Other People’s Poetry

 
Language Event Two

 
Two Poets. Questions and answers are always independent.

(Suzanne Muzard, Andre Breton:)

 
What is a kiss?
A divagation, everything collapses.

 
What is daylight?
A naked woman bathing at nightfall.

 
What is exaltation?
It’s a blob of oil in a brook.

 
What are eyes?
The night watchman in a perfume factory.

 
What is hovering between Suzanne and me?
Great black threatening clouds.

 
What is a bed?
A fan quickly opened. The sound of a bird’s wing.

 

 

Translation from the French by Marcel Jean
From Poems of the Millenium, edited by
Jerome Rothenberge and Pierre Joris

Other People’s Poetry

 
The Dead In Frock Coats

 
In the corner of the living room was an album of unbearable photos,
many meters high and infinite minutes old,
over which everyone leaned
making fun of the dead in frock coats.

Then a worm began to chew the indifferent coats,
the pages, the inscriptions, and even the dust on the pictures.
The only thing it did not chew was the everlasting sob of life that broke
and broke from the pages.

 

 

Carlos Drummon de Andrade 1902 – 1988

Other People’s Poetry

 
Route

Her voice roosts in my memory.
My body rocks my thoughts to sleep.
The telegraph wires vanish in the distance.

Pebbles collide, sound the stroke of noon.

 
Life-Saving Medal

My nose cuts the air,
my eyes are red from laughing.
At night, I gather milk and moonlight
and run without turning back.
If the trees behind me get frightened,
I don’t give a damn.
It is great to be indifferent
in the middle of the night
where all these people go,
the pride of the cities,
the village musicians.
The crowd is dancing, furiously,
and I am just this anonymous passer-by
or somebody whose name I can’t remember.

 
Phillipe Soupault (1897-1990)
 

Other People’s Poetry

 
Well

 

How often we imagined something else
as an ending.
Now there are only hours left,
avalanches of pain past
plunged into pools
of morphine, and you are without
fear, your skin a geography
of purple continents, your eyes
unblinking, seeing
through everything.
I was there all morning
describing the clouds to you
from the song of the sky.
I shut up and followed
the tiny rill of your breath.
And I said, “Mom, can you see me?”
as I leaned over you. You
turned your head to me and
gave me a long, leisurely
blink, full of pleasure,
and then turned your head away.


 

 
By Brian Henderson

 
As appeared in Sharawadji, published by Brick Books.

 
Brian Henderson is the author of nine volumes of poetry (including a deck of visual poem-cards, The Alphamiricon), the latest of which, Nerve Language, was nominated for the Governor General’s Award. His work, both critical and poetic, has appeared in a number of literary journals. He has a PhD in Canadian literature, is the Director of WLUPress and lives in Kitchener Ontario with his wife, Charlene Winger, who directs a mental health clinic in Halton.