The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem

by Jeremy Noel-Tod

  Cloudiness what is cloudiness, is it a lining, is it a roll, is it melting.

  The sooner there is jerking, the sooner freshness is tender, the sooner the round it is not round the sooner it is withdrawn in cutting, the sooner the measure means service, the sooner there is chinking, the sooner there is sadder than salad, the sooner there is none do her, the sooner there is no choice, the sooner there is a gloom freer, the same sooner and more sooner, this is no error in hurry and in pressure and in opposition to consideration.

  A recital, what is a recital, it is an organ and use does not strengthen valor, it soothes medicine.

  A transfer, a large transfer, a little transfer, some transfer, clouds and tracks do transfer, a transfer is not neglected.

  Pride, when is there perfect pretence, there is no more than yesterday and ordinary.

  A sentence of a vagueness that is violence is authority and a mission and stumbling and also certainly also a prison. Calmness, calm is beside the plate and in way in. There is no turn in terror. There is no volume in sound.

  There is coagulation in cold and there is none in prudence. Something is preserved and the evening is long and the colder spring has sudden shadows in a sun. All the stain is tender and lilacs really lilacs are disturbed. Why is the perfect reestablishment practiced and prized, why is it composed. The result the pure result is juice and size and baking and exhibition and nonchalance and sacrifice and volume and a section in division and the surrounding recognition and horticulture and no murmur. This is a result. There is no superposition and circumstance, there is hardness and a reason and the rest and remainder. There is no delight and no mathematics.

  Custard.

  Custard is this. It has aches, aches when. Not to be. Not to be narrowly. This makes a whole little hill.

  It is better than a little thing that has mellow real mellow. It is better than lakes whole lakes, it is better than seeding.

  Potatoes.

  Real potatoes cut in between.

  Potatoes.

  In the preparation of cheese, in the preparation of crackers, in the preparation of butter, in it.

  Roast Potatoes.

  Roast potatoes for.

  Gertrude Stein (1914)

  Winter Night

  It has been snowing. Past midnight, drunk on purple wine, you leave the gloomy shelters of men, and the red fire of their fireplaces. Oh the darkness of night.

  Black frost. The ground is hard, the air has a bitter taste. Your stars make unlucky figures.

  With a stiff walk, you tramp along the railroad embankment with huge eyes, like a soldier charging a dark machinegun nest. Onward!

  Bitter snow and moon.

  A red wolf, that an angel is strangling. Your trouser legs rustle, as you walk, like blue ice, and a smile full of suffering and pride petrifies your face, and your forehead is white before the ripe desire of the frost;

  or else it bends down silently over the doze of the night watchman, slumped down in his wooden shack.

  Frost and smoke. A white shirt of stars burns on your clothed shoulders, and the hawk of God strips flesh out of your hard heart.

  Oh the stony hill. The cool body, forgotten and silent, is melting away in the silver snow.

  Sleep is black. For a long time the ear follows the motion of the stars deep down in the ice.

  When you woke, the churchbells were ringing in the town. Out of the door in the east the rose-colored day walked with silver light.

  Georg Trakl (1914), translated from the German by James Wright

  from Scented Leaves – from a Chinese Jar

  The Bitter Purple Willows

  Meditating on the glory of illustrious lineage I lifted up my eyes and beheld the bitter purple willows growing round the tombs of the exalted Mings.

  The Marigold

  Even as the seed of the marigold, carried by the wind, lodges on the roofs of palaces, and lights the air with flame-coloured blossoms, so may the child-like words of the insignificant poet confer honour on lofty and disdainful mandarins.

  The Milky Way

  My mother taught me that every night a procession of junks carrying lanterns moves silently across the sky, and the water sprinkled from their paddles falls to the earth in the form of dew. I no longer believe that the stars are junks carrying lanterns, no longer that the dew is shaken from their oars.

  Allen Upward (1913)

  Menagerie

  to Vyacheslav Ivanov

  Zoo! Zoo!

  Where the iron of the cages is like a father, reminding brothers that they are brothers, and stopping their bloody skirmish.

  Where Germans come to drink beer.

  And pretty ladies sell their bodies.

  Where eagles sit like centuries, defined by a present day that still hasn’t reached its evening.

  Where the camel, whose high hump is denied a rider, knows the mystery of Buddhism and has concealed the smirk of China.

  Where a deer is nothing but terror, flowering like a wide stone.

  Where the people’s costumes are terribly fancy.

  Where people go about frowning and trying to be clever.

  And Germans blossom with health.

  Where the black gaze of the swan, who exactly resembles winter but whose yellow-black beak is a little grove in autumn, is slightly guarded and mistrustful even for the swan itself.

  Where the dark-blue pretty peacock, pretteacock, drops a tail that is like Siberia seen from the rock of Pavda, when over the gold leaves and the green forest is thrown a blue net of clouds, and all this takes on various shades from the soil’s unevenness.

  Where you feel the desire to pull out the Australian lyre-birds’ tail-feathers and pluck them like guitar strings and sing of Russian exploits.

  Where we clench our fists as if holding a sword and whisper an oath: to keep the Russian species separate, at the price of life, at the price of death, at any price.

  Where the monkeys get angry in different ways and show off their various extremities and are always annoyed at the presence of people, apart from the sad ones and the mild ones.

  Where the elephants, twisting like mountains twist in an earthquake, beg children for food, adding their ancient meaning to the more general truth: ‘I wanna eat! Gimme something to eat!’ – and then they slump to the ground as if to beg for mercy.

  Where the agile bears climb up and look down, and wait for their keeper’s command.

  Where the pipistrelles hang overturned, like the heart of a modern Russian.

  Where the falcon’s breast reminds us of the feathery clouds before a storm.

  Where the low-slung pheasant drags a golden sunset after itself, and all the coals of its fire.

  Where in the tiger’s face, framed by a white beard and with the eyes of an elderly Muslim, we honour the Prophet’s first follower and read the essence of Islam.

  Where we start to think that faiths are the retreating waves whose advance is the various species.

  And that there are so many beasts on the earth because they see God in different ways.

  Where the beasts, tired of roaring, stand up and look at the sky.

  Where the torments of sinners are vividly recalled in the seal, howling as it drags itself round its cage.

  Where the ridiculous fish-wing penguins care for each other with the tenderness of Gogol’s Old World landowners.

  Zoo, Zoo, where the gaze of a beast means more than books learned by heart.

  Zoo.

  Where the eagle complains about something, complaining like a tired child.

  Where the husky kicks up the Siberian dust, completing the ancient ritual of enmity under the gaze of a cat that is licking itself clean.

  Where the goats beg by sticking their cloven hooves through the wires, and wave them, their eyes taking on a self-satisfied or happy expression once they’ve got what they wanted.

  Where a too-tall giraffe stands and stares.

  Where the noon cannon makes the eagles stare up at the sky
in expectation of a storm.

  Where the eagles fall from their tall perches like idols during an earthquake from the roofs of temples and houses.

  Where one eagle, tousled as a little girl, looks up at the sky and then down at its foot.

  Where we see a wooden totem in the face of the motionless stag.

  Where an eagle sits with its back to the people and looks at the wall, holding its wings strangely wide. Does it think that it is hovering high over the mountains? Or is it praying? Or is it too hot?

  Where an elk kisses the smooth-horned buffalo through a fence.

  Where the deer lick the cold iron.

  Where a black seal slides along the floor leaning on its long flippers, with the movements of a man tied up in a sack, like a cast-iron monument caught by a fit of the giggles.

  Where the lion, shaggy-haired ‘Vyacheslav Ivanov’, rushes around and beats its paw angrily against the iron whenever the keeper calls it ‘comrade’.

  Where all the lions dream with their faces against their paws.

  Where the deer unwearyingly knock against the wire with their horns and beat it with their heads.

  Where all the ducks of one particular species in their dry cage cry out in unison after a brief shower of rain, as if offering a prayer – does it have feet and a beak? – a prayer of thanks to their deity.

  Where the guineafowl are sometimes loud gentlewomen with naked stripped necks and an ashy-silver body made to measure by the same tailor who caters to the night sky.

  Where I refuse to recognize a fellow northerner in the honey bear and instead discover the Mongol hidden within him, and want to take revenge on him for Port Arthur.

  Where the wolves show compliance and devotion in their twisted attentive eyes.

  Where, as I enter their stuffy house where it is difficult to stay for long, I am showered with a unanimous cry of ‘prrrrick!’ and the husks of seeds by the idle parrots, who chatter fluently.

  Where the fat and shining walrus waves its black slippery fan-shaped foot like a tired coquette and then falls into the water, and when it drags itself up onto the ramp once more, its powerful greasy body is topped by the moustachioed spiny head and smooth brow of Nietzsche.

  Where the jaws of the white, tall, black-eyed llama and that of the smooth, short buffalo, and those of all other ruminants move evenly to the right and to the left, just like the life of the country.

  Where the rhinoceros holds in his red-white eyes the unquenchable fury of a deposed tsar and alone of all the beasts does not hide his contempt for mankind, like contempt for a slave rebellion. He conceals Ivan the Terrible within himself.

  Where the gulls with their long beaks and their cold ice-blue eyes that seem to exist inside round spectacles look like international businessmen, something we find confirmed in the innate skill with which they steal on the wing the food that is meant for the seals.

  Where, remembering that Russians used to call their great chieftains ‘falcon’, and remembering also that the eye of the Cossack, sunk deep beneath a brooding brow, and of this bird – the race of royal birds – are identical, we begin to know who it was who taught the Russians the art of war. O hawks, piercing the breasts of herons! And the heron’s sharp beak pointed to the sky! And the pin where that rare person – endowed with honesty, truthfulness and a sense of duty – mounts his insects!

  Where the red duck who stands on his webbed feet reminds you of the skulls of Russians who have fallen for their motherland, in whose bones his ancestors built their nests.

  Where, in the golden forelock of one breed of bird, dwells the flame of that strength that is only characterized by a vow of celibacy.

  Where Russia pronounces the name ‘Cossack’ like an eagle’s screech.

  Where the elephants have forgotten their trumpet calls and make a sound that seems to mourn their condition. Could it be that, seeing us so insignificant, they have started to consider it a sign of good taste to make such insignificant sounds themselves? I do not know. O grey wrinkled mountains! Covered with lichen and with grass growing in your ravines!

  Where in the beasts some kinds of beautiful possibilities are dying, like – written in a Book of Hours – the Lay of Igor’s Campaign during the fire of Moscow.

  Velimir Khlebnikov (1911), translated from the Russian by James Womack

  Painting

  Let some one fasten this piece of silk by the four corners for me, and I shall not put the sky upon it. The sea and its shores, the forest and the mountains, do not tempt my art. But from the top to the bottom and from one side to the other, as between new horizons, with an artless hand I shall paint the Earth. The limits of communities, the divisions of fields, will be exactly outlined, – those that are already plowed, those where the battalions of sheaves still stand. I shall not fail to count each tree. The smallest house will be represented with an ingenuous industry. Looking closely, you may distinguish the people; he who crosses an arched bridge of stone, parasol in hand; he who washes buckets at a pond; the litter traveling on the shoulders of two porters, and the patient laborer who plows a new furrow the length of the old. A long road bordered with a double row of skiffs crosses the picture from one corner to the other, and in one of the circular moats can be seen, in a scrap of azure for water, three quarters of a slightly yellow moon.

  Paul Claudel (1900), translated from the French by Teresa Frances and William Rose Benét

  Absinthia Taetra

  Green changed to white, emerald to an opal: nothing was changed.

  The man let the water trickle gently into his glass, and as the green clouded, a mist fell from his mind.

  Then he drank opaline.

  Memories and terrors beset him. The past tore after him like a panther and through the blackness of the present he saw the luminous tiger eyes of the things to be.

  But he drank opaline.

  And that obscure night of the soul, and the valley of humiliation, through which he stumbled were forgotten. He saw blue vistas of undiscovered countries, high prospects and a quiet, caressing sea. The past shed its perfume over him, to-day held his hand as it were a little child, and to-morrow shone like a white star: nothing was changed.

  He drank opaline.

  The man had known the obscure night of the soul, and lay even now in the valley of humiliation; and the tiger menace of the things to be was red in the skies. But for a little while he had forgotten.

  Green changed to white, emerald to an opal: nothing was changed.

  Ernest Dowson (1899)

  The Pipe

  Yesterday I found my pipe while pondering a long evening of work, of fine winter work. Thrown aside were my cigarettes, with all the childish joys of summer, into the past which the leaves shining blue in the sun, the muslins, illuminate, and taken up once again was the grave pipe of a serious man who wants to smoke for a long while without being disturbed, so as better to work: but I was not prepared for the surprise that this abandoned object had in store for me; for hardly had I drawn the first puff when I forgot the grand books I was planning to write, and, amazed, moved to a feeling of tenderness, I breathed in the air of the previous winter which was now coming back to me. I had not been in contact with my faithful sweetheart since returning to France, and now all of London, London as I had lived it a year ago entirely alone, appeared before my eyes: first the dear fogs that muffle one’s brains and have an odor of their own there when they penetrate beneath the casements. My tobacco had the scent of a somber room with leather furniture sprinkled by coal dust, on which the thin black cat would curl and stretch; the big fires! and the maid with red arms pouring coals, and the noise of those coals falling from the sheet-iron bucket into the iron scuttle in the morning – when the postman gave the solemn double knock that kept me alive! Once again I saw through the windows those sickly trees of the deserted square – I saw the open sea, crossed so often that winter, shivering on the deck of the steamer wet with drizzle and blackened from the fumes – with my poor wandering belove
d, decked out in traveller’s clothes, a long dress, dull as the dust of the roads, a coat clinging damply to her cold shoulders, one of those straw hats with no feather and hardly any ribbons that wealthy ladies throw away upon arrival, mangled as they are by the sea, and that poor loved ones refurbish for many another season. Around her neck was wound the terrible handkerchief that one waves when saying goodbye forever.

  Stéphane Mallarmé (1897), translated from the French by Henry Weinfeld

  The Disciple

  When Narcissus died the pool of his pleasure changed from a cup of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears, and the Oreads came weeping through the woodland that they might sing to the pool and give it comfort.

  And when they saw that the pool had changed from a cup of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears, they loosened the green tresses of their hair and cried to the pool and said, ‘We do not wonder that you should mourn in this manner for Narcissus, so beautiful was he.’

  ‘But was Narcissus beautiful?’ said the pool.

  ‘Who should know that better than you?’ answered the Oreads. ‘Us did he ever pass by, but you he sought for, and would lie on your banks and look down at you, and in the mirror of your waters he would mirror his own beauty.’

  And the pool answered, ‘But I loved Narcissus because, as he lay on my banks and looked down at me, in the mirror of his eyes I saw ever my own beauty mirrored.’

  Oscar Wilde (1894)

  The Master

  Now when the darkness came over the earth Joseph of Arimathea, having lighted a torch of pinewood, passed down from the hill into the valley. For he had business in his own home.

  And kneeling on the flint stones of the Valley of Desolation he saw a young man who was naked and weeping. His hair was the colour of honey, and his body was as a white flower, but he had wounded his body with thorns and on his hair had he set ashes as a crown.