W S MERWIN ~

JEAN FOLLAIN ~

The Secret



Where are you lying

secret of the world

with so strong an odor?

Sometimes a gentle workman

in the feverish town

falls from a scaffolding

and the wind always smells of lilac;

a tenacious misfortune

lodges in the loveliest bodies

hands tighten in the evening

an animal sleeps

within walls rough by men

peace forever decays

and war no longer

has an age.








Death



From the bones of animals

the factory had made these buttons

which fastened

a bodice over the bust

of a gorgeous working-girl

when she fell

one of the buttons came off in the night

and the water of the gutters took it

and laid it down

in a private garden

with a crumbling plaster statue

Pomona

naked and laughing








Life



A child is born

in a vast landscape

half a century later

he is simply a dead soldier

and that was the man

whom one saw appear

and set down on the ground a whole

heavy sack of apples

two or three of which rolled

a sound among the sounds of a world

where the bird sang

on the stone of the door-sill.





————————————

JEAN FOLLAIN
W.S. MERWIN (translator)
Transparence of the World
Atheneum 1969





what a book to discover back then, as now!

EAST WINDOW ~

Wandering



A runaway son

     will never come

            into his own

My treasure

      is the cloud on the peak

            the moon over the valley

Traveling east or west

      light and free

            on the one road

I don't know whether

      I'm on the way

            or at home






To the Emperor's Messenger



The affairs of the world

      are nothing to me

            I am tired of coming and going

this poor hut is perfect for me

      the one possession

            of a monk who does nothing

In the stove

      there is no fire

            and no potato

so I have no time

      to wipe my mouth

            to greet the emperor's messenger






East Peak



From the beginning

      people have gazed in awe at Taigaku

            the East Peak

It shoots up into the heavens

       on it the sun rises

            the moon rises

Its original blue and yellow

      are not among the colors

            of other mountains

It will hold the spring sunlight

      year after year

            after year






For A Monk Going West



For many years

      our friendship

            has ripened

One morning

      you say good-bye

            and start down to the west

Stop trying to find the secret

      of succeeding

            as head priest

Look the sharp ax

      has been in your hands

            since the beginning



—————————————

EAST WINDOW
Asian translations by
WS MERWIN
Copper Canyon

TO THE WORDS ~

To the Words


When it happens you are not there



O you beyond numbers

beyond recollection

passed on from breath to breath

given again

from day to day from age

to age

charged with knowledge

knowing nothing



indifferent elders

indispensable and sleepless



keepers of our names

before ever we came

to be called by them



you that were

formed to begin with

you that were cried out

you that were spoken

to begin with

to say what could not be said



ancient precious

and helpless ones



say it


________________

W. S. Merwin
Migrations
Copper Canyon Press
2005

GARDEN TIME ~

A U T U M N      E Q U I N O X

One time I was almost ready to be born

before I had begun to remember

the palms of my hands had not yet unfurled

on the one tree of the whole of darkness

the tree before waiting the hearing tree

the left hand had not yet told the right hand

This is our time our season is now

the only time and you must wake and begin

to remember and to know who you are

you will come to remember but forgetting

comes on its own and you will try to tell what cannot be

told and you will have only

the old words and will try to use them

for the first time but the beginning

has gone from the words and there is no way

now to bring it back to them again

the right hand learns but the left hand is the prophet

Pain was waiting that time with her one key

long before the first daylight had appeared

______________________

W S     M E R W I N

Garden Time

Copper Canyon 2016

ESKIMO ~

photo : Alex Harris
from Last and First Eskimos
by Robert Coles

The Dream

Last night you were in a dream

I dreamed you

walking on the shore

over the little stones

and I was walking with you

last night when I dreamed about you

I dreamed I followed you

I thought I was awake

I wanted you

as though you were a young seal

you were what I wanted

as a young seal

in the eyes of a hunter

before it dives because it's being followed

you were what I wanted

that's how

I wanted you

in my dream about you

Song of the Old Woman

A lot of heads around me

a lot of ears around me

a lot of eyes around me

will those ears hear me much longer

will those eyes see me much longer

when those ears don't hear me any more

when those eyes don't look at mine any more

I won't eat liver with blubber any more

then those eyes won't see me any more

and this hair will have disappeared from my head

Untitled

My song was ready

it was in my mouth

it was all ready

my song

but I gave up the hunt

because the sea got rough

the cold North wind blew

and I saw heavy fogs getting up

along the mountain I saw them running

I saw them getting up

the cold wet fogs out of the north sky

_________________________

1969, from French versions by

Paul-Emile Victor

translated by W.S. Merwin

"More than once during the years. . .I had persuaded myself that I had finished trying to translate poetry. It was a moment whose time seemed to have come. Yet I kept finding that I had been led back again, sometimes by a suggestion from someone else, other times by something — perhaps a single line or phrase — that suddenly caught me in the original, maybe a line or phrase with which I had long been familiar. This indecisiveness, I realize, is quite consistent with the impossible art of translating, for there is no such thing as the final translation of a poem. Only the original is unique and absolute: it essentially cannot exist "in other words." And one part of the impossibility of translating any poem is the fact that what we want the translation to be is exactly what it never can be, the original. Yet the impossibility of the whole enterprise is part of the perennial temptation to try again."

W.S. Merwin, from his essay "Listening for the Original"

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/