flitting
Barbellion: one of the best bloggers ever:
Death
What a delightful thing the state of Death would be if the dead passed their time haunting the places they loved in life and living over again the dear delightful past — if death were one long indulgence in the pleasures of memory! if the disembodied spirit forgot all the pains of its previous existence and remembered only the happiness! Think of me flitting about the orchards and farmyards in —— birdsnesting, walking along the coast among the seabirds, climbing Exmoor, bathing in streams and in the sea, haunting all my old loves and passions, cutting open with devouring curiosity Rabbits, Pigeons, Frogs, Dogfish, Amphioxus; think of me, too, at length unwillingly deflected from these cherished pursuits in the raptures of first love, cutting her initials on trees and fences instead of watching birds, day-dreaming over Parker and Haswell and then bitterly reproaching myself later for much loss of precious time. How happy I shall be if Death is like this: to be living over again and again all my ecstasies, over first times — the first time I found a Bottle Tit’s nest, the first time I succeeded in penetrating into the fastnesses of my El Dorado — Exmoor, the first time I gazed upon the internal anatomy of a Snail, the first time I read Berkeley’s Principles of Human Understanding (what a soul-shaking epoch that was!), and the first time I kissed her! My hope is that I may haunt these times again, that I may haunt the places, the books, the bathes, the walks, the desires, the hopes, the first (and last) loves of my life all transfigured and beatified by sovereign Memory.
Not from Barbellion:
posted by Tom Matrullo at Monday, October 08, 2007
2 Comments:
Oceanic Letter (loosely translated by Kombinat! For Tom Matrullo)
I will never come back here. As a souvenir I throw
into the ocean's bay an empty bottle after fine port wine
I got with the last of found change.
Maybe in time the bottle will clog the aorta
of the world, if one is to believe, that similar to us
its system of veins of waters, streams and liquids,
and if to believe, that all our gazes flow
to their ends somehere, that somewhere end
the railroads, the cables, the bannisters, that at the end
one finds that damn closet with lost gloves
of various kinds. When it finaly arrives there,
I will already be placed
in the lounge chair of stars, and even if the world
will not stop flowing, at least it will feel a stab in the heart.
(Polish original by Tomasza Rozycki)
List oceaniczny
Juz nigdy tu nie wróce. Wrzucam na pamiatke
do zatoki butelke po wytrawnym porto
kupiona za ostatnie znalezione drobne,
moze ona po latach zatka gdzies aorte
swiata, jezeli wierzyc, ze ma on podobny
do naszego swój krwiobieg wód, wódek i plynów,
i jezeli uwierzyc, ze gdzies w koncu plyna
wszystkie nasze spojrzenia, ze gdzies tam sie koncza
tory, kable, porecze, ze na koncu wreszcie
jest ta cholerna szafa, gdzie znajduja sie wszelkie
zgubione rekawiczki. Kiedy tam doplynie,
ja bede juz zajmowal rozkladane miejsce
w miedzygwiezdnej salonce, i choc nie zatrzyma
sie przez nia swiat, przynajmniej zakluje go serce.
If we exchange the closet of lost gloves for the washing machine of missing socks, it could be USia.
Thanks, kombinat! What blogs need is a mode of commenting that enables voice, so that this can be heard in its native element.
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