Eine Klage-Welt

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Enfant en Rouge

Parfois elle traverse le village dans sa petite robe rouge,
toute absorbée à se contenir,
mais, malgré elle, on dirait qu'elle bouge
selon un rythme de sa vie à venir.

Elle court un peu, hésite, s'arrête,
fait demi-tour...,
et tout en rêvant secoue sa tête
contre ou pour.

Puis elle fait quelques pas d'une danse
qu'elle ébauche et oublie,
trouvant sans doute que la vie
trop vite avance.

Ce n'est pas tant qu'elle sorte
de son petit corps qui l'enferme,
mais tout ce qu'en elle elle porte
joue et germe...

C'est de cette robe qu'elle va se rappeler plus tard
dans un doux abandon;
quand toute sa vie sera pleine de hasards,
la petite robe rouge aura toujours raison.


Rainer Maria Rilke
La migration des forces



Girl in Red

At times she walks through the village in her little red dress,
trying hard to contain herself,
but she seems to move, nevertheless,
to some rhythm from her future life.

She runs a bit, hesitates, pauses,
half-turns back again….
dreaming, shakes her head, refuses
pro or con.

Then she sketches a few steps of a dance
that she invents and forgets,
finding life at once
moves on too fast.

It’s not so much that she might go
outside her body’s little enclosure,
but that all she carries within her
frolics and starts to grow.

Later, she will remember this dress,
when risk surrounds her life,
a sweet release—
the little red dress will always be right.


(my translation)

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Rustle and gleam in the understory, a breeze
lifts the little lanterns of scarlet columbine,
lit like tongues by the fire of the holy spirit
they lick up through marl and leafrot.

Lanterns. And tongues. In the other story,
under this one, we all know what the lyric wants:
they suck God through their pale green threads
and spray the divine as a yellow dust of pollen—

it’s process and ek-stasis, history and
rupture, stamen and tendril sieving
the wind, an ache for the right turn of air,
for the word that will burn the words away.

And the same shine everywhere. For instance,
on the segmented back of the five-inch, purple-black
millipede on the path, pedaling crazy bright panic
as he arcs up and over a fallen, wet twig of birch.

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I am interviewed in the current issue of Sisif, a Romanian literary and cultural online journal. The sublime photographer-poet-blogger Roxana Ghita conducted the interview and has also translated several of my poems into Romanian. My tremendous gratitute to Roxana and to Sisif editor Cristina Licuta.

Interview: here

Translations: here

Originals of the poems: here

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Alexandru Macedonski
1854 - 1920

din Noapte de mai

Vestalelor, dacă-ntre oameni sunt numai jalnice nevroze,

E cerul încă plin de stele, şi câmpul încă plin de roze,

Şi până astăzi din natură nimica n-a îmbătrânit...

Iubirea, şi prietenia, dacă-au ajuns zădărnicie,

Şi dacă ura şi trădarea vor predomni în vecinicie...

Veniţi: privighetoarea cântă, şi liliacul e-nflorit


from May Night

Vestals, if pitiful humanity dies of neurosis,

The sky is yet full of stars, the field yet full of roses,

And nothing in nature has grown old, even now...

If love and friendship have turned to futility,

If hate and betrayal will prevail in eternity...

Come: the nightingale sings from the blooming lilac’s bough.

de Nuit de mai

Vestales, si les gens ne sont que tristes névroses,
Le ciel est toujours plein d’astres, le champ de roses.
Jusque aujourd’hui, rien en la nature n’a veilli.
Si l’amour et l’amitié se muent en usure,
Si la haine et la trahison gagneront le futur….
Venez: le rossignol chante, le lilas fleurit.

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Even this world seems enough when starlings shimmer on the grass

First dawnlight imagines my hands
out of the dark, this ache to press

the air scrubbed after last night’s storm
aside like a door. And all

have risen in sleep.
We ply currents into the sky,

gliding, hovering, climbing again
as if we loved the far moon—

until the body tugs,
insists on the earth, and the dreamer

turns, spirals,
regains the muddy shell and casts about

for a word to crack open the dark,
for threshold in the tongue of angels.

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"Featured poet" in the May issue of Chantarelle's Notebook

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