My Favorite Words 14: What do you know!

Which is Which? / Who is Who?

The trouble with the world is not that people know too little,
but that they know so many things that aren't true.*

Mark Twain
Pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens [1835-1910]

* The quotation is most likely apocryphal,
or it paraphrases a saying (or some of the
sayings) by Josh Billings, for instance:



It is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so.

Josh Billings
Pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw [1818-1885]
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Men say they know many things;
But lo! they have taken wings,
The arts and sciences,
And a thousand appliances;
The wind that blows
Is all that any body knows.

Henry David Thoreau
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That Thing of the Poets 7: MADraft

Indian Summer in New York. Getting dressed to go for a run (outside, Central Park shinning brightly under a 28ºC-degree unseasonal heat), I hear a certain writer talk on the NPR radio station. He tells me of his relationship with his father, with his country and the world, with his profession(s), etc. His words make me postpone the run and sit down to, rushing, engage that conversation, which translates into this insane work in progress:

MADraft

Pardon, me, please.
I have heard it;
You just said it:

“I am an urban animal
and I need that rush.”
You called Istanbul
“The Ceaseless Roar”, but
Next
You said the same
Of The City,
--yours, and mine--
(Our city).

You, the transcendental son
Of an absentee-father,
Your Name is Red.
That dad, semi-goner dad,
Who, filling out
With savage ink
His notebooks,
Filled up
With acrid smoke
--Gauloises's smoke--
The humid rooms
Of cheap hotels.
Craving for it
Waiting for it,
Aimlessly roamed
The darkest alleys
Of labyrinthine
Existentialism
Dans Le fou Marais--
Of gay Paris.
Yes, it was him who
Brought up the child
Who you would be.


Periodically fatherless
Istanbulean urchin
Quite early knew
You would not go
And become the painter.
No, no. No.
That one, you would not be...

Nevermind me.


Thousand-and-one
Cities and books,
Mirrors your brow.

Sometimes I think:
I would I walked
Your threaded paths
Across that bridge
America struggles
--so rough and crude--
To try and chow
To smithereens.

Nights of the crescent moon
Evenings of Montparnasse
Let me lend you for a single minute
The dawn Porteño so full of dew
That mists my body until it blooms.


A few blocks from
A bookstuffedshack
I've called "home,"
The Turk-Professor,
Before the staring
Columbia eyes,
Speaks; (the ears, avid),
And feeds them gracious
Abundant Lit.

Nevermind me.

I think you think
The bridge a myth
Cannot be broken,
But,
Noble man,
Master,
Nobel man
Of many a word:

"Lugones era.."
Jorge Luis Borges
Once he did say.
This way he said it:

"Érase-una-vez-un-hombre-que-sabía-todas-las-palabras."

You do too, I reckon.

But, I know, my poet,
Storyteller,
Your apartment's window
On the other side
Gazes at Bosphorus
And your difficult
Forceful
Balance-d act
between two worlds
Brings you to our
--yours and mine--
New York.

Was it, perhaps,
your father’s
Parisian haven
Promised heaven
--A realm so laden--
Where reigns, solemnly,
A Golden Stork?

(The native children
Of my native land
[Still?] believe
In domes above
The enlightened city
Nests the rare bird
Who those children brought)

Nevermind me.

Pushed-away castaways
Listening to borrowed voices;
Broken melodies/
Shakesperean noises/
The likes of those
We emulate.
Erudite parrots,
Of borrowed signage
Are we mad prophets
Howling a desert
Of stolen accents
From Northern winds.

Constantinople <--> Santa María del Buen Aire = New Amsterdam
(Yes, those good old names)

You, Noble Nobel;
Je, le minuscule écrivain;
Peut être nous, étrangeres unconnus.
Nostos draws us:
Strangeman and madman
Trying and straining
To see as the landfall
This strenuous Land.

Yet we galope the world
Astride on a pen
(Once mightier than the sword
As said Sir Lytton, the Lord)
Missing the Dead Poets
Or...
Running away from them all.


Meeting each other
If there is a zenith:

For you, the minarets;
For me, an obelisk.
(None a relationship
With the rather ancient,
Wondrous Egypt).

Soon, (who knows?)
Could you well be
A United European
Walking the bridge
On your seven-league legs.
I, always in my memory
Ambling that desolate land
Where slaps Aeolus
-- we call it Pampero--
furious my face with his nasty blows.

Nevermind me.

Undisturbed
--He said.

Among the perennial silence
Of blank pages and open books,
--He said:

"We have no longer
The sacred animals
For all the cows
Have gone already
-As it has gone--
Long, away, long
Dear dignity"

Or so he said,
Roberto Bolaño,
My dearest neighbor,
Of many an año
Who, very sadly,
Ya went away.
--He said:

"Only nocturnal and
Roaming Rabbits
We harbor now."

Then, at last,
Do mind me,
I beg you,
And please
Do tell me,
Wise Racconteur:
How do I do it?
Where do I meet you
--Ominous Writer--
Orhan Pamuk?

Hugo Pezzini
(this one is mine)
In New York at about noon.

* The (fake) quotations on cows and rabbits are based on Roberto Bolaño's short-story "The Insufferable Gaucho".

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