Winter solitude

Winter solitude--

in a world of one color

the sound of wind.

Matsuo Basho: Winter solitude

Red was your colour

Red was your colour.

If not red, then white. But red

Was what you wrapped around you.

Blood red.

And outside the window

Poppies thin and wrinkle-frail

As the skin on blood.

Ted Hughes: Red (fragment)

Reflections of possibility

There's a piece on the chair

A piece in the hall

A nice piece of me

Stuck to the wall

Divide and conquer

The jigsaw in you

Has left me asunder

All over the room

There's a piece by the clock

Clinging awkwardly to time

There's a piece at the piano

Clinging stubbornly to rhyme

There's a fun piece of me 

In a crack in the floor

An innocent piece

Who walked out the door

Call me a doctor

Or a structural engineer

Draft me a past and a future

That consert to adhere

Give me a pill that makes cohesion

A pharmalogical thing

Bring me the tape and the twine

The blueprint design

To fit the scraps and the threads

To the feet and the legs

There's a piece that was pretty

For a moment or two

But my mouth and my lips

Are somehow askew

A piece of a hero is

Behind the TV

The piece with the glue

Is looking for pieces of me

There's a piece in Detroit

A piece in LA

New York is a critic

She's funny that way

There's a piece prone to panic

A big piece is blue

All the pieces agree

The best piece went with you

In fragments and tatters, scattered

All over the road

Each piece has the other

But no pieces is a whole

Little maps in their pockets,

Reflections of possibility

The pieces pick themselves up

Dust themselves off

And start all over

Again

Patricia Barber: Pieces 

Take a look at me now, it is the season of rain

***

The day will never dawn again

Îmi amintesc de tine. Oraşul ăsta era croit pe măsura dragostei. Tu erai croit chiar pe măsura trupului meu. 
Presimţeam că într-o zi ai să te năpusteşti peste mine.

I remember you. This city was tailor-made for love. You fit my body like a glove.
I had no doubt you’d cross my path one day.

Te aşteptam cu o nesfârşită nerăbdare, calmă. Devorează-mă. 

Deformează-mă după chipul tău, pentru ca nimeni altcineva, după tine, să nu mai priceapă cauza unei dorinţe atât de mari.

I waited for you calmly, with boundless impatience. Devour me. 
Deform me to your likeness, so that no one after you will ever again understand the reason for so much desire.

O să rămânem singuri, dragostea mea. Noaptea se va sfârşi. Nu se va mai face ziuă pentru nimeni. 

We’ll be alone, my love. Night will never end. The day will never dawn again on anyone. 

N-o să mai avem nimic altceva de făcut, nimic altceva decât să plângem ziua care a murit. 

Va trece timp. Timp doar.

There’ll be nothing else for us to do but mourn the departed day. 

Time will pass. Only time.

Şi va vei timp. Va veni timp. Când nu vom mai şti deloc să numim ce ne uneşte.
Numele se va şterge treptat din memoria noastră. Apoi, va dispărea complet.

And a time will come when we can no longer name what it is that binds us. 
Its name will gradually be erased from our memory until it vanishes completely.

(Marguerite Duras: Hiroshima, mon amour. A book made into film by Alain Resnais.

Translated into Romanian by Ileana Cantuniari; English translation @ The Criterion Collection)

Over the valley

*

Spring rain (III)

Spring rain (II)

I always knew I loved the sky,

the way it seems solid and insubstantial at the same time;

the way it disappears above us

even as we pursue it in a climbing plane,

like wishes or answers to certain questions—always out of reach;

the way it embodies blue,

even when it is gray.

But I didn't know I loved the clouds,

those shaggy eyebrows glowering

over the face of the sun.

Perhaps I only love the strange shapes clouds can take,

as if they are sketches by an artist

who keeps changing her mind.

Perhaps I love their deceptive softness,

like a bosom I'd like to rest my head against

but never can.

Linda Pastan: Things I Didn't Know I Loved: After Nazim Hikmet

Spring rain (I)

On the threshing floor

And where, where, where is my Gypsy wife tonight

I've heard all the wild reports, they can't be right

But whose head is this she's dancing with on the threshing floor

whose darkness deepens in her arms a little more

And where, where is my Gypsy wife tonight?

Ah the silver knives are flashing in the tired old cafe

A ghost climbs on the table in a bridal negligee

She says, "My body is the light, my body is the way"

I raise my arm against it all and I catch the bride's bouquet

And where, where is my Gypsy wife tonight?

(Leonard Cohen: The Gypsy's Wife)

Come and quench my thirst

Come, just come in this white balcony 

I have saved you the best place

It is everywhere, all around, just come

Wounded or happy, force me to accept the light of this day.

  
May is the month of tulips.

There is music, unheard by others, in my white space

And no dawn but a never-ending white day.

Your waters are deep.

I will show you the way to the ocean.

There is no use for language.

Come and quench my thirst for you.

Sunday mood with tulips

Status quo