Thursday 26 May 2011

Sylvia Plath







"Daddy"
Sylvia Plath


You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time---
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one grey toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller 
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You---

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two---
The vampire who said he was you
and drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat, black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

good things






"Starshine" by Honeyroot










TRASH


"TRASH" by Amy Yamada




愛すること
愛されること












ものを書く人は、
不幸だと思う。
というか、不幸だと思い込んでいる
そんな自分が結構すきで
自己陶酔できるから
恥ずかしいことを
平気でかけるし
それを納得させることができる


to love and to be loved

Wednesday 25 May 2011

A Beautiful Poem




" BUT HE'S BEAUTIFUL
        THAT BLACK CROW
        I HATE TO SEE. . .
  THIS SNOWY MORNING "


Japanese Haiku
Peter Pauper Press , 1955


「ひごろ憎き 烏も雪の 朝哉」松尾芭蕉


「雪の日の朝の美しさは、普段は卑しく思うカラスでさえも美しく尊いものにさせる」
雪の白さと対照的な黒いカラスが
雪の日の朝に、ぽつんと降り立って
切ない、寂しい、独りぼっちなイメージが頭に広がった。
この孤独が長く続かないことを知っていて
そこに身を任せている
すごく静かで、しんとしてて
すべての時間を止めて
すべてのものを
眠らせ、尊いものにする
この感じ、好きだな
英語にすると
また違うイメージになる
不思議


It gives me a different image in English.
That's funny..