Robert Desnos – Love is not dead

irlandesuk poetry, translation

No, love’s not dead in this heart nor in these eyes nor in this mouth
which was announcing its ongoing funeral.
Listen, I’ve had enough of the picturesque, of colours and charm.
l love love, its tenderness and its cruelty.
My love has but one name, one shape.
Everything passes. Mouths press to this mouth.
My love has but one name, one shape.
And if some day you remember it
O you, my love’s shape and name,
One day on the high seas between America and Europe,
When the sun’s last flourish scintillates upon the undulating
surface of the waves, or maybe one stormy night
beneath a tree in the countryside, or in a fast car,
One spring morning on boulevard Malesherbes,
One rainy day,
At dawn before you go to bed,
Tell yourself that you shouldn’t regret things: Ronsard before me
and Baudelaire sang of the regret of old women and dead women
who despised love’s purest form.
You when you’re dead
You’ll still be a beauty and desirable.
I’ll already be dead, entirely enclosed within your immortal body,
within your stunning image ever present amongst
the perpetual wonders of life and eternity, but if I live
Your voice and its accent, the beam of your eyes
Your scent and the scent of your hair and many other things
will live on inside me,
In me who am neither Ronsard nor Baudelaire,
I who am Robert Desnos and whom, having known and loved you,
Are just as worthy as them.
I who am Robert Desnos, for loving you
And who wants to attach no other reputation
to my memory on the contemptible earth

Robert Desnos

From À la mystérieuse, (1926)

Translation by John Lyons

Be minimum

irlandesuk art, poetry

lake_detail

                           Landscape, John Lyons (oil on canvas)

History – dead time – a past buried in
a chromatic wilderness – a burnt match
floating in a pool of dark rainwater –
an old hair on an old pillow case  Be
minimum  – with your words – in your actions
Resolve to move forward
                                   to write new texts
in a world of warmth and affection  The
past is scribble of fret and fear and
fate beyond absolution  Be mini-
mum  Cut to the quick  Courage – conviction
Angels will appear on the edge of night
By day they will mingle with sparrows and
crows  She who is not worthy will lose her
way  Exercise discretion
                                     Say no more

John Lyons

Portrait of a Woman – Gonzalo Rojas

irlandesuk poetry, translation ,

Gonzalo Rojas

                       Gonzalo Rojas Pizarro (1916–2011)

There will always be the night, woman, to stare you in the face,
alone in your mirror, free from your husband, naked
in the precise and terrible reality of the immense vertigo
that destroys you. You’ll always have your night and your knife,
and the frivolous telephone to hear the single thrust of my farewell.

I swore not to write to you. That’s why I’m calling you in the air
to say nothing to you, as the void says: nothing, nothing,
but the same and always the same thing
that you never hear me, that you never understand me,
although your veins burn from what I’m saying.

Put on the red dress that suits your mouth and your blood,
and burn me with the last cigarette of fear
of the great love, and proceed barefoot on the air that you came on
with the visible wound of your beauty. Woe is she
who cries unceasingly in the storm.

Don’t die on me. I’m going to paint your face in a flash
just as you are: two eyes to see the visible and the invisible,
an archangel nose and an animal mouth, and a smile
that forgives me, and something sacred and ageless that flies out
of your forehead, woman, and it makes me tremble,
because yours is the face of the Spirit.

You come and go, and you worship the sea that sweeps you away
with its foam, and you remain motionless, hearing me call out to you
in the abyss of the night, and you kiss me like a wave.
You were an enigma. You will be an enigma. You will not fly with me.
Here, woman, I leave you your portrait. 

Gonzalo Rojas
(translation by John Lyons)

The great Chilean poet, Gonzalo Rojas, was exiled by the Pinochet dictatorship in 1973.

Retrato de mujer

Siempre estará la noche, mujer, para mirarte cara a cara,
sola en tu espejo, libre de marido, desnuda
en la exacta y terrible realidad del gran vértigo
que te destruye. Siempre vas a tener tu noche y tu cuchillo, y el frívolo teléfono para escuchar mi adiós de un solo tajo.

Te juré no escribirte. Por eso estoy llamándote en el aire
para decirte nada, como dice el vacío: nada, nada,
sino lo mismo y siempre lo mismo de lo mismo
que nunca me oyes, eso que no me entiendes nunca,
aunque las venas te arden de eso que estoy diciendo.

Ponte el vestido rojo que le viene a tu boca y a tu sangre,
y quémame en el último cigarrillo del miedo
al gran amor, y vete descalza por el aire que viniste
con la herida visible de tu belleza. Lástima
de la que llora y llora en la tormenta.

No te me mueras. Voy a pintarte tu rostro en un relámpago
tal como eres: dos ojos para ver lo visible y lo invisible,
una nariz arcángel y una boca animal, y una sonrisa
que me perdona, y algo sagrado y sin edad que vuela de tu frente,
mujer, y me estremece, porque tu rostro es rostro del Espíritu.

Vienes y vas, y adoras al mar que te arrebata con su espuma,
y te quedas inmóvil, oyendo que te llamo en el abismo
de la noche, y me besas lo mismo que una ola.
Enigma fuiste. Enigma serás. No volarás
conmigo. Aquí, mujer, te dejo tu figura. 

Coffee bones

irlandesuk poetry

archaeology

Coffee bones, John Lyons (30 x 30 cm, coffee grounds and oil on canvas)

Bones that yearn
for other bones
out of the earth
into the earth

coffee grounds
and yellow cadmium
eyes turning
one toward the other

only love heals
the scars left
by love

winsome
her hazel eyes
her lips
a celebration

love woven
on the loom
of her life

bones
and the echo
of other bones
long gone

Venus sidles up
to the moon
and for a brief
moment

it illuminates
their love
their bodies turning
in unison

time will one day
sweep them away
for ever conjoined
their dust

their bones
laid to rest
for a single
eternity

John Lyons

A salute to Robert Rauschenberg (2017)

irlandesuk art, poetry ,

charlene

Charlene, Robert Rauschenberg (1954)

Let’s throw some words at the page
           see if they stick :
at this frail moment in time
           I have no aspirations
I am neither a painter nor a pianist
           but my imagination flickers still
I am a collage doused in my own colours
           and not at all sure I have
the temperament for heaven
           wherever that is

but I do love music and horses
           and the way a canvas can draw me in
a composition that takes a firm grip
           on my eye and offers me easy entry
doors or gates of perception I don’t mind
           what’s in a label ?
whether it is nobler ?
           beauty happens it just does as does truth
so remove the gauze from your eyes
           put everything else aside
and get stuck into your life
           how many do you think you have ?
comb the world for affections
           and any found objects you can keep
in your silk-screened closet
           be a chancer more than refusenik
erasure is the highest form of creation
           its space affords a prelude
to multiple afterthoughts
           and many other finer things
so please pay attention
           isn’t that the message ?

John Lyons

September, by Molly Rosenberg

irlandesuk poetry

The air is still, not a breath anywhere,
Everything seems to be hanging immobile
In the amber sultriness of the September
Afternoon.

The bees having a last foray into the
Dying lavender,
Greedily collecting their final harvest,
To store the sweetness through the,
Hard winter months.

The fish in the cool deep pond,
Flapping and mouthing at feeding time,
Anxious to make the most of these last,
Summer rays
Before retreating to the murky depths
To while away those winter days.

The summer days seemed endless,
But the nights are earlier and cooler,
We retreat to warmth and slumber,
Until the misty water colour of a sun,
Rises over the distant Weald.

Molly Rosenberg

Out of kindness come words

irlandesuk poetry ,

Out of kindness come words and silence and
caution and colours   and nothing painful
that cannot be removed   perhaps with a
kiss    or a blind eye   or a ribbon tied
loosely or a fingerboard of rose wood
or a string plucked gently
                                     sounding a note
of fragrant harmony  no distress  no 
anger  no panic  not a hair out of
place at a bend in the river where white
swans gather under a pale blue sky on
a Wednesday at noon   and very likely
feelings of love are expressed and dinner
is served and a bed is made and lips are
licked and time peters out 
                              This is the end

John Lyons

Child of nature

irlandesuk poetry

How strange that you are hereless   Like the wind
gone   leaving the sky   the earth   the green world
in your wake   wordless in the chill silence
When I was a child I dreamt as a child
and lived a life about which I knew no-
thing   I ate   slept  played 
                           learned what I was taught
loved the fields  the grass   the trees   the woodlands
anything that kept me close to nature
thought that cities were places where people
went to die   But you I loved   step by step
I grew into your smile  your tenderness
my eyes   my ears   always attentive to
the simplicity and ease with which you
negotiated each hour of the day

John Lyons

Jackson Pollock rules

irlandesuk art, poetry

Pollock_untitled
                           Jackson Pollock, Untitled

Days tumble one after the other   dawn
to dusk   Sometimes
                   in pure broad light   sometimes
through an empty indeterminate dark
in which newspapers pave the way for time
to progress    segmenting our lives into
events while extolling humanity’s
wounds and achievements
                            Art seeks to oppose
the indifference to simple being
in which jewels are jingled as trophies
worthless possessions heralded as signs
of worth and social standing   Thus Jackson
Pollock rescued the rectangle and re-
vealed the sinews of a chaotic world
Promethean pigments poured on canvas

John Lyons

Stephansdom

irlandesuk poetry ,

Stephansdom

How to read
      the intricacies of faith
chiselled into pale stone
      every plane every angle
and in the cool silent shadows
      weary emblems of ecstatic energy
of saintly narratives
      and terrifying passions

The names in the inscriptions
      gradually fading into dust
the corrosive way
      of the world
of all life
      humbled by death

What persists
      is the belief
and something of the love
      the kiss that outlives
the tears
      the cross borne with a smile

Through the towering spire
      cold winds whisper
and in the square below
      the carriage wheels grind
and hard hooves resound
      on the worn cobblestones

Yes a monument
       to the warmth of fellowship
to a common purpose
      expressed in dying crafts
an overwhelming art in which
      the devil is in the detail

John Lyons