Famous Poets

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I want you to know one thing. You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me. Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little. If suddenly you forget me do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you. If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners that passes through my life, and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots, remember that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land. But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine. Pablo Neruda

 

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Like Water or Clouds​

Li Po (699-762 AD)​

Lu Mountain, Kiangsi I climbed west on Incense Cloud Peak. South I saw the spray-filled falls Dropping for ten thousand feet Sounding in a hundred gorges, Suddenly as if lightning shone, Strange as if light-wet rainbows lifted. I thought the Milky Way had shattered, Scattering stars through the clouds, downwards. Looking up an even greater force. Nature’s powers are so intense. The Cosmic Wind blows there without stop. The river’s moon echoes back the light Into vortices where waters rush. On both sides the clear walls were washed, By streams of pearl broken into mist, By clouds of foam whitening over rock. Let me reach those Sublime Hills Where peace comes to the quiet heart. No more need to find the magic cup. I’ll wash the dust, there, from my face, And live in those regions that I love, Separated from the Human World. Note: Lu Mountain is a Taoist sacred site in Kiangsi Province.

http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Chinese/AllwaterLiPo.htm#jadestairsgrievance​

 

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Buddhist New Year Song BY DIANE DI PRIMA I saw you in green velvet, wide full sleeves seated in front of a fireplace, our house made somehow more gracious, and you said “There are stars in your hair”— it was truth I brought down with me to this sullen and dingy place that we must make golden make precious and mythical somehow, it is our nature, and it is truth, that we came here, I told you, from other planets where we were lords, we were sent here, for some purpose the golden mask I had seen before, that fitted so beautifully over your face, did not return nor did that face of a bull you had acquired amid northern peoples, nomads, the Gobi desert I did not see those tents again, nor the wagons infinitely slow on the infinitely windy plains, so cold, every star in the sky was a different color the sky itself a tangled tapestry, glowing but almost, I could see the planet from which we had come I could not remember (then) what our purpose was but remembered the name Mahakala, in the dawn in the dawn confronted Shiva, the cold light revealed the “mindborn” worlds, as simply that, I watched them propagated, flowing out, or, more simply, one mirror reflecting another. then broke the mirrors, you were no longer in sight nor any purpose, stared at this new blackness the mindborn worlds fled, and the mind turned off: a madness, or a beginning?​

 

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Paracelsus: BY DIANE DI PRIMA​ ​ Extract the juice which is itself a Light. Pulp, manna, gentle Theriasin, ergot like mold on flame, these red leaves bursting from mesquite by the side of dry creekbed. Extract the tar, the sticky substance heart of things (each plant a star, extract the juice of stars by circular stillation smear the inner man w/the coction till he burn like worms of light in quicksilver not the false puffballs of marshfire, extract the heart of the empty heart it is full of the star soul that paces fierce in the deeps of earth the Red Man, healer in furs who carries a club who carries the pale homunculus in his belly. For you are angel, you call the soul from plants or pearls of ambergris out of the grudging sea. Extract arcanum. Separate true Archeus from the false the bitter is not less potent—nor does clarity bespeak truth. Out of the heart of the ineffable draw the black flecks of matter & from these the cold, blue fire. Dry water. Immerse yourself though it be but a drop. This Iliaster flowers like the wind. Out of the ash, the Eidolon of the world Crystalline. Perfect.​

 

Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes

Rainer Maria Rilke

That was the strange mine of souls.
As secret ores of silver they passed
like veins through its darkness. Between the roots
blood welled, flowing onwards to Mankind,
and it looked as hard as Porphyry in the darkness.
Otherwise nothing was red.

There were cliffs
and straggling woods. Bridges over voids,
and that great grey blind lake,
that hung above its distant floor
like a rain-filled sky above a landscape.
And between meadows, soft and full of patience,
one path, a pale strip, appeared,
passing by like a long bleached thing.

And down this path they came.

In front the slim man in the blue mantle,
mute and impatient, gazing before him.
His steps ate up the path in huge bites
without chewing: his hands hung,
clumsy and tight, from the falling folds,
and no longer aware of the weightless lyre,
grown into his left side,
like a rose-graft on an olive branch.
And his senses were as if divided:
while his sight ran ahead like a dog,
turned back, came and went again and again,
and waited at the next turn, positioned there –
his hearing was left behind like a scent.
Sometimes it seemed to him as if it reached
as far as the going of those other two,
who ought to be following this complete ascent.

Then once more it was only the repeated sound of his climb
and the breeze in his mantle behind him.
But he told himself that they were still coming:
said it aloud and heard it die away.
They were still coming, but they were two
fearfully light in their passage. If only he might
turn once more ( if looking back
were not the ruin of all his work,
that first had to be accomplished), then he must see them,
the quiet pair, mutely following him:

the god of errands and far messages,
the travelling-hood above his shining eyes,
the slender wand held out before his body,
the beating wings at his ankle joints;
and on his left hand, as entrusted: her.


‘Mercury’ - Willem Danielsz. van Tetrode (known as Guglielmo Fiammingo) (Dutch, active Italy, c. 1525 - 1580)The Los Angeles County Museum of Art

The so-beloved, that out of one lyre
more grief came than from all grieving women:
so that a world of grief arose, in which
all things were there once more: forest and valley,
and road and village, field and stream and creature:
and that around this grief-world, just as
around the other earth, a sun
and a silent star-filled heaven turned,
a grief-heaven with distorted stars –
she was so-loved.

But she went at that god’s left hand,
her steps confined by the long grave-cloths,
uncertain, gentle, and without impatience.
She was in herself, like a woman near term,
and did not think of the man, going on ahead,
or the path, climbing upwards towards life.
She was in herself. And her being-dead
filled her with abundance.
As a fruit with sweetness and darkness,
so she was full with her vast death,
that was so new, she comprehended nothing.

She was in a new virginity
and untouchable: her sex was closed
like a young flower at twilight,
and her hands had been weaned so far
from marriage that even the slight god’s
endlessly gentle touch, as he led,
hurt her like too great an intimacy.

She was no longer that blonde woman,
sometimes touched on in the poet’s songs,
no longer the wide bed’s scent and island,
and that man’s possession no longer.

She was already loosened like long hair,
given out like fallen rain,
shared out like a hundredfold supply.

She was already root.

And when suddenly
the god stopped her and, with anguish in his cry,
uttered the words: ‘He has turned round’ –
she comprehended nothing and said softly: ‘Who?’

But far off, darkly before the bright exit,
stood someone or other, whose features
were unrecognisable. Who stood and saw
how on the strip of path between meadows,
with mournful look, the god of messages
turned, silently, to follow the figure
already walking back by that same path,
her steps confined by the long grave-cloths,
uncertain, gentle, and without impatience.



http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/MoreRilke.htm#anchor_Toc527606964