(Will this change)
(It will)
(Will this change)
(It will)
(How about this)
(It won’t)
There I stood before an apple
How could I not be overjoyed?
An apple
Apple, apple
Which brought to earth the love of Adam
And Eve from the deception of paradise
It is love – that overcontested thing – that dictates these lines to me
Surely no one could ever return from such a sea
I knew that it was the Book of Wisdom
The Book was before me
I was sweating, sweating
I was crying
My tears were crystals that tinkled when they fell on the ground
Then the day sang by itself
In its flooding radiance
My wife whose hair
Whose thoughts
Whose waist
Whose mouth
Whose teeth
Whose tongue
Just as I
No sooner than
Just as you
No sooner than
The morning dewdrops over the grape
Are like a bird’s breathing
Mr Death limps down the road
Each sentence has to be the whole story
The whole orchestra
Risen
Up into the air
For dancing
After the storm
Mi gran dolor composed of joys
My arrhythmic heart
Careful with the human substance of poetry!
The tango is relentless
The embrace
Jumps ahead of all horizons
Entwining goes and goes
[Note: Sources: Miyazawa Kenji, “Sunlight and Withered Grass”, in Selections (ed. Hiroaki Sato); Visar Ziti, “The Condemned Apple”, in The Condemned Apple (tr. Robert Elsie); Paul Celan, letter to Gisele Celan-Lestrange, 14 January 1970, (tr. Pierre Joris) in Selections (ed. Pierre Joris); Ko Un, “Il-man’s Father”, in Ten Thousand Lives (tr. Brother Anthony of Taizé, Young-moo Kim, and Gary Gach); María Sabina, “The Life” (written with Álvaro Estrada), in Selections (ed. Jerome Rothenberg); Mario Luzi, Earthly and Heavenly Journey of Simone Martini (tr. Luigi Bonaffini); André Breton, “Free Union” (tr. David Antin, modified), in Selections (ed. Mark Polizotti); Charles Bernstein, “First Layer” of “VII. Stelae …”, in Shadowtime; José Lezama Lima, “The Neck”, in Selections (ed. Ernesto Livon-Grosman); Eleanor Antin/Yevgeny Antinova, The Man Without A World (slightly modified); Lyn Hejinian, My Life; Larry Eigner, “t h e w h o l e o r c h e s t r a” in readiness / enough / depends / on; César Vallejo, Aphorisms (tr. Stephen Kessler); Leslie Scalapino, “The Tango” (lightly rearranged, rewritten), in Day Ocean State Of Stars’ Night]
