Category: Uncategorized
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Tainted Margins II.
I lit a cigarette and looked at the newspaper. I never read the newspaper. Newspapers only bring bad news and Brecht had taught me years ago that I will laugh only until I receive the bad news. “Jaipur is the first city in India where I witnessed Indian poverty”, he said to me. “Old men…
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Scenes from last week.
“I spoke to him. He was still a man. Suddenly, beneath my very eyes, I saw his skin get hard and thicken in a terrifying way. His gloves, his shoes, became hoofs; his hands became paws, a horn began to grow out of his forehead, he became ferocious, he attacked furiously. He was no…
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Candide: or, Optimism
–What’s optimism? said Cacambo. –Alas, said Candide, it is a mania for saying things are well when one is in hell. From Voltaire’s Candide.
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Acacias/ Nicanor Parra
Strolling many years ago Down a street taken over by acacias in bloom I found out from a friend who knows everything That you had just gotten married. I told him that I really Had nothing to do with it. I never loved you — You know that better than I do — Yet each…
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Wislawa Szymborska / Writing a Resume
I sat down to write a CV and then I remembered. In the end, poetry will save me. -S. What needs to be done? Fill out the application and enclose the resume. Regardless of the length of life, a resume is best kept short. Concise, well-chosen facts are de rigueur. Landscapes are replaced…
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Elbow-Starlings (song)
How dare the Premier ignore my invitations? He’ll have to go So, to the bunch he luncheons with It’s second on my list of things to do At the top I’m stopping by Your place of work and acting like I haven’t dreamed of you and I And marriage in an orange grove You…
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Just a note.
Reading Tranströmer’s poetry and I realize that I need more absence, more silence, more blankness. Two words are too much. One word standing alone on a page. Maybe even one word is too much. The written must be as transparent as the unwritten. I want my writing to echo the sound of silence. “The sound of…
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Seamus Heaney / Blackberry Picking
If I were to pick one poem about love, it would probably be this one. – S. Blackberry Picking Late August, given heavy rain and sun for a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first…
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Dreams I
Last night, I was in Sweden. Everything looked like a scene from a Bergman film. I remember no colour except black, white and light. A cafe filled with people. Someone brings me a pitcher filled with some cocktail. I take off my shirt. I look at everyone and no one looks at me. A dream.…
