THE ANGEL HANDED ME A BOOK

Placing a book in my hands, the angel said, “It holds all you would wish to know.” And he vanished.
So I opened the book, which wasn’t thick.
It was written in an unknown alphabet.
Scholars translated it, but produced very different versions.
They disagreed even about their own readings, agreeing neither upon the tops or bottoms of them, nor the beginnings, nor the ends.
Toward the close of this vision, it seemed to me that the book
melted, until it could no longer be told apart from the world that surrounds us.





Paul Valéry
1871-1945

translated from the French by Carolyn Forché 


Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath.

From MORAL PROVERBS AND FOLKSONGS

The best of the good people

know that in this life

it’s all a question of proportion;

a little more, a little less . . .

Don’t be surprised, dear friends,

that my forehead is furrowed.

With men I live at peace, but with my insides

I am at war.

The cricket in his cage

by his tomato,

sings, sings, sings.

Pay attention:

a solitary heart

is no heart at all.

In my solitude 

I have seen very clearly

things that are not true.

Antonio Machado
1875-1939

‘Moral Proverbs and Folksongs'
translated from the Spanish by Mary G. Berg and Dennis Maloney


Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz, known as Antonio Machado was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation of ’98.

THIS IS BAD

Someone hands you an English thriller,

highly recommended.

You don’t read English.

You’ve worked up a thirst

for something you can’t afford.

You have deep insights,

brand new, and they sound

like an academic glossing Hoelderlin.

You hear the waves at night

ramping against the shore

and you think: that’s what waves do.

Worse: you’re asked out

when at home you get better coffee,

silence, and you don’t expect to be amused.

Awful: not to die in summer

under a bright sky

when the rich dirt

falls easily from the shovel.

Gottfried Benn
1886-1956

‘This is Bad’ translated from the German by  Harvey Shapiro




Gottfried Benn was a German essayist, novelist, and expressionist poet. A doctor of medicine, he initially welcomed but soon thereafter criticized the National Socialist regime.

HAPPINESS

Stephen Dunn

A state you must dare not enter

with hopes of staying,

quicksand in the marshes, and all

the roads leading to a castle

that doesn’t exist.

But there it is, as promised,

with its perfect bridge above

the crocodiles,

and its doors forever open.

Stephen Dunn

1939-

Dunn is an American poet who has written fifteen collections of poetry. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 2001 collection, Different Hours and has received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Among his other awards are three National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships, Guggenheim Fellowship, and Rockefeller Foundations Fellowship. 

OCEANS

I have a feeling that my boat 

has struck, down there in the depths,

against a great thing.

And nothing

happens! Nothing . . . Silence . . .Waves . . .

- Nothing happens?

Or has everything happened,

and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?

Juan Ramon Jiminez

1881-1956

‘Oceans’  translated from the Spanish by  Robert Bly

Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón was a Spanish poet, a prolific writer who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1956.

CONCH

In front of the mirror in my parents’ bedroom lay a pink conch. I used to approach it on tiptoes, and with a sudden movement put it against my ears. I wanted to surprise it one day when it wasn’t longing with a monotonous hum for the sea. Although I was small I knew that even if we love someone very much, at times it happens that we forget about it.


Zbigniew Herbert
1924-1998


‘Conch’ translated from the Polish by John and Bogdana Carpenter

 Zbigniew Herbert was a Polish poet, essayist, drama writer, author of plays, and moralist. A member of the Polish resistance movement during World War II, he is one of the best known and the most translated post-war Polish writers.

RELATIONSHIP

What a silence, when you are here, What

a hellish silence.

You sit and I sit.

You lose and I lose.

Janos Pilenszky

1921-1981

translated from the Hungarian by Peter Jay