Tag: poem

if lack of physical appearance
means becoming that replaces being
born out of a casual remark
is the poet’s mourning in words
mr nothing has never cried out for
an act of sincerity and grief

they haven’t spoken to one another
since the days they dwelt on past pilcrows
pointing some obsolete gestures
so mr nothing returned to old habits
only occasionally longing for rubrico
in the hours of morning’s late

[…] those grand old men of yesteryear, they were your father.

David Rabe, The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel

there was no a garment
in mr nothing’s wardrobe
that one couldn’t fit in
but rusty hangers up the hill

and there were choices to make
like snooping neighbours
or hiding brandy behind books
along with lack of modesty

all wrapped in dust jackets
reduced to a meagre abstract
where every word is an act
of judgement self-evidence

inherently contradictory
it might be that what he meant
was that the poet’s betrayal
cannot be translated into it

And we all go with them, into the silent funeral,
Nobody’s funeral, for there is no one to bury.

T.S. Eliot, East Coker

mr nothing took off his glasses
he liked it that way a bit blurry
when trying to make sense of
the pictures he reached
for de nuptiis the intended
simplicity of thought
bric-a-brac perhaps

he never was a good storyteller

his father mingled clay and drank
his mother bred hydrangeas
and laughed at the butcher
sometimes she just couldn’t cry
like her mother when talked
late at night so no one could hear
it was german after all in such a place

along the way mr nothing grew up

born in despair in the cruellest month
he was supposed to be a figure
of speech a semantic game borrowed
from another language so the other one
the poet could pretend that he no longer
was looking for an embalmer a grammarian
among the tombstones the last to bury

distrustful of personal pronouns while speaking
of himself in the third-person singular mr nothing
wondered if he should use he or it if anything

he knew that it was easier to take something amiss
than realize himself as a person or to feign motion
instead of becoming fond of oddities of being alive

but not so much a disbeliever as simply uninterested
in an unnamed passer-by who exist only conventionally
mr nothing began to doubt that he is actually present

as the spirit that cannot be stillborn when mingled
with the crowd disappears and the only question is
whether it was innocent at the time when it happened

somewhat embarrassing ordeal
life isn’t it no higher authority though
just abandoned abstractions an afterthought
among creatures of flesh and blood

mr nothing stopped halfway engrossed
in words of the itinerant a rag-and-bone man
collecting unwanted on a street corner
the suffering that cannot demand

but handcarts rumbling against cobblestones
drowned him out and there was nobody
so having adjusted the tilting stack of paper
piled up on his cart he moved on slowly

[…] wśród ludzi nie ma, nie może być większego
przeciwieństwa jak biografia wstępująca i zstępująca […]

Witold Gombrowicz, Dziennik

mr nothing bought a fountain pen
as every humanly elaborated life
requires noble writing implements

he knew the descriptive essentials
those fathomless constructs though
wasn’t sure born or imposed on him

all those notes on the back of receipts
questions such as who is allowed
to cast aspersion on one’s own truths

or biscuit crumbs and empty teacup
a shabby photo more often watched
in the candlelight that smells of lilies

¿Pero es la extensión, la materia, la que piensa o se espiritualiza,
o es el pensamiento el que se extiende y materializa?

Miguel de Unamuno, Del sentimiento trágico de la vida

mr nothing believed in his author
a poet whom he created once
he himself had been written aloft

he called him the poor lovelorn
in search of one’s own tangibility
as quickly noticed that strangely

his creation demands clearness
and is quite impatient with mystery
something rather unusual for a poet

what linked them was the silence
under the midnight lamp search
for a man of judicious observations

and the ethics of mutual imposition
to be nothing less than a name
as there is nothing but names

imagine all good things that haven’t happened at dawn though they could
if there wasn’t that dawn mr nothing was private [here name] he thought everyone
has some reason to be ashamed of but what if of such reasons there are three hundred and six
which reminded him of the arithmetic of compassion he had heard once about
the other day while reading the newspaper with his good old friend mr cogito
whose entourage had long ago fled into barbed badinage and defiant roars
as hardly anyone was prone to listen to philosophers any more not to mention poets

so then mr nothing was in somewhat of a melancholy mood for quite some time
in fact lasting from the very moment after leaving his hamlet in some godforsaken place
when became convinced that he had exchanged ignorance of the sacristy for the idolatry
of the flesh and of the ‘i’ and when upper-case letters vanished from his life for good
but by no means became less ridiculous than a teenager whom he wasn’t for ages after all
he even returned to the old riddle over which puzzled in his youth where is the deeper truth hidden
in volumes of classics lying on the shelves or in the everyday battle with dust on their edges

but somehow under the guise of a serious conversation about the victims of shell shock
and the military tribunals during the great war could be felt the shadow of oblique thoughts
that he refused to admit even to himself intoxicated while still broad awake and aware
of the order of things thankfully he still could have long discussions on historical topics
or about the meaning of the kumogakure chapter of the classical masterpiece the tale of genji
as in the end the eloquence has always been a fairly good fig leaf even for a literary entity