| "Cardinal Points" litetrary journal: www.stosvet.net |
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Nina Cassian AN UNSCIENTIFIC POINT OF VIEW |
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MAYAKOVSKY'S SWEATER __________________________________________ We all remember that notorious "cloud in the pants" poet, as he called himself. But today let's talk about the checkered sweater worn by the almighty Vladimir. That acre of wool, stripes plowed symmetrically, right and left, worn so tight by that immeasurable guy, hardly fits into his narrow closet where now it's draped over a hanger; and where, on a little table outside, sits his death mask. (He, who felt indebted to Japan's cherry trees about which he never wrote. He, who complained about wasted light bulbs in broad daylight. He, who noted the llama, its daughter and its mama, and hated Kerensky's monstruous ears. He, who believed in the internationalism of the metaphor — he would only kill himself when purity was perforated by the trivial bullets of Truth). And I don't leave the room. I stay, hoping I might postpone his death. IT'S A PITY __________________________________________ It's a pity, and I'm truly sorry that I won't reach the solemn hour dressed in the limpid outfit of Spirit. Fog surrounds my present and plunges me into Nothingness, exempt of grandeur. Oh, I wish I could have uttered the Syllable and the High Sound that could pierce the Fish's ear and startle the White Owl in her sleep. I wish I could have drawn a Last Will in the air with my right hand, and could close my eyes willingly on a last loving glance. There is fog. I cannot see. I cannot talk. The world turns its back on me. AT THE OFFICE __________________________________________ I get tired. Too many haunted, sleepless nights. Too many thin, brush-painted smiles. I saw them at the office: the same unerasable features. It was them. Them again. Ice. Terror. — Young and ferocious. Them again, the bosses. Me again, the underling. And then they told me: "Recite a poem for us." Which I did. They went on ordering my sleep, my sleeplessness, my smile, my grimace. In the geometry of their features, I recognized everything I hate: the perpendicular of the guillotine, the bisection, the being cut in two, the obtuse angle, and the like triangles of the Lie. They were just some of them... But who was I? PURITY __________________________________________ Amazing solitude. Only me and my cigarette and this tiny dragonfly painted in Voronetz monastery blue. Nothing threatens me, not even the sun. The sky is an immense cloud made of mother-of-pearl. The lake is an immense cloud of nacreous iridescence. I am the mermaid of the lake. ... I am an infinite melody like her murmur in the rain. And I am clean like the poem I'm writing. AN UNSCIENTIFIC POINT OF VIEW __________________________________________ There was a botanist among us, with a head oblong and sad, who, at Yalta and Salumi, tore from the beauty of the world some corollas of flowers, and several leaves, tiny miracles, crushing them on the pages, um, of his herbarium. To press into cold foliages the petal of the delicate magnolia, I didn't dare. And so it died silently in front of me, and the petal rusted and turned orange. And I was left, alas, with the withered leafstalk in my glass. NOCTURNAL MOMENT __________________________________________ I am made of silence and viscera. The green effluence of alcohol makes my blood phosphorescent. By night, all felonies take place. The law is powerless. CHANGING __________________________________________ I am obliged to believe that it's true — this mystical fog over the ocean, and the endless shore wave, and me — as if from Atlantis! Far out, a few people are taking a sunbath on this shore of another sea, to which I was once related through blood and love's seed. Here the sand is brutal, and a strange cold turns my age blue. My skin is streaked red and white: I am a striped flag — occidental. THE LAST FLAG __________________________________________ I'm ashamed of my widowhood because everyone treats me so nicely and I don't reward them as they deserve. I'm ashamed of my absolute loneliness, and my last flag flutters over the last rampart like a rhyme although I want to die in free verse. MY LAST BOOK __________________________________________ How do I know that this is my last book? My genes are adamant. My energy is longing for exhaustion. The words are telling me to shut up. Yes, in total silence, my crippled hand ejects sometimes a pen to inject a poem like a shot, an intravenous, in the missing arms of Venus. "My Last Book" and "Mayakovsky's Sweater" are reprinted from Continuum: Poems by Nina Cassian. Copyright (c) 2008 by Nina Cassian. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. |