narrowing flesh?
It is fitting to strangle me in the mesh
of my own making.
I who made the sun
come in my belly.
I shall open my door
and accept the evil as I did before
the shining One.
. . .
Stone Deaf
.
Imagine it
– tympanum, cochlea,
cunning little frogs-legs ossicles,
all that delicate absurd machinery
petrified, rattling stonily
in the skull’s cavity
like garnets in a hollow rock.
.
Or like a whale’s eardrum
I saw once preserved,
blank as a great flint chip
and lonely as one cymbal.
.
And the blood’s surf beating
then always like the sea
unheard on solitary stone.
. . .
Periodicity
.
Fragments of shell
shards of protein alphabet
.
my hands are blind
.
at my skin’s circumference
i fumble
seams openings
(is this an organ
for breaking shells?)
.
i smell snow on this beach
what colour
are my eyes?
. . .
Touch Home
.
My daughter, a statistic
in a population explosion
exploded
popped
out of my body like a cork.
.
The doctors called for oxygen,
the birth too sudden, violent,
the child seemed pale
.
But my daughter lay
in perfect tranquillity
touching the new air
with her
elegant hands.
. . .
The Last Room
.
I am waiting for you
in the lowest room beneath the building
.
I am smooth as a gourd
without resistance
my shape spreads
downward
seeking the lowest
centre of gravity
.
I spend hours memorizing
the labyrinth
beneath our skins
by which I came
.
waiting for your long shadow
in the passage
.
I am green as a gourd
but inside I am red
.
All through the folded hours
I am burning
quietly
.
I am becoming a red hollow
skin
a gourd for drinking
.
Only now do I recognize
shards patterning the dust
between my legs
.
they are my former skins
.
How many times
have I come here
.
How long have I been waiting
. . .
Wanting
.
Wanting
to be broken
utterly
split apart with a mighty tearing
like an apple broken
to unfold
the delicate open veined petal pattern
inside the fruit
.
I am arrogant
knowing
what I can do
for a man
.
I am arrogant
for fear
I may be broken
utterly open
and he not see
the flower shape of me
. . .
Demons
.
It’s a kind of justice
for our having left them
face down
while we grew branched
metaphysics
.
They held out
dumb paws for grace
We gave them ritual
.
Even the spare comfort
they negotiated
we fattened on,
driving them always
to the edges
.
It’s a kind of justice
that in certain seasons
they possess us
like planets,
like territories
. . .
For Selected Friends
.
Work one face of a stone
only
so I can always have you:
at times I am one-dimensional.
Love on paper.
.
It’s easier to photograph you
with my mind
arresting you at mid-point
in some brilliant exposition
before discovery moves you
off the surface.
.
Although I know you’re
a cave splendid with crystals
and white bats,
sometimes I am
afraid to go there.
. . .
Letter to the Majority
.
We are not what you think we are.
In another space
enclosing another space
we have grown
whole crops of quiet.
Even our laughter
laughing at ourselves
has been too soft for you to hear.
You have thought us a mirror
to your torments
and your homely pleasures.
You have been watching
motion on a screen only.
.
You send us casual
directives – Eat me, Drink me.
We brush your language
from the pages of books.
It is a momentary diversion.
The only way you can
speak to us
is by speaking to the whole world.
. . .
All poems © Pat Lowther Estate and Borealis Press, from Milk Stone (published 1974)
. . .
Toronto poet Sonia Di Placido is running a poetry workshop about Pat Lowther and her complete + unpublished poems every Saturday beginning September 13th through November 29th, 2014. The workshop is part of Di Placido’s Poetry of the Canadian Moderns series. Click the link for more details:
http://diplacido.wordpress.com/
. . . . .
Pat Lowther: “Escríbeme, cariño, del otro mundo. Y envíame aceitunas.”
Posted: November 24, 2011 Filed under: English, Pat Lowther, Spanish, ZP Translator: Alexander Best Comments Off on Pat Lowther: “Escríbeme, cariño, del otro mundo. Y envíame aceitunas.”
Oscura
Te digo: cae la oscuridad
como flechas y hambre
Ato en nudos mi cabello
para recordar otros imperios
Cae a través de mi cabeza el mundo
sin óbice – como la lluvia
Tengo que decirte: no puedo
mover siempre con el decoro
Como meteores cae la oscuridad
pétalos de negro caliente
Me escapo, quemando, solamente porque
Yo soy la oscuridad.
*
Identificación
Quiero decir:
dime
quien eres,
y me das
una respuesta clara,
quien eres
pues, pienso en
la pregunta inversa
como un cuchillo
con hoja hacia mí
dime
quien eres
: soy una metedura
una boca, llorando
una figura corriendo
con las manos al ángulo derecho
de los brazos
Y pienso, después
de todo, que
no te preguntaré
quien eres.
_____
Dark
I tell you the darkness comes down
like arrows and hunger
I tie knots in my hair
to remember other empires
The world falls through my forehead
resistlessly as rain
I must tell you I can not
always move with decorum
The darkness comes down like meteors
petals of hot black
I escape burning only because
I am the darkness.
*
I.D.
i want to say
tell me
who you are,
and you give me
a clear answer,
who you are
then i think of
the question reversed
like a knife
bladed toward me
tell me
who you are
: i’m a blunder
a mouth, crying,
a figure running
with hands upright
at right angles
to the arms
and i think after all
i won’t
ask you
who you are.
_____
Carta a Pablo número 3
Honrando a los muertos
con grasa de carne
con pan bien crujiente
con miel y ajo,
Anciano lamendo el aceite
de tus pulgares – y eructando,
eres más lustroso que
las flores.
Claveles, amapolas,
caen su especia y su bravura
en un polvo de pétalos agitados;
pasas por la imagen
para honrar la barriga,
las manos las fauces y los dientes,
el incienso de la comida
el sacramento del pan.
*
Letter to Pablo 3
Honouring your dead
with fat of meat
with well-crusted bread
with honey and garlic,
Old man licking the oil
off your thumbs – and belching,
you are more lustrous than
flowers.
Carnations, poppies,
their spice and bravura
fall in a dusting of
petals shaken;
you move past the image
to honour the belly,
the hands — the jaws and teeth,
the incense of cooking
the sacrament of bread.
_____
” Escríbeme, cariño,
del otro mundo.
Y envíame aceitunas. ”
*
” Write to me, darling,
from the other world.
And send me olives. ”
_____
Pat Lowther (1935-1975) nació en Vancouver, British Columbia, Canadá.
Su inspiración – con el poema y con la política – era el maestro-poeta chileno,
Pablo Neruda.
Estes poemas vienen de la colleción póstumo, Diario de Piedra (1977).
Traducción al español: Alexander Best
*
Pat Lowther (1935-1975) was born in Vancouver, British Columbia.
She was inspired poetically / politically by Chilean master-poet
Pablo Neruda.
These poems appeared in A Stone Diary,
published posthumously in 1977.
Translation into Spanish: Alexander Best
Zócalo Poets 