Sunday 20 October 2013

autumn
















I cross autumn fields
 In my dew-laden robes
 On my return home.
 Flowers woefully withered,
 Evening has yet to arrive.


Sōgi
















Saturday 5 October 2013

shake us, we, the palms of the wound






The leaves asleep under the wind
are the wounds’ ship,
and the ages collapsed on top of each other
are the wound’s glory,
and the trees rising out of our eyelashes
are the wound’s lake.
The wound is to be found on bridges
where the grave lengthens
and patience goes on to no end
between the shores of our love and death.
The wound is a sign,
and the wound is a crossing too.









wound_10










wound2








If I had a harbor in the land
of dreams and mirrors, if I had a ship,
if I had the remains
of a city, if I had a city
in the land of children and weeping,
I would have written all this down for the wound’s sake,
a song like a spear
that penetrates trees, stone, and sky,
soft like water
unbridled, startling like conquest.








wound_9











wound_4










wound_21












wound6







Rain down on our desert
O world adorned with dream and longing.
Pour down, and shake us, we, the palms of the wound,
tear out branches from trees that love the silence of the wound,
that lie awake staring at its pointed eyelashes and soft hands.







wound7











wound_8







World adorned with dream and longing
world that falls on my brow
like the lash of a wound,
don’t come close—the wound is closer—
don’t tempt me—the wound is more beautiful.
That magic that your eyes had flung
on the last kingdoms—
the wound has passed over it,
passed and did not leave a single sail
to tempt toward salvation, did not leave
a single island behind.



 

from Adonis, The Wound, tr. by Khaled Mattawa, 
with my thanks to the Black Sun for this discovery


(for e.)