And this is a poem that, in fact, took off
from a translation.
It's a glosa, which this is a form we get from a 16th century
Spanish.
Although, it's continued to be used since then and notably
by the Canadian poet PK Page who wrote a whole book of them.
And in these poems, you take four lines
from a poem by somebody else an elaborate four stanzas.
Each one ending with one of those lines.
And this glosa was taken from my own translation of a poem
by the French poet Claire Malroux.
So I'll read Claire's poem first in translation
and then I'll read the gloss.
And glosa, obviously, like a gloss
or a gloss on another text.
So Claire Malroux's poem is called "Storm."
Through the white days of the storm, bone colored
road, bone colored sky, high vessels
swaying in place with flanks open wide to the foe.
The perfidious piper, the same one
who drew young leaves out with his flute
from there seeping motherly gel.
In his wake, flowers, and fruits,
blackbirds, tentacles, prophecies,
duets, and doodles of the sun, and moon.
The snows caress fir of forgetfulness.
And the children circling the masts
plunging entranced toward the roots.
Blood's roots.
Its hollow.
Blood's risks, its hollows, its flames
exchanged for the pull of that song.
Bone colored road, bone colored sky through the white days
of the storm.
And those last four lines then led to this glosa.
Once out of the grip of desire.
Or if you prefer, it's embrace.
Free to do nothing more than admire the sculptural plane
of a face.
Are you gay, straight, or bi?
Are you queer?
You still tell your old chaplain of names,
which were numinous once.
You replace them with adjectives.
Witty, severe, trilingual, abstracting bloods claims,
bloods risks.
Its hollows, its flames.
No craving.
No yearning.
No doubt.
No repulsion that follows release.
No presence you can't do without.
No absence an hour can't erase.
The conviction no reason could route of being essentially
wrong is dispelled.
What feels oddly like peace now fills
space you had blathered about, where the nights
were too short or too long.
Exchange for the pull of that song.
But peace requires more than one creature released
from the habit of craving.
On a planet that's mortgaged its future
to the lot who are plotting and raving.
There are rifts, which no surgeon can suture overhead
in the street under see.
The bleak plain from which you are
waving mapped by no wise benevolent teacher
is not a delight to the eye.
Bone colored road.
Bone colored sky.
You know that the weather has changed,
yet do not know what to expect with relevant figures
expunged and predictions at best incorrect.
Who knows on what line you'll be ranged?
And who in what cause you will harm?
What kibble or hunter or sect has doctored the headlines
arranged for perpetual cries of alarm
through the white days of the storm?