Wednesday, October 28, 2009

For Myself I Would Like

Tears or willow on the ground
teeth of gold
teeth of pollen
like the mouth of a girl
from whose hair swells a river
in each drop a tiny fish
in each tiny fish a gold tooth
in each gold tooth a fifteen-year-old smile,
that dragonflies may reproduce

What can a maiden think about
when the wind discovers her thighs?

from An Unspeakable Betrayal, Luis Bunuel

4 comments:

Roxana said...

i like it, especially the last two lines, they are marvelous.
(i am thinking about my storm-film and imagining a scene to match them :-)

Kubla Khan said...

You must read Bunuel!

re your comments about Walser, I have read his longer works. I finished reading the Tanners last night. i have read The Assistant last year, i wrote about them on my blog.

what can i say about Walser except this: don;t look for anything.....there is a profound self-annihilating philosophy in his work....efface efface yourself, cultivate humility, look for sorrow, be nothing. be absolutely nothing. now, if i had listened to Walser, this blog kaput!

Walser is described as a dreamy writer. i disagree. he is different, he writes dreamily, you get lost in his sentences, and you know Roxana, one finds even reading him as a vanity!

everything is inglorious. we know it. live for the transience of the moment, says Simon Tanner. in essence, from Von Gunten to the Assistant to the Tanners is a movement. i have to read The Robber now to complete the Walserian watlz.

Roxana said...

hi, Kubla

i have searched for your Walser posts and i will read them, but first i want to finish the Assistant and then see what your impressions were. one thing i can say even now, that his style is indeed special, his German a source of perpetual delight and surprise for me. i can't imagine how the book sounds in English, i saw you had some excerpts in your post, but this too will have to wait, as i said before.

i am so grateful for the Walser world you have gradually opened for us here.

Roxana said...

ps. i don't know why i didn't get any mail notification for your answer, it's the first time it happens on your blog.