Det sistnämnda gäller i synnerhet det första exemplet. John Ashbery anses väl inte vara någon lätt poet, hur nu en sådan är ... Följande rader öppnar gränserna för [själv]dissektion.
Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, by John Ashbery (f. 1927), de avslutande tolv raderna ur den mycket långa dikten.
(Från Poetry Magazine, augusti 1974.)
We have seen the city; it is the gibbous
Mirrored eye of an insect. All things happen
On its balcony and are resumed within,
But the action is the cold, syrupy flow
Of a pageant. One feels too confined,
Sifting the April sunlight for clues,
In the mere stillness of the ease of its
Parameter. The hand holds no chalk
And each part of the whole falls off
And cannot know it knew, except
Here and there, in cold pockets
Of remembrance, whispers out of time.
***
Nästa dikt är så vacker att jag tappar målföret men samtidigt får den mig att tro på mental återhämtning. Det är sådana verser som bygger min tes - Poesi är bästa sortens självterapi.
Often I Am Permitted to Return to a Meadow, by Robert Duncan (1919-1988).
(Från The opening of the field. New York : Grove Press, cop. 1960.)
as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,
that is not mine, but is a made place,
that is mine, it is so near to the heart,
an eternal pasture folded in all thought
so that there is a hall therein
that is a made place, created by light
wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall.
Wherefrom fall all architectures I am
I say are likenesses of the First Beloved
whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady.
She it is Queen Under The Hill
whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words
that is a field folded.
It is only a dream of the grass blowing
east against the source of the sun
in an hour before the sun’s going down
whose secret we see in a children’s game
of ring a round of roses told.
Often I am permitted to return to a meadow
as if it were a given property of the mind
that certain bounds hold against chaos,
that is a place of first permission,
everlasting omen of what is.
***
Jeffrey Harrison visualiserar en annan äng, för er. Notera den vackra "artkompositionen" som förärats fetare stil. Lite annat än Linnés latin, eller hur?
The names of things, by Jeffrey Harrison (f. 1957), första halvan av dikten.
(Från Incomplete knowledge : poems. New York : Four Way Books ; Lebanon, NH : distributed by University Press of New England, 2006.)
Just after breakfast and still
waking up, I take the path cut
through the meadow, my mind caught
in some rudimentary stage,
the stems of timothy bending
inward with the weight of a single
drop of condensed fog clinging
to each of their fuzzy heads
that brush wetly against my jeans.
Out on a rise, the lupines stand
like a choir singing their purples,
pinks and whites to the buttercups
spread thickly through the grasses—
and to the sparser daisies, orange
hawkweed, pink and white clover,
purple vetch, butter-and-eggs.
It’s a pleasure to name things
as long as one doesn’t get
hung up about it. A pleasure, too,
to pick up the dirt road and listen
to my sneakers soaked with dew
scrunching on the damp pinkish sand—
that must be feldspar, an element
of granite, I remember from
fifth grade. I don’t know what
this black salamander with yellow spots
is called
...
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