Now let's drink unblended wine –
   Dawn's just a handspan.

What're we waiting for,
   The evening lamp to get re-lit?

Drink hearty; in no time at all,
   Poor bastard, we'll be sleeping

   Through that endless night.

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:: Abu Nuwas ::

   Freighted with emotion, that man's a weary one – passion staggers him. No joke, what he's charged with; if he weeps, it's only right.

   Whenever one symptom goes away, another comes from you. Lightheartedly, you laugh and your lover bursts into tears.

   (My dis-ease makes you wonder, but health & heartiness – that's what's wonderful.)

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:: Ghalib ::

   Pitiable heart, what’s the matter? You’re suffering, yes – but what’s the cure?

   So hot, yet she’s cold. God, such business! I, too, have a tongue in my head. Will she hear what I  want?

   There’s nothing without you. But, oh God, what trouble is this?

   What’s all this? Enchanting fairies, nodding, winking, flirting…what is this? Curling locks, odor of ambergris…such glances from those eyes, shaded with kohl…

   Whence comes the arbor and the rose? A cloud – what’s that? What is the wind?

   Our faith in her faithlessness: she doesn’t know what faith means! Good deeds will reward you. Isn’t that the dervish’s wail?

   I gave you everything, not only a prayer. It’s true Ghalib’s worthless, but don’t complain. You got him for nothing.

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:: Charles Baudelaire ::

To a Passerby

The deafening street around me howled.
   Tall, slender, in heavy mourning – majestic in Sorrow,
A woman passed; her fastidious hand
   Raising, swaying lace work & hem,

Quick & proud, her leg a statue.
   Me, I drank – twisted like a grotesque –
In her eye – livid sky where the hurricane blooms –
   The sweetness that fascinates & the killing pleasure.

Lightning, then the Night! Fugitive Beauty,
Whose glance suddenly gave me rebirth,
Am I not to see you again but in Eternity?

Elsewhere, far away! Too late! Maybe never.
I’m ignorant of where you flee, you know not where I go,
O you whom I would’ve loved, you who knew!
 

*(Originally published in Invisible City)

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:: Francisco de Quevedo ::

To Lisi

It may close my eyes, the last shadow
   That relieves me of white day
And unbind my soul, the hour
   Which flatters my anxious longing,

But not leave on the opposite shore
   The memory of where it once burned.
This flame knows how to swim the cold waters
   And lose respect for stern law.

Soul that for all a god has been a prison,
   Veins which fed humours to such a fire,
Marrow that so gloriously burned

Will abandon their body, not their passion;
   May be ashes, yet hold feeling;
Dust maybe, but dust in love.*
 

*[Polvo séran, mas polvo enamorado
  “dust be dust in love” (Merwin)]

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:: Paul Verlaine ::

            “Rains softly on the town.”
                                              - Rimbaud

Tears on my heart
Like it’s raining in town.
What languor
Penetrates my heart?

Soft noise of rain
On earth and the roofs.
Song of the rain
For a tedious heart.

No reason for tears
In this disheartened heart.
Treasonless. What! 
This reasonless grief.

The biggest trouble:
Not knowing why
Such trouble at heart,
No love and no hate.
 

(“In my heart, like Verlaine said,
   I can hear the little sound of it
   raining.” - Jack Spicer)

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:: Fernando Pessoa ::

Sky, quiet blueness of light.
Little waves, gently breaking,
Lit up down the length of shore –
Fingers playing.

Playing no tune at all
On that piano, nameless shore.
Out of this constant pounding
Tumbles the whole day’s meaning.

What a thing if just that pleasure were enough!
So reassuring then to believe
Sea   sky   waves
Contain all of life, Being . . .
 

*(published as a New Year’s Greeting from Moe’s Books, 
   Berkeley, CA, 1999)

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from "Unauthorized Versions" © 2001 Ken Bullock. All rights reserved.
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