Act 1 Setting Construction site on the outskirts of a big city. A winter evening. The sky still reflects light, but during this first act, little by little, it will become fully engulfed in evening. A looming, pallid, full moon rises over the vapor-silhouette of a smoke-stack amidst factories. A […]
The moray eel slips from its hole as if without bruising itself it slipped from its body as if without losing itself it slipped from the universe just as we slip from our flesh and world through death Born in Paris, where he resides today, […]
My friend, fate is a potter, cold and cruelly proficient. He takes a raw clump of earth—my heart— and sets it on his terrifying wheel. Ill fortune he lifts like a cutting tool and sets to work. What he hopes to produce I cannot tell. This poem, with […]
lightning leads the world from darkness into darkness Grzegorz Białkowski (1932-1989) was a Polish poet and physicist. The two poems come from his eighth, posthumous book, Figury z piasku (Sand Figures), published in Poland in 2015 by the Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. During his lifetime Białkowski’s […]
The challenge was to make appealing something that was not. To transform this godforsaken city, populated by people as indifferent to art as tourists are to the idea of visiting the only historic building—a vague ruin of a castle—in a glamorous destination. After all, what the Guggenheim did […]
one can step into the same earth twice but not the river a river understood as a flow of passing droplets of time tarnished by occurrences in this picture the earth is a solid and unchangeable law the part of the fire which does not burn the […]
The evening empties, inexplicably. Places no longer receive us, toss us out, to the elements. There’s cold and wind. Sounds linger, trembling in the air, don’t know to disappear. And then a poet the usual one, somewhere, takes a blank sheet of paper, totals up the void (consoled […]
Who could say for sure? You see it as you pass by: eyes sinking into a broken, red dirt road; to the side, some painters’ shacks: tender blue doorways, smoky roof: the green runs to the back, lively as a hen, pecking at the wash, losing itself among […]
In the sky left by clouds two birds quarrel with vastness farther away the night curls up like a ball of wool we never found the needles to begin such a craft unless the tools are us in other hands Born in Paris, where he […]
Wang Wei Empty mountain. No one in sight Only the echo of voices in the air Glimmers and glints return to the forest depths Once more, the green moss filled with light Pei Di Day and night amid cold mountains Alone, at ease, a guest dwells […]