Albuquerque, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, December 2016
Albuquerque, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, December 2016
Albuquerque, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, December 2016
Albuquerque, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, December 2016
Albuquerque, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, December 2016
Jorge Luis Borges: Posesión de ayer
Sé que he perdido tantas cosas que no podría contarlas y que esas perdiciones, ahora, son lo que es mío. Sé que he perdido el amarillo y el negro y pienso en esos imposibles colores como no piensan los que ven. Mi padre ha muerto y está siempre a mi lado. Cuando quiero escandir versos de Swinburne, lo hago, me dicen, con su voz. Sólo el que ha muerto es nuestro, sólo es nuestro lo que perdimos. llión fue, pero llión perdura en el hexámetro que la plañe. Israel fue cuando era una antigua nostalgia. Todo poema, con el tiempo, es una elegía. Nuestras son las mujeres que nos dejaron, ya no sujetos a la víspera, que es zozobra, y a las alarmas y terrores de la esperanza. No hay otros paraísos que los paraísos perdidos.
Sé que he perdido tantas cosas que no podría contarlas y que esas perdiciones, ahora, son lo que es mío. Sé que he perdido el amarillo y el negro y pienso en esos imposibles colores como no piensan los que ven. Mi padre ha muerto y está siempre a mi lado. Cuando quiero escandir versos de Swinburne, lo hago, me dicen, con su voz. Sólo el que ha muerto es nuestro, sólo es nuestro lo que perdimos. llión fue, pero llión perdura en el hexámetro que la plañe. Israel fue cuando era una antigua nostalgia. Todo poema, con el tiempo, es una elegía. Nuestras son las mujeres que nos dejaron, ya no sujetos a la víspera, que es zozobra, y a las alarmas y terrores de la esperanza. No hay otros paraísos que los paraísos perdidos.
Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986): Posesión de ayer, from Los conjurados (1985)
Bachechi Open Space, Bernalillo County, New Mexico photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, December 2016
Bachechi Open Space, Bernalillo County, New Mexico photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, December 2016
Bachechi Open Space, Bernalillo County, New Mexico photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, December 2016
West Mesa, Albuquerque, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, August 2016
West Mesa, Albuquerque, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, August 2016
West Mesa, Albuquerque, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, August 2016
Carrizozo, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, September 2016
Bernalillo, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, August 2016
Bernalillo, New Mexico: photo by Jorge Guadalupe Lizárraga, August 2016
Muhammed Muheisen: Refugee camps in Greece
A Syrian refugee woman
walks back to her shelter carrying bags of food at the refugee camp of
Ritsona about 86 kilometers (53 miles) north of Athens, Wednesday, Dec.
28, 2016. Over
62,000 refugees and migrants are stranded in Greece after a series of
Balkan border closures and a European Union deal with Turkey to stop
migrant flows.: photo by Muhammed Muheisen/AP via AP Images @AP_Images, 28 December 2016
A Syrian refugee woman
walks back to her shelter carrying bags of food at the refugee camp of
Ritsona about 86 kilometers (53 miles) north of Athens, Wednesday, Dec.
28, 2016. Over
62,000 refugees and migrants are stranded in Greece after a series of
Balkan border closures and a European Union deal with Turkey to stop
migrant flows.: photo by Muhammed Muheisen/AP via AP Images @AP_Images, 28 December 2016
A Syrian refugee woman walks back to her shelter carrying bags of food at the refugee camp of Ritsona about 86 kilometers (53 miles) north of Athens, Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2016. Over 62,000 refugees and migrants are stranded in Greece after a series of Balkan border closures and a European Union deal with Turkey to stop migrant flows.: photo by Muhammed Muheisen/AP via AP Images @AP_Images, 28 December 2016
Afghan refugee Setayesh Hassan, 5, sits around a table after eating her lunch at the refugee camp of Oinofyta, about 58 kilometers (36 miles) north of Athens, Monday, Dec. 26, 2016.: photo by Muhammed Muheisen/AP via AP Images @AP_Images, 28 December 2016
A Syrian refugee woman walks back to her shelter carrying bags of food at the refugee camp of Ritsona about 86 kilometers (53 miles) north of Athens, Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2016. Over 62,000 refugees and migrants are stranded in Greece after a series of Balkan border closures and a European Union deal with Turkey to stop migrant flows.: photo by Muhammed Muheisen/AP via AP Images @AP_Images, 28 December 2016
Afghan refugee Setayesh Hassan, 5, sits around a table after eating her lunch at the refugee camp of Oinofyta, about 58 kilometers (36 miles) north of Athens, Monday, Dec. 26, 2016.: photo by Muhammed Muheisen/AP via AP Images @AP_Images, 28 December 2016
Afghan refugee children
gather around two volunteering teachers during a class at a makeshift
school in the refugee camp of Oinofyta about 58 kilometers (36 miles)
north of Athens, Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2016.: photo by Muhammed Muheisen/AP via AP Images @AP_Images, 28 December 2016 (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)
Tharwat, a 6-year-old Afghan refugee girl stands at the doorway of her family's shelter at the refugee camp of Oinofyta about 58 kilometers (36 miles) north of Athens, Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2016.: photo by Muhammed Muheisen/AP via AP Images @AP_Images, 28 December 2016
Syrian refugee child Alan Jouva, 2, sits in a stroller outside his family's shelter at the refugee camp of Ritsona about 86 kilometers (53 miles) north of Athens, Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2016.: photo by Muhammed Muheisen/AP via AP Images @AP_Images, 28 December 2016
All our tomorrows
WEST BANK - Israeli security forces detain a Palestinian boy following a demo against expropriation of land by Israel. By Jaafar Ashtiyeh: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 24 December 2016
#Netanyahu to be questioned in two separate criminal probes – report: image via RT Verified account @RTdotcom, 28 December 2016
An Israeli soldier aims his weapon at Palestinian protestors during a demonst. near a separation wall #Bethlehem By Musa Al Shaer @AFPphoto: image via Photojournalism @photojournalink, 27 December 2016
LES COLONIES ISRAELIENNES EN PALESTINE: image via PLANTU @plantu, 26 December 2016
Forget South Africa, #Apartheid is alive and well and thriving in #Israel. #IsraeliSettlements #bbc #Palestine: image via Twelve Monkeys @DaisyAndFamily, 24 December 2016
SYRIA - Youths collect wood from rubble to be used for heating and cooking in the Damascus rebel-held suburb of Zamalka. By @amer_almohibany: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 27 December 2016
Transformation wrought by Assad and Hezbollah militias in Damascus suburb, from a place of the living to Death Valley .. barrel bombs and explosive missiles in an aggressive campaign to displace residents!: image by Amer Almohibany @amer_almohibany, 27 December 2016
abo hosam seventy year old man living with his wife, go out every morning in this cold in search of food He lost five of his children #syria: image by Amer Almohibany @amer_almohibany, 26 December 2016
abo hosam seventy year old man living with his wife, go out every morning in this cold in search of food He lost five of his children #syria: image by Amer Almohibany @amer_almohibany, 26 December 2016
abo hosam seventy year old man living with his wife, go out every morning in this cold in search of food He lost five of his children #syria: image by Amer Almohibany @amer_almohibany, 26 December 2016
abo hosam seventy year old man living with his wife, go out every morning in this cold in search of food He lost five of his children #syria: image by Amer Almohibany @amer_almohibany, 26 December 2016
Continuous revolution if only the pure in world had a little oxygen, civil defense Mask in place was bombed by Assad regime #syria: image by Amer Almohibany @amer_almohibany, 23 December 2016
Jorge Luis Borges: All our yesterdays
SYRIA - A man cries over the body of his son at makeshift morgue in rebel-held town of Douma following a reported air strike. By @AbdDoumany: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 28 December 2016
Quiero saber de quién es mi pasado.
¿De cuál de los que fui? ¿Del ginebrino
que trazó algún hexámetro latino
que los lustrales años han borrado?
¿Es de aquel niño que buscó en la entera
biblioteca del padre las puntuales
curvaturas del mapa y las ferales
formas que son el tigre y la pantera?
¿O de aquel otro que empujó una puerta
detrás de la que un hombre se moría
para siempre, y besó en el blanco día
la cara que se va y la cara muerta?
Soy los que ya no son. Inútilmente
soy en la tarde esa perdida gente.
Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986): All our yesterdays (1973/1974), from La rosa profunda (1975)
I need to know who lays claim to my past.
Who, of all those I was? The Geneva boy
Who learned some Latin hexameters with joy,
Lines that the years and decades have erased?
That child who searched his father’s library for
Exact details, the round-cheeked cherub storms
Of the old maps, or else the savage forms
That are the panther and the jaguar?
Or the one who opened a door and looked upon
A man as he lay drawing his last breath,
Leaving forever, and kissed in the white dawn
The face that stiffens away, the face in death?
I am those that are no more. For no good reason
I am, in the evening sun, those vanished persons.
Who, of all those I was? The Geneva boy
Who learned some Latin hexameters with joy,
Lines that the years and decades have erased?
That child who searched his father’s library for
Exact details, the round-cheeked cherub storms
Of the old maps, or else the savage forms
That are the panther and the jaguar?
Or the one who opened a door and looked upon
A man as he lay drawing his last breath,
Leaving forever, and kissed in the white dawn
The face that stiffens away, the face in death?
I am those that are no more. For no good reason
I am, in the evening sun, those vanished persons.
Jorge Luis Borges: All our yesterdays, English translation by Robert Mezey
A wounded Syrian woman from the
al-Sukari neighborhood is helped onto the back of a truck as she flees
during the ongoing government forces military operation to retake
remaining rebel-held areas in the northern embattled city of Aleppo on
Dec.14. Shelling and air strikes sent terrified residents running
through the streets of Aleppo as a deal to evacuate rebel districts of
the city was in danger of falling apart.: photo by George Ourfalian/AFP, 14 December 2016
Smoke is seen billowing in the background on Dec. 14 in a rebel-held neighborhood in the northern city of Aleppo. Deadly clashes erupted in Syria’s Aleppo as a deal for the evacuation of rebel areas was put on hold, leaving thousands of cold and hungry civilians uncertain of their future.: photo by Karam Al-Masri/AFP, 14 December 2016
Syrian residents, fleeing violence in
the restive Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood, arrive in Aleppo’s Fardos
neighborhood on Dec. 13, after regime troops retook the area from rebel
fighters.: photo by AFP, 13 December 2016
A Syrian child cooks in the street in a rebel-held area of Aleppo, on Dec.13, during an operation by Syrian government forces to retake the embattled city.: photo by AFP, 13 December 2016
Syrian civilians flee the Sukkari neighborhood towards safer rebel-held areas in southeastern Aleppo, on Dec. 12, during an operation by Syrian government forces to retake the embattled city.: photo by AFP, 12 December 2016
Syrians who were displaced with their families from eastern Aleppo gather at the collective shelter, in the village of Jibreen south of Aleppo, Syria, Dec. 12.: photo by (International Committee for the Red Cross via AP, 12 December 2016
A Syrian child cooks in the street in a rebel-held area of Aleppo, on Dec.13, during an operation by Syrian government forces to retake the embattled city.: photo by AFP, 13 December 2016
Syrian civilians flee the Sukkari neighborhood towards safer rebel-held areas in southeastern Aleppo, on Dec. 12, during an operation by Syrian government forces to retake the embattled city.: photo by AFP, 12 December 2016
Syrians who were displaced with their families from eastern Aleppo gather at the collective shelter, in the village of Jibreen south of Aleppo, Syria, Dec. 12.: photo by (International Committee for the Red Cross via AP, 12 December 2016
A general view shows Syrian pro-government forces walking in the ancient Umayyad mosque in the old city of Aleppo on Dec. 13, after they captured the area: photo by George Ourfalian/AFP, 13 December 2016
YEMEN - Children attend a class at a school that was damaged in a recent Saudi-led air strike in Taez. By Ahmad Al Basha #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 28 December 2016
INDIA - Schoolchildren dressed as Hindu God Lord Shiva pose for a 'selfie' during an annual school function in Amritsar. By @nanuworld #AFP: image: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 27 December 2016
CHINA
- A women poses for wedding photos at the wholesale fruit markets in
the Yau Ma Tei district of Hong Kong. By Isaac Lawrence #AFP: image via
AFP Photo Department AFPphoto, 27 December 2016
SPAIN - Revellers dressed in mock military garb take part in the "Enfarinats" battle in Ibi. By @JaimeReinaFoto #AFP: image: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 27 December 2016
SPAIN - Revellers dressed in mock military garb take part in the "Enfarinats" battle in Ibi. By @JaimeReinaFoto #AFP: image: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 27 December 2016
BULGARIA - A woodcutter rides horses laden with wood during a deforestation near Sofia. By Nikolay Doychinov: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 28 December 2016
#2016YearInReview March 14 GREECE - Refugees try cross a river on their way to Macedonia from a makeshift camp near Idomeni. By @bubulator2 #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 28 December 2016
#2016YearInReview March 11 SYRIA - Men try to pull a man out from under the rubble following a air strike on Aleppo. By @THAER_MOHAMEED #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 28 December 2016
#CarrieFisher who was the iconic @starwars character #princessleia is gone in a galaxy far, far away. @JustinTallis #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 26 December 2016
Des Oryx au sud d’Abu Dhabi (photo Karim Sahib/AFP): image via Gilles Klein @GillesKLEIN, 26 December 2016
PAKISTAN - Indian fishermen look out from a window as they sit in a train after their release from prison, in Karachi. By Asif Hassan #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 26 December 2016
#India - Indian residents sit around a fire to keep warm on a cold foggy morning in Amritsar. @nanuworld #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 24 December 2016
#India Pedestrians walk along the street on a cold foggy morning in New Delhi #AFP Photo by @dofaget: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 8 December 2016
#Pakistan - Pakistani balloon vendors cross a street in heavy fog in Lahore. By Arif Ali #AFP: image via AFP Photo Department @AFPphoto, 24 December 2016
Sea gulls fly at the beach of the Baltic Sea in Timmendorfer Strand, Germany, Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2016. #APPhoto by Michael Probst: image via AP Images @AP_Images, 27 December 2016
CHINA - A cat stretches on a counter top in a Chinese and western medicine shop in Hong Kong. By @AntAFP #AFP: image
via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 26 December 2016
Christmas morning was welcomed by a Winter Wonderland in Oak Glen, California bringing you today's #PhotooftheDay: image via Weather Bug @WeatherBug, 26 December 2016
Frosty sights from tremendous heights…
Snowdonia #PhotooftheDay: image via BBC Wales verified account @BBCWales, 27 December 2016
Safewold, England #seaside #PhotoOfTheDay: image via Susan King @Sioux_King, 27 December 2016
Our friend and mentor Hazen Walker informs us that he has once again been foiled by the Machine. To Hazen and to anyone who has encountered similar difficulties, my sincere apologies. In case it helps any, Google does the same thing to me, every time. Funny thing is, they have managed over the years to find this blog quite useful in several of those ways Google finds things useful -- that is, any way that profits them.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, as Hazen, whose Spanish is quite good, has contributed a translation of the Borges piece that gives this post half its title, I'm going to break my own silly rule and for once, put up a back channel comment, verbatim.
"Great, great post. My apologies, but I still can’t get the goddamn Google to go. And I tried, man did I try. A big Error 400 is holding everything up when I try to post my comment. Anyway . . .
"Borges provides a needed perspective on the end of a year of many losses. The photos by Lizárraga are just the medicine too. His photographs are the quiet we could use. Los dos Jorges make a good combination. Thanks.
"Here’s my translation of Posesión del Ayer.
"I know that I have lost so many things that I will never be able to find them, and that those losses, now, are what is mine. I know that I have lost the yellow and the black, and I think about those impossible colors like I never think about those I see. My father has died and yet is always at my side. When I want to scan verses by Swinburne, I do it, they tell me, in his voice. Only that which has died is ours, only ours that which we lost. Ilium was, now Ilium endures in the hexameter that you mourn. Israel was, when there existed an antique nostalgia. Every poem, with time, is an elegy. Ours are the women who left us, no longer subject to an evening that is sinking, to the alarms and terrors of hope. There are no other paradises than paradises lost."
Hi Tom—
ReplyDeleteThree things: (1) It’s been a great pleasure to follow your blog. I’m glad you’re doing this. (2) I’m wrapping up an essay, under contract and due tomorrow, but it’s always 50-50 on its publication. If published, I’m going to seek a “For Tom Clark” dedication line. Is that OK with you? This line is in the piece: “A stone’s throw downstream a great blue heron took bent-neck flight.” (3) I was so taken with this 29 DECEMBER 2016 post that I note Borges’ “The Possession of Yesterday” poem, and use the last line in both Spanish and English, thusly:
The final line in the great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges’ poem, “Posesión de Ayer” reads, “No hay otros paraísos que los paraísos perdidos.”
There are no other paradises than the lost paradises.
I’m not sure if I need permission for the Borges lines or not, but I do want you to know. I can send you the whole piece (2,100 words and falling) if you’d like to see it. Still tinkering. It concerns threats and risks to fish and fishing in Montana.
Best to you and yours for the New Year,
Tom
Tom,
ReplyDelete1 The pleasure, mine
2 The dedication, an honour
3 No worries
Very happy new year to you & yours, swell to be in touch again after all these degenerative eons. (The degeneration of course also all mine!)