Averse

"We make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry."

William Butler Yeats, poet, playwright, writer, Nobel laureate (1865-1939), in Per Amica Silentia Lunae: Anima Hominis (chapter V, 1918)

I've seen this quote phrased a tad differently all over the Internet: "Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry." I'm one to right wrongs by defending traceability of quotes and authorship, and preserving quotes in their original form...so yeah, you bet I'm going to go after that one. Inasmuch as I cannot but agree that the second form "reads better", I'd rather keep the first one as it is true Yeatsian style. Content matters, but form does too.

I have to apologise to some of my friends for being a quote killjoy [insert emoji of your choice].

By the roundabout way, here is the link to the text.

The earthquake

I thought the earthquake happened thirty years ago.

The town still lies there, in ruins, in tatters, in shambles.

Nobody cared enough to rebuild anything anywhere.

Green lush vegetation now covers the walls, the houses.

Whole barley fields extend as far as the eye can see.

Where roads and streets and parking lots used to be.

Only the graveyard remains untouched by the wilderness.

Someone must be coming here often to tend to the grave.

There's only one, you know, but it is in pristine condition.

The name still shines in gold, sun-mirroring letters.

That name used to be mine, before the earthquake.

I thought the earthquake happened twenty years ago.

When its memory surfaced, like a dead body in the sea.

A dead body is what we put in coffins, like in the movies.

Crapversaries is what I call the birthday of a deathday.

That day was the crappiest crapversary of my short life.

I remember it like it was yesterday because it sort of was.

I saw his silhouette against the lit backdrop of the open door.
I pretended to be asleep but my pounding heart wouldn’t let me. 

I knew he had been waiting for mom to leave for work.

Waiting all day long and pretending to be busy in the garage.

He stepped into the bedroom and didn't switch the light on.

Maybe he thought if I didn't see anything it would be all right.

Maybe he forgot I could still touch, taste, smell, feel pain.

And that's precisely when the earthquake happened.

I thought the earthquake happened ten or so years ago.

It happened in the shower after I had sex with my girlfriend.

The smell came up to me and it burst-reminded me of that day.

I had buried it so deeply within me it couldn't come back.

But it did because we all know the dead can't stay buried.

Because I smelt what my dad smelt when he was done.

That sort of smell is bound to wake up the dead.

That sort of smell is the motherbomb of all deathsmells.

It smothered me and I choked I thought I'd die in the shower.

Maybe it's not as bad as it sounds but I didn't die anyway.

But the earthquake was rattle-ravaging everything inside.

I thought the earthquake happened yesterday, of all days.

He called me on the phone while I was at work.

I hadn't heard of him in more than two decades.

When mom realised the earthquake had gone on for years.

He said he was sorry, that he had become a different person.

Though his name still resounds like a coffinful of bones.

But I got better but I said I didn't want to see him ever again.

Today I am still smiling when I watch the sky.

Today like yesterday I tend to the grave of that child.

I cut out tiny pieces of sunrays to gild the letters.

The horror happened but I acknowledged it and let it go.

I let it slide over me like a tsunami a few years ago.

So I could trade pain for happiness, rage for serenity.

And I am serene not because I survived the earthquake.

I am serene because I found out who I am despite the earthquake.

 

The cry of the erne

Out of the grey – into another –

a routine morning emerges

in leaden sleeplessness –

tessellates into a mirror

– one immense mirror –

levelled with the ground –

its surface like a mountain lake

whose unstirred waters

whorls everything grey

below and above, and above

the erne circles her own reflection

the two quickly gyre centreward

lunge and soar in synchrony

like colliding meteorites and

at the meeting point

claw savagely at each other

– shards scintillate in

the bursting sun –

to arise with a salmon

between her talons –

the fractaled vision shatters

leaves windswept greyness

for horizons around –

whilst the morning

goes greyward again

the cry of the erne

resounds in the waking air.

 

Night Swimming

It was supposed to be a dare

but when I saw his white body

against the dark of the night

I realised the cosmos never jokes.

I feared my body would glow like a firefly,

the dark beating against it like moths,

pulsating, vibrating with life.

It wasn't windy, nor cold, but

my hair stood on end;

I was already wet

so I jumped into the water

lest he would come close,

feel my breasts, my nipples, my sex.

I heard him jump off the pier

but I was too far out already,

the brisk water pitch black

sending fire in my veins,

and the stars broken by

the waves I was making

swimming in the milky way;

but which darkness it was

in which I was enveloped:

that of the cosmos, the lake, the night,

I couldn't say – but I was loved.

Behind me perhaps I heard my name

or was it an owl starting the hunt.

I couldn't but butterfly on.

Perhaps I didn't know who I was,

my parents telling me to get a grip,

my teachers saying that I was lost,

my friends whispering there was no hope,

but here and now I was myself –

a someone still to be explored –

but unmistakeably someone good.

The moon and the stars wiggled back

to where they had always been in the sky.

Motionless I lay, floating like a dead leaf;

muffled trees brushing the night

painting my fury, my pain, my joy;

luminous undisturbed dragonfly

stargazing its fleeting life away;

random waves hitting my body

and again, perhaps, my name.

I felt revealed and hidden,

naked but clothed by the waves,

the trees, the pebbles, the mountain,

its snowy cap a wedge in the darkness

opening a rift in the waters

swallowing me whole

eddying me away down

in some other, more distant gloom

the constellations spiralling

the fire inside raging, raging

against something dying

somewhere, deep down.

Perhaps it was the mountain dying,

perhaps it was me,

perhaps it was the lake and its shimmers,

the illusion that I was someone –

all I know is that I woke up

shivering in the abyss,

struggling to put my jeans back on.

I was soaking wet

and my nipples were hard

but he didn't try to feel my tits

when so many before him had;

he was dressing in silence,

perhaps eyeing me askance.

We didn't say a word on the drive home.

In fact, we never talked again.

I never went back to the lake,

I didn't go back to my house,

to my school or my home town

but on that night I became someone,

unmistakeably someone good,

somewhere I felt more at home,

somewhere I felt loved and desired,

somewhere people understood,

and recognised, the fire in my heart.

 

Revenir

On revient de la vanité du corps

comme de l'urgence de la chair

on apprend la vanité de l'esprit

amarré à l'œil du cyclone

on revient des illusions du vin

comme de l'absence des morts

on comprend la vanité du soi

dans l'abandon à l'autre

on surprend la capacité d'aimer

dans la renonciation à tout

surtout lorsqu'on renonce à tout

alors on revient de tout ce qu'on a pu être

même de la plus triste des tristesses

même blotties dans la tempête

par nos mains astrolabes de nos cœurs

on réalise que mille voies

ne sont qu'un seul chemin

qu'on est capitaines de nos corps

qu'on est navires en quête de vagues

que revenir, en fait, c'est aller.

 

Fragment #34

Though some have tried

their damnedest

though some will try again

none could hurt me

like I hurt myself

That's why everything

will be ok

now that I've learnt

to be at peace

with myself.

 

Nothing in the shadow cast in the mirror

な あ 影 鏡 世

き る に に の

に に あ 映 中

も も れ る は

あ あ や

ら ら

ず ず

源 実朝

Yo no naka wa

Kaga mi ni utsuru

Kage ni are ya

Aru ni mo arazu

Naki ni mo arazu

Our existence

is like a reflection

in a mirror

It really does not exist

but also doesn't not exist

Minamoto no Sanetomo (1192-1219) was a shōgun during very troubled times. He was a very gifted poet, writing more than 700 poems between 17 and 22 years of age, especially excelling in the art of the tanka. 

Earlier on today I was discussing with a dear friend of mine the fact that Greek plays still retained, thousands of years later, that humanity which moved us to tears, which made us (re)think life and our choices; how Greek myths would mirror some of the situations we experienced, which made us pause and ponder.

I had copied this tanka a while ago in my notebook, and it seems so fitting for the both of us right now that I cannot let such a caressing serendipity slip by unnoticed. Here it is, again, for you, dearest.
 

Fragment #100

After failing to impress for the hundredth time

I went back into my cave, stoked the fire,

put my wolf pelt back onto my hide

glanced at the sky entire

lay down on the straw mat

saw the magnitude

of life, its amplitude

and called it a night.

 

Elsa

“Elsa and I” within a heart

is what we carved in the bark.

That was so long ago.

Yet the warm greyness

of this memory

is so appealing

it began snowing

inside of me.

Elsa and I are gone now.

She was all the words

that I would find

She was all the fights

that I would win

– now only a lean

string of mind –

yet she was the home

I didn't know I had.

Her darkbrown eyes

had silvery flakes

like some obsidian stones

like meteorites

reflected upon a lake.

I discovered that

my memories of her

have the power

to stop time.

Now when I make lemonade

I think of her,

of her hair flowing

between my fingers.

When I wake up from my daydream,

the world is about the same

as when I left it.

And though I can't recall

the exact texture of her hair

I believe I find it again

when I daydream of her

when I cry because I miss her.

Elsa passed away

ten years ago today.

Elsa and I will never be, ever again.

She will never again press

her head in my lap

squeeze my hand

for a reason known only to her.

Even back then she was eternal to me.

Such a being could never cease to be.

When I saw her on that hospital bed

in her heart she was ready

so she passed on to me

many memories of her, of us,

of her family.

She was a little over thirty,

and there she was, among the old,

dying before them all,

dying before she could spread

all the goodness she had in her.

What I would learn

in the next ten years

is that she had built us a home

here in the darkness

from which none

is supposed to return.

Elsa is now a collage

of memories

and sensations

emotions I kept

in some sort of box

which I enter

when I open it –

the house she built

with pictures on the walls

strands of hair on her pillow

wet footsteps on the bathroom floor

tangy lemonade on the back porch

with clinking ice cube and ready-to-fall straw

distant humming in some other room

her perfume drifting in and out of the draught

whispering in my ear, spooned on a hospital bed,

that everything is going to be all right

and she knew it would be for she had been there

and left the key to the house under the mat.

Now I could carve Elsa

on every tree there is

and it wouldn't bring her back.

I could shout her name to the skies

the clouds would remain mute.

I could read and read again

her last letter that I wouldn't

hear the tone of her voice.

Believe me, I have tried.

Yes, Elsa is no more.

“Move on against wind and tide,”

she told me to do that night

and, every once in a while,

come to see her, to say hello,

to have a lemonade and a chat,

to change the flowers

and cook us something nice.

Perhaps tell her a story,

my day at work

or a poem I wrote,

until she falls asleep

and I place a cushion

under her head

and tiptoe my way out

shutting the door behind me

look up at the summer stars

dry my tears

with the back of my hand

and with a sigh

wake up.

 

Afterimage

The walls close in on her.

Time ticks on the longcase clock.

The birds, outside, flit about.

The sun rose a few moments ago.

She bites the inside of her cheeks.

Don't spit the blood.

Do not spit the blood.

The searing metal taste

distracts her mind

for just a second,

perhaps more.

She suffocates, white dots dance

in front of her gaze.

She could almost touch the walls.

He tore through her underwear

like kids at Christmas with their presents.

He won't look her in the eyes,

his hot breath filling her ear,

his massive body piles up on hers.

The pain she cannot bear.

Spitting the blood would only enrage him.

Playing dead the only unway out.

He is a boar. The hair on his back

like barkish, briary bristle.

His beady face contorts, she can feel it.

His snout burrows in her neck.

He grunts like a wild animal.

The last thrusts of his hips,

and then the silence.

The walls of the bedroom

dangerously close.

The boar's muzzle lifts up

his tusks grazes her neck –

in the corner of her eye she sees

that the little one looks on, his head

leaning on the door frame – he does

wonder why the bed is not made.

He's been told one can't start the day

if one doesn't make their bed.

His wee hand rests on the wood,

she cannot read his face.

How long has he been looking.

Does it matter, eventually.

He knows. He must.

He may ask at prayers.

She will say nothing.

Yet she knows, she knows if she doesn't

he will want to try it out for himself.

The little one is shy, for now.

But one day he will be a man.

She will nonetheless say nothing.

The boar stands up on his hind legs,

tucks up his shirt in his dungarees,

buckles up his leather belt –

no, he won't look her in the eyes.

The little one has gone,

fled before the boar

who walks out

dragging his limp leg

on the wooden floor.

Time still ticks away in the corridor –

were it not for the birds outside

time would stand still

and she would lay here on her side –

yet all she wants now is kill,

kill and die. Kill and die.

Her folks would take care

of the little one. They would.

But she stands up,

straightens up the skirt,

kerchiefs the tears,

the hair tightened

back into the usual bun

– the blood and semen

coiling around her thighs

will have to be washed –

but right now for the love of god

make the bed, make the damn bed

carefully as she always does

for no one can start their day

if one doesn't make their bed.