03-12-2013, 08:09 AM
I must confess ( a lie) that I just write. If you guys prefer to endlessly discuss the criteria, the shibboleths that inform you re what text qualifies and what text not, I can only retreat. Have fun. See, in the meantime a new poem whispered into my ear: let me, let me out!
And it sat and waited on the wing of a butterfly. This butterfly wing was a tiny sheet of paper I carried around with me and took to a Turkish pharmacist 10 minutes away from me. I needed the "real" (authentic Turkish word for red evening sky (sunset) but not: sunset but instead: red evening sky. (in German there is a word: Abendrot.) So she was busy but scribbled the red evening sky down on the wing of that butterfly on which my poem would fly: kırmızı akşam gökyüzü. I could not read (was in a hurry too) the heaven-word (gök...)
so at the place I buy my booze I asked around. Finally (within 3O secs!) another Turk appeared. "what's going on?- I showed the undecipherable last 2 syllables of the heaven that woman had painted on my wing to him and he spelt it out to me. So my heaven was complete and I got out of this mall and lit a cig and had a bottle o' beer and held this butterfly wing thing in my evening hands and kissed it, closed my eyes, and then another epi-phany: a gang of German words to embalm my butterfly evening showed up: Are you ready, they asked, and me: no pencil, guys. But, said I, let me gift you a lift and I'll fix you down. Back home they fell out of my fingers and they looked like this: Auf einem Schmetterlingsflügel fing sie mein
atemloses Gestammel ein und kritzelte: (She caught my breathless babble on a wing of a butterfly and scribbled down this: ) kırmızı akşam gökyüzü.
And then the left hand of my brain took a big gulp of the Rum I had bought to water my thoughts to let them smoothly flow out and they explained the poem in my head to me teasing me a bit: Who is the Turkish poetical mirror of Neruda? Easy enough, I replied, Nâzım Hikmet? - . Evet (yes), so them and asked again: and who is the poet mirroring Hikmet in Tang China? - Easy, my friends, that would be no other than Li Po. - Think again, they insisted. - Li Bai. - Tamam, so them, ok, and he just invited you, a poet drunk to spent some full moon time with him on the big river and they handed over to me the other wing of my butterfly on which engraved was this:
Rather than to drink alone,
I’ll make bold to ask the moon
To condescend to lend her face
The hour and the scene to grace.
Lo, she answers, and she brings
My shadow on her silver wings;
That makes three, and we shall be.
I ween, a merry company
The modest moon declines the cup,
But shadow promptly takes it up,“
So the established drunken poet in a Rimbaud-like gest navigated his bateau ivre along the line on the river the moon had laid out for us and leaning forward whispered the next poem I will write into my yawning ear. ----
„When the dusk glows red ...“
And it sat and waited on the wing of a butterfly. This butterfly wing was a tiny sheet of paper I carried around with me and took to a Turkish pharmacist 10 minutes away from me. I needed the "real" (authentic Turkish word for red evening sky (sunset) but not: sunset but instead: red evening sky. (in German there is a word: Abendrot.) So she was busy but scribbled the red evening sky down on the wing of that butterfly on which my poem would fly: kırmızı akşam gökyüzü. I could not read (was in a hurry too) the heaven-word (gök...)
so at the place I buy my booze I asked around. Finally (within 3O secs!) another Turk appeared. "what's going on?- I showed the undecipherable last 2 syllables of the heaven that woman had painted on my wing to him and he spelt it out to me. So my heaven was complete and I got out of this mall and lit a cig and had a bottle o' beer and held this butterfly wing thing in my evening hands and kissed it, closed my eyes, and then another epi-phany: a gang of German words to embalm my butterfly evening showed up: Are you ready, they asked, and me: no pencil, guys. But, said I, let me gift you a lift and I'll fix you down. Back home they fell out of my fingers and they looked like this: Auf einem Schmetterlingsflügel fing sie mein
atemloses Gestammel ein und kritzelte: (She caught my breathless babble on a wing of a butterfly and scribbled down this: ) kırmızı akşam gökyüzü.
And then the left hand of my brain took a big gulp of the Rum I had bought to water my thoughts to let them smoothly flow out and they explained the poem in my head to me teasing me a bit: Who is the Turkish poetical mirror of Neruda? Easy enough, I replied, Nâzım Hikmet? - . Evet (yes), so them and asked again: and who is the poet mirroring Hikmet in Tang China? - Easy, my friends, that would be no other than Li Po. - Think again, they insisted. - Li Bai. - Tamam, so them, ok, and he just invited you, a poet drunk to spent some full moon time with him on the big river and they handed over to me the other wing of my butterfly on which engraved was this:
Rather than to drink alone,
I’ll make bold to ask the moon
To condescend to lend her face
The hour and the scene to grace.
Lo, she answers, and she brings
My shadow on her silver wings;
That makes three, and we shall be.
I ween, a merry company
The modest moon declines the cup,
But shadow promptly takes it up,“
So the established drunken poet in a Rimbaud-like gest navigated his bateau ivre along the line on the river the moon had laid out for us and leaning forward whispered the next poem I will write into my yawning ear. ----
„When the dusk glows red ...“