Category: language

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Our calendars will seem strange
and we won’t know what the rules are,
in the new normal.
 
There’ll be caves
and space for everyone.

[…]

The New Normal, Anna Gual, translated from the Catalan by AKaiser

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The brief sum of life forbids us the hope of enduring long. –Horace

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.

They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.

Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetat Incohare Longam, Ernest Dowson

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There is joy in the woods just now,
The leaves are whispers of song,
And the birds make mirth on the bough
And music the whole day long,

[…]

The heartening, summer showers
And the smiling shrubs in bloom,
Dust-free, dew-tinted at morn,
The fresh and life-giving air,
The billowing waves of corn
And the birds’ notes rich and clear:—

[…]

Joy in the Woods, Claude McKay

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Beyond all boundaries, at memory’s undoing—
As when the dreamer sees and after the dream
The passion endures, imprinted on his being

Though he can’t recall the rest. I am the same:
Inside my heart, although my vision is almost
Entirely faded, droplets of its sweetness come

from Paradiso: Canto 33, Dante Alighieri, Translated By Robert Pinsky

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How to Be a Poet
By Wendell Berry

(to remind myself)

i

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

ii

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

iii

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.

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To shelter at noon, pallid and rapt,
back against a scalding orchard wall;
to hear from in the thick of briars
blackbirds’ blatter, the slither of adders.

To spy how over the tares’ stalks, along cracks
in the earth, lines of red ants break
and close ranks, intertwine
atop miniature haystacks.

To observe through boughs the sea’s
distant shimmering of scales
while from bald heights the cicadas
unleash their tremulous calls.

Then emerging into the dazzling sun,
to feel, grimly amazed, how all
of life, its drudgery, is in
this slow trek hard by a wall
whose top is harled with jagged shards.

Noon, Eugenio Montale, translated from the Italian by Jamie McKendrick