MISAPPROPRIATIONS / MISTRANSLATIONS
NOTHING MUCH - Sometimes ... I would turn words into a flock of birds ... and scatter them (with a clap of hands) across the sea-meadow ... that gorgeous distance between things ... sending them towards you ... Other times ... I would turn words into swaying sea grasses ... into things ... things haunted by that small, blue distance in every-thing ... into things moved by invisible currents ... currents that connect everything ... Time (and time again) ... I have poured my spirit into words that circle back ... a raining fire ... that falls over me ... bringing Autumn ... sublime October ... And sometimes I embrace silence ... a silence that descends over everything and nothing ... because ... because ... that silence is so beautiful ... an absent beautiful sublime some-thing ... a small, blue nothing in everything ... Oftimes it seems necessary to embrace nothing ... to find everything ... borrowed landscapes ... borrowed words ... words (quite literally) always on loan ...
ORPHISME - "She read a poem by Baudelaire / Sitting naked in a chair / Her perfume filled the holy air / And eased my tired heart" (--Geldof, "Sex, Age and Death" ...) ... And ... Orphism (Orphisme ...) ... defined by Apollinaire (Wilhelm Apollinaris de Kostrowitzky ...) ... Italian-born French poet and critic ... "bold color, the dynamic, prismatic juxtaposition and overlapping of nonobjective geometric forms and planes, and a lightness and lyricism dissociated from its cubist origins ..." ... I need the temporal trade winds of lyrical abstractions ... the ur-formalist tonic ... but with passion intact ... elemental passions (passiones elementaires) ... the perfumed 'holy air' ... the symbolist insurrection ... the poetic-divine heresy ... the blood-red wine ... signals from the celestial world (not smouldering fires on the beach ...) ... [...] Passion takes many forms ... a poem, a song, a landscape, a dream, a small green seed, a lie, words circling words, a winged cloud ... tears ... an aimless drifting ... a pointed argument ... a distance within distance ... a beautiful kiss on the forehead ... the lightest touch ... the shock of recognition ... a journey into the underworld ... a lost cause ... a golden thread ... [...] --GK (08/11/03)
Je sais je sais tout est à faire
[Yes yes I know everything is to be done]
Dans ce siècle où la mort campait
[In this century of death]
Et va voir dans la stratosphère
[And we'll see in the stratosphere]
Si c'est la paix
[If it is peace]
Éteint ici là-bas qui couve
[Brooding faintly here below]
Le feu court on voit bien comment
[Corrupted fire is deemed praiseworthy]
Quelqu'un toujours donne à la louve
[Someone always provides this ravenous beast]
Un logement
[Shelter]
Quelqu'un toujours quelque part rêve[Someone some-where always dreams]
Sur la table d'être le poing
[Above the table a clenched fist]
Et sous le manteau de la trêve
[And under the cloak of the truce]
Il fait le point
[It makes its point]
[...]
C'est la paix qui force le crime
[It is only peace which forces the crime]
À s'agenouiller dans l'aveu
[To kneel down in acknowledgement]
Et qui crie avec les victimes
[And to cry with the victims]
Cessez le feu
[Cease fire]
Louis Aragon (1954)
Gavin Keeney (2003)
Goodbye Post-Modern Nihilism?
