Juan Gregorio Regino: �The Song Begins� (from Mazatec & Spanish)

 

Translation into English by Jerome Rothenberg 

[Since the late 1970s Juan Gregorio Regino has been a leading figure in the movement � throughout Latin America � aimed at the creation of new literatures using native languages alongside the dominant Spanish.  A Mazatec by birth & upbringing, Regino was a co-founder & president of the Comit� Directivo de Escritores en Lenguas Ind�genas (Association of Indigenous Writers).  His poetry & other writings have appeared in his own Mazatec & Spanish versions, & in 1996 he received the Netzahualc�yotl Prize for Indigenous Literature.  He has for some years been the General Director of Popular [Indigenous] Cultures for Conaculta (The National Council for Culture and Arts) in Mexico.  The translation that follows will appear later this year in Like A New Sun: New Indigenous Mexican Poetry, edited by Zapotec poet Victor Ter�n & translator David Shook, & published by Phoneme Media (PEN Center USA).  The movement in which this plays a part is groundbreaking & of the greatest importance as well to our own ideas of poetry & poetics. The relation of Regino�s own work to that of the Mazatec shaman poet Mar�a Sabina is also to be noted.  An essay/talk by Regino on indigenous literatures can be found hereon Poems and Poetics. (J.R.)]

                              Because they are the papers of the judge

It is the Book of your law

                         It is the Book of your government

Because I know how to speak with your eagle

Because the judge knows us

Because the world knows us

Because God knows us

                    - Maria Sabina

 

I

In the light of the candle

in the essence of sweet basil
In the spirit called forth by the incense
my life�s book is laid out.

Open is my thought before the judge

The gears of time stop short
So that Limbo may pull back a pace
So that the sun and moon dress up
Because the images take on a face

II

What does the smoke of the incense say as it accompanies
the words that initiate their journey to the heavens.
What is the message of the maize your palms propel
that seeks for truth there in the mystery.
In what place, what path
and on what pretext does the guardian of the earth
possess my spirit.
Today reveal it, master
before my person,
before the eyes of God,
before the witnesses

III

You who know the sacred
who lead us on the pathway sown with songs.
Open the sky to me, show me the world,
start me on the path to wisdom.
Let me drink from the children who spring forth,
teach me to speak and read the language of the Wise Ones,
flood me with the power of the Gods,
inscribe my name there in the Sacred Place.
I am clean, my wings are free.
Dew will cause new words to sprout,
rain will nourish wisdom.
I am star that shines beneath the stone,
sea that dances in the blue of sky,
light that travels in raw weather.
I am sun�s vein, I am song.
I am dance and chant that heals.

IV

The spirit of evil lies in wait,
the song begins.
May the words arise that open up the heavens,
the prayers that cut across the profane world.
So may the candles of white light be lit
and drip envenomed blood.
It is a mortal struggle in the Sacred Place,
it is the ransom for my spirit.
For my life these fresh leaves will go forth,
these knowing words,
these colored feathers,
these songs for this initiation.

V

Here my basil is at daybreak,
clean like the horizon:
my medicine is fresh,
my medicine is white.

In its leaves the gentle word

that opens up the heavens:
the word that gives us peace,
the word that gives us breath.

My basil will arrive where sins are purged

will fly off clean to where dawn grows bright.
My pleas will reach into the book of records,
will free my soul from poisons that can kill me..

VI

My incense will reach the place
where it communes with life.
It will reach the house of those
who are the guardians of the earth.
It will be heard out in the place of images,
will plead its case there in the bosom of the night.

However many mouths they have,

however many tongues they may possess,
those who have knowledge of the heavens,
those conversing with the codices
and speaking with the Gods.

VII   

Here is my spirit,
my oak, my cedar.
Here in my heart the prayer is born
is with it in its journey to the heavens.

From the house of purity,

the table of the dawn.
I am asking for strength.
I am seeking justice.

The sacred book will open,

the darkness will grow bright.
In the house of writings.
In the house of the stelae.

VIII

Down to the soles of my feet.
Down to the palms of my hands.
At the apex of my thought.
At the core of my extremities.

My spirit has feet,

my soul has hands,
my veins leave tracks,
pulses of time and the way.

I can talk with the dawn,

can submerge myself in turbid waters of torrential rivers,
barefoot can walk up the incline,
can hurl my song against the wind.

IX

I arrive with God the Father, God the Mother,
I have crossed seven winds,
seven levels of the heavens.
I have defied seven faces of the World Below.

Because I have eyes for looking at the night,

light enough to plumb the mystery.
Because I am a messenger who guarantees his word,
a singer who can track the soul.

In the house of purity

I come to put my calling to the test,
come to awaken secrets.
I come to seek the word,
the fresh and clean path.

I am a bird that prophesies the sacred,

morning star that opens the horizon,
cicada that whispers to the moon,
mist that cures the mountain.

X

Here the fiesta ends,
the road is closed, the song is over.
Lucidity is lingering in the copal,
kernels of corn close up their pages,
standing guard over the journey�s secrets.

A mystery is disappearing,

new ways emerging, ways to fathom life.
The birds trace paths, the earth is fasting.
The moon confides her troubles to the sun
and dawn shakes loose on the horizon..

Here the fiesta ends,

the song rests in the morning�s arms.
The children who spring forth open the world�s heart,
nature is sending signals.

Originally published in Mar�a Sabina Selections, Poets for the Millennium series, University of California Press, 2003.

Bob Holman's "Language Matters" (PBS) on the World's 3000 Endangered Languages

 

Watch now: Language Matters | Full Episode | PBS Video

 

A beautiful and important PBS documentary in which Bob Holman carries forward the fight to save endangered languages (3000 of them) and their attendant poetries. Language Matters asks what we lose when languages die, and how we can save them.  Writes Norman MacAfee in The Huntington Post ( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/norman-macafee/let-the-world-speak_b_6538298.html ):

 

 �There are 6,000 languages in the world, and half are endangered. Those 3,000 will be gone by the end of this century if we don't do something. What are we going to do? That is the situation outlined in a new PBS documentary, Language Matters with Bob Holman, by David Grubin and Bob Holman.

 

"Why is saving endangered languages important?

 

"These 3,000 endangered languages are part of the history, and the prehistory, of humanity. They are part of prehistory because many are only spoken languages, not written, passed orally from generation to generation, down the millennia.

 Rupert Manmurulu (Australia) and Bob Holman
credit: PBS, Language Matters with Bob Holman

 "As the linguist David Crystal writes, 'Each language is a vision of the world. Each language says something different about what it means to be human compared with any other language.'"

A great step forward toward a new & revitalized ethnopoetics.

From KOJIKI: The Male Deity Izanaki and the Female Deity Izanami (new edition)

 
Translated from Japanese by Yoko Danno 

[N.B. Yoko Danno�s Songs and Stories of the Kojiki is the first English translation to capture the full sweep & ferocity of the founding Japanese epic.  The work as such was originally published by Ahadada Books in 2008 & has just been reissued by Red MoonPress in Winchester, VA.  Born, raised & educated in Japan, Danno has been writing solely in English for almost forty years.  She continues to live & work in Kobe. (J.R.)]

 

Izanaki and Izanami Descend from Heaven

The Deities on the Heavenly High Plains said to Izanaki the Inviting Male Deity and Izanami the Inviting Female Deity, �This land is still floating like a jellyfish. Give shape to it and solidify it.� 

The Heavenly Deities sent out the two, giving them the Heavenly Jeweled Spear. Entrusted with this mission, the young Deities departed and stood on the Heavenly Floating Bridge between heaven and earth. They lowered the Spear and stirred the muddy seawater with a churning sound, ko-o-ro, ko-o-ro, and lifted it up. The thick salt water dripping from the tip of the holy Spear piled up and became an island. This island is called Onogoro-jima. The two went down there and brought into being the Heavenly Pillar and a spacious palace for their wedding. 

 At this time Izanaki the Inviting Male Deity asked Izanami the Inviting Female Deity, �How is your body made?� 

 �My body is finely made,� the Female Deity answered, �but has one place which is insufficiently made.� 

�My body is finely made, too,� the Male Deity said, �but has one place which is excessively made. Therefore I would like to produce land by inserting the place which is excessive in my body into the place which is insufficient in your body. What do you think of giving birth to the land like this?�

�That sounds good to me,� the Female Deity answered. 

�Well, shall we,� said the Male Deity, �you and I, walk around this Heavenly Pillar, and mate with each other where we meet? Do you agree?� 

The Female Deity consented. After the two promised thus, the Male Deity said, �Then you walk around from the right, and I will walk around from the left to meet you.�        

They agreed and each walked around the Heavenly Pillar, and then the Female Deity spoke first: �What a handsome man you are!� 

Then afterwards the Male Deity said, �What a beautiful woman you are!� 

After each spoke thus, the Male Deity said to the Female Deity, �It is not right that the woman spoke first.� 

The Male and Female Deities, however, mated in the holy bed. The Female Deity gave birth to a leech-like, boneless child. They placed the child in a boat woven with reed and cast it off shore. Next, she gave birth to a weakling island, Awa-shima, which was not recognized as their proper child, either. 

The two Deities consulted each other and said, �Our children who have just been born are deficient. We�d better return to heaven and report this to the Heavenly Deities.� 

Immediately they returned together to heaven and asked for advice. The Deities in heaven performed a grand divination by heating the blade-bone of a deer. Observing the cracks, they said, �The children were born deficient because the woman spoke first. Descend again, and say it once more.� 

Therefore the Male Deity Izanaki and the Female Deity Izanami descended again and circled round the Heavenly Pillar as they had done before. 

Then the Male Deity Izanaki spoke first: �What a beautiful woman you are!� The Female Deity Izanami said afterward, �What a handsome man you are!� 

After each spoke thus they wedded again.

 

Izanaki and Izanami Give Birth to Fourteen Islands

After that time Izanaki and Izanami bore many fine islands. The first island born was Awaji. Next was Iyo. This island has one body and four faces, each with a name: E-hime, a fine woman; Ihiyori-hiko, a man possessed by a food spirit; Oho-getsu-hime, a woman in charge of food; and Takeyori-wake, a brave-spirited man. Then the couple bore the triple island of Oki, and next, the island of Tsukushi. This island also has one body and four faces, each with a name describing the brilliance of the sunshine. Then they bore the islandof Iki, the islandof Tsushima and the island of Sado, and next, the main island thick with grain plants, the Great Yamato Island. These eight islands which were born first are called collectively the GreatLand of the Eight Islands. 

After giving birth to these islands, Izanaki and Izanami returned to the island of Onogoro. On their way home they bore six more islands including twin islands. 

Izanaki and Izanami Give Birth to Thirty-Five Deities

 

After Izanaki and Izanami had finished giving birth to the various islands, they started bearing deities. The first deity born was the great-task-carrying-out deity. Next born were the male deity of rock and soil and the female deity of stone and sand. Then the deity of great doors, the roof-thatching deity, the deity in charge of the safety of houses and the deity who protects houses from storms were born. Next they bore the sea deity Oho-watatsumi and a couple of river-mouth deities, Akitsu-hiko and Akitsu-hime. 

Akitsu-hiko and Akitsu-hime rule respectively rivers and seas. They joined forces and gave birth to the bubble-sinking male deity Awa-nagi and the bubble-rising female deity Awa-nami. Next were born the surface-calming male deity Tsuru-nagi and the surface-rippling female deity Tsuru-nami. They bore next a pair of deities who distribute water at the watershed and a pair of deities holding ladles to draw water. 

In the meantime, Izanaki and Izanami continued their labor. They gave birth to the wind deity Shinatsu-hiko, the tree deity Kukunochi, the mountain deity Oho-yamatsumi and the female plain deity Kayano-hime. 

The coupled deities Oho-yamatsumi and Kayano-hime, who rule respectively mountains and plains, gave birth to a pair of soil deities, a pair of fog-and-mist deities, a pair of valley deities and a couple of deities who protect strays in the mountains. 

Izanaki and Izanami still continued their labor. They gave birth to Tori-fune, the deity of the heavenly ship as fast as a bird and made of camphor wood as hard as rock. Next they bore the female deity Oho-getsu-hime who is in charge of food. Next was born the burning deity Kagu-tsuchi.

 

Izanami Dies

When Izanami was delivered of the fire deity Kagu-tsuchi, her genitals were severely burnt and she was seriously ill in bed. She vomited and in her vomit a pair of ore deities came into being. In her excrement arose a pair of clay deities, and in her urine the female deity who controls irrigation water and the young deity full of procreative force whose daughter is the food goddess Toyo-uke. 

Then, at last, Izanami, who had given birth to the fire deity Kagu-tsuchi, passed away. 

�I have exchanged the life of my beloved wife for just one child!� Izanaki greatly lamented. Crawling around the head and feet of his wife, he wailed. From his tears arose the female weeping deity Naki-sawame, who dwells at the foot of the trees on the hill of the holy Kagu Mountain. Izanaki buried his wife on Mount Hiba at the border between the landof Izumo and the land of Hahaki.  

[EDITOR�S  NOTE. As the  oldest surviving Japanese book, the Kojiki, or �Record of Ancient Things,� completed on �the twenty-eighth day of the first month of the fifth year of Wado� (A.D. 722) is an attempt to keep a grip on matters already at some distance from the compilers & to establish the �origins� of the Japanese court & nation on (roughly) native grounds.  It is, at the same time, �a compilation of myths, historical & pseudo-historical narratives and legends, songs, anecdotes, folk etymologies, and genealogies.�  (Thus: Donald L. Philippi, the composer of a previous translation.)  Like other such works it begins  with the generations of the gods & follows their creation of -- & descent into � this-place-here.  The fecundity & sexuality of those early gods � like Izanaki and Izanami in the present instance �is an example of surreality (= poesis) as an attempt to comprehend & thereby to possess the world.]

Clayton Eshleman: Wound Interrogation

[From Penetralia, a new collection of poems, to be published by

Black Widow Press in 2016]

In Matta�s �Wound Interrogation, 

a Malangganesque robot thrusts a flattened palm against
a large pulpy vaginal wound hung before it.
   Matta comments:
�The wound is separated from thehuman being & subjected to thetorture of intense examination by heinous machines. The bloody red insides of the wound convey a life striving to exist, while the grays & blacks of thedemon robots remind one of an industrial plant.�

This morning at theend of first light

the sky was drinking a sap so old I could hear the ayahuasca
cloud pythons gargling menstrual-seminal elixir.
I sensed theoracle gas between that Hadic distance &
Matta�s robots interrogating�I propose: Persephone�s sexuality.

Who exactly inhabits Hades� kingdom?

ALL DO (a chorus chants) THAT IS WHY HADES IS SO RICH

Can I interrogate this region of dense, cold air without light?

�You can, but my icy lace is blinding

& my knuckles, feeble from your Herculean viewpoint, are
hurricane poundings, tidal flail.
I am thedream jaguar which you created so as to,
while lurching out of bed, crash onto the floor.
I am the kobold which bit your ankle as you climbed out of a cave.
While you were driving home that night I bit again 
so that you smashed into a ditch & really did that ankle in.
I am, in other words, untapped center, shifty �always.�
In my casket chloroform are blind troll suns, split
gourds of brain jam, simmering golden sweat known as world wars.
You glimpsed my erection in Lascaux�s �Shaft.�
So I opened my beak toward you that you might watch me scram via
a bison�s vagina-winsome hanging guts
There never was a beginning!
All is nexus & midriff cast on an alabaster plain of marauding
tarantula-shanked camels��

          *

The frailty of being holed & rampant with closure.

Blake�s angels feast on my neck
as strapped to this fuselage of honking verbs I watch Hades:
a zyzzogeton munching on alfalfa alpha.

For that matter, what is deliverance?

To find oneself present at Pluto�s cornucopian spread & grasp
that one must not pluck a single grape?

The first Persephone, Laussel, pumped time out of her held-aloft
     bison horn,

& with that image phantom she impregnated herself!

Between the cracks in the time board,

to write from a double periphery, in swerve with the labrys�

�Not to subject thechange,� Hades quipped,

�but what bugs you themost about Americatoday?�

One: The suppression of thehorrifying truth of the 9/11 assault  (more appropriately referred to as �The Pentagon Three Towers Bombing�) infests theAmerican soul with a stifling sense of unreality charged by the rivers of blood flowing alongside the Euphrates & Tigris through a destroyed & failed state that may never again be reconstructed. I note that otherwise responsible political thinkers like Oliver Stone & Bill Maher will not even engage this ongoing nightmare.

   The truth of The Pentagon Three Towers Bombing is, like an undiagnosed plague, lodged in the American subconscious. This truth is now the lie veneer of our dailiness. There is a knotted veil in our eyes building rancor where there could be revelation.

Two: Since I have been writing, translating, & editing for over 50 years, I have to deplore thedegree writing programs that are in theprocess of substituting creative writing for the art of poetry. In 1994 I wrote: �Quotational Reality is thenew Purgatory making each desire artificial.� My comment appears to identify Kenneth Goldsmith�s aestheticized plagiarism.

   The first poets, facing the incomprehensible division between what would become culture & wilderness, taught themselves how to span it & thus in such caves as Chauvet & Lascaux respond to their �wound interrogation�. Our key distinction may become that of being the first generation to have written at a time in which the origins & the end of poetry became discernable.

           * 

The poem is a fire burning alone out of contact with

the brushwood of my body. 
I study it as Heraclitus studied fat raccoon clouds become weeping
     Hathors.
Sky stigmata. Archaic smile of the brave.

An image is fire

around which language appears to be
tightly-packed ash.

James Hillman: �I and soul are alien to each other because of soul�s
     domination

by powers, daimones and gods�  Soul is molten protocol.

Life is theblessing. Death the �less� in blessing:

Count Gaga spread-eagled & gagged in everyone�s smoking gate.
Humankind is timed, as if with a timer, by & for
the apocalypse of immortality.

Know thyself = know thyself to be mortal.

To think of thetethered mandala of the hand,

the radial glory of thefist unhooked from its fury.
Vallejo: �Our brave little finger will be big, worthy,
an infinite finger among thefingers.�
Vodun thumb-post attended by 4 hexed dwarves.
Palm pressed to theMatta wound, to the Gargas wall:
new human negative: the I am not    that is.

I dream because I first had hands.

And in dream tonight I held my fire in my hands,
my fire with Caryl�s eyes!

Carol Rubenstein: Four New Poems from �Vanished Number�

 
author�s note.  With a small Saltonstall poetry grant, I visited Auschwitz in 2004-05 during all the seasons.  I had to get the sense of the place on my skin and know at least that reality as it was felt by the inmates.  It was hard to find a way into the overwhelming �pity and terror� of the Auschwitztragedy, and many poems took on a surreal cast.  I welcomed the variety of approaches that presented themselves.  Some poems, like �Birken, Place of Birches� and �The Carp Feeders,� are based on where and when events occurred.  The exhibits of hair, clothes, shoes�in relation to the human body�required poems that compressed artifacts into a black-humor reality of their own, as in �Possession.�  Extremes of weather in such a place called for poems like �Wind Tongue (2).�  The voices of persecutor and persecuted alike echoed through my stay at Auschwitz.  All the poems represent a slant on reality imagined but not imaginary.  At present I am developing a manuscript of the many poems�working title, �Vanished Number.�  

BIRKEN, PLACE OF BIRCHES                       

                                                                                                                 
So many birch trees neighbored here, etched heights
      murmuring,

that this place was called the place of birches�Birkenau.

A shadow cleaved to each contoured slenderness,

the white bark of each was touched with messages.

One graced near another, they rose together�

comforting the blind who felt their way through this light, the
      deaf
imprinting rapid momentary air, the mute whose praises,
      unscrolling,
are chorused by the angel of the day arising whole. 

In forest legend the lost, the homesick, needed only

tap a birch tree and at once the missing village�
winter-trimmed white-and-black or fringed with summer
      fairness�rolled
guttural, inflected, retold by generations, returned about us. 
      That it may.  

The women�the unripened young, and those big with

      tomorrow�s own,

and of dignity in full, and the withering, stooped�were herded
      here,
faint amid the rear birken groves.  The men, guarded
      elsewhere.  All 
made to wait their turn near units 4 and 5:  Which, worked day
      and night,

backed up.  Schedules haywire, war ending.  �Here come more

      loads.

Boxcars out of Hungary�retching, shitting, pissing, half-dead.�
�Heard it from the top.  Schnell!   Turnover FASTER.  Sent
      straight here,
no sorting, no numbers.�  �Units 4 and 5 again!  What�s with
      the furnaces?�

�... Then shovel out the ash!  Hose this sloppy floor!  Skip hair,

      just

rings, knock out gold.  Get what they got hid.  Thought they
      were smart.�
�... Then GET a shovel man dammit.  You!�  Almost all was
      done when,
army near, guards threw down shovels, fled.  �Schnell!�  Smoke
      still rising.

Shadow-bearing, proof of light-lit substance�they, tree and

      human,

still entwine within the whispering freshness of their dance. 
      Their limbs 
sway and turn�until tranced unmoving by first light.  Now
      their new weight
holds in place another dawn.  All:  Every each one unlike any
      other ever.

POSSESSION                                                                      

Auctioneer, let the bidding begin!  All this is up for grabs�get

      some,

even as the sweet stuff dizzies and falls gorgeously away.

                                                                                                                                                                         
Bone fragments, splintered bits?  We toothpick them, twice
      incised,
for dislodging choice morsels and for twirling gums to panting
      health.

Knuckled knobs of bone ends?  Crack, suck out the sumptuous

marrow lode, next whistle it dry to summon up the double-
      headed dogs.

This stretch of skin?  Melting lids and lips?  Buyer, what�s to

      beware?

Crackle-roast it:  Rake.  A savor to the nostrils

rises, a rendering of fat as famished flames leap to lick and

      catch

each offering.  Sing the high-pitched song of the spitted turning
      swan.

The Three Ravens ask, with-a-down: �Where shall we our

      breakfast take?�

Then beak their punctual eyeball prizes.  And refrain goes
      down-a-down.

Flung, the marbled brains clack broken into shards of silence: 

      Such  

taken by law as assent.  To any queries as to reasons, answer
      you none.  

The jewels of vital organs spill lustrous through fingers�slip,

      soon

festooning the nude bowl of belly:  All let drip within the
      feathered pubes.

But wait, there�s an offal lot more��offal,� get it?  Ya gotta love

      it!  This portrait,

more warty than most, is matchless, of provenance
      unthinkable.  The agent

deaf-and-dumb signals to snap up these bargains!  Prick, pop,

      shrivel, shred,

pouch to ash, sucked under the grate:  Just forget these assets? 
      Not on your life!

Note the going rate, all items tagged, look you take not one bite

      less.  Sold

for a song!  Lifetime guarantee.  Nothing known that cannot be
      possessed!

And repossessed�sold again, a whinny, a cackle!  Buyer,

      peering closer, reels

at the issuing reek.  Now see in the beholder eye such beauty
      hollowing, pitted.

THE CARP FEEDERS
                                                                                                                                
A good job to get!  Some few are daily marched
to tend the pond for farming fish.  At the pond  
they scoop the fish food from their pails�
send it dimpling in.  The ash
drifts downward:  Down go the cousins.

Carp snatch and nibble�

rare and rich and passing strange
such banquet.  And they grow great,
sheathed in sheen of rosy gold.  They do thrive!

How many?  How keep count?  Of the brilliance,

one chosen lot is daily netted, thrashing.  Only officers
are offered them,
the serving platters heaped along the length of dining tables.

For their one or two seasons the feeders 

are beaten to go faster.  Their striped garment
angles sharper about their frame:  Until the cloth is shed,
each scarce tenancy                     

vacated ashen.  Or they trip or slide:  One unstoppable slow-

motion instant of falling�dropping into a skeletal sketch
in the road.  Their tattooed numbers, stripped from roll call,
slant in ashen tidbits back into their pond.  

Replacements never can march fast enough.

Rutted, pitted, dust-dry, mud-laden, ice-layered:   
Road that a former crew,
their broken forms dragged back, made

to fetch there the ash, fetch back the fish.

WIND TONGUE (2)                                                                          

How did they get it to be so lifelike?   
                              No sculpture before nor since
so well catches every rippled instance of flesh and muscle.
Is wind-hand slanting cheek and chin?  Wind-thumb and wind-     
squint aligning best profile?  Now wind-wrist balances
on nose-bridge fulcrum:  Where it wrests control, gets to

      choose�

from the inside out�which expression will stare down time.      

What occult air

channels passageways, explores hollows?
Wind-harp looms the rare tissue that ensheaths the bones.
                              Look�the form-fit figure quivers�

must be reaching for its make!  Wind-tongue

has grooved divinity�s image to the life.

***

Is our character playing dumb?  Acting bored, a diplomat�s

      trick? 

Holding rhetorical pause?
                              What illusion flickers through its aperture,
while the tidal hours crest and trough?  The new moon slivers 
centuries of query:  Who now plays the part of armature? 
                              When did the skeletal captive
                             know it was a trap?

***

An elemental switch:  The form is sent into a blaze of bronze.  

Now absence, now solid.  Now the molten good pours in�
wholly fits.  What mad protocol next?  Rising into view:  This, 
the molded issue.  When to break open the cast?  And now 
                              to puzzle the entrails for portending signs. 
                              See wrought our marked fate, 
the telling of it even as the lips and tongue of language melt.

[NOTE. Carol Rubenstein, who had been an active participant in the New York poetry scene during the formative years of ethnopoetics & related projects, began a series of travels in the 1970s, that brought her then to Borneo, where for five years she collected & translated oral poetry from the Dayak people of that island.  Her important book, The  Honey Tree Song:  Poems and Chants of the Sarawak Dayaks, was published by Ohio State University Press in 1985, after which she settled in Ithaca, New York, where she continues today to write & work.  Her Auschwitz project began in 2004, for which she made three separate trips to Poland during 2004-05, to see for herself (in so far as that was feasible) the place of holocaust �in all the seasons."  The work presented here marks the first publication from the many poems that resulted (�imagined but not imaginary�) & otherwise speaks for itself.  (J.R.)]