Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I [Round about the cauldron go] by William Shakespeare

Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I [Round about the cauldron go] by William Shakespeare   The three witches, casting a spell Round about the cauldron go;  In the poison’d entrails throw.  Toad, that under cold stone  Days and nights hast thirty one Swelter’d venom sleeping got,  Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot.          Double, double toil and trouble;         Fire burn and cauldron bubble.  Fillet of a fenny snake,  In the cauldron boil and bake;  Eye of newt, and toe of frog,  Wool of bat, and tongue of dog, Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting, Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing, For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.            Double, double toil and trouble;           Fire burn and cauldron bubble.  Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf, Witches’ mummy, maw and gulf Of the ravin’d salt-sea shark, Root of hemlock digg’d i’ the dark, Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat, and slips of yew Sliver’d in the moon’s eclipse, Nose of Turk, and Tartar’s lips, Finger of birth-strangled babe Ditch-deliver’d by a drab, Make the gruel thick and slab: Add thereto a tiger’s chaudron, For the ingredients of our cauldron.           Double, double toil and trouble;           Fire burn and cauldron bubble.

Today’s poem is in the public domain.

Lines Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed from a Skull by George Gordon Byron

Start not-nor deem my spirit fled:
In me behold the only skull
From which, unlike a living head,
Whatever flows is never dull.

I lived, I loved, I quaff’d, like thee:
I died: let earth my bones resign;
Fill up-thou canst not injure me;
The worm hath fouler lips than thine.

Better to hold the sparkling grape,
Than nurse the earth-worm’s slimy brood;
And circle in the goblet’s shape
The drink of Gods, than reptiles’ food.

Where once my wit, perchance, hath shone,
In aid of others’ let me shine;
And when, alas! our brains are gone,
What nobler substitute than wine?

Quaff while thou canst-another race,
When thou and thine like me are sped,
May rescue thee from earth’s embrace,
And rhyme and revel with the dead.

Why not? since through life’s little day
Our heads such sad effects produce;
Redeem’d from worms and wasting clay,
This chance is theirs, to be of use.

About this poem:

According to Thomas Medwin, Byron’s gardener dug up a human skull which was then mounted as a drinking cup, per the Lord’s request. Byron: “it returned with a very high polish, and of a mottled colour like tortoiseshell.”

di questa vita menzognera

Sì. Detta così l’ispirazione:
la mia libera fantasia s’appiglia
sempre a quei luoghi dov’è umiliazione,
dov’è sporcizia e tenebra e indigenza.
Laggiù, laggiù, con più umiltà, più in basso, –
di là si scorge meglio un altro mondo…
Hai mai visto i bambini a Parigi
o sul ponte i poveri d’inverno?
Dischiudi gli occhi, schiudili al più presto
sul fittissimo orrore della vita,
prima che un grande nubifragio spazzi
tutto quello che c’è nella tua patria, –
lascia maturare il giusto sdegno,
prepara al lavoro le braccia…
E se non puoi, fa sì che in te si accumuli
e divampi il fastidio e la mestizia…
Ma di questa vita menzognera
cancella l’untuoso rossetto
e, come talpa timida, nasconditi
sotto terra alla luce ed impietrisci,
tutta la vita odiando con ferocia
e tenendo in dispregio questo mondo,
e, anche se tu non veda l’avvenire,
dicendo no alle cose del presente!

 

(Aleksandr Aleksandrovič Blok)

INCARNADINE

Macbeth:

What hands are here! Ha  —   they pluck out my eyes!

Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood

clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather

the multitudinous seas incarnadine,

making the green one red

(Macbeth, 2.2.59-64)

Macbeth:

“Che sono queste mani? Ah, mi strappano gli occhi!

Potrà l’intero oceano del potente Nettuno

lavare il sangue da questa mia mano? No, la mano, piuttosto,

tingerà d’incarnato i mari innumerevoli:

farà del loro verde un solo rosso”

(trad. Guido Bulla).

La scena mostra  la caffetteria “Joe”, luminosa per via dei finestroni alti quanto le pareti. Tre personaggi: due giovani seduti a un tavolino e l’Idiota, solo, seduto a un tavolino accanto.  La coppia è immersa in una conversazione animata. Lui è un giovane-incerto-se-votare [vedi “il sogno dell’impero” da Esploratrici solitarie], mentre la  sua amica è fortemente convinta che bisogna votare: per evitare il pericolo di ecc., per impedire che, ecc. Alla fine lei lo persuade al voto, e i due si allontanano allegri a braccetto. L’Idiota resta seduto e  solo. Ha origliato tutta la conversazione, fingendo di scrivere in un suo taccuino; e adesso monodialoga, come gli ha insegnato Unamuno, senza che alcun suono gli esca dalle labbra.

Chiunque è post-infante ha già compreso

che la storia è una macelleria:

all’odore del sangue bisogna accostumarsi.

Ma io a poco a poco

sto disabituandomi:

comincio ad annusarmi

sempre più spesso le mani.

E’ vero: non vi è alcuna traccia rossa.

E’ vero: il rosso, quando me lo sogno,

diventa color rosa  — enrosadira

            di tramonti su rocce dolomitiche.

Ma di giorno non trovo più rifugi

onirico-ideologici

(deliri della politologia).

Io  so soltanto

che continuo a fiutarmi dorso e palmo:

l’odore  non svanisce, e contagia

di un colore mentale,

colore carnale,

l’acqua dell’esistenza quotidiana.

E basta basta basta coi massacri.

Le nostre mani risentono

del clima nazionale  —

vento della superbia che trasforma

in regola l’eccezione —

sono impozzangherate e immelmate

sotto la pelle, anche se lavate.

Ma d’altronde è patetico ribattere

al rosso con il rosso

di stracci imbandierati.

E io non ho l’audacia

di quelle suore anziane

che rovesciano borse di sangue

sugli schedari

nucleari e militari.

Il mio non è allora

un “basta” di ribellione

ma un “basta” di esaustione.

Non posso incarnadine,

            posso solo rispondere

al rosso con il bianco

del voto muto e vuoto.   

Pensieri(ni)

–  un amico mi cita questa frase, da un’intervista di Marguerite Duras:

“Sartre, il n’a pas écrit. Pour moi il n’a pas su ce que c’était, écrire. Il a toujours eu des soucis annexes, des soucis en second, de secondes mains. Il n’a jamais affronté l’écriture pure. C’est un moraliste, Sartre. Il a toujours puisé dans la société, dans une espèce d’environnement de lui. Un environnement politique, littéraire. Ce nest pas quelqu’un de qui je dirais : « Il a écrit ». Je n’y penserais même pas.”

Non condivido questo giudizio sprezzante, e la Duras si espone facilmente all’accusa di essere un po’ invidiosa…. Eppure, eppure  –   questa frase continua a ronzarmi nella testa  –  non credo nella “scrittura pura” ma credo nella purezza della scrittura –  e non credo che questo sia semplicemente un sofisma –

Poem-A-Day: Characteristics of Life by Camille T. Dungy

A fifth of animals without backbones could be at risk of extinction, say scientists.
-BBC Nature News

Ask me if I speak for the snail and I will tell you
I speak for the snail.
speak of underneathedness
and the welcome of mosses,
of life that springs up,
little lives that pull back and wait for a moment.

I speak for the damselfly, water skeet, mollusk,
the caterpillar, the beetle, the spider, the ant.
I speak
from the time before spinelessness was frowned upon.

Ask me if I speak for the moon jelly. I will tell you
one thing today and another tomorrow
and I will be as consistent as anything alive
on this earth.

I move as the currents move, with the breezes.

What part of your nature drives you? You, in

your cubicle

ought to understand me. I filter and filter and filter

all day.
Ask me if I speak for the nautilus and I will be silent
as the nautilus shell on a shelf. I can be beautiful
and useless if that’s all you know to ask of me.

Ask me what I know of longing and I will speak of

distances
between meadows of night-blooming flowers.
I will speak
the impossible hope of the firefly.

You with the candle
burning and only one chair at your table must

understand
such wordless desire.

To say it is mindless is missing the point

Poem-A-Day: Ode to the West Wind by Percy Bysshe Shelley

– trent’anni dopo (o più), ricordo ancora un pomeriggio a Cambridge, Mass. in cui la lettura di quest’ode fu una vera epifania –

* * *

Ode to the West Wind

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn’s being,
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,
Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou,
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,
Each like a corpse within its grave,until
Thine azure sister of the Spring shall blow

Her clarion o’er the dreaming earth, and fill
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)
With living hues and odours plain and hill:

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and Preserver; hear, O hear!

II
Thou on whose stream, ‘mid the steep sky’s commotion,
Loose clouds like Earth’s decaying leaves are shed,
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread
On the blue surface of thine airy surge,
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge
Of the horizon to the zenith’s height,
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night
Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre
Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: O hear!

III
Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae’s bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave’s intenser day,

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them! Thou
For whose path the Atlantic’s level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,
And tremble and despoil themselves: O hear!

IV
If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free
Than thou, O Uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne’er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

V
Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:
What if my leaves are falling like its own!
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone,
Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,
My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth!
And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened Earth

The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Poem-A-Day: Au Hasard Balthazar by Stacy Szymaszek

– non ho capito  bene la poesia – ma il film di Bresson mi pare uno dei capolavori della cinematografia moderna –

* * *

Au Hasard Balthazar

by Stacy Szymaszek

1974 I start
a memo on
dreadful vision

of Christian mildness
amidst Christian perps

bringing an evil
to hymns

evaporates
water stations

I can wait
a Polish actress

wide-set 50 mm
eyes restrictive
yet yield surprise

my lap
made of muscle

knee caps
shoots    of errant hair

in that moment I understand
French
my hand

took place

opus of
safe infant
heads

listen bud

no static guard
on my acolyte robe
as we learned last Sunday
flammable

another class of girl
wants to be destroyed

donned “beef
cake” by summer
crown of blue
ribbon

now on a mantle
house in a field

my animal
lives with sheep

feel bad that I beat you

problem with
only offering
two options

Poem-A-Day: Dante Micheaux, Garcia Lorca Meets Crane

– non mi permetto di enunziare giudizi a proposito di questa poesia – solo vorrei comunicare una certa tristezza (che ovviamente può benissimo non essere condivisa): tristezza nel vedere il desiderio (che a me sembra abbia sempre in sé qualcosa di sacro, qualunque sia il suo oggetto e il modo della sua realizzazione, e sia esso spirituale o materialistico,  religioso o ateistico) ridotto a frivolezza –

* * *

García Lorca Meets Crane

by Dante Micheaux

Had the metropolitan afternoon not bored him,
the lack of sea air and pure sun not made him long for Andalusía,
or Ángel Flores—intellectual of the rich port—not had a remedy,
the poet in New York might never have crossed the East River
to engage in a conversation that, had language not been a barrier,
went like this:

Señor Crane, el placer es mio. Usted ve que los maricas
de Granada nunca podrían hacer impunemente de recibir tantos marineros
en un hogar a un tiempo. Pleasure—your poems proceed you. Excuse
the mess, one never knows what might wash ashore. Angel, why
didn’t you ring to announce your coming?

To which Flores replied, “Since when has any man ever announced
his coming in this apartment, dear heart?”

Angel, you’re a scoundrel! Ángel, él es un sinvergüenzo maravilloso.
Mire a estos muchachos, bajo permiso y ¡todavía! incapaz de escapar uno
al otro ¡Borrachos y formando escándalos! What did he say?

To which Flores replied, “He said that you have a charming gathering here.”

Yes—the borough’s less fashionable gentleman’s club. Señor Crane…Angel,
tell him the formality is not necessary.

To which Flores replied, “No tan formal, Federico. Por favor.”

…arrrt—disculpame, la pronunciación es difícil—Ángel y yo caminamos
sobre un magnifico puente. Dime, en serio, ¿colga allí?

From which Flores translates, “He wants to know about the bridge.”

Isn’t it magnificent? Can you believe it just hangs there, no support?
I’m composing a rather lengthy piece about it.

From which Flores translates, “Sí. Está componiendo un pedazo
sobre el puente.”

And what have you been working on since your arrival?

From which Flores translates, “¿Qué estás escribiendo?”

Tanto como uno puede, sobre la vida en una residencia.

[exact translation]

Well, hopefully we can inspire you. Would you all like some whiskey?

[exact translation]

Absolutamente. Y una pareja de estos marineros.

From which which Flores translates, “Yes he would. But none for me, thank you.”

Good company and some old-fashion hooch should take your mind
off the anonymity of New York.

[exact translation]

(laughter)

Cheers! Salud! (pause) Federico would you like to stay the afternoon?

[exact translation]

¡Claro! Ángel, sobra tiempo?

To which Flores replies, “Tu puedes pero yo…¡no!”

Hart, dear…Federico is going to stay. I have an article to finish.
Te dejo a su vicio particular.

And that is how Ángel Flores left them. One poet with another,
in a Brooklyn flat, filled with cigarette smoke, sailors and their musk,
the taste of whiskey on the tongue and, perhaps, the skin.