QuoteReplyTopic: A Poem a Day Posted: 19-Feb-2012 at 18:45
Mayakovsky "Cloud in Trousers part IV"
Maria! Maria! Maria!
Let me in, Maria!
I can't suffer the streets!
You won't?
You'd rather wait
until my cheeks cave in,
until, pawed by everyone,
I arrive,
stale,
toothlessly mumbling
that today I am
"amazingly honest."
Maria,
as you see my shoulders droop.
In the streets
men will prick the blubber of four-story craws,
thrust out their little eyes,
worn in forty years of wear and tear to snigger
at my champing
again! on the hard crust of yesterday's caress.
Rain has drowned the sidewalks in sobs;
the puddle-prisoned rougue,
all drenched, licks the corpse of the streets by cobbles clobbered,
but on his grizzled eyelashes yes!
on the eyelashes of frosted icicles,
tears gush from his eyes yes! from the drooping eyes of the drainpipes.
The rain's snout licked all pedestrians;
but fleshy athletes, gleaming, passed by in carriages;
people burst asunder,
gorged to the marrow,
and grease dripped through the cracks;
and the cud of old ground meat,
together with the pulp of chewed bread,
dribbled down in a turbid stream from the carriages.
Maria!
How stuff a gentle word into their fat-bulged ears?
A bird
sings
for alms,
hungry and resonant.
But I am a man, Maria,
a simple man,
coughed up by consumptive night on the dirty hand of the Presnya.
Maria, do you want such a man?
Let me in, Maria!
With shuddering fingers I shall grip the doorbell's iron throat!
Maria!
The paddocks of the streets run wild.
The fingers of the mob mark my neck.
Open up!
I'm hurt!
Look -my eyes are stuck
with ladies' hatpins!
You've let me in.
Darling!
Don't be alarmed
if a mountain of women with sweating bellies
squats on my bovine shoulders through life I drag
millions of vast pure loves
and a million million of foul little lovekins.
Don't be afraid
if once again
in the inclemency of betrayal,
I'll cling to thousands of pretty faces "that love Mayakovsky!" for this is the dynasty
of queens who have ascended the heart of a madman.
Maria, come closer!
Whether in unclothed shame
or shudders of apprehension,
do yield me the unwithered beauty of your lips:
my heart and I have never got as far as May,
and in my expended life
there is only a hundredth April.
Maria!
The poet sings sonnets to Tiana,
but I
am all flesh,
a man every bit I simply ask for your body
as Christians pray:
"Give us this day
our daily bread!"
Maria - give!
Maria!
I fear to forget your name
as a poet fears to forget some word
sprung in the torment of the night,
mighty as god himself.
Your body
I shall cherish and love
as a soldier,
amputated by war,
unwanted
and friendless,
cherishes his last remaining leg.
Maria you won't have me?
you won't have me!
The once again,
darkly and dully,
my heart I shall take,
with tears besprinkled,
and carry it,
like a dog
carries
to its kennel
a paw which a train ran over.
With the heart's blood I gladden the road,
and flowering it sticks to the dusty tunic.
The sun, like Salome,
will dance a thousand times
round the earth - the Baptist's head.
And when my quantity of years
has finished its dance,
a million bloodstains will lie spread
on the path to my father's house.
I shall clamber out
filthy (from sleeping in ditches);
I'll stand at his side
and, bending,
shall speak in his ear:
"Listen, mister god!
Isn't it tedious
to dip your puffy eyes
every day into a jelly of cloud?
Let us¡ªwhy not start a merry-go-round
on the tree of what is good and evil!
Omnipresent, you will be in each cupboard,
and with such wines we'll grace the table
than even frowning Apostle Peter
will want to step out in the ki-ka-pou.
In Eden again we'll lodge little Eves:
command-
and this very night, for you,
from the boulevards, I'll round up
all the most beautiful girls.
Would you like that?
You would not?
You shake your head, curlylocks?
You're frowning, grey brows?
You believe
this
creature with wings behind you
knows what love is?
I too am an angel; I was one
with a sugar lamb's eye I gazed;
but I'll give no more presents to mares
of ornamental vases made of tortured Sevres.
Almighty, you concocted a pair of hands,
arranged
for everyone to have a head:
but why didn't you see to it
that one could without torture
kiss, and kiss and kiss?!
I though you a great big god almighty,
but you're a dunce, a minute little godlet.
Watch me stoop
and reach for the shoemaker's knife
in my boot.
Swindlers with wings,
huddle in heaven!
Ruffle your feathers in shuddering flight!
I'll rip you open, reeking of incense,
wide open from here to Alaska!
Let me in!
You can't stop me.
I may be wrong
or right,
but I'm as calm as I can be.
Look¡
again they've beheaded the stars,
and the sky is bloody with carnage!
Hey, you!
Heaven!
Off with your hat!
I am coming!
Not a sound.
The universe sleeps,
its huge paw curled
upon a star-infested ear.
The drum of war thunders and thunders. It calls: thrust iron into the living. From every country slave after slave are thrown onto bayonet steel. For the sake of what? The earth shivers hungry and stripped. Mankind is vapourised in a blood bath only so someone somewhere can get hold of Albania. Human gangs bound in malice, blow after blow strikes the world only for someone’s vessels to pass without charge through the Bosporus. Soon the world won’t have a rib intact. And its soul will be pulled out. And trampled down only for someone, to lay their hands on Mesopotamia. Why does a boot crush the Earth — fissured and rough? What is above the battles’ sky - Freedom? God? Money! When will you stand to your full height, you, giving them your life? When will you hurl a question to their faces: Why are we fighting?
Stop, oh my friends, let us pause to weep over the remembrance of my beloved.
Here was her abode on the edge of the sandy desert between Dakhool and Howmal.
***
The traces of her encampment are not wholly obliterated even now;
For when the Sonth wind blows the sand over them the North wind sweeps it away.
***
The courtyards and enclosures of the old home have become desolate;
The dung of the wild deer lies there thick as the seeds of pepper.
***
On the morning of our separation it was as if I stood in the gardens of our tribe,
Amid the acacia-shrubs where my eyes were blinded with tears by the smart
from the bursting pods of colocynth.
***
As I lament thus in the place made desolate, my friends stop their camels;
They cry to me "Do not die of grief; bear this sorrow patiently."
***
Nay, the cure of my sorrow must come from gushing tears.
Yet, is there any hope that this desolation can bring me solace ?
***
So, before ever I met Unaizah, did I mourn for two others;
My fate had been the same with Ummul-Huwairith and her
neighbor Ummul-Rahab in Masal.
***
Fair were they also, diffusing the odor of musk as they moved,
Like the soft zephyr bringing with it the scent of the clove.
***
Thus the tears flowed down on my breast, remembering days of love;
The tears wetted even my sword-belt, so tender was my love.
***
Behold how many pleasant days have I spent with fair women;
Especially do I remember the day at the pool of Darat-i-Julju1.
***
On that day I killed my riding camel for food for the maidens:
How merry was their dividing my camel's trappings to be carried on their camels.
***
It is a wonder, a riddle, that the camel being saddled was yet unsaddled!
A wonder also was the slaughterer, so heedless of self in his costly gift!
***
Then the maidens commenced throwing the camel's fesh into the kettle;
The fat was woven with the lean like loose fringes of white twisted silk.
***
On that day I entered the howdah, the camel's howdah of Unaizah!
And she protested, saying, "Woe to you, you will force me to travel on foot."
***
She repulsed me, while the howdah was swaying with us;
She said, "You are galling my camel, Oh Imru-ul-Quais, so dismount."
***
Then I said, "Drive him on! Let his reins go loose, while you turn to me.
Think not of the camel and our weight on him. Let us be happy.
***
"Many a beautiful woman like you, Oh Unaizah, have I visited at night;
I have won her thought to me, even from her children have I won her."
***
There was another day when I walked with her behind the sandhills,
But she put aside my entreaties and swore an oath of virginity.
***
Oh, Unaizah, gently, put aside some of this coquetry.
If you have, indeed, made up your mind to cut off friendship with me, then do it kindly or gently.
***
Has anything deceived you about me, that your love is killing, me,
And that verily as often as you order my heart, it will do what you order?
***
And if any one of my habits has caused you annoyance,
Then put away my heart from your heart, and it will be put away.
***
And your two eyes do not flow with tears, except to strike me with arrows in my broken heart.
Many a fair one, whose tent can not be sought by others, have I enjoyed playing with.
***
I passed by the sentries on watch near her, and a people desirous of killing me;
If they could conceal my murder, being unable to assail me openly.
***
I passed by these people at a time, when the Pleiades appeared in the heavens,
As the appearance of the gems in the spaces in the ornamented girdle, set with pearls and gems.
***
Then she said to me, "I swear by God, you have no excuse for your wild life;
I cannot expect that your erring habits will ever be removed from your nature."
***
I went out with her; she walking, and drawing behind us, over our footmarks,
The skirts of an embroidered woolen garment, to erase the footprints.
***
Then when we had crossed the enclosure of the tribe,
The middle of the open plain, with its sandy undulations and sandllills, we sought.
***
I drew the tow side-locks of her head toward me; and she leant toward me;
She was slender of waist, and full in the ankle.
***
Thin-waisted, white-skinned, slender of body,
Her breast shining polished like a mirror.
***
In complexion she is like the first egg of the ostrich---white, mixed with yellow.
Pure water, unsullied by the descent of many people in it, has nourished her.
***
She turns away, and shows her smooth cheek, forbidding with a glancing eye,
Like that of a wild animal, with young, in the desert of Wajrah.
***
And she shows a neck like the neck of a white deer;
It is neither disproportionate when she raises it, nor unornamented.
***
And a perfect head of hair which, when loosened, adorns her back,
Black, very dark-colored, thick like a date-cluster on a heavily laden date-tree.
***
Her curls creep upward to the top of her head;
And the plaits are lost in the twisted hair, and the hair falling loose.
***
And she meets me with a slender waist, thin as the twisted leathern nose-rein of a camel.
Her form is like the stem of a palm-tree bending over from the weight of its fruit.
***
In the morning, when she wakes, the particles of musk are lying over her bed.
She sleeps much in the morning; she does not need to gird her waist with a working dress.
***
She gives with thin fingers, not thick, as if they were the worms of the desert of Zabi,
In the evening she brightens the darkness, as if she were the light-tower of a monk.
***
Toward one like her, the wise man gazes incessantly, lovingly.
She is well proportioned in height between the wearer of a long dress and of a short frock.
***
The follies of men cease with youth, but my heart does not cease to love you.
Many bitter counselors have warned me of the disaster of your love, but I turned away from them.
***
Many a night has let down its curtains around me amid deep grief,
It has whelmed me as a wave of the sea to try me with sorrow.
***
Then I said to the night, as slowly his huge bulk passed over me,
As his breast, his loins, his buttocks weighed on me and then passed afar,
***
"Oh long night, dawn will come, but will be no brighter without my love.
You are a wonder, with stars held up as by ropes of hemp to a solid rock."
***
At other times, I have filled a leather water-bag of my people and entered the desert,
And trod its empty wastes while the wolf howled like a gambler whose family starves.
***
I said to the wolf, "You gather as little wealth, as little prosperity as I.
What either of us gains he gives away. So do we remain thin."
***
Early in the morning, while the birds were still nesting, I mounted my steed.
Well-bred was he, long-bodied, outstripping the wild beasts in speed,
***
Swift to attack, to flee, to turn, yet firm as a rock swept down by the torrent,
Bay-colored, and so smooth the saddle slips from him, as the rain from a smooth stone,
***
Thin but full of life, fire boils within him like the snorting of a boiling kettle;
He continues at full gallop when other horses are dragging their feet in the dust for weariness.
***
A boy would be blown from his back, and even the strong rider loses his garments.
Fast is my steed as a top when a child has spun it well.
***
He has the flanks of a buck, the legs of an ostrich, and the gallop of a wolf.
From behind, his thick tail hides the space between his thighs, and almost sweeps the ground.
***
When he stands before the house, his back looks like the huge grinding-stone there.
The blood of many leaders of herds is in him, thick as the juice of henna in combed white hair.
***
As I rode him we saw a flock of wild sheep, the ewes like maidens in long-trailing robes;
They turned for flight, but already he had passed the leaders before they could scatter.
***
He outran a bull and a cow and killed them both, and they were made ready for cooking;
Yet he did not even sweat so as to need washing.
***
We returned at evening, and the eye could scarcely realize his beauty
For, when gazing at one part, the eye was drawn away by the perfection of another part.
***
He stood all night with his saddle and bridle on him,
He stood all night while I gazed at him admiring, and did not rest in his stable.
***
But come, my friends, as we stand here mourning, do you see the lightning ?
See its glittering, like the flash of two moving hands, amid the thick gathering clouds.
***
Its glory shines like the lamps of a monk when he has dipped their wicks thick in oil.
I sat down with my companions and watched the lightning and the coming storm.
***
So wide-spread was the rain that its right end seemed over Quatan,
Yet we could see its left end pouring down on Satar, and beyond that over Yazbul.
***
So mighty was the storm that it hurled upon their faces the huge kanahbul trees,
The spray of it drove the wild goats down from the hills of Quanan.
***
In the gardens of Taimaa not a date-tree was left standing,
Nor a building, except those strengthened with heavy stones.
***
The mountain, at the first downpour of the rain, looked like a
giant of our people draped in a striped cloak.
The peak of Mujaimir in the flood and rush of debris looked
like a whirling spindle.
***
The clouds poured forth their gift on the desert of Ghabeet, >till it blossomed
As though a Yemani merchant were spreading out all the rich clothes from his trunks,
***
As though the little birds of the valley of Jiwaa awakened in the morning
And burst forth in song after a morning draught of old, pure, spiced wine.
***
As though all the wild beasts had been covered with sand and mud, like the onion's root-bulbs.
They were drowned and lost in the depths of the desert at evening.
__________________
*
The Mu'allaqat ("Hanged" or "Suspended") were poetry composed by
several pre-Islamic Arab poets including Imru-ul-Quais, Antar, and
Zuhair. They were called the "Suspended" because they were said to have
hung on the walls of the Kabah.
He's satisfied with a pinch of salt on his daily bread with a little of you at night with a short night with you asleep on dream's shoulder with a brief dream with you walking on sleep's shore with a light sleep that sways between the keening of the nai and the clanging of goat bells
The body of a bird in your mouth breathing songs. Raw light spills from your eyes, utterly naked.
You must breach the horizon, once, in order to wake up. You must open window after window. You must support the walls.
I let alphabets cling to me as I climb the thread of language between myself and the world. I muster crowds in my mouth: suspended between language and the world, between the world and the alphabets.
I let my head listen to the myth, to all sides praising each other. And I shout at the winds from the top of a mountain.
Why does my tongue tell me to climb this far? What is the distance between my voice and my longing? What is there?
A body transcending my body. A body exiled by desire. A body sheltered by the wind.
I want to change everything: the crippled chair and the rug lolling its tongue across the tiles. I want to change the rug because it stretches its tongue across the tiles and the chair because it is crippled. I will try, I said, I have my reasons - and you can wait to see how the house turns out when that chair has gone and the rug, crawling in the dust, has deserted the tiles. I will try, I said, but I don't know if that chair would wear sackcloth and ashes and plead with me to stay. And I don't know if the rug will ever stop bothering the cracks - so I must find a wise man to guide me because I want to change everything I want to kick out this routine and free my hands to do my will. I must rearrange everything and all my possessions are nothing but poems waiting to be read - a crippled chair and a joke of a rug.
Poetry - may you be a green body. May you be a language in which I wander with my wings and my self. Be the inspiration of my tongue, so that I may pasture the tribes of my voice - though they are silent.
Sleepless and alone, I see you will not be a green body. You were neither a good master, to be bought, nor the muse. My longed for delirium, my memory.
Let the wind blow from a fisherman's mouth, from the span of a sail to the shell of a boat, unlocking the mouth of the river - So, shout, drowning man, when you founder in treacherous waters
At dawn, the river embarks in silence Riverbanks glean suns from the scales of dead fish Jostled by eddies, the aroma of flotsam and jetsam bakes in the shade
Becalmed, a breeze freights the stillness Sails lazily unfurl
They sail all night from afar, ploughing the river with ritual persistence, staring darkness straight in the eye
You set sail at dawn, infused with the tincture of a heart that had beached your whole life ashore
And yet, another beloved is offering you heaven on earth in her glance, demanding only the perfection of poetry - everything!
Imagine where this dove will go when her wings turn grey when her call grows old. Will she turn to the mirrors of young sparrows to slide into delusion, or will a deaf window offer her a perch to sing? How will she apologise to a traveller wanting to stroke her feathers when the flock scatters? How will she strut through the courtyard or impress the grass? Will she look for a kind boy to grind her a grain of wheat or an old flame to relight ageing passions? Perhaps she will divide her sadness between a window and a metal cage. Perhaps she'll become a professional mourner at the funerals of birds. Imagine where this dove will go when the trees donate her their lowest branch and when neighbours are indifferent to her past.
You will always carry on working for as long as the sun rises to flush the streets of the treasonous night studded with treachery riming the cobblestones and trash
You will always walk through the crowd absent-minded head up looking down on those who look down on you with their perfidious smiles
Every day the same streets you murmur/sing out your greetings meeting everyone you've ever known making songs with their steps pinning their hopes to the walls[1]
You show them the secret of the day and they do the rest they leave until sunrise clasping your gifts in their hands
The walls are worn with affection girls' windowsills graced with apologies and songs and on your mouth is a radiant smile a longing to get home after work before the sun rises again before they come back from the horizon of martyrdom[2]
Descendant of raiders who landed on the beaches, heir to the woman who unmanned Samson, I am the daughter of waves and of memory, a fresh shoot from ancient stock.
When I open my arms, the universe sets forth. When I smile, honey wells from my virgin lips. I take a step and the earth loses its balance. In my laugh, earthquakes resound, and volcanoes spurt from seven tectonic plates.
The child of frivolity and modesty, I am the daughter of depravity and purity, the progeny of black and white.
The tip of my finger taps the stars off track. If I close my eyes, darkness eclipses the world, until my eyelids lift bathing it in gold. And when I toss back my hair the universe shivers in recognition.
I am today and I am tomorrow. Crowned queen on the throne of space. A blink, and fields foam green with wheat. I am wheat itself. I am green. The first harvest. The last.
The kings who have gone left us the remains of their forgettable names —like Aleece or Kush
They left us their peculiar crowns shards of skeletons fish-heads unpronounceable words kohl-sticks commandments and eulogies graven in stone
Yet I left you radiant, resplendent, wherever your throne sets downLive blood in mortal veins - truly you are unforgettable
II
You accompany me to the gates of ancient Rome reaching the ends of perfection as you envisage grace threading each tender aperture as you envisage the faultless line, and the perfect circle
Let us be brothers in stone hand in hand fingers entwined — and then, on the threshold of a bar we clink our glasses as you add the last touch to a face already dreaming its history
III
Which of us is the key? Your door or mine?
IV
Silence is bliss Life is blissCreation is bliss
Even though his chair is empty even though he is gone darkness is ablaze with the presence of his embrace V
Fire your bullets -- our hearts are already ablaze In this land, grief wells up from my distress Fire your bullets -- you villain -- for I Won't play at murder or run away My blood fertilises and refreshes this land And plants a promising generation that is fully conscious Limbs grow from seeds of shrapnel Hands are formed and crowns spring That bet this land will always be their home -- In every corner they stand their ground Wherever I am, this land is my passion Nostalgia is fused with this timeless love I don't care if there are explosions I don't mind the annihilating thunder
Walls climb the ivy And Khartoum, poised on its unamputated foot Singing Will the Nile ever escape into sleep? We were the most loving of lovers, children trickling from us - What name do you give me? - I call you Presence of Earth Come closer then - What will be the taste of grief? - ………………….. And we parted!
Sura
The Nile flows quietly… Seeping through the city's silence And the burning sorrows of villages. Now friends no longer exchange greetings each morning No longer recognize each other. Everywhere one sees them, these one-time prophets, Poverty-stricken, sipping their tea, their tears, Speechless. They hide death in their fraying clothes, And all they can say to our children is: patience. They fade into the trees, commit suicide At night, derive from alcohol Their arguments, embark on futile wars With their women, give up Their prayers, then disappear. Walls climb the ivy And Khartoum, sitting in a café Smoking In the dark you can't tell apart Muggers from those whose journeys they'd cut short. We were lovers, looking for our children Who were breaking into bakeries, stealing fire From the ovens' throats. - What name do you give me? - I call you earth's Fiery Anger So rise up - What will be the taste of ashes? - ……………………. And we parted!
Sura
Fire is the opposite of Water And Smoke is a memory that prepares us only for ash. Water is the opposite of Fire And the waves are like maps, rippling across the land. And the girl? She is somewhere between this heart and this knife… City - you're a handful of grains of wheat, tucked Into the purses of usurers and slave-traders. And the black men Are approaching, approaching. River Nile To what deserts are you taking my reflections? You depart And I stand among the horses, by your gate, And my soul would embark on a holy journey too, For the silence suspended between us Is a language floating among the ruins of a beautiful, vanished past. O River Nile, father Were the trees merely windows reflecting women's sorrows, Or have your waters shattered their images, Drowned the history of women, And painted forever their meadows the colour of poverty? Poverty invades the children's playgrounds, leaving Them silent, accursed, their heritage Only anger and disbelief. The Nile opens his arms Speaks to the migrant birds Falls silent Reigns And never sleeps Never sleeps The Nile drinks dry the desert's tavern, Gets drunk on dumps of toxic waste, Must survive in the city, falling apart Each night, rising up through its history And never sleeps Never sleeps The drums began with the sun And its light filtered songs that entered into the pores of the soul. In the river's shallows boats sheltered from toil and wind. Now the carnivals of the blacks take fire And the Nile has burst through the layers of time. And, see, the kingdom of Maroe appears And the face of the Nubian lover Who walks among the sorrows of the waterwheels Searching for warriors among the horses. Where does the line of ancestral blood begin And when does the blood loss reach its climax, O King Piankhy, enthroned ruler of Kush, A kingdom unravelling in bitter silence? Shout at the horses, and let The waters ready themselves. Let the maps explode. How can the land be lost When the future belongs to the Nile? The Nile knows of the disgrace of cities That have vanished. Knows of the old times Yet never speaks. It is the Nile… Generations will pass, and there will always be children Lingering on its banks, Waiting For it all to end.
No one predicted the day I was born: the breast that fed me was a jug of amnesia spilt by the invaders. So I throw myself onto my shadow to save it from the approaching train; I bare my chest to spears as if I were a shield carried by my ancestors; I climb mountain peaks the way I stroll along the beach, as if these mountains were my seas, their caves my seashells, my days. Now every tree hides a wall beneath its bark: the minute I touch it, I trespass into the property of strangers; the minute I sit down on a rock, it sprouts wings and flies off. Where can I go? How can I stumble away when I hang here like the plait that splits my lover’s back in two? when God’s name lashes from the minarets like whips whipping horseflesh? No one predicted the day of my birth. And the river that bore me has gone to ground in a yawning expanse of endless land that I cross without wings. Like water, when I evaporate, I soar. Like water, when I fall, I am pure. Every time I touch this land, its belly swells: please don’t give birth to another Omani, an Omani who asks me how long this century has lasted, an Omani who invites me to his revels to drink obedience in a cup — while a rudderless balloon, like an exclamation, floats across the sky.
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