THE RUNNER
On a flat road runs the well-train'd runner,
He is lean and sinewy with muscular legs,
He is thinly clothed, he leans forward as he runs
With lightly closed fists and arms partially rais'd.
--Walt Whitman [1867]
Leaves of Grass
Poets to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater
than before known,
Arouse! for you must justify me.
I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,
I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back
in the darkness.
I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping,
turns a casual look upon you and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you.
--Walt Whitman [1860]
Leaves of Grass
At the bridge I stood
lately in the brown night.
From afar came a song:
as a golden drop it welled
over the quivering surface.
Gondolas, lights, and music --
drunken it swam out into the twilight.
My soul, a stringed instrument,
sang to itself, invisibly touched,
a secret gondola song,
quivering with iridescent happiness.
-- Did anyone listen to it?
--Friedrich Nietzsche [1888]
Ecce Homo [trans. Walter Kaufmann]
The wind will not favor me
if I shut the window,
and the jackals will go to another mountain
if I slam the shutters.
The stars will look down in anger
if I close my eyes,
and the moon will rage at me
if I don't go down to the sea.
That's why I sit on shore,
tide wailing through me,
the storm's tongues
lapping
my scorched eyes.
--T. Carmi [1983]
At the Stone of Losses [trans. Grace Schulman]
It's hard for two conches to have a serious talk.
Each one pays attention to its own sea.
Only a pearl-diver or an antique-dealer
can state without hesitation: the same sea.
--T. Carmi [1976]
Selected Poems: T. Carmi & Dan Pagis [trans. Stephen Mitchell]
1
I burned your letter.
It's autumn now.
Tatters of bark hang
from the eucalyptus trunk,
like clothes that are out of style.
I piled up its leaves; it flamed,
changed to ashes.
Then I took off my shoes, sat
for seven days and seven nights,
waiting for the little phoenix
to rustle its wings.
Oh I shall brood over these ashes
until my soul takes flight.
2
A scrap of shoulder,
part of an ear,
an eye like a grape.
All have joined in a sudden
plot to deceive me.
I go on putting you together
like a jigsaw puzzle.
I go on calculating
you and the end of days.
Soon you will be held in my hands,
redeemed,
whole.
3
Now the clocks are changing:
your time is carried on the waves,
skips like a dolphin.
Mine trudges upon heavy earth.
What happens to sundials at night?
What happens to hourglasses
and angel-wings in water?
But when you tell me,
I'll tell you how many grains
of sand, and how many stars,
and how much the time is.
4
I'm sending you many words today,
equipped with light and air and emergency
oxygen masks.
But they have a long way to go,
and who knows
if they've got enough wind.
When they reach you, my love,
you may have to revive them,
mouth to mouth.
--T. Carmi [1971]
Selected Poems: T. Carmi & Dan Pagis [trans. Stephen Mitchell]
Oh, who has called me away
From sights and scenes
Had kept me drunk?
I who loved to live my own life
Wrapped in solitude;
I who longed to remain submerged
In the wine of wisdom and truth;
I who longed to dream
Of power and prestige!
Oh, who on me prevailed
Against mine own nature
To rise in sullen revolt?
Oh no; I do not long
For elevations now:
Nor of being low placed do I complain;
But the sensitive plant
Of my feelings and sensibilities
By autumn has been touched!
The goal is far;
The way most intricate;
And to whatever page of my mind I turn,
I find it all confused!
From sullen revolt
Against mine own nature,
This is the prise I have won!
Better far was that hell
Of solitude, for in this paradise
I have found nothing but thorns --
Nothing beyond a fatal lure,
And a heartless betrayal
At the hands of soulless sirens!
A sound of footsteps indeed there was,
But whoever came, or went!
Oh, who has called me away
From sights and sounds
Had kept me drunk?
--Ahmad Nadeem Kaasimee [trans. A.Q. Niaz]
Presenting Pakistani Poetry [ed. G. Allana] 1961
There are
No pathways here, no beaten tracks;
There is only a vast, immeasurable
Sweep of the desert, wherein
The virgin sands every minute
Renew their freshness.
New footprints come, but
As they come, they are obliterated.
Every step here is an end
In itself, for it has its
Own place in the great plan,
And its own great purpose to fulfil.
Buried beneath layer upon layer
Of the bellowing sands there lies an
Endless succession of forgotten
Centuries, with priceless record
Deep in their silken folds.
But on these inconspicuous,
Unmarked graves of bygone ages,
There reigns now the silence of Time;
And on the surface there is nothing
Visible but an endless
Stretch of desolate wastes.
--Khalilur Rahman [trans. A.Q. Niaz]
Presenting Pakistani Poetry [ed. G. Allana] 1961
Breeze from beloved's land has come;
Deeply I inhale
To pump it into my love-lorn heart.
The moth and butterfly are poles apart;
It is one thing to play with fire
And another to flirt with flowers.
O God, burst the clouds with rain
For my beloved sows today
Parched-up soil with pregnant seeds.
--Pushto Folk-lore [trans. G. Allana]
Presenting Pakistani Poetry [ed. G. Allana] 1961
"Write an article," suggests a letter.
Thank you, epigrams suit me far better.
If in ten lines I can say
what makes you wonder,
why should I ask you to pay
for a hundred?
--Christian Morgenstern [late 1890's]
Twenty German Poets [trans. Walter Kaufmann]
In the Sistina's twilit vaulted land
sits Michelangelo in waking dreams,
a Bible volume in his mighty hand,
and over him a tiny lantern gleams.
He speaks into the middle of the night
as if some guest were listening to his word,
now as if to some superhuman might,
now as if one like him were there and heard.
"Eternal Being, with my sweeping strokes
I bounded and embraced you five times, hid
your glory in five flowing, radiant cloaks,
and gave you body as the Bible did.
With flying hair you storm without restraint
from suns to novel suns with fiery face,
but to the man you fashioned, whom I paint,
you are inclined in flight and show him grace.
Thus I made you although my strength is coarse:
lest I the greater artist be,
make me -- I am a slave to passion's force --
in your own image make me, pure and free.
The first man you have shaped from tender clay;
I should be struck out of a harder block:
Your hammer, Master, you will need today.
O sculptor God, strike me: I am the rock."
--Conrad Ferdinand Meyer [1858]
Twenty German Poets [trans. Walter Kaufmann]
Once more before I wander on
and turn my eyes to distant lands,
in solitude I raise my hands
to you on high to whom I fly,
whom in my heart's profundity
I hallowed altars to implore
that evermore
your voice might call again to me.
On them is glowing, inscribed deep,
the word: Unto the Unknown God.
His am I, although in the sinners' squad
until this hour I did keep:
his am I, and I feel the chains
that in my fight I can't untie
and, though I fly,
force me to serve the god again.
I want to know you, Unknown One,
you that are reaching deep into my soul
and ravaging my life, a savage gale,
you Inconceivable and yet Related One!
I want to know you -- even serve.
--Friedrich Nietzsche [1864]
Twenty German Poets [trans. Walter Kaufmann]
Through seas of Dreams and seas of Phantasies,
Through seas of Solitudes and Vacancies,
And through my Self, the deepest of the seas,
I strive to thee, Nirvana.
O, long ago the billow-flow of Sense,
Aroused by Passion's windy vehemence,
Upbore me out of depths to heights intense,
But not to thee, Nirvana.
By waves swept on, I learned to ride the waves;
I served my masters till I made them slaves;
I baffled Death by hiding in his graves,
His watery graves, Nirvana.
And once I clomb a mountain's stony crown
And stood, and smiled no smile and frowned no frown,
Nor ate, nor drank, nor slept, nor faltered down,
Five days and nights, Nirvana.
Sunrise and noon, and sunset and strange night,
And shadow of large clouds and faint starlight,
And lonesome Terror stalking round the height,
I minded not, Nirvana.
The silence ground my soul keen like a spear;
My bare thought, whetted as a sword, cut sheer
Through time and life, and flesh and death, to clear
My way unto Nirvana.
I slew bodies of old ethnic Hates
That stirred long race-wars betwixt states and states;
I stood and scorned these foolish dead debates,
Calmly, calmly, Nirvana.
I smote away the filmy base of Caste;
I thrust through antique blood, and riches vast,
And all big claims of the pretentious Past
That hindered my Nirvana.
Then all fair types, of form, and sound, and hue,
Up-floated round my sense and charmed anew;
I waved them back into the void blue:
I love them not, Nirvana.
And all outrageous ugliness of time,
Excess, and Blasphemy, and squinting Crime,
Beset me; but I kept my calm sublime:
I hate them not, Nirvana.
High on the topmost thrilling of the surge
I saw, afar, two hosts to battle urge:
The widows of the victors sang a dirge,
But I wept not, Nirvana.
I saw two lovers sitting on a star;
He kissed her lip, she kissed his battle-scar;
They quarrelled soon, and went two ways, afar:
O Life! I laughed, Nirvana.
And never a king but had some king above,
And never a law to right the wrongs of Love,
And ever a fanged snake beneath a dove,
Saw I on earth, Nirvana.
But I, with kingship over kings, am free;
I love not, hate not: right and wrong agree;
And fangs of snakes and lures of doves to me
Are vain, are vain, Nirvana.
So by mine inner contemplation long,
By thoughts that need no speech nor oath nor song,
My spirit soars above the motley throng
Of days and nights, Nirvana.
O Suns, O Rains, O Day and Night, O Chance,
O Time besprent with seven-hued circumstance,
I float above ye all, into the trance
That draws me nigh Nirvana.
Gods of small worlds, ye little deities
Of humble heavens under my large skies,
And governor-spirits all, I rise, I rise,
I rise into Nirvana.
The storms of Self below me rage and die;
On the still bosom of mine ecstasy,
A Lotus on a lake of balm, I lie
Forever in Nirvana.
--Sidney Lanier [1869]
Centennial Edition of the Works of Sidney Lanier, Vol. 1