Recalculating Read online

  26. The gap in agape.

  27. “Rob sees red when Laura goes blond.”

  28. The savage wilderness of the desert.

  29. All problems of language are problems of translation.

  30. “Running on empty.”

  31. Arakawa / Gins: “Forming Blank” (tube / twisted tube / )

  31. Fill in the blank: , ,

  31. Blanched but not bowed.

  31. Waldrop’s paradox: The only one who can judge the translation knows both languages and so can’t judge it.

  31. “DU CALME:

  Poetry makes nothing happen”

  (Rogélio Lopez Cuenca)

  31. Poetry fakes nothing actually.

  31.

  31.

  YOU SAY INSIPID, I SAY INSCRIPSIT

  for Peter Quartermain

  Oh, bring me some mentastrum

  Mentastrum for my cold

  A long cool draft in the morning

  By night the goose is gold

  Caipirinha, caipirinha all the day long

  Till shadow ensnares the turtledove

  & all the children bend their way alone

  [“TO EMPTY EARTH FALLING UNWILLED”]

  To empty earth falling unwilled,

  With sweet uneven gait, she goes,

  Just barely keeping ahead

  Of a quick girl and young brother.

  She is propelled by the stifled freedom

  Of inspiring deficiency;

  And, perhaps, a lucent conjecture

  Delaying in her gait:

  About how spring’s weather

  Is, for us, mother to the tomb,

  And this, eternal, ever begins.

  4 May 1937

  Osip Mandelstam

  translated with Kevin Platt

  A LONG TIME ’TIL YESTERDAY

  In starts and flits

  We dart and flip

  With quirks and fits

  Mirroring mist

  JOINT DARK ENERGY MISSION

  plunges & remains submerged

  plunges & expires

  plunges & resurfaces

  plunges & liquidates

  plunges & flips

  plunges & fails to accelerate

  plunges & separates

  plunges & returns

  plunges & transmogrifies

  plunges & tilts

  plunges & disintegrates

  plunges & beckons

  plunges & bellows

  plunges & cracks

  plunges & disappears

  plunges & aborts

  plunges & splinters

  plunges & disarms probe

  plunges & tears

  plunges & spins

  plunges & sputters

  plunges & sinks

  plunges & diffuses

  plunges & depixilates

  plunges & melts

  plunges & transmigrates

  plunges & powers off

  plunges & combusts

  plunges & hits bottom

  plunges & drifts

  plunges & mimes

  plunges & militates

  plunges & mutates

  plunges & remains

  plunges & ascends

  plunges & despairs

  plunges & pirouettes

  plunges & regrets

  plunges & gets scared

  plunges & allures

  plunges & detours

  plunges & descends

  plunges & makes amends

  plunges & distorts

  plunges & reports

  plunges & repeats

  plunges & spirals

  plunges & sweats

  plunges & tires

  plunges & warps

  plunges & accelerates

  plunges & explodes

  plunges & demagnetizes

  plunges & dematerializes

  plunges & weeps

  plunges & reperfuses

  plunges & turns blue

  plunges & detonates

  plunges & detoxifies

  plunges & festers

  plunges & bends

  plunges & bifurcates

  plunges & bewilders

  plunges & sways

  plunges & swells

  plunges & bursts

  plunges & hurts

  plunges & deflates

  plunges & replicates

  plunges & rips

  plunges & multiplies

  plunges & remains submerged

  TO A BEGGING REDHEAD

  Palish girl with reddish hair

  You whose dress’s holes

  Expose poverty

  And beauty,

  For me, weak poet,

  Your meek body, speckled

  With sickly red freckles,

  Is completely sweet

  You wear with more charm

  Than queens in yarns

  Your velvet boots,

  Such heavy brutes;

  Instead of a shoddy rag’s mess

  You’d have a super party dress

  With noisy pleats that trail

  All the way to your heels

  Instead of stocking holes

  On your legs: daggers of gold

  To blind the suaves

  Whose gazes enslave

  As a bad knot open lies

  Disclosing for our sinning sighs

  Two beautiful breasts, radiant

  As your eyes;

  So that for you to undress

  Your arms are pressed to pray

  To chase away treacherous play

  Of lecher’s fingers

  Pearls from the most beautiful waters

  Sonnets from the master’s coffers

  From your gallants in iron chains

  Who make incessant offers

  Valets of rime

  Dedicating to you their prime

  And contemplating your shoes

  On a sunset cruise

  Many a page caged by chance

  Many a haute rage of France

  Would vie to deduce

  If your price is reduced!

  You will count in your bed

  More kisses than threads

  And will lure under your laws

  More than a Louis Quatorze

  —In the meantime, you go scrounging

  Whatever old debris falls

  Outside the door of some

  Not so grand Véfour;

  You go eyeing, desiring

  Some gems worth maybe 29 cents

  That still I can’t—forgive me!—

  Give you;

  Go then, without ornament—

  Perfume, pearls, diamond—

  Other than your bare nudity,

  O, my beauty!

  Charles Baudelaire, “À une Mendiante Rousse” (1857)

  THE MOMENT IS YOU

  You know you’re old when the people who look old to you are younger than you are.

  You know you’re old when the crank case works better than the crank.

  You know you’re old when the nights are longer and the sleep shorter.

  You know you’re old when tarpaulin covers the boiler plate.

  You know you’re old when screams are seen but not heard.

  You know you’re old when the gray sky holds promise.

  You know you’re old when silken erasures haunt the morning light.

  You know you’re old when dust settles on dust.

  You know you’re old when laughter mocks its own reprise.

  You know you’re old when loss precedes purpose.

  You know you’re old when lilacs languish in lard.

  You know you’re old when maybe means never.

  You know you’re old when tessellation embroiders larceny.

  You know you’re old when the blue is greener and the dew evaporated.

  You know you’re old when the old battles seem inevitable.

  You know you’re old when the next step is harsher than the last.

  You know you’re
old when the wail of regret cripples the harp of inscrutability.

  You know you’re old when the avalanche of inconsequence evaporates in fields of empty promise.

  You know you’re old when all that is fated rises up before your eyes like steam from a man hole.

  You know you’re old when each hour awaits and days are fugitive.

  You know you’re old when manners replace methods.

  You know you’re old when dreams remind you of summer reruns.

  You know you’re old when time past becomes the days ahead.

  You know you’re old when you think that the handprints of Pech-Merle and Lascaux were made by your children.

  You know you’re old when you feel you need to highlight your hair with gray so you will look more distinguished.

  You know you’re old when you can read these words.

  You know you’re old when your knowledge separates itself from your experience.

  You know you’re old when the tyranny of the present obscures the masquerade.

  You know you’re old when indelible marks melt like icicles.

  You know you’re old when everything new seems retrofitted and the established monuments hang like discarded shoes on an electrical wire.

  You know you’re old when the moments are precious but the hours leaden.

  You know you’re old when innocence is shrouded in experience.

  You know you’re old when you can see yourself in the mirror but yourself cannot see you.

  You know you’re old when the long-time haunts seemed changed for the worse.

  You know you’re old when light is useless against dark and winter refuses to cede its hold.

  You know you’re old when time served is a life sentence.

  You know you’re old when even the limelight is dim.

  You know you’re old when limits define you.

  You know you’re old when sentiment is ambient and ambience intoxicates.

  You know you’re old when memento eclipses memory.

  You know you’re old when the bright light of history blinds you.

  You know you’re old when your accomplishments are like morning dew.

  You know you’re old when you see sun and thank shadows.

  THIS POEM IS IN FINNISH

  Translate it by toggling here

  While I remain in English, either stranded

  Or as one drunken and wheeled to a paddy

  Wagon. There was a time I drank blueberry

  Wine but that was long ago and my powers

  Of recollection are still too strong to forget.

  As one overcome by waves of wanton flash-

  Backs, acid dreams of moments all too real,

  Finds himself mirrored by the mind of a very

  Little boy trapped in the body of an old man.

  BREATHTAILS

  a song cycle in 13 breaths for Anne LeBaron

  · · · 1 · · ·

  My breath

  had already settled

  on the windows

  of eternity

  I go on but

  only in flits

  and stops

  to hear myself

  unsettling

  as I

  settled in

  as I go on

  pressed against

  the windowpane

  when even

  as I stop

  the pane presses

  against me.

  · · · 2 · · ·

  The world passed

  or I passed it

  as I live and breathe

  no one saw it

  coming

  no one coming saw it

  as I breathed I lived

  the world passes by

  or I passed it by

  the world I passed by

  passed by me

  · · · 3 · · ·

  Breath is the door

  from life to death

  on the border of

  hearing I hear not hearing

  on the border of

  death and life

  hear not hearing

  · · · 4 · · ·

  In breathless anticipation

  I catch my breath

  then fall under

  the spell of

  respiratory arrest

  trial by

  rhythmic disturbance

  I lose my breath

  in anticipation of

  spell of

  arrest, trial by

  disturbance

  catch my breathless

  anticipation

  under

  arrest

  · · · 5 · · ·

  I am breathing in long

  (he trains himself)

  or breathing out long

  (she discerns)

  or breathing in short

  (she trains herself)

  or breathing out short

  (he discerns)

  I will breathe inconstantly

  (he demurs)

  mindless of time and space

  (she protests)

  I will breathe in without hope

  (mindlessly)

  I will breathe out in despair

  (mindfully)

  I will breathe out in despair

  (mindfully)

  I will breathe in without hope

  (mindlessly)

  mindless of time and space

  (she protests)

  I will breathe inconstantly

  (he demurs)

  or breathing out short

  (he discerns)

  or breathing in short

  (she trains herself)

  or breathing out long

  (she discerns)

  I am breathing in long

  (he trains himself)

  · · · 6 · · ·

  strident, berserk, & artless

  putting aside need & care

  (with reference to the work)

  artless, berserk, and strident

  neither here nor there

  (with reference to the work)

  ardent, alert, and mindful

  putting aside grief and tare

  (with reference to the work)

  · · · 7 · · ·

  breath

  settled

  on

  eternity

  but

  only

  stops

  only

  to

  unsettling

  as

  as

  in

  pressed

  the

  the

  when

  as

  the

  the

  · · · 8 · · ·

  eth

  ettle

  on

  etern

  ut

  nly

  ops

  o

  tling

  as

  sss

  ess

  whe

  as

  th

  th

  as

  whe

  ess

  sss

  as

  · · · 9 · · ·

  tling

  o

  ops

  nly

  tu

  etern

  ut

  gnilt

  ettle

  eth

  hte

  ettle

  etern

  eltte

  ut

  nly

  tu

  ops

  o

  tling

  spo

  · · · 10 · · ·

  shivering in August

  shouting at the rain

  sleepy at noon

  pummeled, frayed

  no fences to guide me

  neither to the nays

  sense don’t hide me

  flushed in haze

  hopes at half mast

  fear rumples waves

  catch a glimpse of heat
her

  cut it out before it blows away

  · · · 11 · · ·

  1 is the ameliorative co-opt

  2 is get even fast

  3 is the liberal’s nostalgia

  4 is sufficient unto the day but on sale every night

  5 or more has 20 percent service added automatically

  6 is the smallest perfect number

  7 is the loneliest number & cries itself to sleep each night

  8 fibs even when sincerity is easier

  9’s the end of the line

  10’s too cool to be cool

  11 runs like rivers under the night

  12 is all over before it started

  13 is beloved of all incongruous saints

  14 is for flat tax

  15 likes compote with apricots

  16 is sweetly silent on 17

  17 won’t say

  18’s twice the sum of its digits

  19 is still too young to die

  20 is Uncle Max’s favorite

  21 is the smallest distance from here to there

  · · · 12 · · ·

  shivering August

  shouting frayed

  fences hide

  flushed haze

  hopes masked

  fear’s waves

  glimpse heather

  blows away

  masked fences

  frayed glimpse

  August hopes

  hide haze

  flushed fear

  masked waves

  heather fences

  shivering fray

  fear’s way

  shivering rays

  slows flush

  low August

  asked lush

  · · · 13 · · ·

  Everything we are

  the air, the

  sky that falls

  into our mouths

  the passing of

  day into sobs

  of night belies

  the fact in

  the name of

  substance, motion, rhythmic

  erasure, as if

  the food we

  eat replaces the

  fools we are

  the air, the

  everything we take

  as fake, as

  real, gains substance

  in its absence

  the air the

  relocates rhythmic erasure

  into mouths passing

  falls, fooled as

  we are by

  the care we

  are, or will

  become, in the

  name of sky

  that falls as

  if name of

  night sobs in

  its absence, the

  fool belies, or

  will become, the

  name of, sobs.

  THE JEW

  for Jerome Rothenberg at 80

  The town is in a terrible commotion and the mayor and his counselors are in despair. They ask the Jew for advice. “This commotion is a sign that your town is doing better than the town to the north and the town to the east. Give a banquet to honor those who have done the most to bring about this state of affairs.”

  The Jew comes upon a couple in violent argument. “Stop! You are both wrong.”