[An example of the geographic & cultural range
of English-language writing, this one a recent work. from the Georgian poet and
translator Irakli Qolbaia. Qolbaia, who
has appeared earlier in Poems and Poetics, writes elsewhere of the deep sources
of language & psyche“: “Could the
embrace of all languages and all consciousnesses not then be seen as only an
initial stage on the journey beyond the strictly human and into all-language /
all-psyche: vegetal-language, animal-language, night-language, dream-language?
If so, then I hope this may be our contribution to Paul Celan’s command: ‘there
are still songs to sing beyond mankind’. And, finally, in evoking dream or dream-language or dream-work,
I also have in mind Stevens’ ‘the vast ventriloquism of sleep’s faded
papier-mâché’ which, of course, ever leads to ‘a new knowledge of reality.’” What follows, here, is the latest instance
from his own work in English. (j.r.)]
Yesterday all cries where we lay
our hearts
to their
dead and everyone that met me struck me as
familiar
stranger they see me and cover their
face everyone I met another
and me
in
him at the place between me and myself
am by myself without me but quiet
quiet something is heard white
noise has increased too much
lately thickened, grown nothing ever knows
how to grow on its own and this feeling, misborn
mine,
towards you will grow so
much with what is missing
until “it overcomes the
ways of year and sun” Virgil
has these words for you I
have adorned with
hellebore the silence, where
your wound says, has
healed music unknown,
inscaped, otherous
inborn, as if all night long I’ve been listening
to your ear, when my feelings towards you are
over,
my misborn feeling for you the solstice of my life
will cradle the vision of
you as for now, my nightside is
breathing you-air
—I am up to this pain: am
adeep with it “I lose you to
you, that
is my snow
consolation” —your snow skin, a
honeysuckle to
your eyes, your deep scent its lavender flesh I wanted for
from you as grass in the summered
sun by my life
I kissed it, that scent, and it gave me
present hunger, though full
I am (as Will & Walt before us) “I find I contain gneiss
coal, longthreaded
moss, fruits,
grains esculent
roots /
and
am stucco’d with quadrupeds and
birds
all over” —in the garden,
where I slept, that which
was to disappear, wherein I
was
to disappear, the sun was borne, the rays
have flown, from the
garden, as rays has flown the garden, and returned
through the front, to
which it hooked itself
as threads, to my solar
plexus, the garden
spectre, I heard, rustled with grave steps —mirror
deepened
with our dreams?
no, my dreams are beyond the
mirror and only my
mourning deepens the
mirror we lay our
hearts to
their dead
où leur conscience d’etre soit moins
douloureuse when you lose everyone you hold
dear to you remember me so that
my waters can pass into
new vessels flow of animals
is expected if it be your will
take this cup from me
am I the healer or the
sickness
am I the healing
or
the rupture am I the solitude or
the multitude am I inspired or
am I the curse am I boundless
or am I
blindness am I boundless or
am I the bound
am as beautiful as
dream in stone
you shall be a swan
tonight, and question me
we lay our hearts to their dead
we cannot lay her in this cold earth,
say
all seven of them her in cold earth, the woman
that loved me for a night (“I shall tell you
of elsewhere that is
inside”) in the earth, where
I enwrapped my guirlande
inside hers’, my hair
in her occino in her dream-hair in winter’s
wet leaves her winter earth
grassscent cannot wake her, cannot take
my eyes off her, cannot
take my eyes off her I fail not to
look at her, must not to lend my
shoulder for her oreiller to lay her head I want
her to sleep, I want stones
I’d be for her, the stone where her heart
pounds and dream in stone of those who dead from stone
to dead from stone, to dead from
stone
to dead from stone
these dreams, the ones
I love each one of them a killing
dream in stone, lethal
stones in my way none of them am I willing to
get over
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