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Charles Wright
APOLOGIA
PRO VITA SUA
I
How
soon we come to road’s end—
Failure, our two-dimensional
side-kick, flat dream-light,
Won’t jump-start or burn us in,
Dogwood
insidious in its constellations of part-charred cross
points,
Spring’s via
Dolorosa
flashed
out in a dread profusion,
Nowhere to go but up, nowhere to turn,
dead world-weight,
They’ve
gone and done it
again,
dogwood,
Spring’s
sap-crippled, arthritic, winter-weathered, myth limb,
Whose roots
are my mother’s hair.
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Landscape’s
a lever of
transcendence—
jack-wedge
it here,
Or here, and step back,
Heave, and a light, a little
light, will nimbus your going forth:
The
dew bead, terminal bead, opens
out
onto
a great radiance,
Sun’s square on magnolia leaf
Offers us
entrance—
who
among us will step forward,
Camellia
brown boutonnieres
Under his feet, plum branches under his feet,
white sky, white
noon,
Church
bells like monk’s mouths tonguing the hymn?
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Journal
and landscape
—Discredited form, discredited
subject matter—
I tried to resuscitate both, breath and
blood,
making
them whole again
Through
language, strict attention—
Verona
mi fe’, disfecemi Verona, the song
goes.
I’ve hummed it, I’ve bridged the break
To
no avail.
April.
The year begins beyond words,
Beyond myself and the image of
myself, beyond
Moon’s ice and summer’s thunder. All that.
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The
meat of the sacrament is invisible meat and a
ghostly
substance.
I’ll
say.
Like
any visible thing,
I’m always attracted downward, and soon to be
killed and
assimilated.
Vessel
of life, it’s said, vessel of life, brought to naught,
Then
gathered back to what’s visible.
That’s it, fragrance of
spring like lust in the blossom-starred orchard,
The
shapeless shape of darkness starting to seep through
and
emerge,
The
seen world starting to tilt,
Where I sit the still, unwavering
point
under
that world’s waves.
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How
like the past the clouds are,
Building and disappearing along the
horizon,
Inflecting the
mountains,
laying
their shadows under our feet
For
us to cross over on.
Out of their insides fire falls, ice
falls,
What we remember that still remembers us, earth and air
fall.
Neither,
however, can resurrect or redeem us,
Moving, as both must, ever
away toward opposite corners.
Neither has been where we’re
going,
bereft
of an attitude.
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Amethyst,
crystal transparency,
Maya
and Pharaoh ring,
Malocchio,
set against witchcraft,
Lightening and hailstorm,
birthstone, savior from drunkenness.
Purple,
color of insight, clear sight,
Color of
memory—
violet,
that’s for remembering,
Star-crystals scattered across the
penumbra, hard stars.
Who
can distinguish darkness from the dark, light from light,
Subject
matter from story line,
the
part from the whole
When whole is part of the part and part is all
of it?
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Lonesomeness.
Morandi, Cézanne, it’s all about lonesomeness.
And Rothko.
Especially Rothko.
Separation from what heals
us
beyond
painting, beyond art.
Words
and paint, black notes, white notes.
Music and landscape; music,
landscape and sentences.
Gestures for which there is no balm, no
intercession.
Two
tone fields, horizon a line between abysses,
Generally white,
always speechless.
Rothko could choose either
one to disappear into. And did.
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Perch’io
non spero di tornar giammai, ballatetta, in Toscana,
Not as we
were the first
time,
not
as we’ll ever be again.
Such snowflakes of memory, they fall
nowhere but there.
Absorbed
in remembering, we cannot remember—
Exile’s anthem, O stiff
heart,
Thingless we came into the world and thingless we leave.
Every
important act is
wordless—
to
slip from the right way,
To fail, still accomplishes
something.
Even a good thing remembered, however, is not as good
as not
remembering
at all.
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Time
is the source of all good,
time
the engenderer
Of
entropy and decay,
Time the destroyer, our only-begetter and
advocate.
For
instance, my fingernail,
so
pink, so amplified,
In the half-dark, for instance,
These
force-fed dogwood blossoms, green-leafed,
defused,
limp
on their long branches.
St.
Stone, say a little prayer for me,
grackles
and jay in the black gum,
Drowse of the peony head,
Dandelion
globes luminous in the last light, more work to
be
done
. . .
III
There
is forgetfulness in me which makes me descend
Into a great
ignorance,
And makes me to walk in mud, though what I remember
remains.
Some
of the things I have forgotten:
Who the Illuminator is, and what
he illuminates;
Who will have pity on what needs have pity on it.
What
I remember redeems
me,
strips
me and brings me to rest.
An end to what has began,
A beginning
to what is about to be ended.
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What
are the determining moments of our
lives?
How
do we know them?
Are they ends of things or beginnings?
Are we
more or less of ourselves once they’ve come and gone?
I
think this is one of mine tonight,
The Turkish moon and its one
star
Crisp
as a new flag
Over my hometown street with its dark trash cans
looming along
the
curb.
Surely
this must be one. And what of me afterwards
When the moon and her
sanguine consort
Have slipped the horizon? What will become of me
then?
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Some
names are everywhere—they are above and they are below,
They are
concealed and they are revealed.
We call them wise, for the wisdom
of death is called the little
wisdom.
And
my name? And your name?
Where
will we find them, in what pocket?
Wherever it is, better
to keep them there not known—
Words speak for themselves,
anonymity speaks for itself.
The
Unknown Master of the Pure Poem walks nightly among
his
roses,
The
very garden his son laid out.
Every so often he sits down. Every
so often he stands back up . . .
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Heavy,
heavy, heavy hangs over our heads. June heat.
How many lives does
it take to fabricate this one?
Aluminum pie pan bird
frightener
dazzles
and feints in a desultory breeze
Across
the road, vegetable garden mojo, evil eye.
That’s one life I
know for sure.
Others, like insects in
amber,
lie
golden and lurking and hidden from us.
Ninety-four
in the shade, humidity huge and inseparable,
Noon sun like a laser
disk.
The grackle waddles forth in his suit of
lights,
the
crucifixion on his back.
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Affection’s
the absolute
everything
rises to,
Devotion’s detail, the sum of all our
scatterings,
Bright imprint our lives unshadow on.
Easy
enough to say that now, the hush of late spring
Hung like an
after-echo
Over
the neighborhood,
devolving
and disappearing.
Easy
enough, perhaps, but still true,
Honeysuckle and poison ivy
jumbling out of the hedge,
Magnolia beak and white tongue,
landscape’s off-load, love’s lisp.
***
Charles Wright es traducido por:
- Jeannette L. Clariond
Publicado
el 20/5/2010
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