Psalm for Distribution - Jack Agüeros

Psalm for Distribution

Lord,

on 8th Street

between 6th Avenue and Broadway

in Greenwich Village

there are enough shoe stores

with enough shoes

to make me wonder

why there are shoeless people

on the earth.

Lord,

You have to fire the Angel

in charge of distribution.



-- Jack Agüeros, "Psalm for Distribution," from Lord, Is This a Psalm? (Hanging Loose Press, 2002).

Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper - Martín Espada

Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper
-- Martín Espada

At sixteen, I worked after high school hours
at a printing plant
that manufactured legal pads:
Yellow paper
stacked seven feet high
and leaning
as I slipped cardboard
between the pages,
then brushed red glue
up and down the stack.
No gloves: fingertips required
for the perfection of paper,
smoothing the exact rectangle.
Sluggish by 9 PM, the hands
would slide along suddenly sharp paper,
and gather slits thinner than the crevices
of the skin, hidden.
The glue would sting,
hands oozing
till both palms burned
at the punch clock.

Ten years later, in law school,
I knew that every legal pad
was glued with the sting of hidden cuts,
that every open law book
was a pair of hands
upturned and burning.

from City of Coughing and Dead Radiators, 1993
W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, NY

Three translations of Cavafy's "As Much As You Can"

As Much As You Can
translation by Stratis Haviaras

And if you can’t make your life as you’d wish it,
try, at the very least, to accomplish this much:
do not make it less than what it already is
by mixing too excessively with the masses,
by hanging around and endlessly chattering.

Don’t cheapen your life by parading it around,
hauling it everywhere and laying it out there
for the dreary humbug of familiars and fellowship,
until it comes to feel like a curious dead weight.


As Much As You Can
translation by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

And if you can’t shape your life the way you want,
at least try as much as you can
not to degrade it
by too much contact with the world,
by too much activity and talk.

Try not to degrade it by dragging it along,
taking it around and exposing it so often
to the daily silliness
of social events and parties,
until it comes to seem a boring hanger-on.


All You Can
translation by John Cavafy

Even if you cannot have the life you would,
endow the life you have with this at least:
do all you can to avoid debasing it
in the continuous contact with the world,
in the continuous restlessness and talk.

Do not debase it by walking it about —
by going often and exposing it
amid the daily trivialities
of your acquaintance and their gatherings,
till like some hanger-on it pesters you.


All translations from the Cavafy Archive: http://www.cavafy.com/index.asp

* C.P. Cavafy, The Canon. Translated from the Greek by Stratis Haviaras, Hermes Publishing, 2004.
* C.P. Cavafy, Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard. Edited by George Savidis. Revised Edition. Princeton University Press, 1992.
* Poems by C. P. Cavafy. Translated, from the Greek, by J. C. Cavafy. Ikaros, 2003.