30 juin 2013

[Poé] À coups d'crayon


D’un seul geste, lis et compose

L’œil nourrit le livre, le recueille
A son tour un recueil
Enivre la vision

Écouter, raconter, même chose

Lorsque les noms sonnent l'oreille
Le poignet crie, réveille
Le tracé du son

Alliage des mots, alliance de prose

Entends ! La langue se mouvoir
Forcer son dédale de mémoire
À coups de crayon
Apollo and the Artist 1975



à coup d'crayon 2013

 art Cy Twombly
Venus 1975

19 juin 2013

[Poé] Seulement lu ou versé




Parfois c’est un duo, parfois une collision

Je ne crée rien, je retranscris seulement
Ce qui traverse – et ceux et celles
                           Que j’entends
                 Traverser vivante

Parfois sauveteurs, parfois écrin
    Parfois fléau, nous sommes essaim

De Rhodopis Vesper

Je n’ai jamais créé, non
Seulement lu ou versé
                Telle eau brûlante sur tel corps nu
           Et bu le cri
seulement lu ou versé, 2013
img
Björk

rewritten in English

[Poé] Rewrite (English version for 'Seulement lu ou versé')



Sometimes it’s a duet, sometimes a crash


I don’t create nothing, only rewrite
What flows throughout – and those
     I hear crossing, those I wish
            To cross alive

     Sometimes we’re lifeguards, not out of harm
           Sometimes we’re but hazard, a swarm
Of hummingbirds

   I never created, no
Only read, then poured
    Such burning water on such naked truth

    To gather its cry

Rewrite, 2013
English version for Seulement lu ou versé

14 juin 2013

[Kwot] Zenarchy (Kerry W. Thornley)


And here I am, typing down the last words of Kerry Wendell Thornley's short none-treatise on the politics of non-political counter-culture, Zenarchy.

 After writing The Idle Soldiers on his then-friend and comrade Lee Harvey Oswald (long before this latter's defection and the murder of JFK), but before founding Discordianism with his childhood friend Greg Hill (Malaclypse the Younger), Thornley (alias the Purple Sage, Omar Khayyâm Ravenhurst - not to be confused with the 11th century Iranian sufi polymath of the same name) wrote some of his ideas on life, compiling stories and examples about counter-culture and Zen (some funny, some laughable, some profound and some very relevantly useless).

Here are two extracts, from the first and the last Chapter of Zenarchy. Let us think, or not.
The whole booklet can be downloaded here free of rights (literally "All rites reversed").


The Unborn Face
[...]

Although we sometimes called ourselves hip or hipsters or hippies or flower children, at that time those were just names among many that seemed occasionally fitting. As a social entity we were not yet stereotyped. Between a hard-bopping hipster and a gentle flower child there was a distinction, and neither label stretched to include us all.


[...]

Becoming hung up on avoiding names, of course, can be as misleading as being named, classified and forgotten. We were not making an effort in either direction. We intended, however, to avoid abstractions that short-circuit thought. An unborn face entailed a naked mind.
Zen is called Zen, but when the monk asks the master, “What is Zen?” he does not receive a definition but a whack on the head, or a mundane remark, or a seemingly unrelated story. Although such responses might baffle the student, they did not encourage him to glibly pigeon-hole the Doctrine.
[...]

The Forgotten Sage


In Flight of the White Crows, John Berry reminds us that Chaung Tzu says the true sage is absent-minded: “The absent-minded man cannot remember his bad deeds; he cannot remember his good deeds.”


 read and typed in june 2013

3 juin 2013

[Poékwot] Iomallachd / Remoteness (Meg Bateman)



A poem from Meg Bateman, original in Gaelic and English transcription, in These Islands We Sing (anthology of contemporary Scottish poems, edited by Kevin MacNeil, 2011). The poem is a lucid, crystal-clear chiasmus between two places, two ages, two exiled communities.

I love the style of Meg Bateman (so different from mine). She wrote a poem / song about the burial of Sorley McLean, the great poet from Raasay Island (between Skye and the Highlands), and the poem is delicate yet real, so real that one could use it as a blanket or a frying pan. And now for Iomallachd.


Iomallachd

Chan eil iomallachd sa Ghàdhealtachd ann -
le càr cumhachdach
ruigear an t-àite taobh a-staigh latha;
's e luimead na hoirthir
a shàraich na daoine
is a chuir thar lear iad
a tha gar tàladh an-diugh,
na làraichean suarach a dh'fhàgh iad
cho miannaichte ri gin san rìoghachd.

Och, an iomallachd, càit a bheil thu?
Càit ach air oir lom nam bailtean,
sna towerblocks eadar motorways
far am fuadaichear na daoine
gu iomall a' chumhachd,
an aon fhiaradh goirt nan sùlean
's a chithear an aodann sepia nan eilthireach
(a bha mise riamh an dùil
gum biodh an Nàdar air dèanamh àlainn). 
 Remoteness

The Higlands are not remote any more -
with a powerful car
you can reach the place in a day;
it is the bleakness of the coast
that wore the people down
and sent them overseas
that draws us today,
the miserable sites they left
as desired as any in the land.

Alas, remoteness, where are you?
Where but at the bleak edge of the cities,
in the towerblocks between motorways
where people are removed
edged out from power,
the same hurt squint in their eyes
as is seen in the emigrants' sepia faces
(that I had fully expected
Nature to have made beautiful).

Meg Bateman by Robyn Grant
 Iomallachd / Remoteness, Meg Bateman