Two from Tukaram

Quarreling with God

You’re shameless,
and you don’t think.
You quarrel with us
like a man in the marketplace.

And then you’re delighted
whenever you meet
someone who has become
just like you.

You’re itching to take off
your loincloth.
And in the end
you’ll strip us all naked.

Tuka says, you heartless man,
you don’t give a damn about yourself
or anyone else.

*****************************************

Can water drink itself?
Can a tree taste its own fruit?
The worshiper of God must
remain distinct from
Him.
Only thus will he come to
know God’s joyful love.
But if he were to say that God
and he are one,
that joy and love would
vanish instantly.

To Night

Night, parent goddess, source of sweet repose, from whom at first both Gods and men arose,
Hear, blessed Venus, deck’d with starry light, in sleep’s deep silence dwelling Ebon night!
Dreams and soft case attend thy dusky train, pleas’d with the length’ned gloom and feaftful strain.
Dissolving anxious care, the friend of Mirth, with darkling coursers riding round the earth.
Goddess of phantoms and of shadowy play, whose drowsy pow’r divides the nat’ral day:
By Fate’s decree you constant send the light to deepest hell, remote from mortal sight
For dire Necessity which nought withstands, invests the world with adamantine bands.
Be present, Goddess, to thy suppliant’s pray’r, desir’d by all, whom all alike revere,
Blessed, benevolent, with friendly aid dispell the fears of Twilight’s dreadful shade.

-from the Orphic Hymns as translated by Thomas Taylor

Amar es combatir

amar es combatir, si dos se besan
el mundo cambia, encarnan los deseos,
el pensamiento encarna, brotan alas
en las espaldas del esclavo, el mundo
es real y tangible, el vino es vino,
el pan vuelve a saber, el agua es agua,
amar es combatir, es abrir puertas,
dejar de ser fantasma con un número
a perpetua cadena condenado
por un amo sin rostro;
el mundo cambia
si dos se miran y se reconocen,
amar es desnudarse de los nombres…

to love is to battle, if two kiss
the world changes, desires take flesh,
thoughts take flesh, wings sprout
on the backs of the slave, the world is real
and tangible, wine is wine, bread
regains its savor, water is water,
to love is to battle, to open doors,
to cease to be a ghost with a number
forever in chains, forever condemned
by a faceless master;
the world changes
if two look at each other and see,
to love is to undress our names…

Octavio Paz, Piedra de Sol (Sunstone), 1957. Translated by Eliot Weinberger.

Stolen from AG, here, which is a post that contains many interesting texts from the Jewish Midrash

Useless questions

A wine bottle fell from a wagon
And broke open in a field.

That night hundred beetles and all their cousins
Gathered

And did some serious binge drinking.

They even found some seed husks nearby
And began to play them like drums and whirl.
This made God very happy.

Then the ‘night candle’ rose into the sky
And one drunk creature, laying down his instrument
Said to his friend – for no apparent
Reason,

“What should we do about that moon?”

Seems to Hafiz
Most everyone has laid aside the music

Tackling such profoundly useless
Questions.

-Hafiz, found on this site

The history of night

Historia de la noche

A lo largo de sus generaciones
los hombres erigieron la noche.
En el principio era ceguera y sueño
y espinas que laceran el pie desnudo
y temor de los lobos.
Nunca sabremos quién forjó la palabra
para el intervalo de sombra
que divide los dos crepúsculos;
nunca sabremos en qué siglo fue cifra
del espacio de estrellas.
Otros engendraron el mito.
La hicieron madre de las Parcas tranquilas
que tejen el destino
y le sacrificaban ovejas negras
y el gallo que presagia su fin.
Doce casas le dieron los caldeos;
infinitos mundos, el Pórtico.
Hexámetros latinos la modelaron
y el terror de Pascal.
Luis de León vio en ella la patria
de su alma estremecida.
Ahora la sentimos inagotable
como un antiguo vino
y nadie puede contemplarla sin vértigo
y el tiempo la ha cargado de eternidad.

Y pensar que no existiría
sin esos tenues instrumentos, los ojos.

-Jorge Luis Borges, found on this site

Throughout the course of the generations
men constructed the night.
At first she was blindness;
thorns raking bare feet,
fear of wolves.
We shall never know who forged the word
for the interval of shadow
dividing the two twilights;
we shall never know in what age it came to mean
the starry hours.
Others created the myth.
They made her the mother of the unruffled Fates
that spin our destiny,
they sacrificed black ewes to her, and the cock
who crows his own death.
The Chaldeans assigned to her twelve houses;
to Zeno, infinite words.
She took shape from Latin hexameters
and the terror of Pascal.
Luis de Leon saw in her the homeland
of his stricken soul.
Now we feel her to be inexhuastible
like an ancient wine
and no one can gaze on her without vertigo
and time has charged her with eternity.

And to think that she wouldn’t exist
except for those fragile instruments, the eyes.

DEVUELTO

A la cara de mi hijo
que duerme, bajan
arenas de las dunas,
flor de la caña
y la espuma que vuela
de la cascada…

Y es sueño nada más
cuanto le baja;
sueño cae a su boca,
sueño a su espalda,
y me roban su cuerpo
junto con su alma.

Y así lo van cubriendo
con tanta maña,
que en la noche no tengo
hijo ni nada,
madre ciega de sombra,
madre robada.

Hasta que el sol bendito
al fin lo baña:
me lo devuelve en linda
fruta mondada
¡y me lo pone entero
sobre la falda!

-Gabriela Mistral

Who knows?

Who knows what is going on on the other side of each hour?

How many times the sunrise was
there, behind a mountain!

How many times the brilliant cloud piling up far off
was already a golden body full of thunder!

This rose was poison.

That sword gave life.

I was thinking of a flowery meadow
at the end of a road,
and found myself in the slough.

I was thinking of the greatness of what was human,
and found myself in the divine.

-Juan Ramón Jiménez, as translated by Robert Bly

found on this site

image found on this site

La Asunción de Maria

En turquesadas nubes y celajes
están en los alcázares impirios
con blancas hachas y con blancos cirios
del sacro Dios los soberanos pajes.

Humean de mil suertes y linajes
entre amaranto y plateados lirios
inciensos indios y pebetes sirios
sobre alfombras de lazos y follajes.

Por manto el Sol, la Luna por chapines,
llegó la Virgen a la impiria sala,
visita que esperaba el Cielo tanto.

Echáronse a sus pies los serafines,
cantáronle los ángeles la gala
y sentóla a su lado el Verbo santo.

-Pedro de Espinosa

In turquoise clouds and perilous heights,
Imperial castles reigned above the ages,
With purest candles and horns ivory white,
And all sovereigns of God’s earth as her pages-

A thousand lines and fates are exhaled
Between amanth and brightly silvered lilies,
Indian incense and Syrian aromas trail
Past woven carpets and the canopy of trees-

As a cloak the sun, and the moon at her feet,
The Virgin arrived in the imperial room,
An entrance that the heavens fondly greeted.

The seraphim thrown down as if defeated,
The angels unleashed a triumphant tune,
As the Holy Word at His side had her seated.

Facilis descensus Averno…

Arte poética

1

Asustadiza gracia del poema:
flor temerosa, recatada en llema.

2

Y se cierra, como la sensitiva,
si la llega a tocar la mano viva.

3

Mano mejor que la mano de Orfeo,
mano que la presumo y no la creo,

4

para traer la Eurídice dormida
hasta la superficie de la vida.

-Alfoso Reyes

Another Sun

De una Virgen hermosa
celos tiene el sol,
porque vio en sus brazos
otro sol mayor.

Cuando del Oriente
salió el sol dorado,
y otro sol helado
miró tan ardiente,
quitó de la frente
la corona bella,
y a los pies de la estrella
su lumbre adoró,
porque vio en sus brazos
otro sol mayor.

«Hermosa María,
dice el sol vencido,
de vos ha nacido
el sol que podía
dar al mundo el día
que ha deseado».
Esto dijo humillado
a María el sol,
porque vio en sus brazos
otro sol mayor.

-Lope de Vega

The sun is envious
Of a beautiful Virgin,
Because in her arms
He saw a greater Sun.

When the golden Sun
Rose from the east,
The other cold sun
Viewed it so bright,
He took off from his head
His own beautiful crown,
And at the feet of the star
Her glow he adored,
Because in her arms
He saw a greater Sun.

“Beautiful Mary,”
Says the conquered sun,
“From you is born
The sun who can give
The world the day that it has desired.”
This the humbled sun
Said to Mary,
Because in her arms
He saw a greater Sun.