Thursday 7 January 2016

Mephisto Waltzes, Weinberg, Sylvie’s Bolero






煢煢

半圓形的天頂被一層月華光澤的膜緊緻地拉扯住,像一只充滿著水的氣球,虛擬著生腥的焦慮與一種無所事事的、完完全全脫離精神性的美與憂鬱。那個午后,是薄如蟬翼且裹上銀粉的新生的卵,適於討論命理與禪。雲以敏捷的腳步滑行於透明且虛弱的藍,泡沫似的溫順與漠然。青春其實是極度缺乏生命力的。在旺盛與浮躁之中貪慕假象的匱乏,而後需索從不曾或缺的旺盛;在柔弱的本質中渴求堅強與信仰,之後因對於軟弱愚蠢的不自覺與惑於自我宣稱的虛偽堅強而尋覓所謂謙恭溫潤的中庸。青春是僅只存活於對純粹的堅持下、一種具備了美卻不易碎的浪費。如果死的優雅與精神性建構了藝術中闡釋生命的美學,則生不過是為襯托死的一種附屬的存在。但是生命卻是無法磨滅的,即使蒼白而無意義,卻無止盡地散發出猩紅的血的氣味。印度神濕婆在宇宙的輪迴當中毀滅自己所創造的鏡花水月,而後使之重生,不斷重複操縱著生與死的轉輪;祂是否也感受到生命中那種匱乏虛弱的美,以及死亡中屬於生之投影的愛與信念?藍所象徵的嫌惡與非難,以清澈且充滿靈性的美存在於自然界的蒼穹。隅隅獨行的生,幾人在腐臭中仍吟哦走了調的聖詩,又幾人能擺脫所有倫常的帷幕而誠摯地憎恨與厭惡?然而這一切的思索總似時間過度充裕的青春所編織的蛛網,純白得美麗亦膚淺得軟弱。當青春終於被擺脫後,生命開始進入下一段對死複雜的戀慕和禁忌,與對消逝的水光緬懷的遺憾。





奔馬

夢先於現實。
而純粹
似花,似血,似詩
,似枯腐前消逝的生。


Runaway Horses (Realistically Synaesthetic Purity)

Dreams, a priori, then reality.
And purity
Resembles a flower, resembles blood, resembles poetry,
Resembles life, a priori, disappearing before decay.





I am lost for words when confronted (and blessed) with such exquisite magnificence—how she tames, commands, and most importantly, marries the movements with and brings out the near-noumenal essence of Ravel’s mesmerising music... I am lost for words, except that I shall miss this feral diamond—beyond doubt, one of the greatest artists of our time—and I am grateful that I have had the privilege of seeing her on stage several times, in Europe and Asia, including a performance from her bittersweet farewell tour.

Watching Sylvie dance, watching her move—it is love and fire and electricity. Thank you Sylvie, for all that you have shared with us, for all that you have given us.




cxii

That Love is all there is,
Is all we know of Love;
It is enough, the freight should be
Proportioned to the groove.

~Emily Dickinson (1830–86), from Part Five of The Single Hound: Poems of a Lifetime by Emily Dickinson, Boston, Little, Brown, and Company, 1914.


Saturday 14 November 2015

“In Search of Soundlessness” (Poets: swallow seeds to grow better Hearts)


dried seeds
from a dead flower
someone wants to swallow these
dried seeds
from a dead flower

a discordant melody sounds
from those dangerously elegant modern ruins
built of shards of glass, reflecting
a shattered moon upon ancient waters

dried seeds
ricochet off frozen ground

shredded ribbons of sunlight
ribbons that create a softly blinding nest
wrapped around her neck

a strong perfume
pushes most eyes closed

most eyes lack
lack the strength of desire
for dead flowers and
dried seeds

will you listen? Seedlings of Hearts:
understand my words
swallow my poems
then discard me
disdain me
all for growing better hearts
to become better poets


a collector
maybe even
a Genghis Khan of poets’ hearts


Croisements, by Thierry Mugny/ tchegg TM. via Couleurs.
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seeds are hearts, then inside creates the outside——
...all are in search of soundlessness

*(originally published on 22/May/2013)

Saturday 26 September 2015

Hamlet’s Bombay Dream


“... to die, to sleep
No more; and by a sleep, to say we end
The Heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks
That Flesh is heir to? ‘Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; aye, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes Calamity of so long life.”


A Louis XV parcel-gilt and cream painted lit à la polonaise, mid 18th century (from La vie de château, collection Jean-Louis Remilleux), part of Christie’s Objects of Desire.

Featuring elaborately carved wood with gilded details, this 18th century French four-poster bed offers its inhabitant the possibility of total seclusion at the flick of a pink silk curtain. At just over three metres in height, the bed comes complete with a floral headboard, the entire structure topped with a gold ‘blossom-form’ roof. Pink sashes and tassles add to the sense of occasion.
Photography by Tim Walker for Casa Vogue October 2010, Clementine Keith-Roach and Her Oyster Shell Bed, Northamptonshire, UK.
via bombayelectric on instagram
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Friday 25 September 2015

a comedy for all the laughables, the laughably craven


A wee writing exercise inspired by darling John, whom I hold in the highest esteem, as ever, as always. 




The original (from Keats’ letter to Benjamin Bailey, dated November 22nd, 1817):

...O I wish I was as certain of the end of all your troubles as that of your momentary start about the authenticity of the Imagination. I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of Imagination — What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth — whether it existed before or not — for I have the same idea of all our passions as of love: they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential beauty. In a word, you may know my favorite speculation by my first book, and the little song I send in my last, which is a representation from the fancy of the probable mode of operating in these matters. The imagination may be compared to Adam’s dream, — he awoke and found it truth. I am more zealous in this affair because I have never yet been able to perceive how anything can be known for truth by consecutive reasoning — and yet it must be. Can it be that even the greatest philosopher ever arrived at his goal without putting aside numerous objections? However it may be, O for a life of sensation rather than of thoughts! It is a ‘Vision in the form of Youth,’ a shadow of reality to come. And this consideration has further convinced me, — for it has come as auxiliary to another favorite speculation of mine, — that we shall enjoy ourselves hereafter by having what we called happiness on earth repeated in a finer tone and so repeated. And yet such a fate can only befall those who delight in sensation, rather than hunger as you do after truth. Adam’s dream will do here, and seems to be a conviction that imagination and its empyreal reflection is the same as human life and its spiritual repetition. But, as I was saying, the simple imaginative mind may have its rewards in the repetition of its own silent working coming continually on the spirit with a fine suddenness — to compare great things with small — have you never by being Surprised with an old Melody — in a delicious place — by a delicious voice, felt over again your very Speculations and Surmises at the time it first operated on your Soul — do you not remember forming to yourself the singer’s face more beautiful than it was possible and yet with the elevation of the Moment you did not think so — even then you were mounted on the Wings of Imagination so high — that the Prototype must be here after — that delicious face you will see. What a time! 

I am continually running away from the subject — sure this cannot be exactly the case with a complex Mind — one that is imaginative and at the same time careful of its fruits — who would exist partly on Sensation partly on thought — to whom it is necessary that years should bring the philosophic Mind — such an one I consider yours and therefore it is necessary to your eternal Happiness that you not only drink this old Wine of Heaven, which I shall call the redigestion of our most ethereal Musings on Earth; but also increase in knowledge and know all things. I am glad to hear you are in a fair way for Easter — you will soon get through your unpleasent reading and then! — but the world is full of troubles and I have not much reason to think myself pesterd with many — I think Jane or Marianne has a better opinion of me than I deserve — for really and truly I do not think my Brothers illness connected with mine — you know more of the real Cause than they do nor have I any chance of being rack’d as you have been — You perhaps at one time thought there was such a thing as worldly happiness to be arrived at, at certain periods of time marked out, — you have of necessity from your disposition been thus led away — I scarcely remember counting upon any happiness — I look for it if it be not in the present hour, — nothing startles me beyond the moment. The setting sun will always set me to rights, or if a sparrow come before my window, I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel. The first thing that strikes me on hearing a misfortune having befallen another is this — ‘Well, it cannot be helped: he will have the pleasure of trying the resources of his spirit’ — and I beg now, my dear Bailey, that hereafter should you observe anything cold in me not to put it to the account of heartlessness, but abstraction — for I assure you I sometimes feel not the influence of a passion or affection during a whole week — and so long this sometimes continues, I begin to suspect myself, and the genuineness of my feelings at other times — thinking them a few barren tragedy tears.

Your affectionate friend, 
John Keats


Thursday 24 September 2015

偽,muteness of a Chinese jar。


哥窯自縊後結晶了胭脂蜜:

Being broken by an inferior essence, a failed poem of pretense is made even more poetic than the knees of an antiquarian butterfly.


—“a violent slap of the exquisite (a melody from the New Aristocrats manifesto)


Very drawn to artist Lukas Wegwerth's series of ceramic works “Crystallisation” displayed at Maison & Objet, Paris—
“The sure, sweet cement, lime and glue of love”* oozing out of celadon crazing of yore... (*Robert Herrick, The Kiss)



All I may, if small,
Do it not display
Larger for the Totalness —
’Tis Economy

To bestow a World
And withhold a Star —
Utmost, is Munificence —
Less, tho’ larger, poor.

~Emily Dickinson, from The Single Hound: Poems of a Lifetime (CXIII.)





“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before—more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.”

—Charles Dickens, Great Expectations


“From my rotting body,
flowers shall grow
and I am in them
and that is eternity.”


—Edvard Munch

The Moments of Dominion
That happen on the Soul
And leave it with a Discontent
Too exquisite—to tell—

~Emily Dickinson




Troisième Symphonie de Gustav Mahler
Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris (Nolwenn Daniel & Christophe Duquenne, Mélanie Hurel & Alessio Carbone)
Deuxième Mouvement: Printemps
Choréographie de John Neumeier


Monday 21 September 2015

Revelation


III: Emily

                              your long legs
                              built
                              to carry high

                              the small head
                              your
                              grandfather

                              knows
                              if he knows
                              anything

                              gives
                              the dance as
                              your genius

                              the cleft in
                              your
                              chin’s curl

                              permitting 
                              may it
                              carry you far


~final part of the poem “3 Stances” by William Carlos Williams, from his book Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems


my Muse, my legend of love: Svetlana Zakharova (linked to Macbeth performance with Andrei Uvarov), Prima Ballerina of the Bolshoi Ballet
Светлана Захарова

Sunday 20 September 2015

Poetic Essence: Keatsian fine excess and remembrance


These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which, as they kiss, consume.

~Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet: Act II, Scene 6


Emma Bennett, Death & Co, 2008; Oil and French enamel on Canvas, 170 x 130 cm.
The music and beauty of memento mori
I am entirely in love with artist Emma Bennett’s mystical and poetic paintings, quietly glistening in the darkened melodies of vanitas and mono no aware—a silently powerful Floating World that is swooningly gorgeous. Her work takes my breath away.


Anne Vallayer-Coster, “Panaches de mer, lithophytes et coquilles (Still-Life with Tuft of Marine Plants, Shells and Corals),” Oil on Canvas, 1769, Musée du Louvre, Paris.
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“In poetry I have a few axioms, and you will see how far I am from their center.

1st. I think poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and not by singularity; it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.

2nd. Its touches of beauty should never be half-way, thereby making the reader breathless, instead of content. The rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should, like the sun, come natural to him, shine over him, and set soberly, although in magnificence, leaving him in the luxury of twilight.

But it is easier to think what poetry should be, than to write it. And this leads me to another axiom—That if poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all.

~John Keats, from a letter to John Taylor, February 27, 1818


Willem van AelstVase of Flowers with Pocket Watch
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“The more I see her, the more I am convinced she is a very isolated figure. A man should never be that, not even a young one, for since reflection is essential to his development he must have come into contact with others. But for that reason a girl should rather not be interesting, for the interesting always contains a reflection upon itself, just as the interesting in art always gives you the artist too. A young girl who wants to please by being interesting really only succeeds in pleasing herself.”

The Seducer's Diary (part of his larger book Either/Or), by Søren Kierkegaard


Francesca Woodman


Saturday 19 September 2015

Oneiric Sketches of a Broken Poem


Miss Horatia Feilding, half-sister of William Henry Fox Talbot, playing the harp, c. 1842
+

Scents, with their eyelids heavy, 
from the oneiric sketches of our broken poems:

a muser and a paresseuse 
dreaming 
of ephemeral truths, dreaming
in the absence of dreams. 

an evanescent truth 
less sorrowful; that truthful ephemerality
even less perceivable...

the memory of a door lies in its unrecoverable closedness 
to a space imagined,
—traversed and touched only by a fingertip—
to what is left open

and songs sung 
to eyes half asleep


~my sketch composed on 19th September ’15

+

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.”

― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets: Burnt Norton, 1936


William Henry Fox Talbot, photogenic drawing negative using botanical specimens from his garden, taken in 1839, the year he announced his discoveries in photography.
+

天空持續燃放著
無聲的煙火
我們停步
牽著手
於彼大澤
和一隻鹿對望
良久

有鹿
有鹿哀愁
食野之百合 


The silent fireworks continued 
to burn across the sky
We stopped
and held our hands
We laid our gaze upon the deer
opposite the enormous swamp
gazing back at us
for a long time

There was a deer
There was a deer of sorrow
that grazed upon wild lilies 


~《有鹿》許悔之, a poem by Taiwanese poet Hsu Huei-Ji; translated from the Chinese into English by me.

+

“Everything is blooming most recklessly; 
if it were voices instead of colors, 
there would be an unbelievable shrieking 
into the heart of the night.”

~Rainer Maria Rilke


Peak of Dawn, photograph by Katsuyoshi Nakahara, for National Geographic Your Shot.
Shirley poppies bloom in a field near Japan’s Mount Tsukuba, here silhouetted against an early morning sky. The mountain—which can be ascended via a hiking trail or cable car—has two peaks, each rising more than 2,800 feet.
+

to sleep 
bed’d among flowers  

for scent
to wake lovers

children become
mothers and fathers

+

“Often the object of a desire, 
when desire is transformed into hope, 
becomes more real than reality itself.”

― Umberto Eco, The Book of Legendary Lands


detail from an Edgar Degas painting
+

“At first he told them that everything was just the same, that the pink snails were still in the house where he had been born, that the dry herring still had the same taste on a piece of toast, that the waterfalls in the village still took on a perfumed smell at dusk. They were the notebook pages again, woven with the purple scribbling, in which he dedicated a special paragraph to each one. Nevertheless, and although he himself did not seem to notice it, those letters of recuperation and stimulation were slowly changing into pastoral letters of disenchantment. One winter night while the soup was boiling in the fireplace, he missed the heat of the back of his store, the buzzing of the sun on the dusty almond trees, the whistle of the train during the lethargy of siesta time, just as in Macondo he had missed the winter soup in the fireplace, the cries of the coffee vendor, and the fleeting larks of springtime. 

Upset by two nostalgias facing each other like two mirrors, he lost his marvelous sense of unreality and he ended up recommending to all of them that they leave Macondo, that they forget everything he had taught them about the world and the human heart, that they shit on Horace, and that wherever they might be they always remember that the past was a lie, that memory has no return, that every spring gone by could never be recovered, and that the wildest and most tenacious love was an ephemeral truth in the end.

― Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude


William Henry Fox Talbot (English, 1800-1877), Lace, photogenic drawing negative,
before December 1845, 17.1 x 22.1cm, The J . Paul Getty Museum
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Aimai-je un rêve?
Mon doute, amas de nuit ancienne, s’achève
En maint rameau subtil, qui, demeuré les vrais
Bois même, prouve, hélas! que bien seul je m’offrais
Pour triomphe la faute idéale de roses.

“Did I love a dream?
My doubt, night’s ancient hoard, pursues its theme
In branching labyrinths, which being still
The veritable woods themselves, alas, reveal
My triumph as the ideal fault of roses.”


~from Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem L’après-midi d’un faune, translated by Henry Weinfeld (read also A.S. Kline's translations of Mallarmé’s poetry)


William Henry Fox Talbot, Adiantum Capillus-Veneris (Maidenhair Fern),
photogenic drawing negative, probably early 1839, 22.5 x 18.3cm.
+

“It is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things.”
“Everything that is sacred and that wishes to remain so must envelop itself in mystery.”
“For me, Poetry takes the place of love, because it is enamored of itself, and because its sensual delight falls back deliciously in my soul.”

~Stéphane Mallarmé


Wednesday 26 August 2015

une piscine caché


《影;氤氳與流光》

To whom,
is a writer that does not write―
a bard that utters no poems
a dreamer of dreamless dreams?

When does
a piano of soundlessness
sigh, and

How does an underwater flower
pass into decay

without blossoming?


Felice Casorati, Ragazza di Pavarolo (1938)

Sunday 2 August 2015

‘falling is the essence of a flower’


Felice Casorati, La preghiera, 1914 circa, tempera su panno,
Galleria d’Arte Moderna Achille Forti

Self-embrace on Silk Prayer

*With thanks to Hamlet-at-Sea of this incarnation, for being the final catalyst of my poem.


“Is it a blessing for a poet to be a natural poet-magnet?”
The romantic thinker wonders to herself.
‘Oh you Little Fool,’ she whispered,
A foolish thinker I am.

All these men, coming
in and out of me. All this pleasure and pain,
flickering like dying blue flames.
An instant garden trampled upon for hundreds of years
by those he loves with his Life—ah, such blasphemous
Beauty. An instant paradise turned
into the most exquisite ice ablaze.
A bruised garden amidst the flames.
The love and devotion that it takes to create
—such Beauty—
I can never fully comprehend.

Threads of a thousand hues are weaving themselves
in and out of each other; breathing esoteric,
breathing erotic, into
the weakest Bird of the most powerful strength—
A Bird without a name—

Can I be spared—Can I be
abstract like your patterns of this mesmerising nature, again?
I plead with my heart to be
as romantic and as abstract, like
your Little Brother, again.
Tears from the eyes of his heart are still rolling,
shining on my quill
like dews on those pink Oleander flowers—
falling, falling, fallen.

(And in case you were wondering, I was not speaking of
your little brother, I was speaking of
Mine. Like all these quests for Beauty and pleasure—I was
speaking, and thinking, of Mine.)

Breathing erotic. Breathing esoteric.
All these fiery blossoms burning way below sub-zero,
I could faint,
just listening to them.

+

*Title: from Mishima Yukio's last words:

A small night storm blows
Saying ‘falling is the essence of a flower’
Preceding those who hesitate

Tuesday 2 June 2015

I cannot paint what then I was. The sounding cataract haunted me like a passion.


Five years have past; five summers, with the length
Of five long winters! and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs
With a soft inland murmur.—Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs,
That on a wild secluded scene impress
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect
The landscape with the quiet of the sky.
The day is come when I again repose
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view
These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts,
Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,
Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves
‘Mid groves and copses. Once again I see
These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines
Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,
Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, as might seem
Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,
Or of some Hermit’s cave, where by his fire
The Hermit sits alone.

                                These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and ‘mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man’s life,
His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world,
Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.


                                If this
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft—
In darkness and amid the many shapes
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world,
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart—
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee,
O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro’ the woods,
How often has my spirit turned to thee!
And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought,
With many recognitions dim and faint,
And somewhat of a sad perplexity,
The picture of the mind revives again:
While here I stand, not only with the sense
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts
That in this moment there is life and food
For future years. And so I dare to hope,
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first
I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o’er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever nature led: more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all.—I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur, other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods,
And mountains; and of all that we behold
From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.


                                Nor perchance,
If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay:
For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,
My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; ‘tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;
And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance—
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence—wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love—oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!


Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour, July 13, 1798, by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Sunday 31 May 2015

鴉片夢:Opium Dream


Dishonesty of three gnawed fingers:

To have your attention held
between the lips
of what disinterest stirs,

To fixate upon
and name your obsession
what you do not adore—

This must be the flower’s poison
in the imagination
of a Proustian whore.


I have always loved the mystery/horror genre.
Roses, by David Sims for Visionaire
image by John Mangila

It’s quite an artform for one to stay looking golden on the outside, while feeling so profoundly rotten inside—not even sublimely or spectacularly ugly, merely this arid and lacklustre vapidness.

At some point it has got to start showing.


Roses, by David Sims for Visionaire

As if looking through the glass at a white goldfish with angel wings, swimming in water purified by beautiful sorrow. (image by John Mangila)

Thursday 28 May 2015

Scene 1: Lacrima / Scene 2: Du Fu Sings


Lacrima: Caruso-san

His pale blue skin, the voice of the flute,
Curtains rise for the Beautiful One’s play—

The role of the bleeding heart
is not to watch over that silver thread
woven callously, vicariously,
into the forgotten tapestry of the world,
but to shield with swan wings,
violently, majestically,
the other role of eternal unhappiness.
So that the arteries can ossify,
so that the obsolescence
of the bleeding heart and his eternal unhappiness
can encase themselves in a serene sleep
and seem obliviously irrelevant
to all but the Beautiful One.

+ + +

Du Fu Sings

Die yourself into a tree
Decant your breaths
A million times over

Would you walk through that door?

+ + +

Hypocrisy is a form of mental masturbation of the weak.



Wednesday 27 May 2015

弔詭/弔念:Cioran and my fragmented poem (Chinese & English)


By all evidence we are in the world to do nothing.” ~Emil Cioran

The ideal life for a muser and a paresseuse would be: to dream in the absence of dreams, and to dream of the absence of dreams, in other words, to dream nothing at all. The grandest thing to muse upon, would be those intricately-woven, beautifully-entangled illusions of all there is, i.e. nothingness—all of it, that is all there is. It’s just that long and inevitably mundane process (with perhaps some specks of high drama) one has to go through, could seem interminable.

+

Some more words from Emil Cioran to further tickle me:

To live entirely without a goal! I have glimpsed this state, and have often attained it, without managing to remain there: I am too weak for such happiness.”

I don’t understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn’t it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world?

+

the Chinese original of this poem (titled 玉) was written in 1999,
English translation/re-composition (re-titled Celadon) was created in 2011-2


蒼白,是血的原色與美學的逆鱗。
他舌尖的蓮消蝕一如
右頰的月光
聲音是時間與蛇的舞姿
交纏蜿蜒的連綴
而生存,歌詠著水波紊亂
殞落著無性之魅
猩紅,似卵與熱的曲線
錯誤的春花秋月
頹萎之靡交合在古印度的菱鏡
天人於是註定了五衰
水面下的墜


Brett Whiteley, A Day at Bondi, 1984 // etching, black ink on white wove paper

Thursday 21 May 2015

Calling



... an Elgin marble from a waking dream

Would it not be a marvel
to find your calling—your niche—
to be suffering
(emptily, on empty)
draped over
a marvellous throne
where everyone feels
envy, breathlessly
(superficially)?


Dornröschen (Sleeping Beauty) by Louis Sussmann-Hellborn, 1878, via Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany

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