American Carnage (per Donald Trump’s First Inaugural Address)

 

Rusted-out factories became tombstones scattered

across the far stretches of the American nation;

and the crime and gangs and drugs go and march

stealing lives all the while the education system,

flush with cash, robs the youth of wisdom and souls.

La « poésie » brutaliste est à la fois grosse et grasse

 

“You did well to leave, Arthur Rimbaud!

… You were right to abandon the boulevard

of the lazybones, the taverns of pisse-lyres …

for the commerce of the cunning…”

René Char

 

Still in clothes they cloud themselves

like the women of the bygone past:

but would you say with me—how

but few still have a musician’s gift

 

to tell apart a fine and clear measure

from the fausses notes & which of them

one should or shouldn’t want to hitch?

Or is it because wholly line by line

 

that grew like well-off woman’s shopping list

poesy turned (after good old baroque clouds)

angels into maudits Cupidons et putti gras

 

que Saturne, « le Père », ne laisse pas dépasser

sa faux—then with no Heaven above or within

doomed to shrink—into Jimmy Riddle’s piss?

Поэзия, опознание звезды просыпающегося oсознания

 

Наглой наготе белизны берёз

как раз недосчитаться

старинного стиха в нас --

в поисках одарённого лица

под чашкой излишнего зонтика.

 

А может его всё же есть,

если позволить -- позвать,

мягкий стук дождя

по дороге накрытой

листьями вокруг.

 

Ведь во всем всегда есть

тот вечно сиящий звук

и стих солнечно проснувшийся

с намёком от совместных небес,

когда те людям в любви очищают глаза.

 

Вот видишь, даже дождь

тихо стухающий по листьям

и есть эта струящаяся звезда,

а сознание и в души вечный стих,

неопалимый свет, солнечная слеза.

 

Poesy as Attained Anamnesis of One’s Wakeful Sun

 

The brazen nakedness of the whiteness of the birches

is just missing out

on the ancient verse in us –

in search of a gifted face

under the pointless umbrella’s calyx.

 

Or maybe it is still there,

if you admit and coax

the soft patter of rain

on the road covered

with leaves around.

 

Everywhere always there is

that sun-awakening rhyme

and its ever-lustrous sound

with a hint of the shared sky,

sent to light and clear our eyes.

 

See even the rain’s light rapping

on the leaves fallen on the ground

is a form of that one streaming star,

a knowing light that won’t burn out,

if in each other soul and song are found.