The Corpse Bride "Tears Shed"

MAGGOT
What does that whispy little brat have that you don't have double?

BLACK WIDOW
She can't hold a candle to the beauty of your smile

CORPSE BRIDE
How about a pulse?

MAGGOT
Overrated by a mile

BLACK WIDOW
Overbearing

MAGGOT
Overblown

MAGGOT AND BLACK WIDOW
If he only knew the you that we know

CORPSE BRIDE
(sigh)

BLACK WIDOW
And that silly little creature isn't wearing his ring

MAGGOT
And she doesn't play piano

MAGGOT AND BLACK WIDOW
Or dance

MAGGOT
Or sing

MAGGOT AND BLACK WIDOW
No she doesn't compare

CORPSE BRIDE
But she still breathes air

BLACK WIDOW
Who cares?

MAGGOT
Unimportant

BLACK WIDOW
Overrated

MAGGOT
Overblown

MAGGOT AND BLACK WIDOW
If only he could see
How special you can be
If he only knew the you that we know

CORPSE BRIDE
If I touch a burning candle I can feel the pain
If you cut me with a knife it's still the same
And I know her heart is beating
And I know that I am dead
Yet the pain here that I feel
Try and tell me it's not real
For it seems that I still have a tear to shed

MAGGOT
The sure redeeming feature
From that little creature
Is that she's alive

BLACK WIDOW
Overrated

MAGGOT
Overblown

BLACK WIDOW
Everybody know that's just a temporary state
Which is cured very quickly when we meet our fate

MAGGOT
Who cares?

BLACK WIDOW
Unimportant

MAGGOT
Overrated

BLACK WIDOW
Overblown

MAGGOT AND BLACK WIDOW
If only he could see
How special you can be
If he only knew the you that we know

CORPSE BRIDE
If I touch a burning candle I can feel no pain
In the ice or in the wun it's all the same
Yet I feel my heart is acheing
Though it doesn't beat it's breaking
And the pain here that I feel
Try and tell me it's not real
I know that I am dead
Yet it seems that I still have some tears

For this relief much thanks:
( Shk: Ham)

Es malo pero......

"It is not what they say..."

So that while you listened, half, with an ear shut and the other opened, half way, while tea sat on the table, and we sat on the armchairs, and the cats sat, on the mat, (of course), so that while you listened, I cried. I cried and broke over the tea, and then ... and you came, ...and "it's not what they say," they say... You said, "crying is good" with surgical care.. and that's a fact.But you also said with the heart on the hand, like the hand that held the other day the cat's paw for a picture, with care "what are we sisters for?" Half acknowledging that life is half a piece of something that we very often find in toilets and streets, but that the other half is worth a laughing stand. So I laughed, and then went on crying, and the cat sat on the mat.

¿Do you remember when we went to the cinema to see The Dead's Poet Club?
Someone was saying poems, in a voice that sounded fat,
With eloquence and "seriedad"
But someone, in the class,
Looked, smiled
And said
In a voice inflated with laugh
"The cat sat on the mat"
and everyone agreed:
It was an indisputable fact.

February the 20th Street

A coincidence must be/ part of a whole chain/ whose links are unknown to me/

I feel them round me/ everywhere I go; in queues/ in trains, under bridges7

People or coincidences, flukes/ of logic, which fail/ because of me, because/

We move singly through streets/ The last of some sad species/ Pacing the floors of zoos

Our luck homing together/ backwards through grasses/ to the brink of another time

Una coincidencia debe ser/ parte de una cadena/ cuyos vínculos desconozco/

Los siento a mi alrededor/ en las colas, en los trenes/ bajo los puentes/

La gente o las coincidencias/ copos de lógica que se me escapan/ por mi culpa porque/

Nos movemos solos en las calles/ los últimos de una triste especie/ encarcelada en zoos/

Nuestra suerte volviendo siempre/ atrás a través de la yerba/ al límite de otros tiempos

Hugo Williams

Como dentro de un cuerpo muerto
Insuflo soplo,soplo dentro
Es inútil,
El globo está lleno de agujeros
Y el aire se me escapa entre los dedos

He estado leyendo la introducción o comentario al poema de Elizabeth Bishop escrita por James Fenton. El poema es "The Unbeliever":

Es un poema que no he leído, sólo tengo como referencias las citas de James:"He sleeps on the top of a mast with his eyes fast closed.The sails fall away below him like the sheets of his bed,leaving out in the air of the night the sleeper’s head." Creo que este poema (o el trozo) recoge mucha belleza, y me resulta duro, duro, leer las críticas. No porque sean negativas, sino porque centran el poema en Bunyan's Progress (The Pilgrim) y creo que como todos (menos, en aquella época) hemos evolucionado algo. Es decir, nadie, si es capaz, puede ver la dureza que se esconde tras el Progreso del Peregrino y tras los textos de citados pertenecientes a los salmos. Nadie aplica esa dureza a su vida. La vida ha evolucionado y en medio está por ejemplo el salto evolutivo y mucho más humano, describiendo a los hombres en los "tops of the masts" de Herman Melville. Es decir, en Melville, el hombre puede o se queda dormido en lo alto del mástil, el peligro le acecha, es el mismo, pero no se le juzga de la misma manera. Duerme el hombre y se mece el mástil y el barco y también el aire, ese aire suave que pasa por la cabeza del "sleeper's head" creo que hemos evolucionado desde los tiempos de la inquisición y que podemos decir, junto con algunos poetas "dulce, como este sol...era ..." y no "of absolute paternal care, that prevents us everywhere". Hay muchas formas de amor.

Fenton parece reconocer esto cuando en su artículo pasa a describir etapas más modernas, de la vida moderna. Ahora los símbolos son otros, se entremezclan con conversaciones mundanas, con cosas de toda la vida. Ya no tenemos a Simple, Presumption etc..como dijo Eliot, "last years words belong to last years language" Fenton reconoce que los símbolos de Bishop son más complejos (o simples) más modernos, que incluyen más cosas, quizás polimorfos, no sé exactamente qué quiero decir pero Bishop sustitye las personificaciones de la alegoría de Bunyan por algo, que son una nube y un pájaro y esto ya es algo, ya indica un cambio en la conciencia, como señala Fenton. Un cambio en los símbolos y en la manera de percibir la realidad.

T A Y, stay, sweet Time, behold or ere thou passeFrom world to world, thou long hast sought to see,That wonder now wherein all wonders be,Where heaven beholds her in a mortall glasse.
Nay,
looke thee Time in this Celestiall glasse,And thy youth past, in this faire mirror see :Behold worlds beautie in her infancie,What shee was then, and thou or ere shee was.
Now
passe on Time, to after-worlds tell this,Tell truelie Time what in thy time hath beene,That they may tel mor e worlds what Time hath seene,And heaven may joy to think on past worlds blisse.
Hee
re make a period Time, and saie for mee,
She
was, the like that never was, nor never more shalbe.

"Where is the end of it/ The end to the fishermen setting and hauling/ the end to the crying that is whineless

A German Requiem

A German Requiem

It is not what they built./ It is what they knocked down./It is not the houses. /It is the spaces in between the houses./It is not the streets that exist./ It is the streets that no longer exist/.It is not your memories which haunt you./It is not what you have written down./It is what you have forgotten, what you must forget.What you must go on forgetting all your life.And with any luck oblivion should discover a ritual.You will find out that you are not alone in the enterprise.Yesterday the very furniture seemed to reproach you.Today you take your place in the Widow's Shuttle.*The bus is waiting at the southern gateTo take you to the city of your ancestorsWhich stands on the hill opposite, with gleaming pediments, As vivid as this charming square, your home.Are you shy? You should be. It is almost like a wedding, The way you clasp your flowers and give a little tug at your veil. Oh, The hideous bridesmaids, it is natural that you should resent themJust a little, on this first day.But that will pass, and the cemetery is not far.Here comes the driver, flicking a toothpick into the gutter, His tongue still searching between his teeth.See, he has not noticed you. No one has noticed you.It will pass, young lady, it will pass.*How comforting it is, once or twice a year, To get together and forget the old times.As on those special days, ladies and gentlemen, When the boiled shirts gather at the gravesideAnd a leering waistcoast approaches the rostrum.It is like a solemn pact between the survivors.They mayor has signed it on behalf of the freemasonry.The priest has sealed it on behalf of all the rest.Nothing more need be said, and it is better that way-*The better for the widow, that she should not live in fear of surprise, The better for the young man, that he should move at liberty between the armchairs, The better that these bent figures who flutter among the gravesTending the nightlights and replacing the chrysanthemumsAre not ghosts, That they shall go home.The bus is waiting, and on the upper terracesThe workmen are dismantling the houses of the dead.*But when so many had died, so many and at such speed, There were no cities waiting for the victims.They unscrewed the name-plates from the shattered doorwaysAnd carried them away with the coffins.So the squares and parks were filled with the eloquence of young cemeteries: The smell of fresh earth, the improvised crossesAnd all the impossible directions in brass and enamel.*'Doctor Gliedschirm, skin specialist, surgeries 14-16 hours or by appointment.'Professor Sarnagel was buried with four degrees, two associate membershipsAnd instructions to tradesmen to use the back entrance.Your uncle's grave informed you that he lived in the third floor, left.You were asked please to ring, and he would come down in the liftTo which one needed a key...*Would come down, would ever come downWith a smile like thin gruel, and never too much to say.How he shrank through the years.How you towered over him in the narrow cage.How he shrinks now...*But come. Grief must have its term? Guilt too, then.And it seems there is no limit to the resourcefulness of recollection.So that a man might say and think: When the world was at its darkest, When the black wings passed over the rooftops, (And who can divine His purposes?) even thenThere was always, always a fire in this hearth.You see this cupboard? A priest-hole! And in that lumber-room whole generations have been housed and fed.Oh, if I were to begin, if I were to begin to tell youThe half, the quarter, a mere smattering of what we went through! *His wife nods, and a secret smile, Like a breeze with enough strength to carry one dry leafOver two pavingstones, passes from chair to chair.Even the enquirer is charmed.He forgets to pursue the point.It is now what he wants to know.It is what he wants not to know.It is not what they say.It is what they do not say.
James Fenton

1980

"And If in the distant/future someone/ Thinks he has ever been me/as I am today/ let him revise/his insolent ontology/ and teach himself to pray"

Lives by Derek Mahon (for Seamus Heaney)

1962-78

"so that at nights/watching the same news in different houses/ our souls tap messages across the icy miles"



Maura Dooley (1957)

The apparition of these faces in the crowd/ petals on a wet....bough

"You left my lips/ and they shape words/ even in silence"

Ossip Mandelsthan

Ossip Mandelsthan was a Russian Writer, he spent part of his life confined .