We present this work in honor of the 35th anniversary of the poet’s death.

 

The body of a tall living hero alone
Walks first
In a wood made of more than a thousand columns,
Then stretches out on a shield
—Partly shining and partly of still warm shadow—
Formed with pine needles.

He rests
Under the musical guard of a quadrille of flies
Held at a respectful distance
By the circularly extended quiverings
Of living flesh.

Some long trees
With the plumes on their summits,
Ward off in the sky
All dangerous flakes.

Prisoners by their roots
Strong
But sinuous on their heels,
They move off around the precious
Olympian figure,
Opening up the skies
For him to see.

He,
With clean body,
Neither hot nor cold,
Without urgent need,
His vision richly fed
On a thousand blue sparks,
Makes move
down in his throat
deep under the veil of his eyes
Ears and nostrils,
The secret screen,
The curtain
Of Memory and Forgetting.

Everything trembles then
And refuses no command.
Each thing in particular
Would be sacrificed willingly.

But he is as just as he is strong
And his modesty enhances his power.
He gives to everyone at each moment
Full authorization
According to their own desires
Having excused everything,
Enriched by his intelligence,
He, already dead for them,
Lies down as they go off.

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 100th birthday.

 

They said to me no, don’t take any, no, don’t touch, that is burning
hot. No, don’t try to touch, to hold, that weighs too much, that
hurts.

They said to me: Read, write. And I tried, I took up a word, but it
struggled, it clucked like a frightened hen, wounded, in a cage of
black straw, spotted with old traces of   blood.

Translation by Mary Ann Caws

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 165th birthday.

 

Rose with dark eyes,
mirror of your nothingness,
rose with dark eyes,
make us believe in the mystery,
hypocrite flower,
flower of silence.

Rose the colour of pure gold,
oh safe deposit of the ideal,
rose the colour of pure gold,
give us the key of your womb,
hypocrite flower,
flower of silence.

Rose the colour of silver,
censer of our dreams,
rose the colour of silver,
take our heart and turn it into smoke,
hypocrite flower,
flower of silence.

We present this work in honor of the 75th anniversary of the poet’s death.

 

I love to go down into the town at the hour when the sky lies close against the horizon like a vast whale. It sinks down into the heart of the street like a worker into his ditch. The bell has swung before the windows and the panes are lit up. It is as though all the eyes of the evening were filled with tears. In an opal the lamps and the day wrestle gently with each other. The advertising signs write to each other, spreading themselves in letters of lava across the face of the buildings. The rope dancers stride over the abyss. A great long legged spider spins its web from the hooks of a bush full of flowers. An acrobat climbs up and throws himself down. Shipwrecked sailors signal foreign vessels. The houses advance like the prows of galleys with all their portholes blazing. Man runs between their golden flames like a waif in a harbor.

Dark and streaming the autos arrive from everywhere, like sharks to the quarry of a great shipwreck, blind to the fulgurant signals of men.

Translation by Kenneth Rexroth

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 125th birthday.

 

It was in the middle of our tragedy
And all the long day sitting at her glass
She combed her bright gold hair. To me it was
As though her calm hands quieted a blaze.
It was in the middle of our tragic days.

And all day long sitting before her glass
She combed her bright gold hair as one who plays
In the very middle of our tragedy
A golden harp without belief, to pass
The long hours, sitting all day at her glass.

She combed her bright gold hair and seemed to be
Martyrizing at will her memory
All the long day while sitting at her glass,
Reviving still the spent flowers of the blaze,
Not speaking as would another in her place.

She martyrized at will her memory
It was in the middle of our tragic days
Her dark glass was the world’s facsimile
Her comb, parting the fires of that silken mass,
Lit up the corners of my memory.

In the very middle of our tragic days
As Thursday is in the middle of the week
And sitting there before her memory
She saw within the glass (but did not speak)

One by one the actors of our tragedy
Dying, whom most in this dark world we praise

I need not call their names You know what memory
Burns on the hearth of these declining days

And in her golden hair when she sits there
And combs in silence the reflected blaze.

Translation by George Dillon