Poetry is the weeping eye
it is the weeping shoulder
the weeping eye of the shoulder
it is the weeping hand
the weeping eye of the hand
it is the weeping soul
the weeping eye of the heel.
Oh, you friends,
poetry is not a tear
it is the weeping itself
[…]
— Nichita Stănescu, from “Poetry”, Bas-Relief with Heroes, trans. Thomas Carlson
There are people so wretched, they don't even have a body; their hair quantitative, their wise grief, low, in inches; their manner, high; don't look for me, the oblivion molar, they seem to come out of the air, to add up sighs mentally, to hear bright smacks on their palates! They leave their skin, scratching the sarcophagus in which they are born and climb through their death hour after hour and fall, the length of their frozen alphabet, to the ground. Pity for so much! pity for so little! pity for them! Pity in my room, hearing them with glasses on! Pity in my thorax, when they are buying suits! Pity for my white filth, in their combined scum! Beloved be the sanchez ears, beloved the people who sit down, beloved the unknown man and his wife, my fellow man with sleeves, neck and eyes! Beloved be the one with bedbugs, the one who wears a torn shoe in the rain, the one who wakes the corpse of a bread with two tapers, the one who catches a finger in a door, the one who has no birthdays, the one who lost his shadow in a fire, the animal, the one who looks like a parrot, the one who looks like a man, the rich poor man, the extremely miserable man, the poorest poor man! Beloved be the one who is hungry or thirsty, but has no hunger with which to satiate all his thirst, nor thirst with which to satiate all his hungers! Beloved be the one who works by the day, by the month, by the hour, the one who sweats out of pain or out of shame, the person who goes, at the order of his hands, to the movies, the one who pays with what he does not have, the one who sleeps on his back, the one who no longer remembers his childhood; beloved be the bald man without hat, the just man without thorns, the thief without roses, the one who wears a watch and has seen God, the one who has one honor and does not die! Beloved be the child, who falls and still cries and the man who has fallen and no longer cries! Pity for so much! Pity for so little! Pity for them!
— César Vallejo, “Stumble between two stars”, trans. Clayton Eshleman (1978; orig. 1937)
— Russell Edson, “The Epic”, The Clam Theater (1973)
