But don’t speak of gardens. Don’t speak of the moon. Don’t speak of roses or the sea. Speak of what you know. Speak of the thing that rings in the marrow, that plays in your eyes with shadow and light. Speak of the endless ache in your bones. Speak of vertigo. Speak of respiration and… Continue reading Alejandra Pizarnik
Days when a distant word takes hold of me. I gothrough those days, sleepwalking and transparent.The beautiful wind-up doll sings to herself, charmsherself, tells herself stuff and stories: a nest madeof stiff thread where I dance and lament myselfat my countless funerals. (She is her own blazingmirror, her spare for the cold bonfires, her mysticalelement,… Continue reading Alejandra Pizarnik
Melancholia is, I believe, a musical problem: a dissonance, a change in rhythm. While on the outside everything happens with the vertiginous rhythm of a cataract, on the inside is the exhausted adagio of drops of water falling from time to tired time. For this reason the outside, seen from the melancholic inside, appears absurd… Continue reading Alejandra Pizarnik
But you I want to look at until your face fades from my fear, like a bird stepping away from the sharp edges of night. — Alejandra Pizarnik, trans. by Yvette Siegert, from “Paths of the Mirror,” Extracting the Stone of Madness (New Directions; Bilingual edition, May 17, 2016)
And nobody understands. My whole life is waiting for you. And nevertheless I search for the night of the poem. I’m only thinking of your body but am remaking the body of my poem as somebody trying to heal a wound. — Alejandra Pizarnik, from “[…] Of Silence,” Selected Poems, trans. Cecilia Rossi (Waterloo Press,… Continue reading Alejandra Pizarnik
You write poemsbecause you needa placewhere what isn’t may be — Alejandra Pizarnik, from “Approximations Buenos Aires 1956 – 1958,” Selected Poems, trans. Cecilia Rossi (Waterloo Press, 2010)
I. The powers of language are the solitary ladies who sing, desolate, with this voice of mine that I hear from a distance. And far away, in the black sand, lies a girl heavy with ancestral music. Where is death itself? I have wanted clarity in light of my lack of light. Branches die in… Continue reading Alejandra Pizarnik
[…] what was it I wanted? I wanted a perfect silence. — Alejandra Pizarnik, from “Paths Of The Mirror,” Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962-1972, transl. Yvetter Siegert (New Directions, 2016) (via adrasteiax)
It’s sunny outside. It’s only a sun Yet men look at it and sing. I don’t know about the sun. I know about the melody of angels and the heated sermon of the last wind. I know how to scream until dawn when death settles naked on my shadow. I cry beneath my name. I… Continue reading Alejandra Pizarnik
your voicein this inability to escapemy gazethings rid themselves of meif it isn’t your voiceturn me into a boat on a river of stonesa rain isolated in my fevered silenceyou undo my eyesand I askyou pleaseto speak to meforever —Alejandra Pizarnik, from “Presence,” Extracting the Stone of Madness: Poems 1962 – 1972. (New Directions Publishing… Continue reading Alejandra Pizarnik
The Vale of Soul-Making 