ACCENTED-UNACCENTED
The world is a long cycle of songs
that you should sing, he said.
The world is a tree full of fruit
that only a sword can cut.
The sword cuts the song. The song
blunts the sword. What can you choose? he said.
How can you choose between the already chosen?
The world is a deep closed song.
—Yannis Ritsos (from Parentheses, 1950-61 )
(original title Theseis-Arseis; tr. Edmund Keeley)
FOOTNOTE TO A PRETENTIOUS BOOK
Who am I to love
so deeply? As against
a heavy darkness, pressed
against my eyes. Wetting
my face, a constant trembling
rain.
A long life, to you. My friend. I
tell that to myself, slowly, sucking
my lip. A silence of motives / empties
the day of meaning.
What is intimate
enough? What is
beautiful?
It is slow unto meaning for
any life. If I am an animal, there
is proof of my living. The fawns
and calves
of my age. But it is steel that falls
as a thin mist into my consciousness. As a fine
ugly spray, I have made
some futile ethic
with.
“Changed my life?” As the dead man
pacing at the edge of the sea. As
the lips, closed
for so long, at the sight
of motionless
birds.
There is no one to entrust with
meaning. (These sails go by, these small
deadly animals.)
And meaning? These words?
Were there some blue expanse
of world. Some other
flesh, resting
at the roof
of the world . . .
you could say of me,
that I was truly
simpleminded.
—Amiri Baraka (from The Dead Lecturer)
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