-
“The Art of Music” by David Shapiro
You were practicing the early art of memory.
You would bestow twenty per cent of your attention on me
Then shut your eyes. From time to time since the invention of print
The phrase “elephant debt” would force itself to your lips.Only one thing exists: the universe.
The others by definition cannot; how rigid out theory is.
Without the flavor of paint however force seems useless.
Needless to say the stage was set, but what followed?Together we will sing in octaves. And the hairy bushes
And bleeding hearts develop like twining vines. -
“Crisis” by Gerardo Deniz (translated by Mónica de la Torre)
Evangelista Cicindelli had no dark side. In vain
they spoke to him about Teilhard de Chardin, about mysteries,
the mysteries of the sea,
of life,
unexplained by positivism. In vain
they tried to shake his stool enameled white,
they spat in the histological preparations while he was out having lunch.By the rocky edge,
the ruinous and unfinished mansion, without windowpanes
so you can face the threatening sea
and welcome the wind carrying saltpeter and saliva, excoriate
the water’s torso,
and welcome your name between the clamor of the wind, -
“Love Song” by Rainer Maria Rilke (Translated by David Shapiro)
How could I stop myself
from meeting you? Should I rise
up over you to some other things?
I could happily make a roof
with someone abandoned in the dark
in some dumb distant spot
that never shakes, as you are trembling now.
Yet everything that grazes you and me
ties us together like a violin bow
stroking two strings into one sound.
But on what instrument have we been bound?
And what musician has us in his hand?
Oh sweet song.*
Rainer Maria Rilke was a German-language poet and novelist,
