YOSANO AKIKO
JAPANESE (1878-1942)
TRANSLATED BY KENNETH REXROTH
Terminus
Wonderful was the long secret night you gave me, my Lover,
Palm to palm, breast to breast in the gloom. The faint red
lamp
Flushing with magical shadows the common-place room of
the inn,
With its dull impersonal furniture, kindled a mystic flame
In the heart of the swinging mirror, the glass that has seen
Faces innumerous and vague of the endless travelling
automata
Whirled down the ways of the world like dust-eddies swept
through a street,
Faces indifferent or weary, frowns of impatience or pain,
Smiles (if such there were ever) like your smile and mine
when they met
Here, in this self-same glass, while you helped me to loosen
my dress,
And the shadow-mouths melted to one, like sea-birds that
meet in a wave—
Such smiles, yes, such smiles the mirror perhaps has reflected;
And the low wide bed, as rutted and worn as a high-road,
The bed with its soot-sodden chintz, the grime of its brasses,
That has born the weight of fagged bodies, dust-stained,
averted in sleep,
The hurried, the restless, the aimless—perchance it has also
thrilled
With the pressure of bodies ecstatic, bodies like ours,
Seeking each other’s souls in the depths of unfathomed
caresses,
And through the long windings of passion emerging again to
the stars . . .
Yes, all this through the room, the passive and featureless
room,
Must have flowed with the rise and fall of the human
unceasing current,
And lying there hushed in your arms, as the waves of rapture
receded,
And far down the margin of being we heard the low beat of
the soul,
I was glad as I thought of those others, the nameless, the
many,
Who perhaps thus had lain and loved for an hour on the
brink of the world,
Secret and fast in the heart of the whirlwind of travel,
The shaking and shrieking of trains, the night-long shudder
of traffic;
Thus, like us they have lain and felt, breast to breast in the
dark,
The fiery rain of possession descend on their limbs while
outside
The black rain of midnight pelted the roof of the station;
And thus some woman like me waking alone before dawn,
While her lover slept, as I woke and heard the calm stir of
your breathing,
Some woman has heard as I heard the farewell shriek of the
trains
Crying good-bye to the city and staggering out into darkness,
And shaken at heart has thought: “So must we forth in the
darkness,
Sped down the fixed rail of habit by the hand of implacable
fate —”
So shall we issue to life, and the rain, and the dull dark
dawning;
You to the wide flair of cities, with windy garlands and
shouting,
Carrying to populous places the freight of holiday throngs;
I, by waste land and stretches of low-skied marsh,
To a harbourless wind-bitten shore, where a dull town
moulders and shrinks,
And its roofs fall in, and the sluggish feet of the hours
Are printed in grass in its streets; and between the featureless
houses
Languid the town-folk glide to stare at the entering train,
The train from which no one descends; till one pale evening
of winter,
When it halts on the edge of the town, see, the houses have
turned into grave-stones,
The streets are the grassy paths between the low roofs of the
dead;
And as the train glides in ghosts stand by the doors of the
carriages;
And scarcely the difference is felt—yes, such is the life I
return to . . . !
Thus may another have thought; thus, as I turned, may have
turned
To the sleeping lips at her side, to drink, as I drank there,
oblivion.
EDITH WHARTON
AMERICAN (1862-1937)
Alba
When the nightingale to his mate
Sings day-long and night late
My love and I keep state
In bower,
In flower,
’Till the watchman on the tower
Cry:
“Up! Thou rascal, Rise,
I see the white
Light
And the night
Flies.”
EZRA POUND
AMERICAN (1885-1972)
Vernal Equinox
The scent of hyacinths, like a pale mist, lies between me and
my book;
And the South Wind, washing through the room,
Makes the candles quiver.
My nerves sting at a spatter of rain on the shutter,
And I am uneasy with the thrusting of green shoots
Outside, in the night.
Why are you not here to overpower me with your tense and
urgent love?
AMY LOWELL
AMERICAN (1874-1925)
Fragment 113
“Neither honey nor bee for me.”—Sappho
Not honey,
not the plunder of the bee
from meadow or sand-flower
or mountain bush;
from winter-flower or shoot
born of the later heat:
not honey, not the sweet
stain on the lips and teeth:
not honey, not the deep
plunge of soft belly
and the clinging of the gold-edged
pollen-dusted feet;
not so—
though rapture blind my eyes,
and hunger crisp
dark and inert my mouth,
not honey, not the south,
not the tall stalk
of red twin-lilies,
nor light branch of fruit tree
caught in flexible light branch;
not honey, not the south;
ah flower of purple iris,
flower of white,
or of the iris, withering the grass—
for fleck of the sun’s fire,
gathers such heat and power,
that shadow-print is light,
cast through the petals
of the yellow iris flower;
not iris—old desire—old passion—
old forgetfulness—old pain—
not this, nor any flower,
but if you turn again,
seek strength of arm and throat,
touch as the god;
neglect the lyre-note;
knowing that you shall feel,
about the frame,
no trembling of the string
but heat, more passionate
of bone and the white shell
and fiery tempered steel.
H.D.
AMERICAN (1886-1961)
Recuerdo
We were very tired, we were very merry —
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable —
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on the hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
We were very tired, we were very merry
—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and the pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
AMERICAN (1892-1950)
I Want to Die While You Love Me
I want to die while you love me,
While yet you hold me fair,
While laughter lies upon my lips
And lights are in my hair.
I want to die while you love me,
And bear to that still bed
Your kisses turbulent, unspent,
To warm me when I’m dead.
I want to die while you love me,
Oh, who would care to live
Till love has nothing more to ask
And nothing more to give?
I want to die while you love me,
And never, never see
The glory of this perfect day
Grow dim or cease to be!
GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON
AMERICAN (1886-1966)
in spite of everything
in spite of everything
which breathes and moves,since Doom
(with white longest hands
neatening each crease)
will smooth entirely our minds
— before leaving my room
i turn,and(stooping
through the morning)kiss
this pillow,dear
where our heads lived and were.
E. E. CUMMINGS
AMERICAN (1894-1962)
somewhere i have never travelled . . .
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands
E. E. CUMMINGS
AMERICAN (1894-1962)
Lay your sleeping head, my love
Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.
Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit’s sensual ecstasy.
Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.
Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of sweetness show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find the mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness see you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.
W. H. AUDEN
ENGLISH (1907-1973)
The Kimono
When I returned from lovers’ lane
My hair was white as snow.
Joy, incomprehension, pain
I’d seen like seasons come and go.
How I got home again
Frozen half dead, perhaps you know.
Desires ungratified
Persist from one life to the next.
Hearths we strip ourselves beside
Long, long ago were x’d
On blueprints of “consuming pride.”
Times out of mind, the bubble-gleam
To our charred level drew
April back. A sudden beam . . .
—Keep talking while I change into
The pattern of a stream
Bordered with rushes white on blue.
JAMES MERRILL
AMERICAN (1926-1995)
Having a Coke with You
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience
which is not going to go wasted
on me which is why I’m telling you about it
FRANK O’HARA
AMERICAN (1926-1966)
23rd Street Runs into Heaven
You stand near the window as lights wink
On along the street. Somewhere a trolley, taking
Shop-girls and clerks home, clatters through
This before-supper Sabbath. An alley cat cries
To find the garbage cans sealed; newsboys
Begin their murder-into-pennies round.
We are shut in, secure for a little, safe until
Tomorrow. You slip your dress off, roll down
Your stockings, careful against runs. Naked now,
With soft light on soft flesh, you pause
For a moment; turn and face me —
Smile in a way that only women know
Who have lain long with their lover
And are made more virginal.
Our supper is plain but we are very wonderful.
KENNETH PATCHEN
AMERICAN (1911-1972)
Elegy
Body, beloved, yes; we know each other you and I.
Perhaps I ran to meet you
like a cloud heavy with lightning.
Ah, that fleeting light, that fulmination,
that vast silence that succeeds catastrophe.
Whoever looks at us now (dark stones, bits
and pieces of used matter)
won’t know that for an instant our name was love
and that in eternity they call us destiny.
ROSARIO CASTELLANOS
MEXICAN (1925-1974)
TRANSLATED BY MAGDA BOGIN
I Crave Your Mouth, Your Voice, Your Hair
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.
I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.
I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,
and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.
PABLO NERUDA
CHILEAN (1904-1973)
TRANSLATED BY STEPHEN TAPSCOTT
DISAPPOINTMENT
Hate whom ye list, for I care not
Hate whom ye list, for I care not:
Love whom ye list and spare not:
Do what ye list and dread not: