Snatched from the River
bright is the echo of the bold springs
that the raven muddles into the earth
two times a day it’s what he wants
and the salts of your fields
large limestone caryatids
pigment the destinies of your voice
so many times fallen to crumbs
on the porcelain roads
disparate resources
of quick graces
exquisite subsidiaries
you aren’t any help
you tell lies on the fingers
the deceptive beauty
at the turn of the woods
who is it who is it
haberdashery of pain
among the wanting
tuesday friday
who is it what is it
the wheel of the mill
with an air of uncertainty
living day to day as prey
to pretty dreams pretty
miserable light
on the necktie of the hanged
and tossed in the streets
one foot in the mud of the tomb
who is it who is it
gloved in the root of time
the weight from the pedestal to the arms
the village madwoman
cries plaintively to the river
mario mario
two times a day
she comes to the parapet
crying mario mario
and goes
as if she hadn’t ever
come
and it’s for this
that the market takes place
one time each day mario
and again one time each day mario
market where the marchers
and the growers and the sellers
and the fried fish
move through the city
crying mario mario
and the power of the single-storey
Civil War Song
snows still we are deceived
pile up the drunkenness
captains of fog
with hoarder’s eyes
bushes and women
drowned in their laughter
hidden in the bagpipes
the bitter strata of profound events
crackle little lights
into the damp indolence
of fleeting fiefdoms
under the cover of words
nothing left but a leap wake the visionaries
to jump the flame over the breastwork of rye
snows snows cover us
night wind noon wind
stones always and again
the knives of the hail
death runs quickly youth is lighter
than the earth of those we carry in ourselves
so now the beloved
come begging the silence
the flesh of lips
stuck to the lips of the gravestones
i’m the one who has written this poem
in the solitude of my room
while in those for whom i weep
death is sweet there they abide
Cash on the Nail
the void blows across the street
sounds into the dark rooms
whatever the meaning of things
by which the cold classifies appearances
the sea looks squarely at us
and across the ivory of our eyes
like beasts in training
we give in to each others’ eyes
and follow one another through the mist
the tenderness and the friendship
i told the windows’ shadow
underneath the eyelid of the tree
that a slumber for more gold
took the wing from its flame
i told the time that runs
on its road to ruin
sad mines gigantic laughs
barns smashed and stolen for ships
grimacing wells the silences of the world
old folks anchored in distress
lovers children future executioners
blood mothers budding mothers
or trembling forests of pressing pasts
it’s always just one language
scattered along the fluted flank
from the treasure at the heart of the skies
of these men that we are
language of solitude
to cross the countries black with people
black is the world
its underclothes showing
the catacomb secrets
the waves from the sweethearts blown all out of proportion
the storefronts on the open lips
on the snow structures
the lifeless menageries
in the rain the honeymoons
and the honey of the memory
and underneath the weight of the cities
it’s the same blind speech
a thousand vocal smithereens conceal
that which returns in splinters
the pack of things repulsive
but at our darkened doors
throng the seas the recklessness
of rams written
on the daisy ice
in the rooms dead or quick
deaf tribes of intentions
in long lines that the lamps
have led into the tombs
it’s the avenue for the poor
to our skeletal tanks
lying in wait for the birth of the voices
the shadow unwinding
where no one meets shadow
or tenderness or friendship
On the Threshold
vintners of broad bursts
and you hills where the trains climb
astonishment of the citadels
that the ant in arms keeps watch
like smoke at the margin of man
the feigned reason to follow you
pipe between its teeth the sky on fire
chews the thyme of lost keys
and the elfin eggs
litter the road with pruning shears
no exit teeth clenched
will the words return drunk
was it the shadow threatening
we would never know
if the more or less talkative
to death to the newborn
laughs as he paces the room
or if he weeps what falls
heavy sleep of meadows
it’s not the very end
even if the wing beats faster
than it manages to pull away
from this center where the star
nails down the weight of one malevolent death
certainties certainties
from Noontimes Won
Tristan Tzara
translated from the French by Heather Green
In the 1930s, his raucous Dada years behind him, Tristan Tzara became active in the anti-fascist movement and traveled several times to Spain to organize international literary events in support of the Republican forces fighting Franco and to otherwise join the war effort. In 1939, Tzara returned to France and published Midis Gagnés, or Noontimes Won, the collection from which these poems are drawn, originally illustrated with a series of drawings by Henri Matisse.
Having lived for more than twenty years in exile from his native Romania, Tzara now watched France, his adopted home, stand in imminent danger of a Nazi invasion. It’s no surprise that this collection, though focused on the Spanish Civil War, enacts what critic Stephen Forcer calls a “lyric mourning connected to issues of self and nationhood.” François Buot, one of Tzara’s biographers, notes that, though these poems have a political consciousness, “we are far from partisan poetry or agit-prop. History simply burst into the heart of the work and a collective hope somehow supports an individual despair.” Buot adds that although Tzara’s poetry was in some respects separate from his political work, the two informed one another: “if there hadn't been this prospect of collective liberation, this sense of participation in a fight for freedom, there would have been nothing left but the forces of death. In a world bowing to the executioners wearing swastikas, Tzara wanted to write a poetry of life, despite everything.”
Tzara, in this underrecognized mid-career work, floods the page with a torrent of images, alternately glittering and desolate. Without punctuation, the lines move like gears, one turning into the next, but the voice is made of a profoundly human doubt, melancholy, and vision. Today, Tzara’s complex relationship with the nation-state and his lamentation of corrupt exercises of power and the disenfranchisement of the weakest members of society feel particularly timely.
Forcer, Stephen. Modernist Song: The Poetry of Tristan Tzara. London: Legenda, 2006.
Buot, François. Tristan Tzara: l'homme qui inventa la révolution Dada. Paris: Grasset, 2002.
Having lived for more than twenty years in exile from his native Romania, Tzara now watched France, his adopted home, stand in imminent danger of a Nazi invasion. It’s no surprise that this collection, though focused on the Spanish Civil War, enacts what critic Stephen Forcer calls a “lyric mourning connected to issues of self and nationhood.” François Buot, one of Tzara’s biographers, notes that, though these poems have a political consciousness, “we are far from partisan poetry or agit-prop. History simply burst into the heart of the work and a collective hope somehow supports an individual despair.” Buot adds that although Tzara’s poetry was in some respects separate from his political work, the two informed one another: “if there hadn't been this prospect of collective liberation, this sense of participation in a fight for freedom, there would have been nothing left but the forces of death. In a world bowing to the executioners wearing swastikas, Tzara wanted to write a poetry of life, despite everything.”
Tzara, in this underrecognized mid-career work, floods the page with a torrent of images, alternately glittering and desolate. Without punctuation, the lines move like gears, one turning into the next, but the voice is made of a profoundly human doubt, melancholy, and vision. Today, Tzara’s complex relationship with the nation-state and his lamentation of corrupt exercises of power and the disenfranchisement of the weakest members of society feel particularly timely.
Forcer, Stephen. Modernist Song: The Poetry of Tristan Tzara. London: Legenda, 2006.
Buot, François. Tristan Tzara: l'homme qui inventa la révolution Dada. Paris: Grasset, 2002.
Tristan Tzara (1896–1963) is best known as the cofounder of the Dada movement and author of many of its most influential poems and manifestoes. After the peak of the Dada movement, he had a brief and contentious affiliation with Surrealism, and he remained a prolific lyric poet for the rest of his life. Tzara was born and raised in Romania, where, because of his Jewish identity, he could not own land or hold a passport. In 1915, he moved to Zurich and began to write in French and perform in the Cabaret Voltaire. In 1919, Tzara brought Dada to Paris, where he lived for most of his life, writing poetry and working as an art and literary critic, activist and humanitarian, diplomat, journalist, and playwright.
Heather Green is a poet and translator. Her translation of Tristan Tzara’s Noontimes Won will be published in 2018 as the inaugural volume in Octopus Books’ Poetry in Translation series, and her translation of his short collection Guide to the Heart Rail was recently published in a small art-edition from Goodmorning Menagerie. She is the author of two chapbooks: No Omen and The Match Array. Her poems and translations have appeared in Denver Quarterly, The New Yorker, Poetry International, and many other journals. She teaches at George Mason University.
