If You Want Me to Stay With You
~ Natalie Barney
Translated by Patrice Titterington
If you want me to stay with you
Lower your voice,
Pitch it
To the intimate moments
And let us have a large pot
Of hot water with the tea.
Why?
~Mary Webb
Why did you come, with your enkindled eyes
And mountain-look, across my lower way,
And take the vague dishonor from my day
By luring me from paltry things, to rise
And stand beside you, waiting wistfully
The looming of a larger destiny?
Why did you with strong fingers fling aside
The gates of possibility, and say
With vital voice the words I dream to-day?
Before, I was not much unsatisfied:
But since a god has touched me and departed,
I run through every temple, broken-hearted.
Pyrargite Metal, 9
~Cecilia Meireles
Translated from Portuguese by Jams Merrill
The piano tuner spoke to me that tenderest
attender to each note
who ever looking over sharp and flat
hears and glimpses something more remote.
And his ears make no mistake
nor do his hands that in each chord awake
those sounds delighted to keep house together.
‘Disinterested is my interest:
I don’t confuse music and instrument, mere
piano tuner that I am,
calligrapher of that superhuman speech
which lifts me as a guest to its high sphere.
Oh! what new Physics waits up there to teach
other matters to another ear. . .’
Siena
“L’anima non avra giammai l’oblio, giammai l’oblio, giammai . . . ”
~ Lily Thicknesse
Whilst thou art far away, I am at peace,
As some poor wretch, delivered from the rack,
Enjoys the slumber of a doubtful ease
Knowing he must be haled to torture back.
In this embattled city of old days,
The flower of beauty born of blood and fire,
My footsteps wander through the narrow ways,
And seek in vain the soul of my desire;
I feast upon my dreams’ immortal food,
But when there comes again the thought of thee,
It is as if slow heavy drops of blood
Dripped from a wound within unceasingly.
The Roosters Will Crow
~ Cecilia Meireles
(A lovely site devoted to Meireles’ work is here.)
The roosters will crow when we die,
And a soft breeze, with delicate hands,
Will touch the fringes, the silken
Shrouds.
And the sleep of night will cloud
The clear windows.
And the crickets, far off, will saw silences:
Stalks of crystal, cold long solitudes,
And the enormous perfume of trees.
Ah, what sweet moon will look upon our calm face,
Even yet more calm than her great mirror
Of silver.
What thick freshness upon our hair,
As free as the fields at sunrise.
From the mist of dawn,
One last star
Will ascend: pale.
What immense peace, without human voice,
Without the lip of wolfish faces,
Without hatred, without love, without anything!
Like dark lost prophets,
Only the dogs will talk through the valleys.
Strong questions. Vast pauses.
We shall lie in death
In that soft contour
Of a shell in the water.
