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"Since water still flows, though we cut it with swords,
And sorrow returns, though we drown it with wine,
Since the world can in no way satisfy our cravings,
Let us loosen our hair tomorrow and go fishing."
-- LiPo
"In those days
It was through the sky gleaming in the mirror's waters
That the magi of our sleep, as they withdrew,
Would spread out their treasures in the darkened room."
-- from "The Top of the World" by Yves Bonnefay
"In a drizzling rain,
In a flower shop's doorway,
A girl sells herself."
-- A haiku from the book "Haiku, the Other World" by Richard Wright
"It all means little,
all the painting, sculpture, drawing,
writing, or rather literature,
it all has its place
and nothing more.
An attempt is everything.
How marvellous!"
-- Short poem by the sculptor Alberto Giacometti, 1965
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The Joy of Writing
"Why does this written doe bound through these written words?
For a drink of written water from a spring
whose surface will xerox her soft muzzle?
Why does she lift her head; does she hear something?
Perched on four slim legs borrowed from the truth,
she pricks up her ears beneath my fingertips.
Silence -- this word also rustles across the page
and parts the boughs
that have sprouted from the word "woods."
Lying in wait, set to pounce on the blank page,
are letters up to no good,
clutches of clauses so subordinate
they'll never let her get away.
Each drop of ink contains a fair supply
of hunters, equipped with squinting eyes behind their sights,
prepared to swarm the sloping pen at any moment,
surround the doe, and slowly aim their guns.
They forget that what's here isn't life.
Other laws, black on white, obtain.
The twinkling of an eye will take as long s I say,
and will, if I wish, divide into tiny eternities,
full of bullets stopped in mid-flight.
Not a thing will ever happen unless I say so.
Without my blessing, not a leaf will fall,
not a blade of grass will bend beneath that little hoof's full stop.
Is there then a world
where I rule absolutely on fate?
A time I bind with chains of signs?
An existence become endless at my bidding?
The joy of writing.
The power of preserving.
Revenge of a mortal hand.
-- Wislawa Szymborska
"According to Freud, Leonardo da Vinci made up a wax paste
For his walks from which
he fasioned delicate animal figurines,
hollow and filled with air.
When he breathed into them, they floated
Like small balloons, twisting and turning,
released by the air
Like LiPo's poems downriver, downwind
To the undergrowth and the sunlight's dissembling balm.
What Freud made of this
Is one thing.
What does it mean to you,
Amber menagerie swept from his sun-struck hands?
Giorgio Vasari told it first,
and told this one as well.
A wine grower from Belvedere
Found an uncommon lizard and gave it to Leonardo
Who made wings for it out of the skins
Of other lizards,
and filled the wing with mercury
Which caused them to wave and quiver
Whenever the lizard moved.
He made eyes, a beard and two horns
In the same way, tamed it, and kept it in a large box
To terrify his friends.
His games were the pure games of children,
Asking for nothing but artifice, beauty and fear."
-- Charles Wright
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