Eidolons: Ill of the Moon

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Ill of the Moon

I am grieved
that I must speak ill
of the moon.
I have nightly watched it wane
and wax back to full
since we conspired between those mirrors...
and you snared me with your smile.
Yet no phase,
however brilliant,
has served to distract,
or made me less alone.
Oh, you have been a constant
inhabiter of my thoughts.
The third quarter
drew the sweetest torment;
you rocked me
-- dear apparition--
and kissed my lips;
then sunk down smiling
beneath the horizon;
riding on the moon.
I arose possessing sighs
that stretched out for miles;
All the distance between
my cup of tea
and your abandoned cigarette--
they reached to wipe the ashes from your hands;
they reached to run their fingers through your hair;
they reached for the moon.

7-6-09

1 comment:

Hector4CNovember 8, 2009 at 10:14 AM
mmm I like
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Walking Around

It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie
houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.

The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse
sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.

It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.

Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don't want so much misery.
I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.

That's why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the
night.

And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist
houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.

There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical
cords.

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic
shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.

Translated by Robert Bly

Pablo Neruda

Eidolons

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Ill of the Moon

1 comment:

Walking Around

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