I have a heart
My heart has a song
The song has a secret
And the secret is you. 


Leonid Utesov, Jazz Singer

If there is something to desire,
there will be something to regret.
If there is something to regret,
there will be something to recall.
If there is something to recall,
there was nothing to regret.
If there was nothing to regret,
there was nothing to desire.

 

Vera Pavlova

Empty Space

There were two kingdoms only:

the first of them threw out both him and me.

The second we abandoned.

Under a bare sky

I for a long time soaked in the rain of my body,

he for a long time rotted in the rain of his.

Then like a poison he drank the fondness of the years.

He held my hand with a trembling hand.

“Come, let’s have a roof over our heads awhile.

Look, further on ahead, there

between truth and falsehood, a little empty space.”

Amrita Pritam

translated from the Punjabi by D.H. Tracy & Mohan Tracy

Clay: 24

He took a chair
out to the garden
watched the shadow
kicked a stone.
Most of all
of late
the words hate me.


Yannis Ritsos
Athens—January 18, 1978

Like the Leaves

Forgetting
is like leaves.


Some fall
others are born.


They stop being leaves
only when the tree
stops being a tree.

No One Belongs Here More Than You

"If there were a map of the solar system, but instead of stars it showed people and their degrees of separation, my star would be the one you had to travel the most light-years from to get to his. You would die getting to him."

And the sea, my friend, does not dream of you

Open to them your hand to the shore, watch them walk into the sea.
Press upon them all they need, see them yearn for all they want.
Gift to them the calm pool of words, watch them drove the sword.
Bless upon them the satiation of peace, see them starve from war.
Grant them darkness and they will lust for light.
Deliver to them death and hear them beg for life.
Beget life and they will murder your kin.
Be as they are and they will see you different.
Show wisdom and you are a fool
The shore gives way to the sea
And the sea, my friend,
Does not dream of you.

Wind and Water and Stone

The water hollowed the stone,
the wind dispersed the water,
the stone stopped the wind.
Water and wind and stone.

The wind sculpted the stone,
the stone is a cup of water,
The water runs off and is wind.
Stone and wind and water.

The wind sings in its turnings,
the water murmurs as it goes,
the motionless stone is quiet.
Wind and water and stone.

One is the other and is neither:
among their empty names
they pass and disappear,
water and stone and wind.

Octavio Paz

We have seas, full of the sun;
We have trees, full of leaves;
From dawn to dusk we go and go and come
Among our seas, among our trees
Full of
The blues.

My soul
Empty as the silence,
Empty with a vague,
Aching emptiness
Desiring,
Needing someone
Something ......

My hands
open the curtains of your being
clothe you in a further nudity
uncover the bodies of your body
My hands
invent another body for your body

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,

There is society, where none intrudes,

By the deep sea, and music in its roar:

I love not man the less, but Nature more,

From these our interviews, in which I steal

From all I may be, or have been before,

To mingle with the Universe, and feel

What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

it is not important
that you take your bag and leave
all women take their bags and leave
when they are angry.
it is not the important question
that i put out my cigarettes nervously
on the upholstery of the chair,
all men do that
when they are angry.
the matter is not that simple.
it is out of our hands.
we are two zeroes in the margin of love.
two lines written in pencil.
what is important is this:
the golden fish thrown to us by the sea
was squashed between our fingers.