"

UN FEU DISTINCT

Un feu distinct m’habite, et je vois froidement
La violente vie illuminé entière…
Je ne puis plus aimer seulement qu’en dormant
Ses actes gracieux melangés de lumière.

Mes jours viennent la nuit me rendre des regards,
Après le premier temps de sommeil malheureux;
Quand le malheur lui-même est dans le noir épars
Ils reviennent me vivre et me donner des yeux.

Que si leur joie éclate, un écho qui m’éveille
N’a rejeté qu’un mort sur ma rive de chair,
Et mon rire étranger suspend à mon oreille,

Comme à la vide conque un murmure de mer,
Le doute, - sur le bord d’un extrême merveille,
Si je suis, si je fus, si je dors ou je veille?

"

"Oisive jeunesse
À tout asservie,
Par délicatesse
J’ai perdu ma vie."

"NO, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kist
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globèd peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung."

"

NARRATIVE

Because what happens will never happen,
and because what has happened
endlessly happens again,

we are as we were, everything
has changed in us, if we speak
of the world
it is only to leave the world

unsaid. Early winter: the yellow apples still
unfallen
in a naked tree, the tracks
of invisible deer

in the first snow, and then the snow
that does not stop. We repent
of nothing. As if we could stand
in this light. As if we could stand in the silence
of this single moment

of light.

"

Deadlines of youth. Lapses of laughter. Glimpses of the flight of a bird.

Alejandra Pizarnik (¿1956?)

cuidado con las palabras
                                        (dijo)
tienen filo
                te cortarán la lengua
cuidado
             te hundirán en la cárcel
cuidado
             no despertar a las palabras
acuéstate en las arenas negras
y que el mar te entierre
y que los cuervos se suiciden en tus ojos cerrados
cuídate
            no tientes a los ángeles de las vocales
no atraigas frases
                             poemas
                                          versos
no tienes nada que decir
nada que defender
sueña sueña que no estás aquí
que ya te has ido
que todo ha terminado