Dans le présent décomposé au passage de la disparue face à l’horizon tu mesures l’enfer la matière du deuil à peine murmurée comme au tournant d’une autre vie
Sphinx fuyant le soir à son approche plus vive présence tu creuses le chemin à ton pas la mesure indéchiffrable ouvre le balancier de tes jambes
Brûlure immédiate d’un même sang précipité ta nudité rieuse résonne au bout des doigts ultime étreinte hors des murets
Dons impalpables de l’écume j’ai reconnu l’intime ferment que sont les lignes jetées par le travers des heures vertige de haute mer une phrase s’obstine autant nuit que jour flamme acérée ce vers à ta bouche comme vague s’assemble
À son envol j’ai pris le large où vient battre la mer dans le bleu dévasté je veux aller boire où tant de signes ont naufragé
Olor a salitre de rocas abruptas labradas por las olas, cuando el alma al descubierto se encoge como escarcha en tu mano y mientras partes los latidos desaceleran.
Frío sobre el golfo de Génova, como la helada sonrisa que enmarca la despedida, inmutable. No es pasajero; ese viento lo llevas dentro, es la naturaleza que te reconoce sin mentiras.
El panorama puede sostener el universo por su belleza. Desalentador y sin refugio el sentimiento se serena, es la novia asombrada por la nieve entre sus párpados.
A stone from the Rio Verde engenders a river in my house flowing subterraneous beneath the carpet of the living room. A stone from the Rio Verde mocks our six faucets spitting their bits of water on the ceramic of our sinks. A stone from the Rio Verde laughs at the tiny territory where, imprisoned, I can’t stretch out laughs at my closed window a defense against the rain. A stone from the Rio Verde feels sorry for the caladiums in their potted exile. It despises the fan the pittance of its breeze. Dethrones all clocks so superficial in their handling of time. A stone from the Rio Verde bursts open my wooden doors and, returning to mother earth, sets me free again.
Awakened by a gradual loosening of sand between my fingers, by rough cryptic rubbings that red potatoes fill in creases belonging to my unwashed palms, by the sweet sighs crushed basil flowers expel behind the back of my nostrils, I stand inside myself. I know I sleep best when black soil crumbles its loose texture upward around the new sprouts of bean plants, but because I’m always so anxious knowing a tomato on its vine bulges with lightning inside its red heart of seeds, I can’t help but stay awake. So intent am I not to miss a thing, I even go so far as to disarm my alarm clock. Now I regularly observe fresh shallot greens shake the flowering moons of their lavender colored seeds across a warmth of damp black soil. When real quiet, I hear a tight brain inside an acorn make silence my first and last name. It appears for now I need nothing. All I have is all there is.
Meet you at the Osiris: a Parisian café in the American Wilderness
I live in the boondocks of upstate New York, just south of the Canadian border. From my deck I watch an Adirondack River flowing slowly towards Lake Champlain. For blue jays, cardinals, chickadees, Canadian geese, squirrels, chipmunks, ground hogs, deer, fox and beaver this is the place. For climbing mountains, kayaking streams, rivers, lakes, and reedy swamps, this is the place. For downhill or cross- country skiing, snowshoeing, autumn strolls on woodland paths, daily swims in local rivers and lakes, canoeing everywhere, if you can find a partner, this is the place, indeed. However, if you want to soak in culture, as you would be doing seated at a corner table at Les Deux Magots on St. Germain de Pres, forget it. You can’t get there from here.
Or maybe you can. For if you subscribe to Osiris, a modest, high quality international poetry magazine now in its fifty-second year, you might feel yourself part of the intellectual camaraderie of a Latin Quarter brasserie. Seated in your lonely abode in the American wilderness, when you pick up a copy of Osiris, you can nod with a smile of recognition at Simon Perchik, seated at his usual table with his usual café au lait. Across the way, you catch sight of Bob Moorhead, discussing graphic art and Post-surrealism with a wild-haired Frenchman on his third anis. Seated beside him is his wife, Andrea Moorhead, happy to be in the midst of the bustle, elegance, richness, and surging of languages, here in the café she established half a century ago. At the next table sits John Taylor, a long-term ex-pat writer and translator, married to and rooted in France, if not always Paris itself. And there’s the American poet, almost as old as you yourself, Paul Roth, publisher of Bitter Oleander Press, sipping from a straight-forward black coffee, steaming hot. And then you catch a glimpse of your old pal Gerald Chapple, seated alone with the ghost of the great Berliner Gunter Kunert, his long-term drinking buddy and intellectual confidante. And as you sip your hot chocolate, you revel in the languages flowing around you: the predominant French, of course, but also bits of Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Danish, and quite a lot of English, both from Americans and Brits.
How happy you are, as if seated in Les Deux Magots or Café de Flore, awash with the music of multiple languages and the intellectual buzz of people who believe that ideas and art still matter. And you can have all this while dwelling in the loneliness of the vast American expanse. Thank you, Andrea and Robert, for providing a home for those who never feel entirely at home.
Osiris Poetry 