Wendell Berry: For The Future

Planting trees early in spring,
we make a place for birds to sing
in time to come. How do we know?
They are singing here now.
There is no other guarantee
that singing will ever be.

Richard Brautigan: I Live In The Twentieth Century

I live in the Twentieth Century
and you lie here beside me. You
were unhappy when you fell asleep.
There was nothing I could do about
it. I felt hopeless. Your face
is so beautiful that I cannot stop
to describe it, and there's nothing
I can do to make you happy while
you sleep.

Kurdi Imre: Egyenesen át

Félútról visszanézve, egyenesen át,

a szemközti hegyoldal:
ott látod azt a fát.
Öreg cseresznye lehet, olyan, mintha ága
nem is lenne, csak a rengeteg
habzó fehér virága.
Pedig nem kérte, nem akarta: egyszer csak lett neki.
Megkapta, elfogadja, tartja –
aztán majd elengedi.

Richard Brautigan: I Feel Horrible. She Doesn't

I feel horrible. She doesn't
love me and I wander around
like a sewing machine
that's just finished sewing
a turd to a garbage can lid.

Kaye Aldenhoven: Trying to . . .

Although I am inspired to write a sonnet
I'll have to stick to free verse
because the rhymes I pull together
don't say much and sound even worse.

Halina Poświatowska: Utolsó vers

ez az utolsó vers

hozzád
nem lesz már több
mondtam
azzal
bélyeget tettem a levélre
és beejtettem
a négyszögletû lapos szívet
a levélszekrény szûk résén

az emberek most vigyázva járnak

a postaláda körül
egyre kérdve
mi történt
tán egy madár költözött
a ládába
s csapdos szárnyával a falán
és már-már
énekel

-- Fordította: Zsille Gábor

Charles Bukowski: To The Whore Who Took My Poems

some say we should keep personal remorse from the
poem,
stay abstract, and there is some reason in this,
but jezus;
twelve poems gone and I don't keep carbons and you have
my
paintings too, my best ones; its stifling:
are you trying to crush me out like the rest of them?
why didn't you take my money? they usually do
from the sleeping drunken pants sick in the corner.
next time take my left arm or a fifty
but not my poems:
I'm not Shakespeare
but sometime simply
there won't be any more, abstract or otherwise;
there'll always be money and whores and drunkards
down to the last bomb,
but as God said,
crossing his legs,
I see where I have made plenty of poets
but not so very much
poetry.

Deborah Ager: Morning

You know how it is waking
from a dream certain you can fly
and that someone, long gone, returned

and you are filled with longing,
for a brief moment, to drive off
the road and feel nothing

or to see the loved one and feel
everything. Perhaps one morning,
taking brush to hair you'll wonder

how much of your life you've spent
at this task or signing your name
or rising in fog in near darkness

to ready for work. Day begins
with other people's needs first
and your thoughts disperse like breath.

In the in-between hour, the solitary hour,
before day begins all the world
gradually reappears car by car.

Fekete Anna: Könnyen, még könnyebben

A boldogság kijelöl egy szögletet. Fészket,

rejteket, napocskát, felhõcskét, fiókot, zúgocskát
a szerelmes leveleknek, amik nem íródtak meg.
Belealudhatnék a vánkosok szelídségébe.
De ülök a küszöbön, és tisztogatom a fegyvereimet.

Mary Oliver: The Snakes

I once saw two snakes,
northern racers,
hurrying through the woods,
their bodies
like two black whips
lifting and dashing forward;
in perfect concert
they held their heads high
and swam forward
on their sleek bellies;
under the trees,
through vines, branches,
over stones,
through fields of flowers,
they traveled
like a matched team
like a dance
like a love affair.

Steve Kowit: What Chord did She Pluck

What chord did she pluck in my soul
that girl with the golden necklace
& ivory breasts
whose body ignited the river:
she who rose like the moon
from her bathing &
brushed back the ebony hair
that fell to her waist
& walked off
into the twilight dark—
O my soul,
what chord did she pluck
that I am still trembling.

after Chandidas

Bajtai András: félúton

látod, felejtek én is,

a telefonszámodat már régóta nem tudom,
és a kedvenc színedet sem,
de van, amire emlékszem még,
a lassú esõkre például, amikor ernyõd
alatt bújtunk össze,
vagy az ébredésre melletted,
a reggelekre az ágyunkban, mutasd az arcodat,
súgta a tükör a fürdõszobából
vagy amikor sétálni mentünk,
és hiába a sötét, nem féltünk semmitõl,
talán mert nem hallottuk, hogyan
roppantak körülöttünk a fák,
hûvös volt, hogy ne fázzam annyira,
megszámoltam hányszor koppan
a cipõd sarka az aszfalton amíg hazaérünk,
látod, vannak ilyen emlékeim,
elõkerülnek néha, akár az elveszettnek
hitt dolgok, most is ilyenek jutnak eszembe,
ahogyan ülünk itt egymás mellett a buszon,
mint az a régi, nyári éjszaka,
de hiába, te félúton leszállsz
én a végállomásig megyek

Bill Holm: Wedding Poem For Schele and Phil

A marriage is a risky business these days

Says some old and prudent voice inside.
We don’t need twenty children anymore
To keep the family line alive,
Or gather up the hay before the rain.
No law demands respectability.
Love can arrive without certificate or cash.
History and experience both make clear
That men and women do not hear
The music of the world in the same key,
Rather rolling dissonances doomed to clash.

So what is left to justify a marriage?

Maybe only the hunch that half the world
Will ever be present in any room
With just a single pair of eyes to see it.
Whatever is invisible to one
Is to the other an enormous golden lion
Calm and sleeping in the easy chair.
After many years, if things go right
Both lion and emptiness are always there;
The one never true without the other.

But the dark secret of the ones long married,

A pleasure never mentioned to the young,
Is the sweet heat made from two bodies in a bed
Curled together on a winter night,
The smell of the other always in the quilt,
The hand set quietly on the other’s flank
That carries news from another world
Light-years away from the one inside
That you always thought you inhabited alone.
The heat in that hand could melt a stone.

Robert Frost: Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Yvon Givert: Ha akkor nem néz a szemébe

Ha akkor nem néz a szemébe egy madár

– a korláton gubbaszkodott
csivitelt –
a lány leugrik az erkélyrõl

Így visszahátrált a szoba árnyékába

– hát mégis élt –

A madár utána ment
fölette az asztalról a morzsát
– csivitelt
mulattatta a helyzet –

Aztán se szó se beszéd

távozott az ablakon át
Az erkélyen repkény dudorászott
aztán az üvegben a bor

Lomhán végignyalta ereit a nap

A lány sárga ruhát vett

kiszaladt a kikötõbe

 

--Fordította: Lackfi János

Donald Hall: Love Poem

When you fall in love,
you jockey your horse
into the flaming barn.

You hire a cabin
on the shiny Titanic.
You tease the black bear.

Reading the Monitor,
you scan the obituaries
looking for your name.

Howard Nemerov: Pockets

Are generally over or around
Erogenous zones, they seem to dive
In the direction of those

Dark places, and indeed
It is their nature to be dark
Themselves, keeping a kind

Of thieves' kitchen for the things
Sequestered from the world
For long or little while,

The keys, the handkerchiefs,
The sad and vagrant little coins
That are really only passing through.

For all they locate close to lust,
No pocket ever sees another;
There is in fact a certain sadness

To pockets, going in their lonesome ways
And snuffling up their sifting storms
Of dust, tobacco bits and lint.

A pocket with a hole in it
Drops out; from shame, is that, or pride?
What is a pocket but a hole?　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　

Kiss Gabriella: Szerdai jó tanács

Ha a szorongás lidérce éjszakákon át
mellkasodra telepszik, ezt kell tenned:
Lefekvés előtt egyél valami placebót,
majd köpj ki balra, és mondd el háromszor,
le van szarva, várnak rám holnapi dolgok,
reggel tűzz az ajtófélfára villanyóraállást,
kóborló macskáknak adj a parizerből,
fordítsd fal felé a tükröket,
de a babona szerint legjobb,
ha elalvás előtt átölelnek.

Olav Hauge: This Is the Dream

This is the dream we carry through the world

that something fantastic will happen
that it has to happen
that time will open by itself
that doors shall open by themselves
that the heart will find itself open
that mountain springs will jump up
that the dream will open by itself
that we one early morning
will slip into a harbor
that we have never known.

A. E. Stallings: Fairy-tale Logic

Fairy tales are full of impossible tasks:

Gather the chin hairs of a man-eating goat,
Or cross a sulphuric lake in a leaky boat,
Select the prince from a row of identical masks,
Tiptoe up to a dragon where it basks
And snatch its bone; count dust specks, mote by mote,
Or learn the phone directory by rote.
Always it’s impossible what someone asks—

You have to fight magic with magic. You have to believe

That you have something impossible up your sleeve,
The language of snakes, perhaps, an invisible cloak,
An army of ants at your beck, or a lethal joke,
The will to do whatever must be done:
Marry a monster. Hand over your firstborn son.

Filip Tamás: Igen

Igen, repülni.

Még úgy is, ha odakötözve
az éjszakához. Alul kevéske
fény, fönt nagy homály,
s ahogy a fáradt motor leáll,
az álom-katapult szelíden lõ ki
a meglágyult mennyezeten át
a tetõk fölé, még puhább csöndbe.
S ha reggel ébredünk: éjjel nõtt
szárnyaink reccsenve törnek szét
az ismeretlen bútorok sarkain.

Jack Gilbert: Dreaming at the Ballet

The truth is, goddesses are lousy in bed.
They will do anything it’s true.
And the skin is beautifully cared for.
But they have no sense of it. They are
all manner and amazing technique.
I lie with them thinking of your
foolish excess, of you panting
and sweating, and your eyes after.

Nizar Quabbani: I Want To Write Different Words For You

I want to write different words for you
To invent a language for you alone
To fit the size of your body
And the size of my love.

I want to travel away from the dictionary
And to leave my lips
I am tired of my mouth
I want a different one
Which can change
Into a cherry tree or a match box,
A mouth from which words can emerge
Like nymphs from the sea,
Like white chicks jumping from the magician’s hat.

-- Translated from the Arabic by Bassam K. Frangieh and Clementina R. Brown.

Závada Péter: Bűnjel [3]

Reggelre kihûlt a helyed,

belepte valami nyirkos és hideg,
mint a hó azt a szürke foltot,
amit az autók hagynak.
Nem tudom, te hiányzol-e,
vagy csak az, hogy eszembe juss
- emlékszel, amikor az építkezésen
üveggyapotba tenyereltem,
napokig nem tudtam eldönteni,
hogy egy szilánk szúr-e, vagy már
csak a helye. Pedig én próbálom
kitapogatni a közösen eltöltött
idõt, mint egy villanykapcsolót
a sötétben. A sötétség mélyén
azt az ismerõs arcot. Összerakhatatlan.
De te a kezem ügyében hagytad
a harapófogót, hogy megtanuljam,
milyen hideg lehet egy terpesz.
Mélyen a bõröm alatt viszketsz.
Üveggyapotba törülközni.

Margaret Atwood: Hesitations outside the door

1
I’m telling the wrong lies,
they are not even useful.
The right lies would at least
be keys, they would open the door.
The door is closed; the chairs,
the tables, the steel bowl, myself
shaping bread in the kitchen, wait
outside it.

2
That was a lie also,
I could go in if I wanted to.
Whose house is this
we both live in
but neither of us owns
How can I be expected
to find my way around
I could go in if I wanted to,
that’s not the point, I don’t have time,
I should be doing something
other than you.

3
What do you want from me
you who walk towards me over the long floor
your arms outstretched, your heart
luminous through the ribs
around your head a crown
of shining blood
This is your castle, this is your metal door,
these are your stairs, your
bones, you twist all possible
dimensions into your own

4
Alternate version: you advance
through the grey streets of this house,
the walls crumble, the dishes
thaw, vines grow
on the softening refrigerator
I say, leave me
alone, this is my winter,
I will stay here if I choose
You will not listen
to resistances, you cover me
with flags, a dark red
season, you delete from me
all other colours

5
Don’t let me do this to you
you are not those other people,
you are yourself
Take off the signatures, the false
bodies, this love
which does not fit you
This is not a house, there are no doors,
get out while it is
open, while you still can

6
If we make stories for each other
about what is in the room
we will never have to go in.
You say: my other wives
are in there, they are all
beautiful and happy, they love me, why
disturb them
I say: it is only
a cupboard, my collection
of envelopes, my painted
eggs, my rings
In your pockets the thin women
hang on their hooks, dismembered
Around my neck I wear
the head of the beloved, pressed
in the metal retina like a picked flower

7
Should we go into it
together / If I go into it
with you I will never come out
If I wait outside I can salvage
this house or what is left
of it, I can keep
my candles, my dead uncles
my restrictions
but you will go
alone, either
way is loss
Tell me what it is for
In the room we will find nothing
In the room we will find each other

Rumi: Begin

This is now. Now is. Don’t

postpone till then. Spend
the spark of iron on stone.
Sit at the head of the table;
dip your spoon in the bowl.
Seat yourself next to your joy
and have your awakened soul
pour wine. Branches in the
spring wind, easy dance of
jasmine and cypress. Cloth
for green robes has been cut
from pure absence. You’re
the tailor, settled among his
shop goods, quietly sewing.