Saturday commute cix: "Near the road and the small bridge"

  
  Mec
     The face of heads
                       Idols
  In a corner the sound of a car
             Everything's asleep
  Barely a minute
                  And here I am
  Eyes poring over a caricature
  A fist on full-blown reality

  


 Damn, it's all so far
 The numbers drift away
 On the board where the
  few letters of a name bleed
      Wednesday
        Punctured wind
 The hole pierces the date
 And one passes through
  without batting an eye
 The stains have aged
  on the green-painted bridge

 And the trees passing by
 On the way never a trace
  or reverse
        A man who can't wait

ii  Hubert de Givenchy
       and Audrey Hepburn 
       source unknown

Pierre Reverdy
Oeuvres complètes
Flammarion, 2010©
  Près de la route
    et du petit pont
1919
Mark Polizzotti 
  translation
New York Review Books, 2013©

Suppose it were Friday xcvi: The cheat sheet and the triceps

 
    How many of us, one can only won-
    der, affect a confident air in the
    kitchen because of a handy cheat-
    sheet or mobile app, in the nuanced
    voice of Mr Olney or, I confess, of
    Craig Claiborne? Legions, have we
    noted, on the Greenwich steps of 
    Telegraph Hill, the spiraling croi-
    sette of Corbett Street, indeed e-
    even the stately stairs of Taylor, 
    rising between Bohemia and the Hun-
    tington, all assured in their acu-
    men by a guide who climbed before.

    But what happens, as an unfolding
    of ordinary life repositions the
    secret, early stenciled upon the
    evolving fore, as a magnified yet
    inaccessible code on the obverse 
    muscle group? Ah. A consternation?

    A seizure by anxiety, at the dis-
    appearance of any legacy of learn-
    ing, upon the thoroughly intended
    renovation of the subject, is pos-
    sibly the most endurable remorse -
    of our marginal sample of mankind.

    I recall, distinctly, the parsley.

  ii   Joe Collier

Where could he have come from?

              Nasce l'uomo a fatica,

           Ed è rischio di morte il nascimento.

           Prova pena e tormento

           Per prima cosa; e in sul principio stesso

           La madre e il genitore

           Il prende a consolar dell'esser nato.

           Poi che crescendo viene,

           L'uno e l'altro il sostiene, e via pur sempre

           Con atti e con parole

           Studiasi fargli core,

           E consolarlo dell'umano stato.

               

               Man is born by labor,

           and birth itself means risking death.

           The first thing that he feels

           is pain and torment, and from the start

           mother and father

           seek to comfort him for being born.

           As he grows, 

           they nurture him,

           and constantly by word and deed

           seek to instill courage,

           consoling him for being human.

Giacomo Leopardi

Canti

  Canto Notturno di un Pastore

  Errante dell' Asia

  [fragment]

1831

Jonathan Galassi

  editing and translation

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2010©

On whether one wishes to bother with self-government

 

 

   A tragic illusion,
   you say, and never
   yet have you been
   proved wrong. Yet,
   without it, there
   can be no others.

   From which side,
   then, do you dream:
   on the outside, be-
   ing shrewd, or the
   inside, otherwise?

   We return to bil-
   dungsroman to per-
   petuate our losses,
   you may say, or to
   praise the beloved.

Adam Liptak 

  on the ordeal of James Risen

The New York Times

June 2, 2014