Beers & Books LXX – Seamus Heaney

"I've always associated the moment of writing
with a moment of lift, of joy,
of unexpected reward."

North (1975), Station Island (1984),
The Government of the Tongue (1986),
The Redress of Poetry (1995),
The Spirit Level (1996),
The Blackbird of Glanmore (Poems 1965 – 2006)

 Seamus Heaney (13 April 1939 – 30 August 2013)

Dafydd ap Gwilym (XVI)

 It's St. David's Day again.

May the Welsh enjoy celebrating their Saint.

Omnium is celebrating their Poet.

Voilà.

It's a pity for me that the girl whose praises I am always singing, and who holds her court in the wood, does not know of the conversation I had about her with the grey friar today.

I went to the friar to confess my sins. I admitted to him that I have been without any doubt an idolatrous poet since I have always loved and adored a certain lovely girl with dark eyebrows, "And", I told him, "I have never had a single favour from my murdress, nor has my lady ever allowed me a moment of happiness: in spite of this I love her continually and am wasted with pining for my darling. I carry her praise through the whole land of Wales, and in spite of this I live without her, though I long to hear her in my bed between me and the wall."

The brother spoke this to me: "I will give you good advice: if you have loved this foamwhite girl (merely the colour of paper) for so long, it is time now to think of lessening your punishment on that dreadful day which comes to all of us, for all this is of no benefit to your soul. Cease from making rhymes and accustom yourself instead to saying your prayers, for God did not redeem the souls of men that they might make rhymes and elegiacs, and your minstrels' songs are nothing but flattery and idle bawling. This praise of the body is not good, and leads the soul to the devil."

Then I answered each word that the friar had spoken.

"God is not so cruel as old men tell us: nor will God cut off the gentle soul of a man for loving a woman or a girl. Three things are loved by the whole world.: women, fine weather, and good health, and girls are the fairest flowers in heaven next to God himself. Every man of all peoples is born of woman save these three: Adam, Eve, Melchizedek, and so it is not surprising that man loves girls and women. Gladness falls from Heaven, all misery comes from Hell.
Song makes glad old and young, sick and healthy, and I have an equal right to make poems as you have to pray, I have the same right to sing for my bread as you beg for it. Are not hymns and sequences but other kinds of odes and elegiacs? And are not the psalms of David poems to the good God?

God does not feed man with one food and one relish, he gives him time to eat and a time to worship, a time to pray and a time to make poems. Song springs up at every feast to give pleasure to the ladies, paters are said in church to seek the land of Paradise. Yscuthach drinking with his poets spoke the truth:
'A happy face, his house is full
A sad face, evil and bitterness.'

Though some love holiness, others love being glad together, and there are few men who can make a sweet verse though everyone can say a prayer. And so, my holy brother, I do not think that singing is the greatest sin. When men are as ready to hear paters as the harp, as ready as the girls of Gwynedd are to hear gay songs, then my right hand I'll say paters all day and for ever without ceasing. Till then shame on Dafydd if he sings paters instead of poems!"

Dafydd ap Gwilym c. 1320 – c. 1370

Beers & Books LIV – Edna St Vincent Millay

 

“My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night"

[from A Few Figs from Thistles]

Edna St. Vincent Millay (22 February 1892 – 19 October 1950)

Moments of solitude

Like a great poet,
Nature knows to produce greatest effects
with most limited means.

– Heinrich Heine (13 December 1796 – 17 February 1856) –

Laughing Lhursday*

A wing mirror's wake
on a white winter morning
rhapsody in blue

* [For first time visitors]: Typo in the title? Nah. It's just that
I would not let a tiny T spoil an avantgardistic alliteration.

All the Hemispheres

All the Hemispheres

Leave the familiar for a while.

Let your senses and bodies stretch out
Like a welcomed season

Onto the meadows and shores and hills.
Open up to the Roof.

Make a new water-mark on your excitement

And love.

Like a blooming night flower,

Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness

And giving

Upon our intimate assembly.
Change rooms in your mind for a day.
All the hemispheres in existence

Lie beside an equator

In your heart.
Greet Yourself

In your thousand other forms

As you mount the hidden tide and travel

Back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven

Are sitting around a fire

Chatting

While stitching themselves together

Into the Great Circle inside of

You.

From: 'The Subject Tonight is Love'
Translated by Daniel Ladinsky

Hafez (1316 – 1390)

The sawing goes on

Sie sägten die Äste ab, auf denen sie saßen
Und schrieen sich zu ihre Erfahrungen,
Wie man schneller sägen könnte, und fuhren
Mit Krachen in die Tiefe, und die ihnen zusahen,
Schüttelten die Köpfe beim Sägen und
Sägten weiter.

Humble attempt to translate as literally as possible.
Suggestions for improvement are welcome.

They sawed the branches on which they sat
and called out to eachother their experiences,
how one could saw faster, and fell
with crack into the depth, and those watching them
shook their heads while sawing and
went on sawing

 

Bertold Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956)

 

Conifers

Reminded I feel
of japanese poetry
and kalligraphy

 

Beers & Books XL

I often feel,
and ever more deeply I realize,
that fate and character
are the same conception.

Novalis 2 May 1772 – 25 March 1801

Beers & Books XXXVIII

"Where one burns books
one ultimately burns people."
- Almansor, 1832 -

  Heinrich Heine (13. December 1797 – 17 February 1856)

Beers & Books XXV

 

The Romantic Dogs

Roberto Bolaño (28 April 1953 – 15 July 2003)

Teta

Clément Marot (23 November 1496 – 12 September 1544)

Beers & Books II

I would give all my fame
for a pot of ale.

Henry V: Act 3, Scene 2

 Shakespeare's sonnets

A Poet's Creed

Jorge Luis Borges (24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986)

12 Temas a García Lorca

Federico García Lorca (5 June 1898 - 19 August 1936)

Paco Ibáñez * 20 November 1934

Muerte de un poeta

Federico García Lorca (5 June 1898 - 19 August 1936)

Federico García Lorca

Federico García Lorca (5 June 1898 - 19 August 1936)

World Champions

And the Winner is:
Nation of Procrasti!
Who cares about peace?!

The house is black

There is no shortage of ugliness in the world.
If man closed his eyes to it, there would be even more.
But man is a problem solver.
On this screen will appear an image of ugliness…
a vision of pain no caring human being should ignore.
To wipe out this ugliness and to relieve the victims…
is the motive of this film and the hope of its makers.
I thank you, God…
for creating me,
I thank you, God…
for creating my caring mother, my […] father
I thank you, God for […]ng the flowing water and the fruiting trees.
I thank you for giving me hands to work with
I thank you for giving me eyes…
to see the marvels of this world.
I thank you for giving me ears
to enjoy beautiful songs.
I thank you for giving me feet…
to go wherever I will.
Who is this in hell praising you, O Lord?
Who is this in hell?
Saturday…
Sunday…
Monday…
Tuesday…
Wednesday…
Thursday…
Friday…
Saturday…
I will sing your name, O Lord
I will sing your name with the ten-string lute.
For I have been made in a strange and frightening shape.
My bones were not hidden from you when I was being created,
I was molded in the bowels of the earth.
In your book all my party have been written…
and your eyes, O Lord, have seen my fetus.
I won’t see the spring.
These lines are all that will remain.
As the heavens circles, I fell into the bedlam.
I’m gone.
My heart is filled with sorrow.
O Muslims, I am sad tonight.
Leprosy is chronic and contagious.
Leprosy is not hereditary,
Leprosy can be anywhere or everywhere
Leprosy goes with poverty
Upon attacking the body
It deepens and enlarges wrinkles…
eats away the tissues, covers the nerves with a dry shield,
dulls sensitivity to heat and touch,
causes blindness,
destroys the nasal septum,
it finds its way to the liver and bone marrow,
withers the fingers,
it clears the way for other diseases.
Leprosy is not incurable.
Taking care of lepers stops the disease from spreading.
Wherever lepers have been adequately cared for…
the disease has vanished.
When the leper is cared for early he can be treated completely
Leprosy is not incurable
God is the Greatest. O God, the Great Lord,
the Generous, thou bestow thy kindness on our supplication.
thou art the Supreme over men and ghosts. In the name of God…
the Clement, the Caring. In the name of God and from God and by God.
I submit my being to you, O God, and turn my face towards…
thine and leave my affairs to thy command. I leave my fate between…
Your hands, my left and my right, my north and my south,
my sides and my destiny. All to thy command and power
as there is no turning and no power. except from God,
I said if I had wings of a dove…
I would fly away and be at rest.
I would go far away and take refuge in the desert.
I would hasten my escape from the windy storm and tempest.
For I have seen misery and wickedness on earth.
The universe is pregnant with inertia
and has given birth to time.
Where would I escape from your face?
And where would I go from your presence?
If I hang on to the wings of the morning breeze
And reside in the deep of the sea,
Your hand will still weigh on me.
You have made me drunk with indecision.
How awesome are your deeds!
How awesome are your deeds!
I speak of the bitterness of my soul.
I speak of the bitterness of my soul.
When I was silent, my life was rotting
from my silent screams all day long.
Remember that my life is wind.
I have become the pelican of the desert,
the owl of the ruins,
and like a sparrow, I am sitting alone on the roof.
I am poured out like water…
as those who have long been dead. 
On my eyelids is the shadow of death. 
Leave me, leave me, for my days are but a breath.
Leave me before I set out for the land of no return,
the land of infinite darkness.
O God, don’t entrust the life of your dove to the wild beast.
O God, remember my life is wind…
and you have given me a time of idleness,
and around me the song of happiness,
the sound of the windmill, and the brightness…
of the light have vanished
Lucky are those who are harvesting now,
and their hands are picking sheaves of wheat.
Let’s listen to the soul who sings in the remote desert.
The one who sighs and stretches his hands out saying,
“Alas, my wounds have numbed my spirit.“
O, the time-forgotten one,
dressing yoourself [sic] in red, and wearing golden ornaments,
anointing your eyes with kohl,
remember you have made yourself beautiful in vain,
for a song in the remote desert,
and your friends who have denigrated you
Alas, for the day is fading, the evening shadows are stretching.
Our being, like a cage full of birds,
is filled with moans of captivity.
And none among us knows how long he will last.
The harvest season passed, the summer season came to an end,
and we did not find deliverance.
Like doves we cry for justice… and there is none.
 




We wait for light and darkness reigns.
Venus. Sometimes at twilight we see a bright star.
The name of it is Venus.
Venus is very bright.
The planet Venus is very close to us.
The planet of Venus doesn’t twinkle.
Why should we thank God for having a father and mother?
You answer.
I don’t know, I have neither.
You name a few beautiful things.
The moon, the sun, flowers, playtime.
And you, name a few ugly things.
Hand.
foot…head,
Write a sentence with the word “house“ in it.
LEPER COLONY
The house is black.
O overruning river driven by the force of love,
flow to us, flow to us.
 

Made in fall 1962 for the Society For Assisting Lepers by Gulistan Film Co
Cinematography: Soleyman Minasian
Sound: Mahmud Hangval & Samad Poorkamali
Assistants: Herand Minasian & Amir Karrari
Produced by Ebrahim Gulistan
Edited and directed by Forough Farrokhzad

Forough Farrokhzad (29 December 1934 – 13 February 1967)

Another Birth

Forough Farrokhzad (29 December 1934 – 13 February 1967)


Another Birth

Translations by Ismā'il Salāmi

My entire soul is a murky verse
Reiterating you within itself
Carrying you to the dawn of eternal burstings and blossomings

In this verse, I sighed you, AH!
In this verse,
I grafted you to trees, water and fire

Perhaps life is
A long street along which a woman
With a basket passes every day
Perhaps life
Is a rope with which a man hangs himself from a branch
Perhaps life is a child returning home from school
Perhaps life is the lighting of a cigarette
Between the lethargic intervals of two lovemakings
Or the puzzled passage of a passerby
Tipping his hat
Saying good morning to another passerby with a vacant smile
Perhaps life is that blocked moment
When my look destroys itself in the pupils of your eyes
And in this there is a sense
Which I will mingle with the perception of the moon
And the reception of darkness

In a room the size of one solitude
My heart
The size of one love
Looks at the simple pretexts of its own happiness,

At the pretty withering of flowers in the flower pots
At the sapling you planted in our flowerbed
At the songs of the canaries
Who sing the size of one window.

Ah
This is my lot
This is my lot
My lot
Is a sky, which the dropping of a curtain seizes from me
My lot is going down an abandoned stairway
And joining with something in decay and nostalgia
My lot is a cheerless walk in the garden of memories
And dying in the sorrow of a voice that tells me:
"I love
Your hands"
I will plant my hands in the flowerbed
I will sprout, I know, I know, I know
And the sparrows will lay eggs
In the hollows of my inky fingers
I will hang a pair of earrings of red twin cherries
Round my ears
I will put dahlia petals on my nails

There is an alley
Where the boys who were once in love with me,
With those disheveled hairs, thin necks and gaunt legs
Still think of the innocent smiles of a little girl
Who was one night blown away by the wind
There is an alley which my heart
Has stolen from places of my childhood

The journey of a volume along the line of time
And impregnating the barren line of time with a volume
A volume conscious of an image
Returning from the feast of a mirror

This is the way
Someone dies
And someone remains
No fisherman will catch pearls
From a little stream flowing into a ditch

I
Know a sad little mermaid
Dwelling in the ocean
Softly, gently blowing
Her heart into a wooden flute
A sad little mermaid
Who dies with a kiss at night
And is born again with another kiss at dawn


Forough Farrokhzad (29 December 1934 – 13 February 1967)