David Ferry (1924-2023)

[tiganeasca]

Poet, translator, winner of awards, author of stunning translations (I read his translation of Gilgamesh and thought that it read beautifully). You can find obituaries in many places, including here.

 

[Leseratte]

Some Things I Said​

BY DAVID FERRY
writings on the wall

*
I was the one who said
the ditch in the backyard was maybe a river
that had flowed from somewhere else and was flowing to
somewhere else

*
I was the one who said where are you now?

*
I was the one who told about the one whose photograph in
the book of Eakins’s photographs was of
a guy the perfection of his body was his doom, and
Shakespeare said so too

*
Right there before my eyes was the one who said
where are you now? Where
are you Anne? I was the one

*
Who saw how Aeneas lay there in the darkness watching the
light, the little motions of light moving around the ceiling
and telling him something

*
I was the one whose mother’s voice called out of the urn
beseeching

*
I was the one who said how the day light knocks at the lid in
vain

*
I said be keep to your self be close be wall all dark

*
I said good people are punished, like all the rest

*
I said the boats on the river are taking it easy

*
I said the brain in your head whispers

*
I said death lives in our words

*
I said how beautiful is the past, how few the implements,
and how carefully made

*
I was the one who said
her body witness is, so also is her voice

*
I said better not know too much too soon all about it

*
where rhymes with beware, I said

*
I said it is the body breathing,
the crib of knowing

*
I wish I could recall now the lines written across my dream is what
I said

*
I said the horse’s hooves know all about it, the sky’s statement of
oncoming darkness

*
The fumes on the roof are visible and drifting away like
martyred souls, I said

*
I said the knees of the committee touch each other under the
table, furtive in pleasure

*
I said
Eurydice, My Father

*
I said we huddle over the ice,
the two of us

*
To squeeze from a stone its juice is her art’s happiness is
what I said

*
I am the one who said,
I hum to myself myself in a humming dream

*
And how we’re caught, I said,
In language: in being, in feeling, in acting. I said, it’s
exacting

*
I said the sea upheld us, would not let us go nor drown us,
and we looked down say a million years, and there were the
fish

*
See, the dead bloom in the dark, I said

*
The nightjar feeds while flying softly, smiling, smiling, I said

*
I said revenant whitefaced Death is walking not knowing
whether

*
I said the formula on the blackboard said who are you

*
I said Utnapishtim said to Gilgamesh blink of an eye

*
I said where are you now Where are you Anne

*
Stanza my stone my father poet said

*
vwx stones and sticks

*
The day doesn’t know what day it is, I said

*
What’s in the way the sun shines down, I said

*
I cried in my mute heart,
What is my name and nature

Source: Poetry (September 2019)

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/150756/some-things-i-said