Mother Goddesses

By Ángeles Santos

Cupid’s Trick

‘TWAS noon of night, when round the pole
The sullen Boar is seen to roll;
And mortals, wearied with the day,
Are slumbering all their cares away :
An infant, at that dreary hour,
Came weeping to my silent bower,
And wak’d me with a piteous prayer,
To save him from the midnight air !
“And who art thou,” I waking cry,
” That bid’st my blissful visions fly ?”
” gentle sir !” the infant said,
” In pity take me to thy shed ;
Nor fear deceit : a lonely child
I wander o’er the gloomy wild.
Chill drops the rain, and not a ray
Illumes the drear and misty way !”

I hear the baby’s tale of woe ;
I hear the bitter night- winds blow ;
And sighing for his piteous fate,
I trimm’d my lamp and op’d the gate.
‘Twas Love ! the little wandering sprite,
His pinion sparkled through the night !
I knew him by his bow and dart ;
I knew him by my fluttering heart ! .

I take him in, and fondly raise
The dying embers’ cheering blaze ;
Press from his dank and clinging hair
The crystals of the freezing air,
And in my hand and bosom hold
His little fingers thrilling cold.

And now the embers’ genial ray
Had warm’d his anxious fears away ;
” I pray thee,” said the wanton child
(My bosom trembled as he smil’d),
‘ I pray thee let me try my bow,
For through the rain I’ve wander’d so,
That much I fear, the ceaseless shower
Has injur’d its elastic power.”
The fatal bow the urchin drew ;
Swift from the string the arrow flew;
Oh ! swift it flew as glancing flame,
And to my very soul it came !
“Fare-thee-well,” I heard him say,
As laughing wild he wing’d away ;
” Fare-thee-well, for now I know
The rain has not relax’d my bow ;
It still can send a madd’ning dart,
As thou shalt own with all thy heart !”

– Anacreon

Mi caída sin fin

My fall without end to my fall without end in which nobody waited for me well upon looking at who was waiting for me I saw no other thing but myself.

– Alejandra Pizarnik

Flyin’ shoes

Days full of rain
Skys comin’ down again
I get so tired
Of these same old blues
Same old song
Baby, it won’t be long
’fore I be tyin’ on
My flyin’ shoes
Flyin’ shoes
Till I be tyin’ on
My flyin’ shoes

Spring only sighed
Summer had to be satisfied
Fall is a feelin’ that I just can’t lose.
I’d like to stay
Maybe watch a winter day
Turn the green water
To white and blue
Flyin’ shoes
Flyin’ shoes
Till I be tyin’ on
My flyin’ shoes

The mountain moon
Forever sets too soon
Bein’ alone is all the hills can do
Alone and then
Her silver sails again
And they will follow
In their flyin’ shoes
Flyin’ shoes
They will follow in their
Flyin’ shoes

Days full of rain
Skys comin’ down again
I get so tired
Of the same old blues
Same old song
Baby, it won’t be long
Till I be tyin’ on
My flyin’ shoes
Flyin’ shoes
Till I be tyin’ on
My flyin’ shoes.

– Townes Van Zandt

Destiny

We kill what we love. What’s left
Was never alive.
No one else is close. What is forgotten,
What else is absent or less, hurts no one else.
We kill what we love. Enough of drawing a choked breath
Through someone else’s lung!
There is not air enough for both of us. And the earth will not hold
Both our bodies
And our ration of hope is small
And pain cannot be shared.
Man is an animal of solitudes,
A deer that bleeds as it flees
With an arrow in its side.
Ah, but hatred with its insomniac
Glass eyes; its attitude
Of menace and repose.
The deer goes to drink and a tiger
Is reflected in the water.
The deer drinks the water and the image. And becomes
-before he is devoured – (accomplice, fascinated)
his enemy.
We give life only to what we hate.

– Rosario Castellanos

Meetings

Never forget that every stick has two ends.
The devil can lead you to paradise, and God, directly to Hell.

– G.I. Gurdjieff

Embodied, embedded

‘Either God really does love all beings… or religion seems a vast fraud.’

- Charles Hartshorne

I got up from my cadaver, I went in search of who I am.

‘Return to the memory of the body, I must return to my bones in mourning, I must understand what my voice says.’

– Alejandra Pizarnik

(Secret) Words

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

– Gospel Of Thomas

Snow

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one’s hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

- Louis MacNeice

You Were My Death

You were my death:
you I could hold
when all fell away from me.

- Paul Celan

The Bluebird

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?

- Charles Bukowski

The Day When Peace Takes Hold

The day when peace takes hold, a stubborn
and everlasting snow will fall upon the earth,
everything will be a target in our joyous sight,
the snowflakes will be as large as bedsheets.
In that snow God will unfurl his flags
and for the first time Christ will be happy.

- Gloria Fuertes

Translated from the Spanish by Philip Levine and Ada Long

Sweet Torture

My melancholy was gold dust in your hands;
On your long hands I scattered my life;
My sweetnesses remained clutched in your hands;
Now I am a vial of perfume, emptied

How much sweet torture quietly suffered,
When, my soul wrested with shadowy sadness,
She who knows the tricks, I passed the days
kissing the two hands that stifled my life

- Alfonsina Storni

The space between

“The literary work has two poles, which we might call the artistic, and the aesthetic: the artistic refers to the text created by the author, and the aesthetic to the realization accomplished by the reader. From this polarity it follows that the literary work cannot be completely identical with the text, or with the realisation of the text, but in fact must lie halfway between the two. The work is more than the text, for the text only takes on life when it is realised, and furthermore the realisation is by no means independent of the individual disposition of the reader – although this in turn is acted upon by the different patterns of the text. The convergence of text and reader brings the literary work into existence, and this convergence can never be precisely pinpointed, but must always remain virtual, as it is not to be identified either with the reality of the text or with the individual disposition of the reader.”

– Wolfgang Iser