[Lika_k]

Emily Dickinson
Complete Poems. 1924.
Part One: Life
XCII
Drowning is not so pitiful
As the attempt to rise.
Three times, ’t is said, a sinking man
Comes up to face the skies,
And then declines forever
To that abhorred abode

Where hope and he part company,—
For he is grasped of God.
The Maker’s cordial visage,
However good to see,
Is shunned, we must admit it,
Like an adversity.

@темы: d, 19, english-american, dickinson, emily

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[Lika_k]

Emily Dickinson
Complete Poems. 1924.
Part One: Life
XC
To venerate the simple days
Which lead the seasons by,
Needs but to remember
That from you or me
They may take the trifle
Termed mortality!

To invest existence with a stately air,
Needs but to remember
That the acorn there
Is the egg of forests
For the upper air!

@темы: d, 19, english-american, dickinson, emily

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[Lika_k]

Ezra Pound
Collected Shorter Poems (Faber and Faber, 1973)
Cathay (1915)
The Jewel Stairs' Grievance*
The jewelled steps are already quite white with dew,
It is so late that the dew soaks my gauze stockings,
And I let down the crystal curtain
And watch the moon through the clear autumn.

By Rihaku (Li Pai)

* Jewel stairs, therefore a palace. Grievance, therefore there is something to complain of. Gauze stockings, therefore a court lady, not a servant who complains. Clear autumn, therefore he has no excuse on account of weather. Also she has come early, for the dew has not merely whitened the stairs, but has soaked her stockings. The poem is especially prized because she utters no direct reproach.

@темы: chinese, 8, r, l, p, 20, eastern, english-american, pound, ezra

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[Lika_k]

Ezra Pound
Collected Shorter Poems (Faber and Faber, 1973)
Lustra
April
Nympharum membra disjecta
Three spirits came to me
And drew me apart
To where the olive boughs
Lay stripped upon the ground:
Pale carnage beneath bright mist.

Instead of enjoying April as the philistines of every nationality do with babbling vitality, melting hearts and roaring erections, Pound’s lyrical hero gives himself over to the three spirits to pull him apart into identification with dead nature victimized by winter. Instead of praising the “bright mist” by hot tears of spring hope he perceives it as a shroud of corpses of the life’s victims – the poet eccentrically, absurdly refuses to forget about “pale carnage” beneath the surface of life. This depersonalization of the poet’s psyche keeps it intact from the repressive vigor of living imposed on human beings, and instead allows him to keep his creative need alive. Spirituality here is depicted as identification with death through fragmentation. )

@темы: antiquity, p, 20, english-american, pound, ezra

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[Lika_k]

Ezra Pound
Collected Shorter Poems (Faber and Faber, 1973)
Lustra
Surgit Fama*
There is a truce among the gods,
Kore** is seen in the North
Skirting the blue-gray sea
In gilded and russet mantle***.
The corn has again it's mother and she, Leuconoe****,
That failed never women,
Fails not the earth now.

The tricksome Hermes is here;
He moves behind me
Eager to catch my words,
Eager to spread them with rumour;
To set upon them his change
Crafty and subtle;
To alter them to his purpose;
But do thou speak true, even to the letter:

‘Once more in Delos, once more is the altar a-quiver*****.
Once more is the chant heard.
Once more are the never abandoned gardens
Full of gossip and old tales.’

*surgit fama - Latin - there is a rumour
**Kore - maiden esp. used of Persephone
***russet mantle - borrowed from "Hamlet" (I, i, 166f):
"But look, the morn in russet mantle clad,
Walks o'er the dew of yon, high eastern hill."
****Leuconoe - the girl appears in Horace (Odes, I, xi, 2).
*****alrar a-quiver - a sign that a deity is approaching (Callumachus, Hymns, II, 1-2)
(c)

@темы: c, s, antiquity, p, 20, h, mythology, shakespeare, citatus, english-american, pound ezra

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[Lika_k]

Ezra Pound
Collected Shorter Poems (Faber and Faber, 1973)
Rome
From the French of Joachim du Bellay
"Troica Roma resurges" — Propertius[, Elegies IV,I, 087]

O thou newcomer who seek—st Rome in Rome
And find—st in Rome no thing thou canst call Roman;
Arches worn old and palaces made common
Rome—s name alone within these walls keeps home.

Behold how pride and ruin can befall
One who hath set the whole world —neath her laws,
All-conquering, now conquered, because
She is Time—s prey, and Time conquereth all.

Rome that art Rome—s one sole last monument,
Rome that alone hast conquered Rome the town,
Tiber alone, transient and seaward bent,

Remains of Rome. O world, thou unconstant mime!
That which stands firm in thee Time batters down,
And that which fleeteth doth outrun swift Time.

@темы: b, d, 16, p, 20, francaise, english-american, pound, ezra

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[Lika_k]

Ezra Pound
Collected Shorter Poems (Faber and Faber, 1973)
Prayer for His Lady's Life
From Propertius, Elegiae, Lib. III, 26

Here let thy clemency, Persephone, hold firm,
Do thou, Pluto, bring here no greater harshness.
So many thousand beauties are gone down to Avernus,
Ye Might let one remain above with us.

With you is Iope, with you the white-gleaming Tyro,
With you is Europa and the shameless Pasiphae,
And all the fair from Troy and all from Achaia,
From the sundered realms, of Thebes and of aged Priamus;
And all the maidens of Rome, as many as they were,
They died and the greed of your flame consumes them.

Here let thy clemency, Persephone, hold firm,
Do thou, Pluto, bring here no greater harshness.
So many thousand fair are gone down to Avernus,
Ye might let one remain above with us.

@темы: antiquity, p, 20, english-american, pound, ezra

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[Lika_k]

Langston Hughes
Dream Variations
To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me—
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening . . .
A tall, slim tree . . .
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.

@темы: 20, h, english-american, harlem renaissance

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[Lika_k]

Sylvia Plath
Lorelei
It is no night to drown in:
A full moon, river lapsing
Black beneath bland mirror-sheen,

The blue water-mists dropping
Scrim after scrim like fishnets
Though fishermen are sleeping,

The massive castle turrets
Doubling themselves in a glass
All stillness. Yet these shapes float

Up toward me, troubling the face
Of quiet. From the nadir
They rise, their limbs ponderous

With richness, hair heavier
Than sculpted marble. They sing
Of a world more full and clear

Than can be. Sisters, your song
Bears a burden too weighty
For the whorled ear’s listening

Here, in a well-steered country,
Under a balanced ruler.
Deranging by harmony

Beyond the mundane order,
Your voices lay siege. You lodge
On the pitched reefs of nightmare,

Promising sure harborage;
By day, descant from borders
Of hebetude, from the ledge

Also of high windows. Worse
Even than your maddening
Song, your silence. At the source

Of your ice-hearted calling—
Drunkenness of the great depths.
O river, I see drifting

Deep in your flux of silver
Those great goddesses of peace.
Stone, stone, ferry me down there.

(from "The Colossus and Other Poems", 1960)

@темы: p, 20, english-american, plath, sylvia