Richard Hugo, The Triggering Town

Hello Richard Hugo, I never knew you in person
But reading your poems and essays I already miss you my dear fellow
So I hope you’d enjoyed being translated into this odd language—
Your Triggering Town now may trigger someone here to dare to splash
Some crystalline water of the truth (of sorts)—
We speak here, but if not, please drop me a feather
Or maybe a thread of cobweb from your misty beyond.

By sheer chance I’ve learned some valuable part of my English at the University of Montana, Missoula, where Richard Hugo, MA, was one of the first directors of the famous creative writing program. If I only knew, mayhap I’d never leave that place and stayed to study. But it was exactly 20 years ago, I was 18, and unaware, and a chemist at that time.

About Richard Hugo.
Some of his poetry.
At the grave of Richard Hugo.

From “Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg”, by Richard Hugo

[…]

Isn’t this your life? That ancient kiss

still burning out your eyes? Isn’t this defeat

so accurate, the church bell simply seems

a pure announcement: ring and no one comes?

Don’t empty houses ring? Are magnesium

and scorn sufficient to support a town,

not just Philipsburg, but towns

of towering blondes, good jazz and booze

the world will never let you have

until the town you came from dies inside?

[…]

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Pies of Contemplation, miscellaneous (2013-14)

Out of place

So magnificently out-of-place
So falling and rising like some Capricorn
Or Pisces for that matter
And every name for this is nill
Is lost before its birth
And this is lonesome
TrulyMadlyDeeply.

And only that can signify a thing
That can be stopped or ended or deceased.
And all that’s seen just cannot ever crush
It flutters, propagates and flows and flows
And everything of place is out-of-place.

This peace of mind

This peace of mind that I will never get,
This world united that I cannot reach,
This seeing things without naming them,
This unity, this deathlessness, this this
Right now’s in the shadows of the I.

An elephant seen as a planet (paper mache, acrylic paint)

Future Bedazzling

In future we’ll be drinking vintage water and get cock-eyed sober
In future we’ll be perfuming ourselves with fresh air from crystal vials of no-name trademarks
In future we’ll be getting our bodywork from forest grass and pebbles ashore
In future we’ll be wearing exquisite shades of white covering our bodies the way they feel the most

In future we’ll be committing to memory the longest and oldest words and thus make the wordy gardens for the children to come
In future we’ll be having the brains tuned to fifty eight kinds of silence with best and most talented band-masters to conduct the quietphonies open-air
In future we’ll be savouring the infrared and ultraviolet with fried wind on the side
In future we’ll be soaking in scented waters of each others’ attention and silking the skins of our hearts with them

But the Prince Meaning of Life noble and modest as ever will be still residing on a remote island ruling no-one even Himself audiences unappointed

Never Comes

The sun can never come it’s always there
It’s Earth it turns and brings us to the light
The love can never come it’s always there
The mind the heart they flip into its might
The time can never come it’s never there
The time if it exists can spread or sit
The death can never come it’s always there
It happens on and on and then that’s it

The silence never comes it’s always here
Behind the sounds in my noisy ear.

A Difficult Horse, by W. N. Herbert. I’m reciting

The Meaning of Life, Illustrated: Paul&George Talking Series. Since Sept-2013

Some ink on paper & 1 colour pencils on paper