square white world

I

Je chante la chaleur à visage de nouveau-né, la chaleur désespérée.

I SING THE WARMTH IN THE FACE OF A NEWBORN,

THE DESPERATE WARMTH.

II

Au tour du pain de rompre l’homme, d’être la beauté du point du jour.

THE BREAD’S TURN TO BREAK MAN,

TO BE THE DAWN’S BEAUTY.

III

Celui qui se fie au tournesol ne méditera pas dans la maison. Toutes les pensées de l’amour deviendront ses pensées.

HE WHO BELIEVES THE SUNFLOWER WON’T BROOD IN THE HOUSE.

ALL THOUGHTS OF LOVE WILL BE HIS THOUGHTS.

IV

Dans la boucle de l’hirondelle un orage s’informe, un jardin se construit.

A STORM INQUIRES INTO THE SWALLOWS LOOP,

A GARDEN IS CONSTRUED.

V

Il y aura toujours une goutte d’eau pour durer plus que le soleil sans que l’ascendant du soleil soit ébranlé.

THERE WILL ALWAYS BE A WATER DROP TO OUTLAST THE SUN

THAT WILL NOT SHAKE THE SUN IN ITS ASCENDANCY.

VI

Produis ce que la connaissance veut garder secret, la connaissance au cent passages.

MAKE THAT WHICH FAMILIARITY WOULD KEEP SECRET,

FAMILIARITY WITH ITS HUNDRED HALLWAYS.

VII

Ce qui vient au monde pour ne rien troubler ne mérite ni égards ni patience.

THAT WHICH COMES TO THE WORLD TO DISTURB NOTHING

MERITS NEITHER CONSIDERATION NOR TOLERANCE.

VIII

Combien durera ce manque de l’homme mourant au centre de la création parce que la création l’a congédié?

HOW LONG WILL THIS LACK AT THE CENTRE OF CREATION LAST

OF THE DEATH OF MAN BECAUSE CREATION HAS REJECTED HIM?

IX

Chaque maison était une saison. La ville ainsi se répétait. Tous les habitants ensemble ne connaissaient que l’hiver, malgré leur chair réchauffée, malgré le jour qui ne s’en allait pas.

EVERY HOUSE WAS A SEASON. THE CITY WAS THUS REPEATED.

ALL OF ITS INHABITANTS TOGETHER KNEW ONLY WINTER,

IN SPITE OF THE WARMTH OF THEIR FLESH,

IN SPITE OF THE DAY THAT WOULDN’T LEAVE THEM.

X

Tu es dans ton essence constamment poète, constamment au zénith de ton amour, constamment avide de vérité et de justice. C’est sans doute un mal nécessaire que tu ne puisses l’être assidûment dans ta conscience.

YOU ARE A POET IN YOUR BEING CONTINUOUSLY, AT THE ZENITH OF YOUR LOVE CONTINUOUSLY,

HUNGRY FOR TRUTH AND JUSTICE CONTINUOUSLY. NO DOUBT IT IS A NECESSARY EVIL

THAT IN YOUR CONSCIENCE YOU CAN’T BE SO ASSIDUOUSLY.

XI

Tu feras de l’âme qui n’existe pas un homme meilleur qu’elle.

YOU’LL MAKE OF THE SOUL WHICH DOESN’T EXIST

A MAN BETTER THAN IT.

XII

Regarde l’image téméraire où se baigne ton pays, ce plaisir qui t’a longtemps fui.

LOOK AT THE RECKLESS IMAGE

IN WHICH YOUR COUNTRY IMMERSES ITSELF,

THIS PLEASURE THAT FOR A LONG TIME ESCAPED YOU.

XIII

Nombreux sont ceux qui attendent que l’écueil les soulève, que le but les franchisse, pour se définir.

THOSE WHO WAIT TO BE LIFTED UP BY WHAT BLOCKS THEM,

TO BE PASSED THROUGH BY THEIR END,

IN ORDER TO BE DEFINED,

ARE NUMEROUS.

XIV

Remercie celui qui ne prend pas souci de ton remords. Tu es son égal.

THANK HIM WHO PAYS YOUR REMORSE NO MIND.

YOU ARE HIS EQUAL.

XV

Les larmes méprisent leur confident.

TEARS SCORN THE SYMPATHISER.

XVI

Il reste une profondeur mesurable là où le sable subjugue la destinée.

THE DEPTH IS STILL MEASURABLE THERE

WHERE FATE FOUNDERS IN SAND.

XVII

Mon amour, peu importe que je sois né: tu deviens visible à la place où je disparais.

MY LOVE, WHO CARES THAT I WAS BORN:

YOU BECOME VISIBLE AT THE PLACE WHERE I DISAPPEAR.

XVIII

Pouvoir marcher, sans tromper l’oiseau, du coeur de l’arbre à l’extase du fruit.

THE POWER TO WALK,

WITHOUT FOOLING THE BIRD,

FROM THE HEART OF THE TREE

TO THE FRUIT’S ECSTASY.

XVIX

Ce qui t’accueille à travers le plaisir n’est que la gratitude mercenaire du souvenir. La présence que tu as choisie ne délivre pas d’adieu.

WHAT YOU GET FROM PLEASURE

IS ONLY THE MERCENARY CONSUMMATION

OF NOSTALGIA. THE TRACE

YOU’VE PICKED

GRANTS NO ADIEUS.

XX

Ne te courbe que pour aimer. Si tu meurs, tu aimes encore.

DON’T BOW YOUR HEAD

EXCEPT TO LOVE.

IF YOU DIE,

STILL YOU LOVE.

XXI

Les ténèbres que t’infuses sont régies par la luxure de ton ascendant solaire.

THE DARKNESSES INSTILLED IN YOU

ARE SUBJECT TO THE CUPIDITY

OF YOUR SOLAR ASCENDANT.

XXII

Néglige ceux aux yeux de qui l’homme passe pour n’être qu’une étape de la couleur sur le dos tourmenté de la terre. Qu’ils dévident leur longue remonstrance. L’encre du tisonnier et la rougeur du nuage ne font qu’un.

IGNORE THEM IN WHOSE EYES MAN PASSES FOR NO MORE THAN A TONE OF COLOUR

ON THE EARTH’S TORTURED BACK. LET THEM REEL OFF THEIR LENGTHY REMONSTRANCE.

THE POKER’S INK AND THE REDNESS OF CLOUD ARE JUST ONE.

XXIII

Il n’est pas digne du poète de mystifier l’agneau, d’investir sa laine.

IT’S UNWORTHY OF THE POET

TO MYSTIFY THE LAMB,

TO INVEST HIMSELF IN WOOL.

XXIV

Si nous habitons un éclair, il est le coeur de l’éternel.

OUR LIFE IS IN THE LIGHTNING,

TO BE IN THE HEART OF THE ETERNAL.

XXV

Yeux qui, croyant inventer le jour, avez éveillé le vent, que puis-je pour vous, je suis l’oubli.

EYES WHO, THINKING TO CREATE THE DAY,

YOU’VE WOKEN UP THE WIND,

WHAT COULD I FOR YOU,

I AM OBLIVION.

XXVI

La poèsie est de toutes les eaux claire celle qui s’attarde le moins aux reflets de ses ponts.
Poèsie, la vie future à l’intérieur de l’homme requalifié.

POETRY IS OF ALL CLEAR WATERS

THAT ONE WHICH SLOWS THE LEAST

TO REFLECT ITS BRIDGES.

POETRY, THE FUTURE LIFE

INSIDE OF THE MAN RETRAINED.

XXVII

Une rose pour qu’il pleuve. Au terme d’innombrables années, c’est ton souhait.

A ROSE THAT IT RAIN.

AT THE END OF INNUMERABLE YEARS,

THAT IS YOUR WISH.

The spectre showed a spectre’s ordinary caprice.

– Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, first published 1847, a year before the death of its author, aged 30, although it appeared under the pseudonym of Ellis Bell, Penguin Books, Australia, 2009, p. 33

A nothing vexed him, and suspected slights of his authority nearly threw him into fits.

– Ibid., p. 47

‘Is Heathcliff not here?’ she demanded, pulling off her gloves, and displaying fingers wonderfully whitened with doing nothing, and staying in doors.

– Ibid., p. 62

I cannot express it; but surely you and every body have a notion that there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation if I were entirely contained here?

– Ibid., p. 96

they were really in possession of deep and growing happiness.

It ended. Well, we must be for ourselves in the long run

– Ibid., p. 108

‘I have such faith in Linton’s love that I believe I might kill him, and he wouldn’t wish to retaliate.’

I advised her to value him the more for his affection.

– Ibid., p. 115

I believed a person who could plan the turning of her fits of passion to account, beforehand, might, by exerting her will, manage to control herself tolerably even while under their influence

– Ibid., p. 138

he was too good to be thoroughly unhappy for long. He didn’t pray for Catherine’s soul to haunt him

– Ibid., p. 217

He maintained a hard, careless deportment, indicative of neither joy nor sorrow; if anything, it expressed a flinty gratification at a piece of difficult work, successfully executed.

– Ibid., p. 221

‘Her affection for him was still the chief sentiment in her heart; and he spoke without anger; he spoke in the deep tenderness of one about to leave his treasure amid perils and foes, where his remembered words would be the only aid that he could bequeath to guide her.’

– Ibid., p. 300

‘he’s such a cobweb, a pinch would annihilate him’

– Ibid., p. 336

Living among clowns and misanthropists, she probably cannot appreciate a better class of people, when she meets them.

– Ibid., p. 356

‘my mind is so eternally secluded in itself, it is tempting, at last, to turn it out to another.’

– Ibid., p. 378

if you find it impossible to say,
once you find it’s impossible to go on,
then it’s clear that this is the place
to start.

What were they?
We had taken many of the same drugs.
I only remember parts of the very long words for them,
ptslblnmnkrnwfrsdnx.
What they were I don’t recall.

if the artist allowed the work to survive
it is by reason of curiosity and comparison
not as potential evidence of achievement.

– James Lord, Giacometti, p. 356

FOR YOU
… nobody has come back and said,
‘I have broken the ends off my fingers’
‘I have cried …
‘I have cried …’

a desirable challenge:
TO HAVE ONE’S EYES
OPENED BY
BUT NOT TO
infinity

It is one thing to dissolve the ‘I’ in impossibility.
It is another thing to do the impossible.

there are then two kinds of death just as there are two kinds of representation: one is intense, while one is not; one is lived, while one is living. … Are reversals possible? … It is in the dimension of time that intensity becomes event and death overcomes its limit, its terminal limit, that termination, and becomes timeless. While the other kind of death ends in time or is ended and falls away, like a ruined armature, falling to dust, without any sense of loss – as if it were the twin of the other kind of representation. Jesse.

The first waterman was a Russian immigrant. He had written a novel detailing his adventures, in and out of trouble with the law. It created a myth. It was into this myth that I was invited now to step.

When I first came to this city it was full of good things that I loved: a bookshop, a café, colourful characters. Now, moving back here …

Pinsized people seen from heights,
mountains, skyscrapers.

to be equal to one’s wound,
to be equal in shame,
to be equal in pride.

You lose your name because it is rough.
I watch you swap body parts.

a socialisation of music … we are a carpet and a carpet of sound sound

Two white goats’ body
staggered on a boundary,
heads in a green dark hedge.

I am the girl inside her head &
I am the boy inside her head

these claims we make on images
by shooting them

the stylites:
What is writing? I fear it will behoove me to ask this question.
Nobody knows what writing is

the year is 1980. The détente between East and West has been broken with salvos of nuclear warheads travelling in both directions. Everybody knows hostilities will escalate, that neither Superpower will rest until every enemy target has been hit; everybody knows that New Zealand is on the list of targets.

I left my wife for Carax
back to hell
The world demands that we be equal to its wound
back to hell

how is it possible, unless you really hate yourself, not to conceive a love for those who do what you tell them to do?

it’s really impossible, unless you have no self-respect at all, not to love the people who do what you tell them

the people are fascists

if sex is the “theatre of the working classes,” one can very well understand the ‘pornification’ of society.

on the evidence that society doesn’t descend to – or rise to the challenge of becoming – an orgy, while, it is said, they think about sex every several seconds, we must adduce that men are capable of being gentlemen the majority of the time

crying … REAL men shouldn’t feel afraid to show their emotions. Unless those emotions involve machetes or Samurai swords.

Nava Valencia’s [sic] diamond-studded gun

sometimes unpleasantness lends to enjoyment a little extra; however, like salt, it is possible to over-season.

you left me
i hate you
you came back
i love you

technicolour

knowledge is power; information is force?

I must be at the same level
as my belief
that is why I am a king
or a count at the very least

what becomes exotic is the rarefied context in which such exhibitionism can not only take place but become de rigueur. Aristocracy becomes a matter of self-display. This is the scene, a feature of the scene.

it shows up the hypocrisy of fashion editorial that does not go “all the way” but changes what is “all the way” into an act of honesty: the candid shot. Conventional fashion editorial starts to seem contrived, above all in the way it eroticizes or plays on the erotic fantasy of the viewer, male or female.

Zahm here celebrates and is critical. The critique lies in the candid shots interpellated into the more or less conventional spreads. That these are not primarily [illegible] sexual is attested to in the example of Lindsay Lohan’s scarred knee.

What is put on display is perversity in the sense that sex does not occur: no erect penises or shots of penetration. Here the perversity contemplates itself.

Olivier is a young-girl too. He is included … his glasses … and his stubble, resembling a pubic tonsure, particularly that of …

obéissez à vos cochons qui existent;

j’obéis à mes dieux qui n’existent point.

– René Char

OBEY THE PIGS THAT EXIST;

I OBEY THE GODS THAT DON’T.