Naked Legs

how they swing how they

move smoothly
.......................like skin
in water
little drops
.................accumulating
desirable
...............but
undaringly familiar

Die Unsterblichen / The Immortals by Hermann Hesse

The Immortals
Ever reeking from the vales of earth
Ascends to us life’s fevered surge,
Wealth’s excess, the rage of dearth,
Smoke of death-meals on the gallow’s verge;
Greed without end, spasmodic lust;
Murderers’ hands, usurers’ hands, hands of prayer;
Exhales in fœtid breath the human swarm
Whipped on by fear and lust, blood raw, blood warm,
Breathing blessedness and savage heats,
Eating itself and spewing what it eats,
Hatching war and lovely art,
Decking out with idiot craze
Bawdy houses while they blaze,
Through the childish fair-time mart
Weltering to its own decay
In the glare of pleasure’s way,
Rising for each newborn and then
Sinking for each to dust again.

But we above you evermore residing
In the ether’s star-translumined ice
Know not day nor night nor time’s dividing,
Wear nor age nor sex for our device.
All your sins and anguish self-affrighting,
Your murders and lascivious delighting
Are to us but as a show
Like the suns that circling go,
Changing not our day for night;
On your frenzied life we spy,
And refresh ourselves thereafter
With the stars in order fleeing;
Our breath is winter; in our sight
Fawns the dragon of the sky;
Cool and unchanging is our eternal being,
Cool and star-bright is our eternal laughter.

Die Unsterblichen
Immer wieder aus der Erde Tälern
Dampft zu uns empor des Lebens Drang:
Wilde Not, berauschter Überschwang,
Blutiger Rauch von tausend Henkersmählern,
Krampf der Lust, Begierde ohne Ende,
Mörderhände, Wuchererhände, Beterhände.
Angst- und lustgepeitschter Menschenschwarm
Dunstet schwül und faulig, roh und warm,
Atmet Seligkeit und wilde Brünste,
Frisst sich selbst und speit sich wieder aus,
Brütet Kriege aus und holde Künste,
Schmückt mit Wahn das brennende Freudenhaus,
Schlingt und zehrt und hurt sich durch die grellen
Jahrmarktsfreuden seiner Kinderwelt,
Hebt für jeden neu sich aus den Wellen,
Wie sie jedem einst zu Kot zerfällt.

Wir dagegen haben uns gefunden
In des Äthers sterndurchglänztem Eis,
Kennen keine Tage, keine Stunden,
Sind nicht Mann noch Weib, nicht jung noch Greis.
Eure Sünden sind und eure Ängste,
Euer Mord und eure geilen Wonnen
Schauspiel uns gleich wie die kreisenden Sonnen,
Jeder Tag ist uns der längste.
Still zu eurem zuckenden Leben nickend,
Still in die sich drehenden Sterne blickend,
Atmen wir des Weltraums Winter ein,
Sind befreundet mit dem Himmelsdrachen;
Kühl und wandellos ist unser ewiges Sein,
Kühl und sternhell unser ewiges Lachen. 

Angut Kuşu

angut kuşu şehir bahçesi. 
angut kuşu zakkum gölge ve tüy dallarda. 
yıka, biricik, bir, damlaları. gözyaşlarının.
geçmeyi bıraktırmaya evlerin sis çatışı. 
yakın sonsuzluklardan güvey fenerleri. 
uyan ey göv, kum dalgalarını yıka şarkınla
vay canına
kız gözü durulu, dalgalı deniz.
vay canına
kıyıları ırakların tüm şaha kalktığı ırmak. 
ölçümsüz ölçülü uza, derin avluda. da... da...
hayda
havadan ve denizden gül, kırma şarkısını yellerin! 
karaşın ilk anlayan gözlerinle baktım uzağa. ğa... ğa... ğa...
haydaaa.
kalbim, içinde balkı, ilk yazı, atta durur tarlası. 
sevi bahçesi. si. si. si. 
angut kuşu ah, ahuyu bebe tanımadan, 
tınısı sesimde pullanması, beynimin, lekeli. 
sularla. haydaa, breh

hoppa
hop hop hop
bilinçsiz doğum.
angut kuşu ah! ahuyu bebe tanımadan, tınısı sesinde, göl pullanması.
angut kuşu!
beynimin, lekeli sularla!
gölge ve tüy durur dallarda
su! yıldız gece akıl taşları kımıldamakta! 
arıyı ve dağ çiçeklerini ruh bilip, gecikti, gelecek piçi. haydaa
haydaa 

A Toast

Nothing, this foam, virgin verse

Depicting the chalice alone:

Far off a band of Sirens drown

Many of them head first.

We sail, O my various

Friends, I already at the stern,

You at the lavish prow that churns

The lightning’s and the winters’ flood:

A sweet intoxication urges me

Despite pitching, tossing, fearlessly

To offer this toast while standing

Solitude, reef, and starry veil

To whatever’s worthy of knowing

The white anxiety of our sail.

Mallarme

The Dead Woman

If suddenly you do not exist, 
if suddenly you are not living, 
I shall go on living.

I do not dare, 
I do not dare to write it, 
if you die.

I shall go on living.

Because where a man has no voice, 
there, my voice

Where blacks are beaten, 
I can not be dead.
When my brothers go to jail
I shall go with them.

When victory, 
not my victory, 
but the great victory
arrives, 
even though I am mute I must speak: 
I shall see it come even though I am blind.

No, forgive me, 
if you are not living, 
if you, beloved, my love, 
if you
have died. 

Chicken Haiku

OK, here is a haiku by Moi who competed in the "Haiku Monday Challange of the Chicken" by chickory, and won.

Faithful feathered friend—

chopped, plucked, garlic-stuffed. Sunday's

sacrificial lamb.

I Do Not

Yes, today I got a book of poetry as a gift. By Michael Palmer. It is called The Promises of Glass. I will immediately share my favorite-till-now.

"Je ne sais pas l'anglais."

Georges Hugnet

I do not know English.

I do not know English, and therefore I can have nothing to 
say about this latest war, flowering through a night-
scope in the evening sky.

I do not know English and therefore, when hungry, can do no 
more than point repeatedly to my mouth.

Yet such a gesture might be taken to mean any number of 
things.

I do not know English and therefore cannot seek the requisite 
permissions, as outlined in the recent protocol.

Such as: May I utter a term of endearment: may I now proceed 
to put my arm or arms around you and apply gentle 
pressure; may I now kiss you directly on the lips; now 
on the left tendon of the neck; now on the nipple of 
each breast? And so on.

Would not in any case be able to decipher her response.

I do not know English. Therefore I have no way of 
communicating that I prefer this painting of nothing to 
that one of something.

No way to speak of my past hopes for the future, of my 
glasses mysteriously shattered in Rotherdam, the statue 
of Eros and Psyche in the Summer Garden, the sudden, 
shrill cries in the streets of São Paulo, a watch 
abruptly stopping in Paris.

No way to tell the joke about the rabbi and the parrot, the 
bartender and the duck, the Pope and the porte-chochère.

You will understand why you have received no letters from me 
and why yours have gone unread.

Those, that is, where you write so precisely of the 
confluence of the visible universe with the invisible, 
and of the lens of dark matter.

No way to differentiate the hall of mirrors from the meadow 
of mullein, the beetlebung from the pinkletink, the 
kettlehole from the ventifact.

Nor can I utter the words science, seance, silence, language 
and languish.

Nor can I tell of the aboreal shadows elongated and shifting 
along the wall as the sun's angle approaches maximum 
hibernal declination.

Cannot tell of the almond-eyed face that peered from the 
well, the ship of stone whose sail was a tongue.

And I cannot report that this rose has twenty-four petals, 
one slightly cancred.

Cannot tell how I dismantled it myself at this desk.

Cannot ask the name of this rose.

I cannot repeat the words of the Recording Angel or those of 
the Angle of Erasure.

Can speak neither of things abounding nor of things 
disappearing.

Still the games continue. A muscular man waves a stick at a,
ball. A woman in white, arms outstretched, carves a true 
circle in space. A village turns to dust in the chalk hills.

Because I do not know English I have been variously called 
Mr. Twisted, The One Undone, The Nonrespondent, The 
Truly Lost Boy, and Laughed-At-By-Horses.

The war is declared ended, almost before it has begun.

They have named it The Ultimate Combat between Nearness and 
Distance.

I do not know English.