Ewa Chrusciel
4 poems
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Pentecost 3
Are you living underground? Have you split a peyote button and are practicing Tango Milonga on your cross-country skis with some newly found hot ski-bums? Are you off to Colorado to betray me with some children and Peter Pans? Have you jumped off a ski-lift? Are you angry with your past? Does your skin break out in boils? Do strangers make odd faces at you – expressive of infinite remorse? Do phantom string quartets play mute rhapsodies in your left ear? Is your right ear occupied with the voice of a little man saying over and over "joy to our students"? Is your morning cereal soggier than you recall in the past? Do you think your car is holding a grudge for some unexplained grievance in the past? Is your heater on constantly and yet the room remains cold? Has God appeared to you saying, "It was only a joke"? If one or all of these symptoms is present, I can well understand the eerie silence coming from the northern lands where you now reside. Here, all is the sunlight of the twilight days of the new warmer globe. Soon vast jungles of rubber and teak trees will take over the potato fields and snakes and jaguars will frolic on our front lawn. Since you are closed in the ZOO, you would sigh and say, "I'm home."
**
Pentecost 4
I THINK YOU'VE LOST MY MIND. EITHER THAT OR I HAVE TO WRITE ABOUT THIS TILL IT MAKES SOME SORT OF SENSE.
I just had a dream about being dismembered. You woke me up from the dream. Didn’t you call me a “modern Orpheus” the other day? If we go down into ourselves we find that we possess exactly what we desire. We see only a part of the whole? Lascaux painters knew well about it, as they worked in the dark. I wish that I were there with a jar of fireflies. It's us who can see all of it from some distance. Distance is the Soul of Beauty. Or take Lorca’s ant, who had to climb a tree in order to see the eyes we carry inside of us. An ant gave her life for those eyes. The beauty of our friendship is helping each other love what we love. We would like only for once to get where we are already. It was a song that killed Orpheus. The twigs and other missiles did not get to him. Ciconian Maenads used their hands only in order to share him (– unfulfilled artists). They seized him while he was singing and tore him to pieces. Even while floating down the river, he continued singing! And sycamores and stalactites swayed in unison to his tunes. I wish they had taken off on extended letters. Quarrels ceased. Mermaids or manatees wrapped in the sounds ceased to dismember the wandering sailors. Orpheus, with the sounds of his lyre, created a forest, a chorus of trees. His voice transgressed existence. It spoke of desire and sacrifice. Of beauty and death, for what one loved.
**
In a Bob Moon this drunk, and as black as soot, God lives. In him, evil and good spirits commune. The first time Kasia and I went to Colorado, Bob – a property manager – took care of us. I was doing sociolinguistic research and I secretly recorded him. I kill’em – mountain lions, poke their eyes out, poke’m out, cut their throat, kill’em or they gonna kill you. You got to be straight. You hit directly in the eyes, you poke’m out. You think I’m joking? They ain’t too friendly – Ha, ha, ha I don’t take shit from nobody. It’s those people’s fault. You tell’em. I’m a redneck. I’m a cowboy. I don’t take shit from nobody. Bob’s style displays a high level of informality and casualness. It is affectively charged: a high pitched voice, sharp contours, and exclamation marks help to convey his temper. I ain’t no joking. Patty Ann Stuart. Sweetest, nicest, most innocent girl. I ruined her. His highly-emphatic style, with its use of gestures and characteristic laughter introduced almost every third sentence, made his speech very animated and informal. I did! I ruined her! Heh, heh! Salient features included the use of the double negative, which is characteristic of working-class speech. The speed is rapid and he constantly swallows or abbreviates certain consonants, such as in: “kill’em,” (line 5); “poke’m” (line 7); “tell’em” (line 11). On my birthday, I hoped that a deer would be in the graven horned road continually rising before us. Instead someone was following us in a truck. On a dusty and empty road. We pulled over. It was Bob. Almost bashfully he said: You want me take you to the place with the deer?
**
even....................God....................needs....................companionship
We were eating fish soup and talking about sin. I said sin is a waste of time. It is settling for less. Sin and art have something in common - you said. They both promise happiness. Sin betrays the promise in pain and destruction while art merely defers the happiness and makes the promise again, generating an endless pleasant string of promises that are not so much broken as endlessly deferred. You said: it's like the end of Dante's Paradiso when he's gone so far that the only thing left to see is God himself; but Dante leaves the pilgrim craning out over an abyss with everything again infinitely deferred. My longing is preceded by endless waiting. I wade through tiny spinning atoms of affection. What a gift - this connectedness. I said I would quote you here. You said: What, am I writing this whole thing now??? I said: however noble, if we do things only on our own, we are the enemies of grace. Besides, if ideas are like air, you can’t steal them. You said: If the being of God is mysterious, what happens to our spirit after death must be equally unspeakable. They make it sound like a freaking hog roast where the Pepsi flows eternally. Just where I wouldn't want to be for eternity. I said: God has the address. Is it a box which God has? Ultimately, the happiness that art promises, the greatest happiness that it promises, is "to see a landscape as it is when I am not there," - you said. I say: we need to color and tame the landscape. Horror vacui. The only thing that saves it is our imagination. Or rather, our incarnation. Man has to perform an act of incarnation, for he is disembodied. “Desincarne” by his imagination. What comes to us from Satan is our imagination. Can a landscape be incarnated? Places are extensions of people. There is no country without an encounter. We begin with evanescence.
**
return to sawbuck 2.4
**
**
Pentecost 3
Are you living underground? Have you split a peyote button and are practicing Tango Milonga on your cross-country skis with some newly found hot ski-bums? Are you off to Colorado to betray me with some children and Peter Pans? Have you jumped off a ski-lift? Are you angry with your past? Does your skin break out in boils? Do strangers make odd faces at you – expressive of infinite remorse? Do phantom string quartets play mute rhapsodies in your left ear? Is your right ear occupied with the voice of a little man saying over and over "joy to our students"? Is your morning cereal soggier than you recall in the past? Do you think your car is holding a grudge for some unexplained grievance in the past? Is your heater on constantly and yet the room remains cold? Has God appeared to you saying, "It was only a joke"? If one or all of these symptoms is present, I can well understand the eerie silence coming from the northern lands where you now reside. Here, all is the sunlight of the twilight days of the new warmer globe. Soon vast jungles of rubber and teak trees will take over the potato fields and snakes and jaguars will frolic on our front lawn. Since you are closed in the ZOO, you would sigh and say, "I'm home."
**
Pentecost 4
I THINK YOU'VE LOST MY MIND. EITHER THAT OR I HAVE TO WRITE ABOUT THIS TILL IT MAKES SOME SORT OF SENSE.
I just had a dream about being dismembered. You woke me up from the dream. Didn’t you call me a “modern Orpheus” the other day? If we go down into ourselves we find that we possess exactly what we desire. We see only a part of the whole? Lascaux painters knew well about it, as they worked in the dark. I wish that I were there with a jar of fireflies. It's us who can see all of it from some distance. Distance is the Soul of Beauty. Or take Lorca’s ant, who had to climb a tree in order to see the eyes we carry inside of us. An ant gave her life for those eyes. The beauty of our friendship is helping each other love what we love. We would like only for once to get where we are already. It was a song that killed Orpheus. The twigs and other missiles did not get to him. Ciconian Maenads used their hands only in order to share him (– unfulfilled artists). They seized him while he was singing and tore him to pieces. Even while floating down the river, he continued singing! And sycamores and stalactites swayed in unison to his tunes. I wish they had taken off on extended letters. Quarrels ceased. Mermaids or manatees wrapped in the sounds ceased to dismember the wandering sailors. Orpheus, with the sounds of his lyre, created a forest, a chorus of trees. His voice transgressed existence. It spoke of desire and sacrifice. Of beauty and death, for what one loved.
**
wild.............................................(d).............................................éornes
In a Bob Moon this drunk, and as black as soot, God lives. In him, evil and good spirits commune. The first time Kasia and I went to Colorado, Bob – a property manager – took care of us. I was doing sociolinguistic research and I secretly recorded him. I kill’em – mountain lions, poke their eyes out, poke’m out, cut their throat, kill’em or they gonna kill you. You got to be straight. You hit directly in the eyes, you poke’m out. You think I’m joking? They ain’t too friendly – Ha, ha, ha I don’t take shit from nobody. It’s those people’s fault. You tell’em. I’m a redneck. I’m a cowboy. I don’t take shit from nobody. Bob’s style displays a high level of informality and casualness. It is affectively charged: a high pitched voice, sharp contours, and exclamation marks help to convey his temper. I ain’t no joking. Patty Ann Stuart. Sweetest, nicest, most innocent girl. I ruined her. His highly-emphatic style, with its use of gestures and characteristic laughter introduced almost every third sentence, made his speech very animated and informal. I did! I ruined her! Heh, heh! Salient features included the use of the double negative, which is characteristic of working-class speech. The speed is rapid and he constantly swallows or abbreviates certain consonants, such as in: “kill’em,” (line 5); “poke’m” (line 7); “tell’em” (line 11). On my birthday, I hoped that a deer would be in the graven horned road continually rising before us. Instead someone was following us in a truck. On a dusty and empty road. We pulled over. It was Bob. Almost bashfully he said: You want me take you to the place with the deer?
**
even....................God....................needs....................companionship
We were eating fish soup and talking about sin. I said sin is a waste of time. It is settling for less. Sin and art have something in common - you said. They both promise happiness. Sin betrays the promise in pain and destruction while art merely defers the happiness and makes the promise again, generating an endless pleasant string of promises that are not so much broken as endlessly deferred. You said: it's like the end of Dante's Paradiso when he's gone so far that the only thing left to see is God himself; but Dante leaves the pilgrim craning out over an abyss with everything again infinitely deferred. My longing is preceded by endless waiting. I wade through tiny spinning atoms of affection. What a gift - this connectedness. I said I would quote you here. You said: What, am I writing this whole thing now??? I said: however noble, if we do things only on our own, we are the enemies of grace. Besides, if ideas are like air, you can’t steal them. You said: If the being of God is mysterious, what happens to our spirit after death must be equally unspeakable. They make it sound like a freaking hog roast where the Pepsi flows eternally. Just where I wouldn't want to be for eternity. I said: God has the address. Is it a box which God has? Ultimately, the happiness that art promises, the greatest happiness that it promises, is "to see a landscape as it is when I am not there," - you said. I say: we need to color and tame the landscape. Horror vacui. The only thing that saves it is our imagination. Or rather, our incarnation. Man has to perform an act of incarnation, for he is disembodied. “Desincarne” by his imagination. What comes to us from Satan is our imagination. Can a landscape be incarnated? Places are extensions of people. There is no country without an encounter. We begin with evanescence.
**
return to sawbuck 2.4
**
Ewa Chrusciel is a poet, critic and translator. She holds a PhD in literature from ISU, and MA from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, PL. In 2003 Studium published her first book in Polish. Her second book is forthcoming in Poland in 2009 and her manuscript in English is pending with Graywolf Press. Her poems have appeared in Polish, Italian, and American journals, including: Studium and Zeszyty Literackie, Topos in Poland; Boston Review, Process, Mandorla, Canary, Rhino American Letters and Commentary, The Spoon River Review, The Pebble Lake Review, XCP: Sreetnotes, Colorado Review and Lana Turner in the US; and ClanDestino, Il Giornale in Italy. Her translations of poetry appeared in Poetry Wales, the Chicago Review, Lyric, and two international anthologies. She is a professor at Colby-Sawyer College in NH. A cat and a woodpecker accompany her everywhere she goes.
Labels: 2.4, ewa chrusciel
