One of these days One of tOnhoNE oNE OF THESE DAYS
rreadersREADERS'LL discover
TRISTAN TZARA'S POETRY
the one that surpasses the misly reputation he has as the as one of the founders of dada dada was great and always will be however its become a miserable
label
that covers everything says nothing means
less
Tzrara wrote more than a dozen books of
Poetry
they would exist
whether dada did or not
Heather Green poet and translator is part of a trajectory of poet translators
bringing Tzara's vast
production
of poetry to light
Thank you to her and others like her....
________________________________________________________________________
all of them are right and if all pills are Pink Pills, let us
try for once not to be right.
-Tristan Tzara
(tr. Robert Motherwell) as quited by Heather Green ~
_______________________________________________
II
what thinks the height
so much earth to follow
snowy vowels
caged in uncertainty
for the future
for the hair on the beach
the deaf ear
and that dissimilar
to the root of the heads
no more reward
of the night in raft
like another night
awakening awakening
on the jewels of days
there will be no more deaths
in a cool language
III
always marching up front
rolling the letter before you
like the hands know
like nobody sees
the childrens’ key
the great walls’ strength
earth of sleeping women
to be sure
how many mirages
in a gaze
an incomprehensible threshold
falls before the world
like smoke that has lost the path
not light nor blood
and the birds got lost
from too much knowing
VI
the star always hollows – disappointment
in the crux of a wax hand
that you were not whiplash
all the sky frozen
as the child wakes at the head
of ravines that flow with the rapture of death
the word shined white like skin
that slips only on the child
devastated and dancing dancing
always at the backs of the lines
so many sunny spells in such a little place
magnified into the next death
alone and alone
a new city like another lie
piles itself up in a cheap smoke
another stainless rain like a death without end
XII
she who was joy – riot of my sorrow
haven’t you cautiously gone back to wander naturally
in the soul full and ringing out like fruit
scanning the sloth of the soil
the sun licked bodies slow and weary
not a shadow has clouded its comings and goings
tender as rags the hanging of birches and voices
have consumed flesh dressed in charms of calm
o docile death o wait o suspicion
kneaded by coarse hands in the fire
one day the trees will shake frail
dry fears below here
and memory will not see its own end anymore
the new rumors will lay out their proud bodies
in the grasses of the dead
with the bells
XIII
wander wander in a full head
where I wait for the lone woman the absentee
the wrong one chosen from among the beauties
the neck stone
near the deep alleyways of the smile
so many men get lost near this bridge
always gone – neither ripples nor winds
among the dearth
the old shadow broke from
the friendless branch
and the last one who wanted to relive
his dead youth is dead
all the snow all
the sky where everything resides
anchored hopelessly
in one cry – of having understood too much
____________________
Translated by Heather Green
and
ll
http://www.octopusmagazine.com/issue10/green.htm
Copied from the Saltgrass blog which is also the blog for their small publishing outfit ~ Saltgrass ___
Lessons in translation
More about Heather Green
Heather Green lives in Boston. Her work has recently appeared inDenver Quarterly and Tarpaulin Sky, and her chapbook, The Match Array, is available from Dancing Girl Press.
http://ekleksographia.ahadadabooks.com/issuetwo/authors/heather_green.html
These poems are selected from the volume Oú boivent les loups(Where the Wolves Drink), which was written in French and originally published in the 1930’s.
