Equivocations and Mistranslations

Poetry collected from another era, a world before the Pandemic. Full of love's equivocations and many mistranslations of such 20th century poets as Pablo Neruda, Anna Akhmatova, Antonio Machado, Cesar Vallejo, Paul Celan and others. Also, work inspired by figures as disparate as Sappho and Saint John of the Cross. 

Admiring the Mist Near Lumberville

I admire the mist

that concentrates in hollow places.

I walk in the fields

when it begins to rain.

The trees are cold and damp.

The hillsides are terribly steep.

A man was killed once

when a branch came crashing in a sudden storm.

I am aware that landscapes

can be dangerous.

I enter them with caution.

You are my entire life.

Heat Lightning At Montauk

How you feel about oceans and storms

is why we are waiting, alone

in the dark

as heat lightning flashes

from cloud to cloud

in the pregnant air.

The storms within you

like those in the clouds

are as silent to me

as the thunder, the rain

falling indifferently

over the sea.

Possibly in Another World

Possibly in another world the streets are less noisy.

Here in this world my heart has become faithful to you.

You point out the bills I have not paid.

You bring good things home from the store.

I praise God with every drink of water.

I suggest that you eat more vegetables and fruit

We walk together in various places.

Once we saw the machinery of ancient canals.

The wind from across the inlet was especially warm.

Our footprints were the ones that went into the water.

There were always hills to which I could raise my eyes.

I can imagine us walking upon those hills.

We Drank Something Difficult to Name

after Paul Celan’s “Die Jahre Von Dir Zu Mir”

We drank something difficult to name

and lived in the house of forgetting.

Your eyes were the color of skies,

your long hair like many autumns.

I ate strawberries from your mouth,

I breathed air from your lungs.

And finally I saw you, sister,

in that overwhelming light.

It is of our love that I am speaking.

In These Wandering Hours

       After Ramon Jimenez’ “En Estas Horas Vagas”

In these wandering hours

that surround the night

the sky grows red,

old histories reappear.

No matter how many years

have passed

the memory of your eyes

opens my arms

in the middle of the street.