Tt

Sonnet LXV

Matilde, where are you? Down there I noticed,
under my necktie and just above the heart,
a certain pang of grief between the ribs,
you were gone that quickly.

I needed the light of your energy,
I looked around, devouring hope.
I watched the void without you that is like a house,
nothing left but tragic windows.

Out of sheer taciturnity the ceiling listens
to the fall of the ancient leafless rain,
to feathers, to whatever the night imprisoned:

so I wait for you like a lonely house
till you will see me again and live in me.
Till then my windows ache.

Hùng Quan vượt thẳng lên mây,
Hoa mai bay trạm tháng ngày hắt hiu.
Đền thờ thừa tướng tiêu điều,
Việt cung bỏ phế mọc nhiều cỏ cây.
Nhạn hồng bắc chẳng xuống đây,
Giá cô sợ lạnh bay đầy phương nam.
Quê xưa vọng ngóng chẳng kham,
Đường dài chiều xuống núi lam chập chùng.

Lovers talk (tiếng Anh)

– We’ve been here an hour
But you always come up with the same old answer;
You want to drive me crazy with your jokes
But I know them by heart.
Don’t you like my mouth? Don’t you like my eyes?
– Of course I like your eyes.
– Then why don’t you kiss them?
– I am going to kiss them!
– Don’t you like my thighs or my breasts?
– What do you mean, I don’t like your breasts!
– Then why don’t you show it?
Touch them, while you have the chance.
– I don’t like for you to make me do it.
– Then whey did you make me undress?
– I didn’t tell you to undress.
You did it because you wanted it:
Now get dressed, before your husband comes home.
Stop talking and put your clothes on
Before your husband comes home.

What poems say (tiếng Anh)

“Poetry is not responsible for what poems say.”
“Why not?”
“Because poetry says nothing. A poem always says something. But what a poem says is outside poetry. Poetry doesn’t say it, didn’t say it.

In no way do we assert that poetry ‘says nothing’ by saying nothing.”

“Robert Desnos wrote something like: ‘The poet must be able to say everything, and freely. Go ahead and try, friends, and you will see that we are not free’ What do you think of that?”

“It’s still true.”
“Poetry says everything?”
“Yes. As much as and in the same way that it says nothing.”
“But in no way do we assert that ‘poetry says everything ‘by saying everything.”

That poetry does not think (tiếng Anh)

“Poetry never resides in the thought of poetry.”
“Poetry never resides in thought?”
“That’s true as well.

In no way do we assert that poetry thinks by thinking in poetry.
In no way do we assert that poetry ‘does not think’ by thinking nothing.
We can arrive at poetry through thought. We can arrive at it without thought. Neither thought nor non-thought are essential.

A poem that says thought also says the opposite, in a more or less visible way
also says something else, in a more or less visible way;
also says the same thought, but in a redundant way
says the same thought again, only obliquely, formally.

The only requirement is that everything be, poetically, purposeful.”

What the poem said (tiếng Anh)

I forgot what the poem said

I knew what the poem said but I forgot what it was

The poem said that, but I forgot that that that the poem said

That the poem said that, is that what the poem said? If it’s that that the poem said, I forgot what it was

Maybe, without knowing what the poem said, while I was reciting the poem (when I was reciting the poem), I had already forgotten what it was
but if that’s what the poem said, I forgot what it was

Now, when I recite the poem, I don’t know if I’m reciting this poem,
since I’ve forgotten what the poem was saying

That’s why what this poem says is not really what the poem was saying
and why I forgot what it was

Memory, again (tiếng Anh)

“Poetry is memory. Poetry is the memory of language. Poetry is the memory of a language for someone.”
“Someone who?”
“You.
Poetry is your language is the memory of your language in you.”
“How’s that?”
“By what it evokes in you, in your memory. Poetry occurs in a memory. It is an effect of memory.”
“And that’s why it says nothing.”
“That’s why. For the memory effect of poetry is entirely private. It’s your memory, and no other. If it’s true that the meaning of what is said – if what is said has a meaning, is a communicable meaning – is paraphrasable, it is a public meaning. But the meaning of poetry in a memory is only in that memory. It’s not something that can be transmitted to others.”
“It is not remembrance?”
“It is not remembrance. And it is not thought.
Poetry, for someone, is the being of his language.”
“Is there more?”
“Poetry is subtracted from the so-called ‘publicity of meaning’ rule. The discussion of the meaning of poetry (in poems is distorted at the start if that is not taken into account. In the ‘meaning’ of what a poem says, there is inevitably much that is private, and thus untransmittable and non-interpersonal.
It follows that poetry, if I welcome and recognize it, makes the language my language more than any other use of it, makes me a possessor of my language.
My language is mine through poetry.”

What?! (tiếng Anh)

“What?! Just because we had Napoleon the Great we have to have Napoléon the Small?” (Victor Hugo)

“What?! Just because we had had Breton, we had to have Breton the Small!”

Under the stars (tiếng Anh)

Maybe I had lost the key, and everyone around me laughs and each shows me an enormous key hanging from his neck.

I am the only one who has no way to get in somewhere. They have all disappeared and the closed doors leave the street sadder. No one. I’ll knock on every door.

Insults fly out of the windows and I withdraw.

So, not far outside of town, on the edge of a river and a wood, I found a door. A simple gate with no lock. I got behind it and beneath the night that has no windows but does have a large curtain, between the forest and the river that protected me, I was able to sleep

Song

Bells on our eyelashes
and the death throes of words,
and I among fields of speech,
a knight on a horse made of dirt.
My lungs are my poetry, my eyes a book.
and I, under the skin of words,
on the beaming banks of foam,
a poet who sang and dies
leaving this
before the faces of poets,
for birds at the edge of sky