Bolaño's "muse"

muse
by Roberto Bolaño

she was more beautiful than the sun
and i wasn't even 16 years old.
24 have passed
and she's still at my side.

sometimes i see her walking
over the mountains: she's the guardian angel
of our prayers.
she's the dream that recurs

with the promise and the whistle.
the whistle that calls us
and loses us.
in her eyes i see the faces

of all my lost loves.
oh, muse, protect me, i say to her,
on the terrible days
of the ceaseless adventure.

never pull away from me.
take care of my steps and the steps
of my son lautaro.
let me feel your fingertips

once more over my spine,
pushing me, when everything is dark,
when everything is lost.
let me hear the whistle again.

i am your faithful lover
though sometimes dreaming
pulls me away from you.
you're also the queen of those dreams.

you have my friendship every day
and someday
your friendship will draw me out of
the wasteland of forgetfulness.

so even if you come
when i go
deep down we're
inseparable friends.

muse, wherever i
might go
you go.
i saw you in the hospitals

and in the line
of political prisoners
i saw you in the terrible eyes
of edna lieberman

and in the alleys
of the gunmen.
and you always protected me!
in defeat and in triumph.

in unhealthy relationships
and in cruelty,
you were always with me.
and even if the years pass

and the roberto bolaño of la alameda
and the librería de cristal
is transformed,
is paralyzed,

becomes older and stupider
you'll stay just as beautiful.
more than the sun
and the stars.

muse, wherever you
might go
i go.
i follow your radiant trail

across the long night.
not caring about years
of sickness.
not caring about the pain

or the effort i must make
to follow you.
because with you i can cross
the great desolate spaces

and i'll always find the door
leading back
to the chimera,
because you're with me,

muse,
more beautiful than the sun,
more beautiful
than the stars.

rocking chair requiem

a memory within the creeeeek of the old rocking chair

we are those children once more

you and me

old and Withered flesh stripped away, scraped back, washed clean

until we are in the woods again, trees and skittish deer

and you and me

eyes darting, lips blooming, painful kisses and giggles and

cold backs and wide hopes and childish whispers

from you and me

bricks of destiny, a blood red stone wall, Dali clocks melting

ropes pulling us apart, and resignation on the childhood faces

of you and me

and never us.

R. R. Shea

The Unknown University

I've begun reading Bolaño's poems.  More to come.  Much, much more.

post match poetry.

All things considered, I think I'm taking my beloved Spain's loss to Brazil today in stride.  Here are my reworkings of poetry to match my mood.


Roses are red
violets are blue
Spain lost
dark
dark
dark
dark
dark

Now is the winter of our discontent/
Made even worse by having to hear about Neymar all summer.

I measure every grief I meet
With analytic eyes;
I wonder if it weighs like mine,
Or has an easier size.
Like, however tall that wanker Fernando Torres is. 

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, The ship has weather'd every rack, except the three goals our shoddy back line couldn't keep out. We obviously didn't weather those very well.

Red is the rose that in yonder garden grows/
And red is the color of the card Piqué got for that bonehead tackle on Neymar.

Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
probably has something to do with having no actual strikers.    

A few interesting sites

Here are four interesting sites I stumbled upon this week:

1.)  http://achilleshighheel.org/
2.)  A Zambra interview here
3.)  Proustian concerns here
4.)  and this fun little site

Father's day

What life is all about.  Now, off to frolic with my wife and my little girl.  Happy fathers' day to dads everywhere

All Russian to me

 

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Reading the first few pages of “Maidenhair” by Mikhail Shishkin, I was stunned by these random lines within the very modern story:

“And so Darius and Parysatis had two sons, the elder Artaxerxes and the younger Cyrus.  When Darius was taken ill and felt the approach of death, he demanded both sons come to him.  At the time the elder son was nearby, but Darius sent for Cyrus to another province, over which he had been placed as satrap.”

It was a Proustian moment and I was propelled back a decade to the summer I spent taking a one-on-one Ancient Greek class with one of my favorite professors, Brad Cook.  The text that summer was Xenophon’s “Anabasis,” often referred to as the march of the ten thousand.  The lines by Shishkin are the opening ones of Xenophon.  Here they are in the Greek (click a word for some linguistic fun):

Δαρείου καὶ Παρυσάτιδος γίγνονται παῖδες δύο, πρεσβύτερος μὲν Ἀρταξέρξης, νεώτερος δὲ Κῦρος: ἐπεὶ δὲ ἠσθένει Δαρεῖος καὶ ὑπώπτευε τελευτὴν τοῦ βίου, ἐβούλετο τὼ παῖδε ἀμφοτέρω παρεῖναι. ὁ μὲν οὖν πρεσβύτερος παρὼν ἐτύγχανε: Κῦρον δὲ μεταπέμπεται ἀπὸ τῆς ἀρχῆς ἧς αὐτὸν σατράπην ἐποίησε   

This is one hell of a book (Shishkin), so nothing I find would surprise me.  I just wonder at its purpose.  Anyway, here is my pretty literal translation from the Greek:

“Darius and Parysatis begat two sons, the elder Artaxerxes and the younger, Cyrus.  And when Darius lay sick and suspected the end of his life, he wished both sons to be nearby.  The elder one happened to be nearby, but he sent way for Cyrus from the province over which he (Darius) had made him (Cyrus) Satrap.

The one thing I remember clearly from Xenophon is that it felt after a while like I was marching along with the troops, covering so many stathmoi everyday, trapped inland with no guide and no hope of seeing the coast and a glimpse of familiar islands, and I was as thrilled as any Greek when the shout went up toward the end, “thalatta!, thallatta!,” “The Sea!, The Sea!”  We shall see what this ancient tale of strangers marching through and trying to escape a foreign land has to do with a novel of Russians trying to get into a foreign land and escape their own.