unask

 

a third tiger

 

Against the tiger of symbols I have set
the real one, the hot-blooded one
that savages a herd of buffalo,
and today, the third of August, ’59,
its patient shadow moves across the plain.

But yet, the act of naming it, of guessing
what is its nature and its circumstance
creates a fiction, not a living creature,
Not the animal that lives wild upon the earth.

Let us look for a third tiger. This one
will be a form in my dream like all the others,
a system, an arrangement of human language,
and not the flesh-and-bone tiger
that, out of reach of all mythologies,
paces the earth.

I know all this; yet something
drives me to this ancient, perverse adventure,
foolish and vague, so that still I keep on looking
throughout the hours for the other tiger,
the other tiger, the one not found in verse.

 

Jorge Luis Borges, transl. Tom Davis and (mostly) Alastair Reid

 

 

 

sunflowers

 

Why did Blake say
'Sunflower weary of time'?
Every time I see them
they seem to say
Now! with a crash
of cymbals!
Very pleased
and positive
and absolutely delighting
in their own round brightness.

 

From Elizabeth Smart, Blake's Sunflower

 

 

 

 

nasturtium

 

In the modest church
of the nasturtium bed
the choir of leaves
on the mere stalks'
green intelligence
acknowledges the sun.

 

From Lionel Abrahams, Entries under "Religion"

 

 

 

 

seeds

 

These are the days when Birds come back --
A very few -- a Bird or two --
To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies resume
The old -- old sophistries of June --
A blue and gold mistake.

Till ranks of seeds their witness bear --
And softly thro' the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf.

 

From Emily Dickinson, These are the days when Birds come back