Παρασκευή 31 Αυγούστου 2012

Denise Levertov - μετρώντας τις λέξεις τους στις τσέπες μας


September 1961

This is the year the old ones,
the old great ones
leave us alone on the road.

The road leads to the sea.
We have the words in our pockets,
obscure directions. The old ones

have taken away the light of their presence,
we see it moving away over a hill
off to one side.

They are not dying,
they are withdrawn
into a painful privacy

learning to live without words.
E. P. "It looks like dying"--Williams: "I can't
describe to you what has been

happening to me"--
H. D. "unable to speak."
The darkness

twists itself in the wind, the stars
are small, the horizon
ringed with confused urban light-haze.

They have told us
the road leads to the sea,
and given

the language into our hands.
We hear
our footsteps each time a truck

has dazzled past us and gone
leaving us new silence.
One can't reach

the sea on this endless
road to the sea unless
one turns aside at the end, it seems,

follows
the owl that silently glides above it
aslant, back and forth,

and away into deep woods.

But for us the road
unfurls itself, we count the
words in our pockets, we wonder

how it will be without them, we don't
stop walking, we know
there is far to go, sometimes

we think the night wind carries
a smell of the sea...

Βιογραφικό και ποίηση της Levertov
 

6 σχόλια:

  1. The Secret
    by Denise Levertov


    Two girls discover
    the secret of life
    in a sudden line of
    poetry.

    I who don't know the
    secret wrote
    the line. They
    told me

    (through a third person)
    they had found it
    but not what it was
    not even

    what line it was. No doubt
    by now, more than a week
    later, they have forgotten
    the secret,

    the line, the name of
    the poem. I love them
    for finding what
    I can't find,

    and for loving me
    for the line I wrote,
    and for forgetting it
    so that

    a thousand times, till death
    finds them, they may
    discover it again, in other
    lines

    in other
    happenings. And for
    wanting to know it,
    for

    assuming there is
    such a secret, yes,
    for that
    most of all.

    ΑπάντησηΔιαγραφή
  2. By Emily Dickinson

    We play at paste,
    till qualified for pearl,
    then drop the paste,
    and deem ourself a fool.
    The shapes, though, were similar,
    and our new hands
    learned gem-tactics
    practising sands.


    και αυτό

    I had no time to hate, because
    the grave would hinder me,
    and life was not so ample I
    could finish enmity.

    Nor had I time to love, but since
    some industry must be,
    the little toil of love, I thought,
    was large enough for me.

    ΑπάντησηΔιαγραφή
  3. Levertov writes as both a maker and a seer, as a proponent of both scrupulous craftsmanship and organic form, whereby 'the poet can discover and reveal' the form that is in all things. Her poem 'September 1961' celebrates 'the old great ones', specifically Pound, Williams, and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), whilst elsewhere she names Duncan and Creeley 'as the chief poets among my contemporaries'; and, very roughly to locate her, it might be said that, just as she is more etherially inclined than Williams or Creeley, so she is more materially grounded than H.D. or Duncan.

    ΑπάντησηΔιαγραφή
  4. ΤΙ ΘΑ ΓΙΝΕΙ; ΠΕΡΙΜΕΝΟΥΜΕ ΤΗΝ ΕΠΟΜΕΝΗ ΑΝΑΡΤΗΣΗ ΕΔΩ ΚΑΙ ΒΔΟΜΑΔΕΣ!

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  5. Προς "Ανώνυμο 22 Οκτωβρίου 2012":
    Δοκίμασε εδώ: http://www.zellits.gr/bilstein.php

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  6. ΑΛΙΜΟΝΟ ΣΕ ΑΥΤΟΝ ΤΟΝ ΔΙΑΦΗΜΙΖΟΜΕΝΟ

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