All for a peck in the cheek

The burning embers of your eyes, my love

sun and moon, become

The blackness of your eyes, my love

the dark night enlivened

Diamonds scattered in your silk robe

the star studded night sky

Oh! and your smile

radiant as a flower blossoming

Your heaving bosom

like crashing waves

The sweetness of your voice

Soul-stirring bird song

Thou art a forest goddess my darling

and love fills me to the brim.

Talk not of traditions to me, my love

My passion, it cares but little for laws

If elders blessings we must seek

rites we shall perform

But patience fails me, my love

Perhaps a quick peck on the cheek.

- My translation of Bharathi's Suttum vizhi chudar

Spring is cummings

though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

e.e. cummings

To one who asks me what is love

I have phrases and whole pages memorized,

but nothing can be told of love.

You must wait until you and I

are living together.

In the conversation we'll have 

then...be patient...then.

- Rumi

Rumi says

If the foot of the trees were not tied to earth, they would be pursuing me

White sheet

There is nothing as beautiful

As that which does not exist.

Paul Valery

Mallarme

I wait, but do not know for what or why

Mallarme

Rimbaud

I shall say – not a thing: I shall think – not a thing:
But an infinite love will swell in my soul,
And far off I shall go, a bohemian,
Through Nature – as happy, as if I had a girl.

Chanson d'automne

The long sobs of
The violins
Of autumn
Lay waste my heart
With monotones
Of boredom.

- Paul Verlaine

Eliosy - Quartet

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock - remix

THE .DOC FILE OF J ALFRED PRUFROCK

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a laptop, put in sleep mode on a table
Let us go through certain half-deserted streets
The blinking-light retreats
Of restless nights in free-wifi cafes
And public libraries with internet
Streets that follow like messageboard argument
of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming blog post
Oh, do not ask, "What, yaoi?"
Let us go and post an entry.

In the room the players come and go
Talking of their scores on Halo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the Windows PC
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the Macintosh
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening
Lingered upon the trackpads in their case
Let fall upon its back the crumbs that fall to keyboards,
Slipped by the flashdrive, made a sudden leap
and seeing that it was a soft October night
Curled once about the mouse, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the desk,
Rubbing its back upon the Windows PC;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the icons that you meet;
There will be time to murder and respawn
And time for all the Chrome and Firefox
That drag and drop a website on your plate;
Time for .doc and time for .ppt
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred fanfics and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the players come and go
Talking of their scores on Halo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Is this wanky?" "Is this fair?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair
With a comment on the level of your player
[They will say: "How his server's lagging slow!"]
My morning cosplay, collar mounting firmly to the chin
My website rich and modest, but accessed by a simple login
[They will say: "But how his content's growing thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the interwebs?
In a minute there is time
For fanfictions and revisions which Google Docs may reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the RPs, archives, messageboards
I have measured out my life with usernames.
I know the voices dying with a 404
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the mods already, known them all --
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase
And when I am banhammered, sprawling on a pin,
When I am banned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the fragments of my browser cache?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the sites already, known them all —-
Sites that are Web two-oh, white and bare
[But on my cellphone, still given to fail!]
It is the javascript impress
That makes them so digress?
Sites that stretch out like a table, or word-wrap like a shawl
And should I then presume?
And how should I log in?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through archived files
And watched the dialup sequences that blink
No more from AOL in lonely Windows?

I should have been a line of ragged code,
Scuttling through the compiler, breaking apps.

And the messageboard, the website, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep...tired...or it malingers
Returning 404, here in front of me.
Should I, after iPhone apps and prices,
Have the strength to force AT&T to crisis?
But though I have wept and emailed, wept and played,
Though I have seen my avatar brought in upon a platter,
I am no hacker -- and here's no great matter;
I have seen the screen of my laptop flicker,
And I have seen the eternal bluescreen hold my eye, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the games, social media, the blogs,
Among the twitters, among some talk of IRC logs,
Would it have been worth while
To have bitten off the fandom with a smile,
To have squeezed the internet into a ball
To roll it toward some ass on Yahoo Questions
To say, "I am Babbage, come from the dead,
Come back to ban you all, I shall ban you all" --
If one, sending a textmessage, autocorrected
Should say: "That is not what I typed at all.
That is not it. LOL."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would have been worth while
After the LOLcats and the macros and the youtube clips,
After the spambots, after the blog space, after LiveJournal trailing on the floor --
And Digg, and so much more? --
It is impossible to type just what I mean!
But as if a new .avi threw the nerves in patterns on the screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, texting or throwing back Red Bull,
And turning towards the PC, should say,
"That is not what I typed at all.
That is not it. OH LOL."

No! I am not Lovelace,
nor was meant to be,
Am on some messageboard, one that will do
To send things viral, start a meme or two,
Edit the wiki, no doubt an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Pwning, sometimes, but anonymous,
Filled with citations, all a bit obtuse;
These edits, indeed, almost ridiculous --
Can you not work Google?

I grow old... I grow old...
I shall add some links to my blog roll.

Shall I change my default pic? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall play some World of Warcraft, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the servers singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen cats talking in capslock on the web,
All up in ur fridge, eatin' ur food
When my laptop lights the darkness white and black.

We have lingered in the tubes of internet,
By URLS wreathed with info, loaded-down
Till cellphones ringing wake us, and we drown.

Things hidden

From all I did and all I said
let no one try to find out who I was.
An obstacle was there that changed the pattern
of my actions and the manner of my life.
An obstacle was often there
to stop me when I’d begin to speak.
From my most unnoticed actions,
my most veiled writing—
from these alone will I be understood.
But maybe it isn’t worth so much concern,
so much effort to discover who I really am.
Later, in a more perfect society,
someone else made just like me
is certain to appear and act freely.

- Cavafy

Sirote chaque jour ta tasse de neant

This is a beautiful cafe/patisserie that I stumbled upon in the most unexpected of places. The door opened invitingly to cough out a woman with a child in her arms, a sublimely satisfied expression on her face, and the aroma of freshly brewed coffee and a scent that was hard to place but was of something delicious, perhaps with almonds in it (and surreptitiously sweet) wafted, like a hooked finger, alluring like a woman's hidden bosom. Perhaps it was the name, but I heard a melody, played on a bansuri flute. It was a simple melody, with three notes recurring endlessly. Sa-ni-saa. Sa-ni-saa. Sa-ni-saa. Jasmine climbers shielded the cruel world, of sportscars and discounted brand apparel, from barging into this tranquil universe. My universe, where there was me and my cup and none. And I sipped from my cup of nothingness.

Anguish - Rimbaud

Is it possible that She will have me forgiven for ambitions continually crushed,--

that an affluent end will make up for the ages of indigence,--

that a day of success will lull us to sleep on the shame of our fatal incompetence?

(O palms! diamond!-- Love! strength!-- higher than all joys and all fame!--

in any case, everywhere-- demon, god,-- Youth of this being: myself!)

That the accidents of scientific wonders and the movements of social brotherhood

will be cherished as the progressive restitution of our original freedom?...

But the Vampire who makes us behave, orders us to enjoy ourselves

with what she leaves us, or in other words to be more amusing.

Rolled in our wounds through the wearing air and the sea;

in torments through the silence of the murderous waters and air;

in tortures that laugh in the terrible surge of their silence.

I am

Did you think I too will
Spend my days in
search of meagre food,
Tell petty and pointless tales,
wallow in heartbroken agony,
cause by my various acts,
distress and woe to my fellows,
Turn senile with grey hair,
And fall as fodder to the
relentless march of time
As yet another faceless man?

A tip of the hat to A spark of fire for the original translation of Bharathi's poem Thedi Choru Nithanthinru which I have slightly modified

Iran

Neruda wrote in his 'I am explaining a few things'

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings

and

Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!

and the final lines that, to me epitomises what Harold Pinter called "powerful visceral description of the bombing of civilians"

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!

I have nothing to add.

Joyce - Chamber Music

XXII

Of that so sweet imprisonment
My soul, dearest, is fain —
Soft arms that woo me to relent
And woo me to detain.
Ah, could they ever hold me there
Gladly were I a prisoner!

Dearest, through interwoven arms
By love made tremulous,
That night allures me where alarms
Nowise may trouble us;
But lseep to dreamier sleep be wed
Where soul with soul lies prisoned.

I'm Explaining a Few Things

You are going to ask: and where are the lilacs?
and the poppy-petalled metaphysics?
and the rain repeatedly spattering
its words and drilling them full
of apertures and birds?
I'll tell you all the news.

I lived in a suburb,
a suburb of Madrid, with bells,
and clocks, and trees.

From there you could look out
over Castille's dry face:
a leather ocean.
My house was called
the house of flowers, because in every cranny
geraniums burst: it was
a good-looking house
with its dogs and children.
Remember, Raul?
Eh, Rafel? Federico, do you remember
from under the ground
my balconies on which
the light of June drowned flowers in your mouth?
Brother, my brother!
Everything
loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,
pile-ups of palpitating bread,
the stalls of my suburb of Arguelles with its statue
like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:
oil flowed into spoons,
a deep baying
of feet and hands swelled in the streets,
metres, litres, the sharp
measure of life,
stacked-up fish,
the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which
the weather vane falters,
the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,
wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down the sea.

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings --
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise,
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate!

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives!

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain :
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers,
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes,
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land?

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
The blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
In the streets!

Pablo Neruda