LONG GOODBYES ~

Author Ursula Le Guin at home with her cat, Lorenzo, in 1996. The writer’s “pleasant duty,” she said, is to ply the reader’s imagination with “the best and purest nourishment that it can absorb.”

Credit                                                                                                Jill Krementz, All Rights Reserved 

             

              1929 (Berkeley) ~ 2018

Nicanor Parra teaching in Santiago, Chile, in 1992. On the blackboard he had written: “Back to democracy for what? So the movie repeats itself? No.” 

   Credit

                                                                                                 Alvaro Hoppe/Associated Press

                                                                                          1914 (Chile) ~ 2018

                                                           

MOURNING POEMS ~

The bulk of the poems in this anthology were first published from New Directions which has a deep and nurturing trough to draw from. Well chosen by a bright editor who has divided the poems into forty-nine days as you look over the table of contents, "or stations, of grief," as described by Jeffrey Yang. "Each day consists of a poem or a series of poems for the reader to slowly read, re-read, and dwell upon. Its structure echoes a simplified Buddhist calendar of mourning — the forty-nine bardo days of chants and ritual meditation that assist the dead on their journey to the next life. These imperative words are spoken not only to the dead, but to the living, directed to one's self, words bearing both memento mori and the promise of rebirth." On further reflection, the editor discovered another 49-day period of mourning, observed in the traditional Jewish calendar, "outside of the week-long shivah, between Passover and Shavuot, called the Counting of the Omer." Both of these traditions hold guidance. I also put the book before a young poet's eyes who skipped the editor's introduction, could care less about the table of contents and just started reading, locating poets or even forms of poems that instantly meant something to him. I, on the other hand, reached for my glasses because the type font is too small. That is my only negative remark about a book that fits nicely into the palm of your hand.

[ BA ]

______________________


Rest in Peace




sure — rest in peace
but what about the damp?
                         and the moss?
                                     and the weight of the tombstone?
and the drunken gravedigger?
and the people who steal the flowerpots?
and the rats gnawing at the coffins?
and the damned worms
crawling in everywhere
they make death impossible for us
or do you really think
we don't know what's going on. . .

fine for you to say rest in peace
when you know damn well that's impossible
you just like running off at the mouth

well for your information
we know what's going on
the spiders scurrying up our legs
make damn sure of that

let's cut the crap
when you stand at a wide open grave
it's time to call a spade a spade:
You can drown your sorrows at the wake
we're stuck at the bottom of the pit.


                                                         Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman



____________________

NICANOR PARRA
from Time of Grief:
Mourning Poems
edited by Jeffrey Yang
New Directions 2013

in memory of philip seymour hoffman

EVERYTHING USED TO LOOK GOOD TO ME ~

Nicanor Parra





Now everything looks bad to me



an old telephone with a little bell

was enough to make me the happiest creature alive

an armchair — almost anything



Sunday mornings

I'd go to the flea market

and come back with a wall clock

— anyway with the case —

or with a pensioned-off victrola

to my shack at La Reina

where Chamaco was waiting for me

and the lady who used to be his mother

in those days



those were happy days

or at least nights without pain



1970

__________________________


Translated by W. S. Merwin


http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2012/03/26/our-twilight-lands/

EARTH ~

Nicanor Parra

PIANO SOLO


Since man's life is nothing but a bit of action at a distance,
A bit of foam shining inside a glass;
Since trees are nothing but moving trees:
Nothing but chairs and tables in perpetual motion;
Since we ourselves are nothing but beings
(As the godhead itself is nothing but God);
Now that we do not speak solely to be heard
But so that others may speak
And the echo precede the voice that produces it;
Since we do not even have the consolation of a chaos
In the garden that yawns and fills with air,
A puzzle that we must solve before our death
So that we may nonchalantly resuscitate later on
When we have led woman to excess;
Since there is also a heaven in hell,
Permit me to propose a few things:


I wish to make a noise with my feet
I want my soul to find its proper body.



SOLO DE PIANO


Ya que la vida del hombre no es sino una acción a distancia,
Un poco de espuma que brilla en el interior de un vaso;
Ya que los árboles no son sino muebles que se agitan:
No son sino sillas y mesas en movimiento perpetuo;
Ya que nosotros mismos no somos más que seres
(Como el dios mismo no es otra cosa que dios)
Ya que no hablamos para ser escuchados
Sino para que los demás hablen
Y el eco es anterior a las voces que lo producen;
Ya que ni siquiera tenemos el consuelo de un caos
En el jardín que bosteza y que se llena de airs,
Un rompecabexas que es preciso resolver antes de morir
Para poder resucitar después tran quilamente
Cuando se ha usado en exceso de la mujer;
Ya que también existe un cielo en el infierno,
Dejad que yo también haga algunas cosas:


Yo quiero hacer un ruido con los pies
Y quiero que mi alma encunentre su cuerpo.

translated by William Carlos Williams

My father spoke Spanish quite as easily as he spoke English. . .Spanish was the language spolken in the household. . .So that as children my brother and I heard Spanish constantly spoken about us. A steady flow of West Indians, South Americans, and other speakers of the Spanish language came to visit us.

from ~ Yes, Mrs. Williams, (1959)




compiled & edited by Jonathan Cohen
(New Directions, 2011)





Nicanor Parra is the great Chilean poet and mathematician magnificently still with us at age 97 (birthday was September 5, 1914). Many will say there is no greater poet alive in the Spanish language. And even greater still, Parra is the brother to the legendary folk singer Violeta Parra.