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Joseph Campbell
The silence of unlaboured fields
Lies like a judgment on the air:
A human voice is never heard:
The sighing grass is everywhere--
The sighing grass, the shadowed sky,
The cattle crying wearily!
Where are the lowland people gone?
Where are the sun-dark faces now?
The love that kept the quiet hearth,
The strength that held the speeding plough?
Grasslands and lowing herds are good,
But better human flesh and blood!
i am prey
i am mammal
pure fear
fires my pistons
my eyebrows
can pupate
i have outgrown
my own hair
earth-bound
descended from the trees
i drink from the gray
breasts of clouds
on hind legs
i hone myself
to the thinness
of a blade of grass
Fresh from their hibernaculum
under the lawn beside
the stone well,
the male garter snakes
thread themselves into a throbbing knot
and pull apart, thwarted.
Where is she? They circle
like eddies of wind, old skins
whispering through the grass.
A groundhog comes out of her hole
and begins to gather bundles
of dried grass.
Harlequin ladybirds
emerge from the side of the house
with a burning thirst
and dive onto the snow,
where they suck and stumble
and come to a frozen halt.
There's a truth in a
painted picture of grass,
as it's sways aside to reveal
secrets. In poppies that
grow bittersweet red and black,
that drank the sorrow and tried
to forget. To dancing fields
that grow from years
of crushed, decaying, pitiful lives,
to form those magnifiscent
oceans of cerulean upon gold.
Truths that cascade over storms,
rushes to help those caught in the
betraying winds and cold.
There's a glistening truth in
all sadness
The universe is liquid;
it fits any container.
The universe fits
in a field
and we play a pick-up
game of football.
The universe fits
in a blade of grass on a field,
drinking the dew that
forms on its shaded face.
The universe fits
in a football;
what joy it is to be
kicked around!
The universe fits
in the cells of a blade of grass,
Is every grain of sand
Different from the other?
I do not know.
Is every drop of water
Different from the other?
I do not know.
But I do know
That every snowflake
Is different from the other
Just as every man differs from the other.
How like snowflakes are we!
Both appear from nowhere
But from somewhere the same
Falling, falling we come down
Lying on a rock or in a glacier
Or on the riverbank here
Why do you, Toad, look at me
So impassive, so self-assured?
You sit - no, squat on all your fours
your warty skin, wrinkled and ridged
Your glands swollen with poison -
Think I didn't know?
Go forth, be not afraid of me!
Go forth and procreate!
For you and your kind, here -
A blade of grass, a dried leaf
A twig to play with -
The shade of the great trees -
And over there, Kunthi, for your children!
In the mountains, high up in the grasslands
Where mist swirls; where every blade of grass
Is wet with dew –
Tread softly, for you are trampling upon beads of love.
Love erupts slowly, the moist soil swells –
As you watch, it surges, drips
Drop by drop. Press your face onto the soil -
On your nose, your lips, your tongue
Love spreads into your blood.
Love erupts at the tips of your fingers, my love!
Caress my face, touch my lips!
Run your fingers over my ravaged face
Over my ageing skin; perhaps it will glow again
At your touch!
Love spurts, my dear, red beads of blood
As you tear into me in ecstasy!
When I read them I'm obliged to project myself
the original author's thrill writing and
the expanse: trees, sky, tremendous dogs fighting:
for me this is to read. There exists no best
translation, however one admires the vain effort
none makes to make it all the same, somehow authentic if not
perfect (meanwhile sickening of the original!).
Oh yucky repetitious pretensions of mind! move outside,
out of sight! get your jaws wide! eat
Mother Nature! Know the ways of the city drag.
Contemplate a while cigarettes and boiling coffee.
Dig cold air! Shut down contraptions (like radio)
and ramble determinedly about — out! Time comes
your guilt will crack, eyes see nameless birds,
WE HAVE LOST THE LAND
OR
HAVE BECOME SEPARATED
FROM OURSELVES
AS GRASS PULLED FROM
ITS SHAFT
WE STAND WITH NO MEANING
IN SPACES
THE OPENED GROUND IS AS
STRANGE AS THE OPENINGS
BETWEEN OUR FINGERS.
there is GRASS on the PAMPA and there is OIL
in the CRANKCASE. Our CAT purrs under her FUR
as if the CALENDAR would NEVER cease. I have ACCESS
to the PERSONAL, it is the AIR I TAKE, through WHICH
my two ARMS WAVE. Farther AWAY, FACES, armies of WORDS,
DIM fact and fancy. Bacon, an OLD june,
MEMORY DISQUALIFIES itself. Though it may EMERGE
as a DROP of longing on my TONGUE. From this
LIVING AXIS, I am ABLE to SPEAK without DYING.