Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Pablo Neruda


For Everyone

I can't just suddenly tell you
what I should be telling you,
friend, forgive me; you know
that although you don't hear my words,
I wasn't asleep or in tears,
that I'm with you without seeing you
for a good long time and until the end.

I know that many may wonder
"What is Pablo doing?" I'm here.
If you look for me in this street 
you'll find me with my violin,
prepared to break into song,
prepared to die.

It is nothing I have to leave to anyone,
not to these others, not to you,
and if you listen well, in the rain,
you'll hear
that I come and go and hang about.
And you know that I have to leave.

Even if my words don't know it,
be sure, I'm the one who left.
There is no silence which doesn't end.
When the moment comes, expect me
and let them all know I'm arriving
in the street, with my violin.


tr. Alastair Reid
fr. Fully Empowered, 1975

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Jackson Mac Low

Manifesto

To manifest: to be, visibly.
To make visible what was formerly invisible or otherwise to make sensible what was formerly not.
To present or make present, vocally, visibly, or otherwise, one's views, sentiments, objections, etc. in reference to a matter of public concern.
Manifest: a commercial document listing constituents of cargo or names of passengers on a plane, ship, or other vehicle.
A manifest of meanings.
To make evident or certain by showing or displaying.
Readily perceived by the senses, especially by sight.
Easily understood or recognized.
Obvious.
To become obvious.
To be, obviously.
To be, recognizably.
To become recognizable.
To emerge as a figure from a ground.
To become visible, or otherwise perceptible, as an agent.
To act.
To make interior states perceptible to others.
Manifesto: a public declaration of principles, intentions, views, or feelings.
A document in which is said explicitly what otherwise might have remained implicit in political, artistic, or other practice.
To present or make present.
To present for inspection what might not otherwise have been able to be inspected.
To make the implicit explicit.
To make the hidden unhidden.
To say what might not otherwise have been said.
Choose one or more of the following:
Every text is a manifesto.
Every (adjective) text is a manifesto.
Every text worth reading is a manifesto.

18 June 1983
New York

***

Unmanifest

What the maker of a manifesto does not comprehend or acknowledge is the basic unmanifestness from which and within which each manifestation take place. It is this neglect or ignorance that calls forth repugnance when a manifesto is proclaimed or published, especially one regarding art. As if what comes to being in and as the work of art could ever be totally manifest or even manifest at all without its abiding steadfastly in the unmanifest! A work of art is a manifesto only insofar as it is its own antimanifesto.

21 June 1983
New York

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

Fernando Pessoa


Raining

Raining. There is silence since rain's self
Makes no noise unless a noise of peace.
Raining. The sky's gone to sleep. When the soul is
Widowed of unknowing, feeling gropes.
Raining. My essence (who I am) I repeal.

So calm the rain is, it seems to disappear
(Not even made of clouds) into air, seems
Not to be rain even, only a whisper
Which itself, in the whispering, dislimns.
Raining. Nothing gleams.

No wind is hovering. There is no sky
That I can feel. It's raining, distinct, indistinct,
Like something certain which may be a lie,
Like what a lie does to us, some great thing desired.
Raining. In me nothing's stirred.

(2.10.33)

tr. Jonathan Griffin
in Fernando Pessoa: Selected Poems
[Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1974]