Written or translated by Norman Elliott Anderson
Point of pen --
purge of soul.
Bilge and din
can ne'er console.
"Burst the 'Damns,'
profane the gift!
Death to lambs,
let life no lift!
"Slop and scorch
and scald and boil!
Cast the torch,
and cake the soil!"
Demons plot and play,
connive with glee:
"Ha, ha! Heaven for pay!
and woe for free!"
A soul grieves
for the children dead.
Manse pyre -- "Clergy please!" --
burned alive, parsonage.
Round survivors tragedy clings
as cloak covers corpse,
as strains hover o'er the dirge,
as snow blankets graveyard copse.
Composed February 11, 1988 following a tragic house fire
With revisions through August 7, 1995
Love -- that eternal
transient fire
googaplexing
down the hearth
of the aeons.
Composed August 16, 1991
With revisions through March 27, 1993
Twitching ceaselessly through the night,
slumber escapes this troubled soul.
Disturbance -- cannot think, cannot write.
All balance is overthrown. I've
spread my sails o'er troubled waters.
Leaky, keeling, soon to sink and
rise to heaven, if that elusive
island shore continues ever
to elude me more, never
never to receive this
would be soon-to-be
sailor cast-away. Ah, what
rapture in the passing thought
of goal won -- or turbulence ceased!
Composed October 16, 1991
With revisions through March 27, 1993
When somber down
the sun she goeth,
Mired agin' the mirky sky,
fiery orb one instant frozen,
Gallowed o'er the wild horizon,
Shine n' dark
doth stave the soul,
Tempest past
doth linger strivin',
Stalled in even's woeful mournin'.
Composed December 22, 1993 in remembrance of the Hurricane of 1938
With revisions through December 24, 1993
Larkspur rising, fulminating
in the breath of Zeus,
so shall I arise --
not from the ashes,
for conflagration
I have not yet known,
though faith, work, and love,
even (maybe you can
comprehend) sense of self,
have all been crumbled, quashed,
liquefied in the crucible of life, with (here I
confess) partial residue of fought-off insanity.
Larkspur rising, fulminating
in the breath of Zeus,
so shall I arise --
not as a wraith
to haunt the somber
future of humanity;
not from the dead,
though that is still
one hope of faith;
but from the ground mists of obscurity
to unfold my petals before the sun
in the terrestrial garden of spiritual delight.
Begun April 18, 1995
With revisions through February 25, 1996
Poem written in Mim's Room at Union
In the twelfth un-rue
of my infirm riches
(O crazed refrain,
now un-ruing!),
I cling to this hard
destiny of despair --
happiness at bay,
joy subsumed.
Exaltation breaks through,
bursts, brightens, and
fades in the night.
Ruin, ruination --
I cling to it like
sailor to sinking ship.
"Cast loose! Cast loose!"
Lungs heave for
absent breath.
"Give body to sea,
to denizens of
surface and deep!
Cast loose, cast loose,
let go despair!
Let go the
drop weights that
entangle, drag, and bind!
Go naked,
naked afloat in this
squall-tossed sea.
'Risk all'
(Mim's voice is heard) --
affliction, burden,
imperfection,
yes, all my
infirm riches --
to desperate grasp
for LIFE!" (whispered)
Swells lift,
body rises,
breath is broken --
spray, submersion --
breath again.
Gale winds drive
pelting rain.
All boundaries
are lost --
surface and deep,
sea and open air,
darkness and light.
All direction too --
no hint of
up or down,
coast or star.
Here releasing at last --
no, released already
(but when, I wonder) --
I rest, content,
just another mammal
of the open sea.
All a moment of
crystal presence
while cupped in the
certain hand of God.
Composed March 9, 1997
With revisions through March 12, 1997
By Alfonsina Storni (1938)
Translated from the Spanish by Norman Elliott Anderson
Alfonsina Storni, poet, playwrite, feminist, and nonconformist, was born in the southern Swiss village of Sala Capriasca on May 29, 1892. Three or four years later, her family moved to Argentina, where she was brought up first in San Juan and then, fatherless and struggling, in Rosario. At the age of nineteen, she bore a son out of wedlock and hence moved to Buenos Aires, where she held various jobs, including that of a clerk at an olive-oil importing firm. Partly as a way of survival at first, she took up writing. Among other works, she published several books of poems:
She became part of the intellectual community of Buenos Aires and eventually taught at the Conservatorio de Música y Declamación. One stormy night in 1938, having wrestled for three years with a radical mastectomy from which she never recovered, believing cancer to have spread to her lungs, and having lost her ability to write by hand, she cast herself off the end of a pier into the waves at a favorite oceanside resort, Mar del Plata, and perished. "Voy a dormir" was her final poem.
Dentation of flowers, hair-net of dew,
Fingers* of weeds, you, good wetnurse,
Prepare for me the earthen sheets
And the featherbed of weedy mosses.
O wetnurse of mine, I am going to sleep, put me to bed.
Place a lamp at the headboard;
A constellation; whichever pleases you;
All are good; turn it down just a bit.
Leave me alone; you can hear the buds bloom...
From on high a celestial foot rocks your cradle
And for you a bird sketches musical measures
So that you may forget... Thank you. Oh, one request:
If he calls again by telephone
Tell him not to persist, that, heah, I've departed...
Translated October 11-12, 2000
Copyright ©1997-2004 by Norman E. Anderson
Posted, November 7, 1997; new url, January 28, 2004; last modified, January 28, 2004
For yet another poem, this one a prayer, click here.
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