Russell Edson
(1935-2014)
Counting sheep
A scientist has a test tube full of sheep. He wonders
if he should try to
shrink a
pasture for them.
They are like grains of rice.
He wonders if it is possible to shrink something out
of existence.
He wonders if the sheep are aware of their tininess,
if they have
any sense
of scale. Perhaps they think the test tube is a glass barn...
He wonders what he should do with them; they certainly
have less meat
and wool
than ordinary sheep. Has he reduced their commercial value?
He wonders if they could be used as a substitute for
rice, a sort of woolly rice...
He wonders if he shouldn't rub them into a red paste
between his fingers.
He wonders if they are breeding, or if any of them
have died.
He puts them under a microscope, and falls asleep
counting them.
Contando
le pecore
Uno scienziato
ha una provetta piena di pecore. Si
domanda se deve provare
a restringere
un pascolo per loro.
Sono
come chicchi di riso.
Si domanda
se sia possibile restringere qualcosa fuori dell'esistenza.
Si
domanda se le pecore siano consapevoli della loro piccolezza, se possiedano
un qualche
senso della scala. Forse pensano che la provetta sia un granaio di vetro…
Si domanda
cosa debba fare di loro; hanno certo meno carne
e lana
delle normali pecore. Ha ridotto il loro valore commerciale?
Si domanda
se possano essere usate come surrogato del riso, un tipo di riso lanoso…
Si domanda
se schiacciarle in una rossa crema fra le sue dita.
Si domanda
se siano nutrite, o qualcuna sia morta.
Le mette
sotto al microscopio, e si addormenta contandole.
*
Antimatter
On the other side of a mirror there's an inverse
world,
where the insane go sane; where bones climb out of the
earth and recede to the first slime of love.
And in the evening the sun is just rising.
Lovers cry because they are a day younger, and soon
childhood robs them of their pleasure.
In such a world there is much sadness which, of
course,
is joy...
Antimateria
Dall'altra
parte di uno specchio c'è un mondo alla rovescia,
dove i
malati diventano sani; dove ossa arrampicano fuori
dalla
terra e tornano al primo fango d'amore.
E la
sera il sole sta appena sorgendo.
Gli amanti
si disperano di essere più giovani di un giorno, e presto
l'infanzia
li derubi dei piaceri.
In un
mondo siffatto vi è molta tristezza, che, naturalmente,
è
gioia.
*
For many readers, calling something like this poetry
is not just
preposterous, but an insult against every poem they
have ever loved.
Edson said that he wanted to write without debt or
obligation to any
literary form or idea, a poetry free from the
definition of poetry and
a prose free of the necessities of fiction, free even
of their author
and his own expectations. What made him fond of prose
poems, he said,
is their clumsiness, their lack of ambition, and their
sense of the
funny. If the finished product turned out to be a work
of literature,
this was quite incidental to his intentions.
