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Thursday 22 November 2012

Asger Schnack: Aqua


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Datei:Steilküste bei Elmenhorst.JPG

Steilküste bei Elmenhorst: photo by Ch. Pagenkopf, 10 June 2007


we operate with the joyful concepts don’t know for example
words like dissimulation or jealousy it is
another war we are fighting it is the direct
connection it is a language filled to the brim with
words like applejuice waterfall and rubbertree

like children who have their eyes full of the world and don’t
let themselves be disturbed like an automatic machinegun
loaded with polaroid shots from an endless summer
or like a library reading room lined with absorbent cotton and
not a single piece of news about perverse torture

we have examined the world and we have taken a stand
we are to be found in the impossible combination and
nowhere else we are not afraid to use love
we are not through with it no matter how many times
the shadow of the third world war appears on the horizon

there are front pages and there is the terrible truth
and we look with open eyes at the marching army
of newsbulletins but our hands are tied by our confidence in
a sexual liberation sometime in a coming language
well then that’s our method because we have thought about it

in our hearts it’s raining a silent rain of classical
poetry and punk we can show our powerlessness
and can deny the existence of anything but grapes
we can discuss the meaning of the word victory we can
bring it in doubt and we can besiege beauty in order to survive 


Asger Schack (b. 1949): from Aqua (Kvint), 1980; translated from the Danish by Alexander Taylor and Asger Schnack, 1982



File:Baltic Sea Wave (Cien Water).jpg
 
Top of a small wave, Baltic Sea, Mielno: photo by Marek Nowocien, 27 June 2006
 
File:Skagerrak-2005-IV-13 ubt.jpeg
 
Middle of Skagerrak: photo by Tomasz Sienicki, 13 April 2005

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

love the contradiction and the positive in this!

VINCENT FARNSWORTH said...

Thank you

Hazen said...

How like life this poem is; one experience, one sensation following on another, one thought pressing against the next, streaming endlessly. Love is the aitch-two-owe we ought never be without.

Mose23 said...

it is a language filled to the brim with/ words like applejuice waterfall and rubbertree

our hands are tied by our confidence in/ a sexual liberation sometime in the coming language

There is such respite in words, that an attention to the sensuous in language would seem to be the beginning of some kind of hope.

But we are jealous and we do dissimulate, are envied and lied to. All this in language. What curious things we do with our unfreedom.

Our hands are tied with such lovely bindings.

It's quite a thing to follow the precarious turns of this poem: "...magic delivered from the lie of being truth" (Adorno)



Anonymous said...

aitch-two-owe ...?

Hazen said...

H/2/O. Hache dos oh. El símbolo químico del agua. La ortografia se debe al gran Walt Kelly, creador de los dibujos "Pogo". Admito que es un poco redcóndito.

TC said...

The opportunistic vendor of the miraculous magic elixir H20 is Seminole Sam, the trickster fox.

Anonymous said...

thanks Hazen !

Anonymous said...

thanks Hazen !