"Sometimes it's not enough to know the meaning of things, sometimes we have to know what things don't mean as well. Like what does it mean to not know what the person you love is capable of? Things fall apart, especially all the neat order of rules and laws. The way we look at the world is the way we really are. See it from a fair garden and everything looks cheerful. Climb to a higher plateau and you'll see plunder and murder. Truth and beauty are in the eye of the beholder. I stopped trying to figure everything out a long time ago." jack fate
Teaching the Ape to Write Poems.
by James Tate.
They didn't have much trouble/
teaching the ape to write poems:/
first they strapped him into the chair,/
then tied the pencil around his hand/
(the paper had already been nailed down)./
Then Dr. Bluespire leaned over his shoulder/
and whispered into his ear:/
"You look like a god sitting there./
Why don't you try writing something?"
YILOLAL POTZLOM (extract in tzoltzil, mayan language from Chiapas, Mexico) Chil jun yochob, tana, Nitil tas at vo, nitil ta yol vo. Sbajojbikun ta ch en, Jtot. Sbajojbikun tan a, ta jun yoket. Tijbil tana yaxal cha ton, K´anal cha ton, ik al cha ton un. Yol k ok tana un, yol te tana un. Yol vitz tana un, yol tan tana un. Ta lo ti slilijemale. Ta lo li xvok lajet une. Ja xa xch ayun o tana li yo ntone. Ja xa xch ayun o tana li xch ich ele. Xtilch uj lok el ta sba xch´ich el tana un, Ta sba sbakil, Ta sba snukule. ----------------------------------------------------- POTZLOM (extract) Dream of sea. I dream a water eddy where the Earth swallow it. Im tied up to the eye of rain. Tied up to the waters son, Im shuted up in his cave, In the house of the fire stone. I call the green basalt I call the yellow basalt, the black basalt, The fires son, the woods son, The hills daughter, the ashs daughter. Enough of the fall of his leaves. Enough of the pain like mattock breaking clay. He forgets his heart. He forgets his pulse. Break the moorings in the skin of your blood, In the skin of your bone, In the skin of his skin.
