With Borges
Monday, March 11th, 2013All of these come from Poems of The Night. An incredible selection of Borges’ poems on darkness, nighttime and dreams.
From Juan Manual Roca -ii
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012Still Life
(the direct translation from Spanish would be Dead Nature -Naturaleza Muerta, which I think would be more accurate in this case)
I walk through the streets with my antelope’s bag
and my goat’s wallet
and my bull’s shoes
and I wear a red shirt tinted with achiote.
All my clothes have been washed at a secret river with a rose’s soap.
On my paper sheets an old forest rumbles,
and at times I feel like the snake of my belt is waking up.
And there are traces of chlorophyll in my teeth.
I write with charcoals from a willow.
And I wonder what part of the landscape I am.
From Juan Manuel Roca, -i
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012My botched translation from Roca’s poem, Una Carta Rumbo a Gales (fragmento).
A letter on my way to Wales (fragment)
In this place, anger and rage grow simultaneously,
you do not know what it is like to live in a country
like and old animal preserved
in the most varied alcohols
you do not know what it is like to live
among yesterday’s moons, dead ones and disventures.
We Will Always Be Hyenas
Wednesday, January 11th, 2012From Rimbaud’s Illuminations (Pub. by W. W. Norton): Departure, Royalty & Phrases.
poverty, desires, hopes
Thursday, March 10th, 2011This is the last post on Pasolini (at least by now). From Roman Poems.
poverty, sex
Thursday, March 10th, 2011From PASOLINI Roman Poems. A new book by City Lights on the 30th aniversary of Pasolini’s death.
never exhausted
Monday, January 31st, 2011From ‘In Danger, a Pasolini’s anthology’. Ninetto, to whom this poem is dedicated, was one of the 2 main character’s in Pasolini’s “The Hawks and The Sparrows”. Heart wrenching ending.
Flat Fix
Thursday, January 20th, 2011An old flat fix place on my 1st neighborhood in Brooklyn (my 2nd time around in NY). What an installation.
shelter
Saturday, January 15th, 2011I clipped this image (by Pieter Hugo) from the nytimes but lost the link to the original article. It may sound cruel to talk merely about a visual form, when the article itself was about the working conditions on a toxic garbage dump. Nevertheless I found this structure very attractive. It reminds me of things I’ve seen in Colombia.. so bare and precarious -and yet, it seems to stubbornly resist.
