death is before me today
like the recovery of a sick man
like going forth into a garden after sickness
death is before me today
like the odor of myrrh
like sitting under the sail in good wind
death is before me today
like the course of a stream
like the return of a man from a war galley to his home
death is before me today
like the home a man longs to see
after years spent as a captive
Bill Manhire – Kevin
I don’t know where the dead go, Kevin.
The one far place I know
is inside the heavy radio. If I listen late at night,
there’s that dark, celestial glow,
heaviness of the cave, the hive.
Music. Someone warms his hands at the fire,
breaking off the arms of chairs,
breaking the brute bodies of beds, burning his comfort
surely to keep alive. Soon he can hardly see,
and so, quietly, he listens: then someone lifts him
and it’s some terrible breakfast show.
There are mothers and fathers, Kevin, whom we barely know.
They lift us. Eventually we all shall go
into the dark furniture of the radio.
Raymond Carver – Happiness
So early it’s still almost dark out.
I’m near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.
When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.
They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren’t saying anything, these boys.
I think if they could, they would take
each other’s arm.
It’s early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.
They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.
Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn’t enter into this.
Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.
Siberia sovietica, de Leo Butnaru
Mda… Ce insemna
Siberia sovietica?…Pai
cum ar fi sa va explic mai plastic?…Uite-asa
un atelier de pictor
un taburet – pe el
o pagina din ziarul “Pravda”
patata in draci de vopsele
pe ea – o scrumbie
o stacana cu sticla ca
un curcubeu tulbur – urmele
palmei butucanoase a pictorului – si
bineinteles
o sticla de vodca
intr-o anumita masura
desarta
si o panza ciudata (trebuie sa spunem ca
pictorul e destul de talentat)
intitulata “Papusa beata”
si chiar infatisand o mare papusa
cazuta rasturnata oarecum indecent intr-o
ograda acolo
in Siberia sovietica
Lyric of the day, because I’ve been chasing dreams lately
Simon&Garfunkel – America
Let us be lovers we’ll marry our fortunes together
I’ve got some real estate here in my bag
So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner’s pies
And we walked off to look for America
Cathy I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh
Michigan seems like a dream to me now
It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw
I’ve gone to look for America
Laughing on the bus playing games with the faces
She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy
I said be careful his bowtie is really a camera
Toss me a cigarette I think there’s one in the raincoat
We smoked the last one an hour ago
So I looked at the scenery she read her magazine
And the moon rose over an open field
Cathy I’m lost I said though I knew she was sleeping
I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They’ve all come to look for America
All come to look for America
America
Three o’clock in the night or the morning. The unexpected hour. At the windows of the train, a line of fatigue-burned masks. In the seats, bodies dishevelled by a sleep that came by surprise. A woman’s voice recovering, in the darkness, the inflexions and the weight of all the things she isn’t speaking about as she speaks on the phone: “He topped up my pre-pay card when I told him I was out of credit…two euros and it’s just to talk to me, he says. I don’t know why he’s throwing money at me like that.” .
A couple of years ago I used to dream of running away. Home felt suffocating and I used to think in opposites; in runaway land, freedom and poverty were therefore inseparable and a place’s dirtiness was the mark of authenticity for the dreams I could chase there. I’ve more or less lost this obsession now that I’ve stopped thinking in binaries and managed to build ties and find freedoms in my home town; I can’t make up my mind whether this proves responsibility or jadedness, but it definitely feels like a resignation.
Still, I did manage to run away this New Year’s Eve. I spent it on the streets of Sibiu with some drunken acquaintainces and a couple of friends that dragged me away from the group and into a kebab place when they noticed I was becoming hypothermic. It was 3 o’clock in the night or the morning and after I warmed up enough for my brain to start working I realised I had found my way away from my home country to a place that truly belonged to the space of my old runaway dreams. This holiday was full of such magic moments. I’d almost forgotten their taste – at home, the real world gets lost in a bog of routine. It would do me good to remember to break out of this every now and then…with a bit of luck, next time I won’t need five days in a strange city to do that. Running away may be just a teenage fancy, but the need for magic is real.
Winter is here, the holidays are coming and I wish I had someone to get sincerely drunk with.
Eleanor Wilner – Hunting Manual
The unicorn is an easy prey: its horn
in the maiden’s lap is an obvious
twist, a tamed figure—like the hawk
that once roamed free, but sits now, fat and hooded,
squawking on the hunter’s wrist. It’s easy
to catch what no longer captures
the mind, long since woven in,
a faded tapestry on a crumbling wall
made by the women who wore keys
at their waists and in their sleep came
hot dreams of wounded knights left bleeding
in their care, who would wake the next morning
groaning from the leftover lance in the groin,
look up into the round blond face beaming down
at them thinking “mine,” and say: “angel.”
Such beasts are easy to catch; their dreams
betray them. But the hard prey is the one
that won’t come bidden.
By these signs you will know it:
when you lift your lure
out of the water, the long plastic line
will be missing its end: the lure and the hook
will be gone, and the line will swing free
in the air, so light it will be without
bait or its cunning
sharp curl of silver. Or when you pull
your net from the stream, it will be eaten
as if by acid, its fine mesh sodden shreds.
Or when you go at dawn to check your traps,
their great metal jaws will be wrenched
open, the teeth blunt with rust
as if they had lain for years in the rain.
Or when the thunderstorm suddenly breaks
in the summer, next morning
the computer’s memory will be blank.
Look then for the blank card, the sprung trap,
the net’s dissolve, the unburdened
line that swings free in the air.
There. By day, go empty-handed to the hunt
and come home the same way
in the dark.
Sunday morning. Sunday blogging. Sunday hangover. Aching muscles and a mind that won’t be pulled together. I really ought to be doing my homework, but I must have taken a wrong turn this morning… I went out on the balcony to glance at the sunrise and there was a certain clarity in the light, a meaningfulness of the buildings I don’t remember having seen for a couple of years. I knew that landscape better than I knew my own heart back then. Which isn’t saying much. I used to be such a fan of walls I had to spend years tearing some of the ones I’ve built apart. Crawling my way out of hiding places. Learning to take the heat. Yet today my head’s full of morning light, the music isn’t really reaching me and I’d get worried if I didn’t know this still, cool peace will dissappear with my hangover.
…I received from the peasant woman that was sitting next to me in the railstation’s waiting room, yesterday night. Her train was only due in the morning and I reminded her of her drowned daughter.
