Wislawa Szymborska: Untitled

 Poems  Tagged with:
Aug 222023
 

The best Polish poem of recent years.
Author unknown.
But certainly not poet A,
poet B, poet S.

The text is densely written
from right to left
and left to right
and from top to bottom
and bottom to top
and crosswise
and in tiny veinlets
up to the beautifully serrated edges.

The customs agent didn’t know the suspect code.
He just checked for letters,
seized books,
tossed photos,
shredded diplomas.

The best Polish poem of recent years ended up abroad.

And it can now be read against the light
in Vienna
in Toronto
in Haifa
in Amsterdam.

As with all true poetry –
it’s difficult to translate
into the leaflet of a different birch
from a different cemetery.


Translated by Clare Cavanagh

Plato: from Phaedrus

 Quotes  Tagged with:
Aug 222023
 

Yes, because there’s something odd about writing, Phaedrus, which makes it exactly like painting. The offspring of painting stand there as if alive, but if you ask them a question they maintain an aloof silence. It’s the same with written words: you might think they were speaking as if they had some intelligence, but if you want an explanation of any of the things they’re saying and you ask them about it, they just go on and on for ever giving the same single piece of information. Once any account has been written down, you find it all over the place, hobnobbing with completely inappropriate people no less than with those who understand it, and completely failing to know who it should and shouldn’t talk to. And faced with rudeness and unfair abuse it always needs its father to come to its assistance, since it is incapable of defending or helping itself.

– trans. Robin Waterfield

Plato: from Phaedrus

 Quotes
Aug 222023
 

SOCRATES: All right. The story I heard is set in Naucratis in Egypt, where there was one of the ancient gods of Egypt—the one to whom the bird they call the ‘ibis’ is sacred, whose name is Theuth. This deity was the inventor of number, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, of games involving draughts and dice—and especially of writing. At the time, the king of the whole of Egypt around the capital city of the inland region (the city the Greeks call “Egyptian Thebes”), was Thamous, or Amon, as the Greeks call him. Theuth came to Thamous and showed him the branches of expertise he had invented, and suggested that they should be spread throughout Egypt. Thamous asked him what good each one would do, and subjected Theuth’s explanations to criticism if he thought he was going wrong and praise if thought he was right. The story goes that Thamous expressed himself at length to Theuth about each of the branches of expertise, both for and against them. It would take a long time to go through all Thamous’ views, but when it was the turn of writing, Theuth said, “Your highness, this science will increase the intelligence of the people of Egypt and improve their memories. For this invention is a potion for memory and intelligence.” But Thamous replied, “You are most ingenious, Theuth. But one person has the ability to bring branches of expertise into existence, another to assess the extent to which they will harm or benefit those who use them. The loyalty you feel to writing, as its originator, has just led you to tell me the opposite of its true effect. It will atrophy people’s memories. Trust in writing will make them remember things by relying on marks made by others, from outside themselves, not on their own inner resources, and so writing will make the things they have learnt disappear from their minds. Your invention is a potion for jogging the memory, not for remembering. You provide your students with the appearance of intelligence, not real intelligence. Because your students will be widely read, though without any contact with a teacher, they will seem to be men of wide knowledge, when they will usually be ignorant. And this spurious appearance of intelligence will make them difficult company.”

PHAEDRUS: Socrates, it doesn’t take much for you to make up stories from Egypt and anywhere else in the world you feel like.

A. E. Stallings: Leaving the Island

 Poems  Tagged with:
Aug 222023
 

for JP


Packing up, we are out of sorts,
And speak as two who’ve never loved.
The chores come due like book reports;
Kids shrug and shirk. At last you’ve shoved

Into the trunk the broken bike
(Which has to be repaired in town)
You shouldered on a mountain hike
Because the gears jammed halfway down

And you’re ill-slept – the blessed cat
That can’t tell time, except for dawn,
Pawed you awake. The thermostat
That starts your runny nose is on;

But only yesterday you stood
On a ladder in the orange tree
And picked – as many as you could
Globes from our golden orrery.

You lift them, and just now, by chance
The bulging sack seems to explode,
And in a mad, atomic dance
They jump in bright arcs down the road.

Your anger stutters into curse;
But for the bike, you’d slam the trunk.
I know to laugh would make it worse.
(Whole marriages that way are sunk.)

Out of our hands, our labours spill,
Irretrievable and sweet,
Faster and farther down the hill.
The day’s catastrophe complete,

Yet aren’t we lightened by an ounce
As our misgivings veer amiss?
My heart leaps as the oranges bounce
Ungovernable as happiness.

Emily Bronte: The Old Stoic

 Poems  Tagged with:
Aug 032023
 

Riches I hold in light esteem,
And Love I laugh to scorn;
And lust of Fame was but a dream
That vanished with the morn –

And if I pray, the only prayer
That moves my lips for me
Is – ‘Leave the heart that now I bear.
And give me liberty.’

Yes, as my swift days near their goal,
’Tis all that I implore –
Through life and death, a chainless soul,
With courage to endure!