一座演化中的島嶼

Beloved imagination, what I most like in you is your unsparing quality.
-- André Breton, The Surrealist Manifesto

A clouded dream on an earthly night
Hangs upon the crescent moon
A voiceless song in an ageless light
Sings at the coming dawn
Birds in flight are calling there
where the heart moves the stones
there that my heart is longing for
All for, for the love of you


A painting hangs on an ivy wall
Nestled in the emerald moss
The eyes declare a truce of trust
then it draws me far away
deep in the desert twilight
Sand melts in pools of the sky
darkness lays her crimson cloak
lamps will call, call me home


And so it's there my homage's due
Clutched by the still of the night
now I feel, feel you move
And every breath, breath is full
So it's there my homage's due
Clutched by the still of the night
Even the distance feels so near
All for, for the love of you


A clouded dream on an earthly night
Hangs upon the crescent moon
A voiceless song in an ageless light
Sings at the coming dawn
Birds in flight are calling there
Where the heart moves the stones
there that my heart is longing for
All for, for the love of you

Paul Célan (1920-1970)
tr. Michael Hamburger


Do not work ahead,
do not send forth,
stand
into it, enter:


transfounded by nothingness,
unburdened of all
prayer,
microstructured in heeding
the pre-script,
unovertakable,


I make you at home,
instead of all
rest.　　　　 ...繼續閱讀

Nobody, no matter how alienated, is without (or unaware of) an irreducible core of creativity, a camera obscura safe from intrusion from lies and constraints. If ever social organization extends its control to this stronghold of humanity, its domination will no longer be exercised over anything save robots, or corpses. And, in a sense, this is why consciousness of creative energy increases, paradoxically enough, as a function of consumer society's efforts to co-opt it.
-- Raoul Vaneigem

Paul Célan (1920-1970)
tr. Pierre Joris


Once,
I did hear him,
he did wash the world,
unseen, nightlong,
real.


One and unending,
annihilated.
I'ed.


Light was. Salvation 　　　 ...繼續閱讀

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue skys from pain
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail
A smile from a veil
Do you think you can tell


And did they get you to trade
Your heros for ghosts
Hot ashes for trees
Hot air for a cool breeze
Cold comfort for change
And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage


How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl
Year after year
Running over the same old ground
What have we found
The same old fears
Wish you were here

I mount; I escape; I rise on spring-heeled boots over the tree-tops. But I am now fallen into the carriage at the hall door, where she sits nodding yellow plumes with eyes hard like glazed marbles. Oh, to awake from dreaming! Look, there is the chest of drawers. Let me pull myself out of these waters. But they heap themselves on me; they sweep me between their great shoulders; I am turned; I am tumbled; I am stretched, among these long lights, these long waves, these endless paths, with people pursuing, pursuing.
-- Virginia Woolf, Waves

I don't know you
But I want you
All the more for that
Words fall through me
And always fool me
And I can't react
And games that never amount
To more than they're meant
Will play themselves out


Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you have a choice
You'll make it now


Falling slowly, eyes that know me
And I can't go back
Moods that take me and erase me
And I'm painted black
You have suffered enough
And warred with yourself
It's time that you won


Take this sinking boat and point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice you had a choice
You've made it now
Falling slowly sing your melody
I'll sing along

Paul Célan (1920-1970)
tr. Michael Hamburger


You opened your eyes - i saw my darkness live.
I see through it down to the bed:
there too it is mine and lives.


Is that a ferry? Which, crossing, awakens?
Whose light can it be at my heels
for a boatman to appear?　　　　　　 ...繼續閱讀

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way


Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun


And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but its sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but youre older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death


Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the english way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought Id something more to say


Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
Its good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.