Black milk

Elizabeth Fraser; pic from here

Some days ago, I was chatting with my friends River and Eucie about that poem by Patrizia Cavalli posted on Nemesys’ blog. It is interesting to note, in our chatting, the connection between Patrizia Cavalli poetry and my previous post theme.

Judy: This morning in a blog I read a poem by Patrizia Cavalli

Eucie: Oh?

Judy: She talks about her feeling to be alone, yet not free… alone. That poem ends so:

“This is what the body is for:
you touch me or you don’t touch me,
you hug me or walk away.
The rest is for the insane.”

Eucie: Yes

River: A truth.

Judy: I commented it in that blog (sorry: it’s in Italian language), saying I know it is true and I know that situation so much.

River: I always find such clarity and solidarity. When I read the words of another in poetry or prose and I relate I feel validated and not alone in my struggle and that is substantial.

Judy: That’s why we read

River: Yes.

Eucie: It is!

Judy: Well… to read is similar to make love; it is as to touch another skin, another soul. That’s what I need: to see another one to be myself

Eucie: You know you are not alone or crazy

Judy: Yes. And I in that way know I am my need. To be human is to be needy and that’s much more evident for a woman.

Then, River shared that song by Massive Attack, Black milk. I did not know it and, to be honest, I do not like its music, but the lyric is beautiful and moving in its paradox (nevertheless, the title itself of the song is clearly a paradox):

You’re not my eater
(…) Eat me
(…) Love you for God

As to say: do not bother me, do not get me only because we are together. Do it because there’s Another, because there’s a sense out from us in doing it.

Black Milk
Liz Fraser

You’re not my eater
I’m not your food
Love you for God
Love you for the Mother

Eat me
In the space
Within my heart
Love you for God
Love you for the Mother

Mother fountain
Or live or not at all

The most level
Sunken chapel
Love you for God
Love you for the Mother

All’s there to love
Only love

Word

Word

S.Quasimodo

Pic from here

You laugh at me, flaying myself for words,
bending around me in the straining elms,
the blue edge of skies and hills
and quivering waters’ voices,
wiling my youth
with clouds and hues
the light submerges.

I know you. Waylost in you
beauty lifts your breasts,
scoops to your hips and in gentle sweep
spreads over you shy sex,
flows down in harmony of forms
to the ten shells of your lovely feet.

But wait; if i take you,
you too become word to me, and sadness.

Salvatore Quasimodo – Traslation by Jack Bevan

This is one of the best poems I ever read. Better: one of my favourite poems.

So sensual and so sad both. Almost densperated. That “I know you” (Ti so in the original Italian version) bring us into a deep intimacy and meantime into an immense sadness.

Those two last lines are almost unberable and filled with a so great pain… Well, rereading it in these so strange days makes me understand better the poet and feel a sharp melancholy.

Original version (Italian)

Parola

Tu ridi che per sillabe mi scarno
e curvo cieli e colli, azzurra siepe
a me d’intorno, e stomir d’olmi
e voci d’acque trepide;
che giovinezza inganno
con nuvole e colori
che la luce sprofonda.

Ti so. In te tutta smarrita
alza bellezza i seni,
s’incava ai lombi e in soave moto
s’allarga per il pube timoroso,
e ridiscende in armonia di forme
ai piedi belli con dieci conchiglie.

Ma se ti prendo, ecco:
parola tu pure mi sei e tristezza.

Breath me, by Sia

Breath me

Sia Kate Isobelle Furler

Pic from here

Help, I have done it again
I have been here many times before
Hurt myself again today
And, the worst part is there’s no-one else to blame

Be my friend, hold me
Wrap me up, enfold me
I am small and needy
Warm me up and breathe me

Ouch I have lost myself again
Lost myself and I am nowhere to be found
Yeah I think that I might break
Lost myself again and I feel unsafe

Be my friend,…

 

 

May, 8th 2022

 

Ser poeta, by Florbela Espanca

Ser poeta
F. Espanca

Pic from here

To be a poet is to be loftier, to be greater
To be greater than men! To bite like those who kiss!
To be a beggar and to give like he who is
King of the Kingdom of the Nearby and Faraway Pains!

To be a poet is to have the splendor a thousand desires
And to not even know what one wants!
To have here deep within a star that burns bright,
To have the talons and the wings of a condor!

To be a poet is to hunger, to thirst for the Infinite!
For helm, the mornings of gold and satin…
To be a poet is to condense the world into one sole shout!

And to love you, thus, madly…
To be a poet is to be the soul and the blood and the life in me
And to proclaim it to all the world, singing!

Florbela Espanca

Original version (Portuguese)

Ser poeta

Ser poeta é ser mais alto, é ser maior
Do que os homens! Morder como quem beija!
É ser mendigo e dar como quem seja
rei do reino de aquém e de além dor!

É ter de mil desejos o esplendos
e não saber sequer que se deseja!
É ter cá dentro um astro que flameja,
è ter garras e asas de condor!

É ter fome, é ter sede de Infinito!
Por elmo, as manhãs de oiro e cetim…
É condensar o mundo num só grito!

E é amar-te assim perdidamente…
É seres alma e sangue e vida em mim
E dizê-lo cantando a toda a gente!

https://youtu.be/DzeD-fO3DcM

Rain. A tribute to Terrygold by Kristine Blackadder

I already told you here something about this Terry’s beautiful and moving work.

There, I already tried to say something about a so nice Kristine’s machinima about “Rain”, the last art installation built shared by Terrygold into Second Life.
Well, this beautiful friend, Kristine, was not satisfied by her machinima, and felt her need to make more and better: thus, another video was born: “Rain by Terrygold”.
These so dear and clever two friends, Kristine and Terry, go on to grow better and better as artists.

This time Kristine gives space and dignity to the words used by Terry in her work. Kristine makes a beautiful machinima where Terry’s words are in great evidence, while into the original art installation our eyes and our minds are so captured by pics and landscapes that words are subordinate and for instance I self really did not give them their real importance and beauty.
The translation into English from the original Italian text was made by another dear friend, Annalisa Mulialina, while a fourth friend, Shyla, enhanced those words with her so pleasant voice.

Four clever and gentle and dear friend, four women from both the sides of Atlantic Ocean made this wonderful work.

I enjoy their work so much; I enjoy more and more their friendship with Judy.

This machinima was accepted into that so great SL event that is FantasyFaire 2022: it will be presented during the event scheduled on Saturday, April 30th, as showed below here.

And this is the event SLURL

The Seventh, by József Attila

The Seventh
J. Attila

Pic from here

If you set out in this world,
better be born seven times.
Once, in a house on fire,
once, in a freezing flood,
once, in a wild madhouse,
once, in a field of ripe wheat,
once, in an empty cloister,
and once among pigs in sty.
Six babes crying, not enough:
you yourself must be the seventh.

When you must fight to survive,
let your enemy see seven.
One, away from work on Sunday,
one, starting his work on Monday,
one, who teaches without payment,
one, who learned to swim by drowning,
one, who is the seed of a forest,
and one, whom wild forefathers protect,
but all their tricks are not enough:
you yourself must be the seventh.

If you want to find a woman,
let seven men go for her.
One, who gives heart for words,
one, who takes care of himself,
one, who claims to be a dreamer,
one, who through her skirt can feel her,
one, who knows the hooks and snaps,
one, who steps upon her scarf:
let them buzz like flies around her.
You yourself must be the seventh.

If you write and can afford it,
let seven men write your poem.
One, who builds a marble village,
one, who was born in his sleep,
one, who charts the sky and knows it,
one, whom words call by his name,
one, who perfected his soul,
one, who dissects living rats.
Two are brave and four are wise;
You yourself must be the seventh.

And if all went as was written,
you will die for seven men.
One, who is rocked and suckled,
one, who grabs a hard young breast,
one, who throws down empty dishes,
one, who helps the poor win;
one, who worked till he goes to pieces,
one, who just stares at the moon.
The world will be your tombstone:
you yourself must be the seventh.

József Attila

Original version (Hungarian)

A hetedik

E világon ha ütsz tanyát,
hétszer szűljön meg az anyád!
Egyszer szűljön égő házban,
egyszer jeges áradásban,
egyszer bolondok házában,
egyszer hajló, szép búzában,
egyszer kongó kolostorban,
egyszer disznók közt az ólban.
Fölsír a hat, de mire mégy?
A hetedik te magad légy!

Ellenség ha elődbe áll,
hét legyen, kit előtalál.
Egy, ki kezdi szabad napját,
egy, ki végzi szolgálatját,
egy, ki népet ingyen oktat,
egy, kit úszni vízbe dobtak,
egy, ki magva erdőségnek,
egy, kit őse bőgve védett,
csellel, gánccsal mind nem elég, –
a hetedik te magad légy!

Szerető után ha járnál,
hét legyen, ki lány után jár.
Egy, ki szivet ad szaváért,
egy, ki megfizet magáért,
egy, ki a merengőt adja,
egy, ki a szoknyát kutatja,
egy, ki tudja, hol a kapocs,
egy, ki kendőcskére tapos, –
dongják körül, mint húst a légy!
A hetedik te magad légy.

Ha költenél s van rá költség,
azt a verset heten költsék.
Egy, ki márványból rak falut,
egy, ki mikor szűlték, aludt,
egy, ki eget mér és bólint,
egy, kit a szó nevén szólít,
egy, ki lelkét üti nyélbe,
egy, ki patkányt boncol élve.
Kettő vitéz és tudós négy, –
a hetedik te magad légy.

S ha mindez volt, ahogy írva,
hét emberként szállj a sírba.
Egy, kit tejes kebel ringat,
egy, ki kemény mell után kap,
egy, ki elvet üres edényt,
egy, ki győzni segít szegényt,
egy, ki dolgozik bomolva,
egy, aki csak néz a Holdra:
Világ sírköve alatt mégy!
A hetedik te magad légy.

My friend Sharrow told me that she sees relationships between my stuff “Wish” and this poem by J.Attila; she also proposed me a different translation of the last verse of each stanza: “You to be the seventh, yourself!”; really I like more her versione.

She also shared me a song using Attila’s poem as lyric, this one.

I think this interesting Hungarian poet should be better known!

Thank you Sharrow.

Goodbye, mom

Father
That’s a song by Claudio Chieffo, where God talks with a woman; I tried this traslation:

 

You didn’t know how I’d call you
the face that I gave you, the story that you lived
you did not know it yet, you did not know it yet …

When in your prime you did play to be a woman
near the door of your old house
I was preparing for your life so great things
that you didn’t know yet, that you didn’t know yet, that you didn’t know yet …

Then you could know the pain, that takes away things tastes,
but fills so much the words, colours the words with life,
at that time you lived it, at that time you lived it at that time you lived it …

Then I gave you that my real love so unpretentious and great,
so that your pain could became more bearable
and your love infinite, and your love infinite, and your love infinite…

Now I want you here with me: you haven’t to be afraid,
you have to let you go, each thing comes true just now,
each thing comes true just now, each thing comes true just …

… now here darkness no longer exists,
there’s the light in the eyes of God,
there’s the peace in the hands of God,
there’s the joy in the heart of God!

 

December, 19th 2021

 

Goodbye, mom! Please say hello to dad and to your brothers for me.

Italian version

Sudden Light, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Sudden Light
D.G.Rossetti

Rossetti in a photo by Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), albumen print, 7 October 1863

Pic from here

I have been here before,
but when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
the sweet keen smell,
the sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

You have been mine before,
how long ago I may not know:
but just when at that swallow’s soar
your neck turned so,
some veil did fall,
I knew it all of yore.

Has this been thus before?
And shall not thus time’s eddying flight
still with our lives our love restore
in death’s despite,
and day and night yield one delight once more?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

I always considered Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite authors something like too much sentimental, romantic like, decadent.

Some days ago a friend told me more about them and I needed to know more abou them.

Well, I like these words much more than his paintings.

That friend said me that she finds something similar in my words and in Pre-Raphaelite ones: I am so proud for that, even if I think I am really so far from any real poet… Indeed, the idea to put into poetic stuff spiritual contents is what I try when i describes what i see or what i feel.

And now I am looking for other Rossetti’s words.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, by O.Wilde

from The Picture of Dorian Gray

O. Wilde

Pic from here

Music had stirred him like that. Music had troubled him many times. But music was not articulate. It was not a new world, but rather another chaos, that it created in us. Words I Mere words t How terrible they were I How clear, and vivid, and cruel 1 One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them I They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to form- less things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?

Oscar Wilde

Maybe it’s a book about sin, maybe it’s a book about our wish to be alive. In any case, in it there are a lot of deep and detailed description of our soul. Music and words: I do not comment what he says much better than what I could do.

That Hideous Strenght, by C.S.Lewis

C.S.Lewis and his Love, from here

 

 

from That Hideous Strenght

C.S.Lewis

 

The woman led her along a brick path beside a wall on which fruit trees were growing, and then to the left along a mossy path with gooseberry bushes on each side. Then came a little lawn with a see-saw in the middle of it, and beyond that a greenhouse. Here they found themselves in the sort of hamlet that sometimes occurs in the purlieus of a large garden–walking in fact down a little street which had a barn and a stable on one side and, on the other, a second greenhouse, and a potting shed and a pigstye–inhabited, as the grunts and the not wholly disagreeable smell informed her. After that were narrow paths across a vegetable garden that seemed to be on a fairly steep hillside and then rose bushes, all stiff and prickly in their winter garb. At one place they were going along a path made of single planks. This reminded Jane of something. It was a very large garden. It was like . . . like . . . yes, now she had it: it was like the garden in Peter Rabbit. Or was it like the garden in the Romance of the Rose? No, not in the least like really. Or like Klingsor’s garden? Or the garden in Alice? Or like the garden on the top of some Mesopotamian ziggurat which had probably given rise to the whole legend of Paradise? Or simply like all walled gardens? Freud said we liked gardens because they were symbols of the female body. But that must be a man’s point of view. Presumably gardens meant something different in women’s dreams. Or did they? Did men and women both feel interested in the female body and even, though it sounded ridiculous, in almost the same way. A sentence rose to her memory. “The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male, and it is no accident that the goddess of Love is older and stronger than the god.” Where on earth had she read that? And, incidentally, what frightful nonsense she had been thinking for the last minute or so! She shook off all these ideas about gardens and determined to pull herself together. A curious feeling that she was now on hostile, or at least alien, ground warned her to keep all her wits about her. At that moment they suddenly emerged from between plantations of rhododendron and laurel and found themselves at a small side door, flanked by a water butt, in the long wall of a large house. Just as they did so a window clapped shut upstairs.
A minute or two later Jane was sitting waiting in a large sparely furnished room with a shut stove to warm it. Most of the floor was bare, and the walls, above the waist-high wainscotting, were of greyish-white plaster, so that the whole effect was faintly austere and conventual. The tall woman’s tread died away in the passages and the room became very quiet when it had done so. Occasionally the cawing of rooks could be heard. “I’ve let myself in for it now,” thought Jane, “I shall have to tell this woman that dream and she’ll ask all sorts of questions.” She considered herself, in general, a modern person who could talk without embarrassment of anything: but it began to look quite different as she sat in that room. All sorts of secret reservations in her programme of frankness–things which, she now realised, she had set apart as never to be told–came creeping back into consciousness. It was surprising that very few of them were connected with sex. “In dentists,” said Jane, “they at least leave illustrated papers in the waiting-room.” She got up and opened the one book that lay on the table in the middle of the room. Instantly her eyes lit on the following words: “The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male, and it is no accident that the goddess of Love is older and stronger than the god. To desire the desiring of her own beauty is the vanity of Lilith, but to desire the enjoying of her own beauty the obedience of Eve, and to both it is in the lover that the beloved tastes her own delightfulness. As obedience is the stairway of pleasure, so humility is the . . .”
At that moment the door was suddenly opened. Jane turned crimson as she shut the book and looked up. The same girl who had first let her in had apparently just opened the door and was still standing in the doorway. Jane now conceived for her that almost passionate admiration which women, more often than is supposed, feel for other women whose beauty is not of their own type. It would be nice, Jane thought, to be like that–so straight, so forthright, so valiant, so fit to be mounted on a horse, and so divinely tall.

 

Cleve Staples Lewis

 

I wondered to find in this book (it’s a novel about the final fight between good and evil, with a lot of religious – christian- connections) a so delicate and clever observation about love.

 

Oh, yes: I’m back!. Lol.