Painting by Hieronymus Bosch : The Extraction of the stone of Madness
THE BIG WORDS [For Antonio Porchia]
it is not yet now
now is never
it is not yet now
now and forever
is never
SILENCES
Death always at my side.
I listen to what it says.
And only hear myself.
I ASK FOR SILENCE
... sing, my suffering darling.
- Cervantes
though it's late, though it's night,
and you are not able.
Sing as if nothing were wrong.
Nothing is wrong.
FALLING
Never again a hope
in the comings and goings
of names, of figures.
Someone dreamed this up so poorly,
someone consumed by accident
the forgotten distances.
EYES WIDE OPEN
Someone, sobbing, measures
the lengths before dawn.
Someone punches her pillow
in search of an impossible
place of rest.
MEMORY LOSS
Although the voice (its oblivion
tossing back my shipwrecked selves)
presides over a frozen garden
I recall with all my lives
my reasons for forgetting.
ABANDONMENT
Abandonment in suspense.
No one is visible on the face of the earth.
Only the music of blood
can guarantee residence
in such an open space.
Poems from Alejandra Pizarnik, Extracting the stone of madness, Poems 1962-1972, Translated by Yvette Siegert, New Directions Book, 2016.