Total pandemonium. The people around us are shouting, laughing, and gesticulating. Our replies are sighs of love, volleys of hiccups, poems, moos, and miaowing of medieval Bruitists. Tzara is wiggling his behind like the belly of an Oriental dancer. Janco is playing an invisible violin and bowing and scraping. Madam Hennings, with a Madonna face, is doing the splits. Huelsenbeck is banging away nonstop on the great drum, with Ball accompanying him on the piano pale as a chalky ghost. We were given the honorary title of Nihilists.

Hans Arp on the first period of Dadaïsm

Pijnboomen die ten oever reiken
Staren ontzet naar hun zichtbare schim,
Die hang in ‘t water, niet meer wil wijken
Met een rimpeling naar de kim.

Vijanden deinsden, wij weten niet meer
Aan welke waapnen den moed te wijden.
Het leven moet op ‘t eiland in ‘t meer
Peinzen of zeilend er over glijden.

Zullen wij nimmermeer omhelzen?
Onze huiden huivrend dons
Vergeten sluimeren in zware pelzen,
Winter in ‘t woud, eeuwig herfst in ons?

I adore Sylvia reciting her poems because they’re so heartfelt. At a certain time in this recording her voice cracks and it kind of breaks my heart every time I hear it.

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it–

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?–

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot–
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.

It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart–
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash–
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there–

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

I noticed the hills,

I noticed the highways,

I noticed the dirt road;

I noticed the car rows in the parking lot

I noticed the ticket takers,

Noticed the cash and the checks and credit cards,

I noticed the buses, noticed mourners,

I noticed their children in red dresses,

I noticed the entrance sign,

Noticed retreat houses,

Noticed blue and yellow flags

Noticed the devotees, their trucks and buses, guards in khaki uniforms,

I noticed the crowds,

Noticed misty skies,

Noticed the all –pervading smiles and empty eyes –

I noticed the pillows, coloured red and yellow, square pillows round and round –

I noticed the Tori gate, passers-through bowing, a parade of men & women in formal dress –

Noticed the procession,

Noticed the bagpipe, drums, horns,

Noticed high silk head crowns and saffron robes,

Noticed the three piece suits,

I noticed the palanquin, an umbrella, the stupa painted with jewels the colours of the four directions – Amber for generosity, green for karmic works,

I noticed the white for Buddha, red for the heart –

Thirteen worlds on the stupa hat,

Noticed the bell handle and umbrella, the empty head of the white cement bell

Noticed the corpse to be set in the head of the bell –

Noticed the monks chanting, horn plaint in our ears, smoke rising from astep the firebrick empty bells –

Noticed the crowds quiet,

Noticed the Chilean poet, noticed a rainbow,

I noticed the guru was dead,

I noticed his teacher bare breasted watching the corpse burn in the stupa,

Noticed morning students sad cross legged before their books, chanting devotional mantra’s, Gesturing mysterious fingers, bells and brass thunderbolts in their hands,

I noticed flames rising above flags and wires and umbrellas and painted orange poles,

I noticed the sky,

noticed the sun, a rainbow around the sun, light misty clouds drifting over the sun –

I noticed my own heart beating, breath passing through my nostrils

My feet walking, eyes seeing,

I’ve noticed smoke above the corpse,

I’ve noticed fired monuments

I noticed the path downhill,

I’ve noticed the crowd moving toward the buses

I noticed food, lettuce salad,

I noticed the teacher was absent,

I noticed my friends,

I’ve noticed our car,

I’ve noticed the blue Volvo,

I’ve noticed a young boy hold my hand

Our key in the motel door,

I noticed a dark room,

I noticed a dream and forgot,

Noticed oranges lemons and caviar at breakfast,

I noticed the highway, sleepiness, homework thoughts, the boy’s nippled chest in the breeze as the car rolled down hillsides past green woods to the water.

I noticed the sea,

I noticed the music -

I wanted to dance.

E.E. cummings • maggie and milly and molly and may

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

How can he recite a poem with such images of sweet childhood in that way? Gah!

O Sylvia, Sylvia,
with a dead box of stones and spoons,

with two children, two meteors
wandering loose in a tiny playroom,

with your mouth into the sheet,
into the roofbeam, into the dumb prayer,

(Sylvia, Sylvia
where did you go
after you wrote me
from Devonshire
about rasing potatoes
and keeping bees?)

what did you stand by,
just how did you lie down into?

Thief –
how did you crawl into,

crawl down alone
into the death I wanted so badly and for so long,

the death we said we both outgrew,
the one we wore on our skinny breasts,

the one we talked of so often each time
we downed three extra dry martinis in Boston,

the death that talked of analysts and cures,
the death that talked like brides with plots,

the death we drank to,
the motives and the quiet deed?

(In Boston
the dying
ride in cabs,
yes death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)

O Sylvia, I remember the sleepy drummer
who beat on our eyes with an old story,

how we wanted to let him come
like a sadist or a New York fairy

to do his job,
a necessity, a window in a wall or a crib,

and since that time he waited
under our heart, our cupboard,

and I see now that we store him up
year after year, old suicides

and I know at the news of your death
a terrible taste for it, like salt,

(And me,
me too.
And now, Sylvia,
you again
with death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)

And I say only
with my arms stretched out into that stone place,

what is your death
but an old belonging,

a mole that fell out
of one of your poems?

(O friend,
while the moon’s bad,
and the king’s gone,
and the queen’s at her wit’s end
the bar fly ought to sing!)

O tiny mother,
you too!
O funny duchess!
O blonde thing!

Draw the hour
dark as a bruise

where neon shopfronts
jerk and implore

on-off, arrow-arrow
enter me, like any whore.

On streets of soot and stain
the first brushes of rain

daub jewels and holocausts
through violet exhausts

and the wet deepens like a dream
while souls in stereo

ferry the black and fiery stream.

It’s depressing to find out that none of her books are available in this city (or maybe I just haven’t found them?) because I quite like this. I’m curious towards her other poems.

2.Come, be happy!–sit near me:
Sad as I may seem to thee,
I am happier far than thou,
Lady, whose imperial brow
Is endiademed with woe.

3.Misery! we have known each other,
Like a sister and a brother
Living in the same lone home,
Many years–we must live some
Hours or ages yet to come.

4.’Tis an evil lot, and yet
Let us make the best of it;
If love can live when pleasure dies,
We two will love, till in our eyes
This heart’s Hell seem Paradise.

5.Come, be happy!–lie thee down
On the fresh grass newly mown,
Where the Grasshopper doth sing
Merrily–one joyous thing
In a world of sorrowing!

6.There our tent shall be the willow,
And mine arm shall be thy pillow;
Sounds and odours, sorrowful
Because they once were sweet, shall lull
Us to slumber, deep and dull.

7.Ha! thy frozen pulses flutter
With a love thou darest not utter.
Thou art murmuring–thou art weeping–
Is thine icy bosom leaping
While my burning heart lies sleeping?

8.Kiss me;–oh! thy lips are cold:
Round my neck thine arms enfold–
They are soft, but chill and dead;
And thy tears upon my head
Burn like points of frozen lead.

9.Hasten to the bridal bed–
Underneath the grave ’tis spread:
In darkness may our love be hid,
Oblivion be our coverlid–
We may rest, and none forbid.

10.Clasp me till our hearts be grown
Like two shadows into one;
Till this dreadful transport may
Like a vapour fade away,
In the sleep that lasts alway.

11.We may dream, in that long sleep,
That we are not those who weep;
E’en as Pleasure dreams of thee,
Life-deserting Misery,
Thou mayst dream of her with me.

12.Let us laugh, and make our mirth,
At the shadows of the earth,
As dogs bay the moonlight clouds,
Which, like spectres wrapped in shrouds,
Pass o’er night in multitudes.

13.All the wide world, beside us,
Show like multitudinous
Puppets passing from a scene;
What but mockery can they mean,
Where I am–where thou hast been?

Summer broke and drained. Now we are safe.
The days lose confidence, and can be faced
Indoors. This is your last, meticulous hour,
Cut, gummed; pastime of a provincial winter.