Ian Milner

Joy (tiếng Anh)

There is joy, there really is.
And he felt it not as something merciless
which rushes on us
and puts out our unguarded fire
nor as a vertigo which in the double light of irony
brings us a bottle and shoes to make us dance –
no, what he felt was a quiet, simple, unfounded joy,
given rather than granted for an hour,
the joy of a man walking over a bridge
who will go on singing for ever…
But it was enough for the wind to toss a withered leaf
at his feet
and the bridge was overloaded

For himself (tiếng Anh)

So many apples and no apple-tree! But
now there are no more apples here.
So much passion and no love! But
now there are no unchristened here.
Every man for himself
and we have time only for moments.
It won’t last.

Bequest (tiếng Anh)

What poets leave behind
has always something in it hurt by time, sin, exile
The truest of them,
the least known, quietest and most loving
doesn’t force anything on you: neither by his image
scorn nor solace, least of all by love.
Present, he is absent. And Picasso
making a snowman well understood
that the immortality of art
is in time, sin, exile
which the sun must redeem
in tears, springs, river, sea, and nothingness

Between (tiếng Anh)

Between the idea and the world
there is more than we can understand.
There are ideas for which no words can be found

The thought lost in eyes of a unicorn
appears again in a dog’s laugh.

During an illness (tiếng Anh)

A melting icicle, a leaking tap,
counting drops of medicine.

Tibet sees by water. We by tears.

But (tiếng Anh)

The god of song and laughter long ago
shut the doors of eternity behind him.
Since then only sometimes
a dying memory echoes in us.
And since then only the pain
is never life size,
it is always larger than man
and yet must lodge in his heart.

Discernment (tiếng Anh)

If life floats along the stream
and death against the stream –
we cannot discern its mouth.

If life floats against the stream
and death along the stream –
we cannot discern its source.

Fairy tale (tiếng Anh)

He built himself a house,
his foundations,
his stones,
his walls,
his roof overhead,
his chimney and smoke, his view from the window.

He made himself a garden,
his fence,
his thyme,
his earthworm,
his evening dew.

He cut out his bit of sky above.

And he wrapped the garden in the sky and the house in the garden
and packed the lot in a handkerchief

and went off
lone as an arctic fox through the cold unending
rain
into the world.

Love (tiếng Anh)

Two thousand cigarettes.
A hundred miles
from wall to wall.
An eternity and a half of vigils
blanker than snow.

Tons of words
old as the tracks
of a platypus in the sand.

A hundred books we didn’t write.
A hundred pyramids we didn’t build.

Sweepings.
Dust.

Bitter
as the beginning of the world.

Believe me when I say
it was beautiful.