LatinosUSA

Various Metaphors for Candles

First, we must discard the metaphors of Eastern poets—
such as “tears drying only when the candle melts to ash.”
Just as your poem uses only “wax” without “tears,”
though I had to translate it as candle tears.
For such smuggled, covert metaphor
I carry an unspeakable awkwardness,
as someone who holds a candle during the daytime.
Only pure “wax” is the real existence,
not just threads of words. Perhaps a new metaphor
could be sought, such as varicose veins,
or, perhaps, like the ancients of China,
“Life is short, why not roam with candles?”
Let the melting wax drip onto the burning tiger’s mouth.
Of course, we must also discard the metaphors of Western poets—
such as “my candle burns at both ends.”
We cannot place it together with the sun and the lamp,
nor between the legs of youth.
My goal is to restore the candle to being just a candle itself,
piling up opaque cheese blocks on a tin plate,
while still warm, shaping them into something indescribable,
reliving the fun of childhood blackouts.
This is a Hamlet-like existentialist question—
lest when the «candle» is extinguished, the candle itself disappears.

~~

A Study of Collars

The sharp blade of the pointed collar can cut off
the Medusa snakes writhing around the neck,
It can also drain the blood of worms from the throat.

Blue-collar, white-collar, gold-collar, fearsome simplifiers
use economic status to annihilate species diversity.

The little hooligan’s shiny, slicked-back hair,
big black lapel, with a smooth red tie.

Never forget the red scarf, the white shirt, blue pants,
chalk painted white shoes for the sports meeting.

The priest’s stiff white collar keeps him dignified,
his steps slow, as though his collar is filled with lead.

Cardboard fake collars, disguised as suits
Are quietly popular among rookies in the office building.

Your beige windbreaker in college,
collar raised in romantic defiance, reciting angry poems.

The head of thought can shrink into the collar of language,
then tremble and pop out like a rusted spring
creaking with laughter.

Now you prefer the ease of collarless T-shirts,
Don’t care about exposing your slender collarbone,
making the sand rope of slavery twitch with temptation.

~~

Owl Studies

The ancient Chinese used the light butterfly to represent wisdom
because they weren’t realists like bees, who only know gathering pollen,
but rather romantics dancing with flowers.
However, Athena’s sacred bird is such a carnivorous predator,
with a round head, round eyes, and a nearly round belly,
alternately, opening and closing its eyes inside a wooden clock.

Or perched on the column tops of the ruined Ephesus,
remaining as still as possible, watching more, speaking less.
Even its flight is silent, and in this way, it bears some resemblance to butterflies.
But has anyone ever seen the storm stirred by the flap of a butterfly’s wings across the ocean?

The outline of the facial disc seems to have been drawn later,
white brow giving it a stern expression.
But never let it count your eyebrows;
It can see the past without turning around,
Including the murder on the steps of the Senate.

The bony circles around its eyes are the fingernails of a ghost.
Dido once heard it scream atop the temple.
The cost of consulting it is allowing it to choose a chorus for a tune,
and patiently waiting for it to spit out some dry pellets.

Barefoot, masked, laughing, wearing glasses,
or with a cat’s head, walking on stilts, making sawing sounds.
But I particularly like the group in the barn.
Their “parliament” is discussing the issues of pesticides and mice.

~~

Some Sayings Concerning Tigers

Dionysus Bacchus, with a whip of vines,
drove his pack of tigers down Mount Nysa in India.
Revered for his justice,
their unyielding necks submitted to the yoke,
pulling him toward higher mountains.

Dido accused Aeneas of having suckled at a tiger’s breast.
Medea believed that, had she not aided Jason,
the Golden Fleece would have been hers—
She was the daughter of a tiger.
She slew her own children and fled in a dragon chariot.

The crescent moon is like a tiger.
The ancient Chinese placed four colored tigers
at the four cardinal directions,
with a yellow tiger at the center.
They correspond to the four living creatures in the Bible,
guarding the order of space against the erosion of chaos.

Blake posed questions
that neither tiger nor lamb could answer.
Shelley called the moon the priestess of Dionysus,
her body filled with ecstatic claws.

April is the cruelest month, yet also the adolescence,
when the Tiger Christ appears, in Dalí’s dream.
He leaps toward us to devour us as air,
but first he must spew forth in turn:
a whale, an elephant, a dove, and a pomegranate.

The blind can only create tigers in dreams,
yet they are as small as dogs or birds.
The maze of mingled scents along the Ganges
bears nine new tigers every nine nights,
each begetting nine more, endlessly—
This is the origin of the world’s order.

The tiger that collects taxes,
the tiger that repays kindness,
the tiger that listens to scriptures,
the person who sacrifices his flesh to feed a tiger,
the tiger wearing a red flower—
I have seen none of these, they are all tigers of words.

As for Tiger Alley in southern Nanjing,
the women there do not place a hand on a man’s shoulder
or breathe warm air into his neck.
Like tigers, they see no meaning in being written into poetry.

~~

Some Sayings Concerning Apples and Apple Blossoms

On Lesbos, apple blossoms are the arms of the Graces,
the garments draped over the backs of women passing beneath the trees.
Whose daughters they are, Sappho cannot turn to overtake.
She glances toward the crowded, heaving harbor,
her beloved perched on the highest branch, beyond all reach.

To toss an apple is a signal to be courted.
Venus flung hers to trick a man into bending, so she might win the race.
We toss melons, or repay peaches with plums
smaller, softer, less likely to harm than apples.
Even if you do not love, catch the apple still,
hold it and muse on how brief youth is.
Menelaus bent to slay Helen,
but at the sight of her “apple,” he let his sword fall.

The Bible never names the fruit as apple.
It might have been fig, for the first couple,
having eaten, wove skirts from fig leaves.
Solomon speaks three times of the seductive apple:
“My beloved is among men
like an apple tree among the trees of the forest.”
Also: “The scent of your nose is like apples,”
“I awakened you under the apple tree.”
My parents, who bore me in toil, labored beneath apple trees.

The apple of the eye is the pupil.
Shakespeare’s love potion must be dropped upon the eyelid.
At eight years old, Mary Austin met God beneath an apple tree,
and all her writing thereafter sought to return
to that day’s sun, wind, and grass.

Rough, gnarled branches twist and curve, the richness of grafting
is the uneven shape of the sour apples in Cézanne’s pockets.
An orchard need not hold a hundred-eyed giant nor a dragon,
but it must have Pissarro’s heavy wheelbarrow,
Frost’s ladder leaning bare toward the sky,
fallen apples even cattle will not touch, winter and sleep
make cider glowing golden like fire.

Only the blossoms are beautiful, light as down,
five petals white with blushes of pink.
Like long-vanished faces that knew how to blush,
they shine in the sun before Yeats’ window.
She loved revolution, not the sacred rage of poetry.
Only Newton was lucky enough to catch the one apple
that fell from the cauldron of the stars.