Alejandra Pizarnik

Tree of Diana

Translated by Joseph Mulligan & Patricia Rossi

March 10, 2011

New Paltz, New York – Buenos Aires, Argentina

INTRODUCTION

Tree of Diana by Alejandra Pizarnik. (Chem.): verbal crystallization by amalgamation of passionate insomnia & meridian lucidity in a solution of reality subjected to the highest of temperatures. The compound does not contain any deceitful particle at all. (Bot.): the tree of Diana is transparent & gives off no shade. It has its own light, twinkling & brief. It is born in the arid regions of America. The hostility of the climate, the inclemency of the discourses & shouting matches, the general opacity of the thinking species, its neighbors, due to a phenomenon of well-known compensation, stimulates the luminous properties of this plant. It has no roots; the stalk is a cone of slightly obsessive light; the leaves are small, covered by four or five lines of phosphorescent writing, elegant & aggressive buds, toothed edges; the flowers are diaphanous, the females separated from the males, the first axillary, almost somnambulant & solitary. The latter ones in beards, thistles and, more rarely, thorns. (Myth. & Ethno.): the ancients believed that the arc of the goddess was a branch dangling from the tree of Diana. The scar of the trunk was considered as the (feminine) sex of the cosmos. It may refer to a mythical Fig Tree (the sap from the branches is milky, lunar). The myth may allude to sacrifice by dismemberment: an adolescent (male or female?) was chopped apart each new moon, in order to stimulate the reproduction of the images in the mouth of the prophetesses (archetype of the union of the lower & upper worlds). The tree of Diana is one of the masculine attributes of the feminine deity. Some see in this the supplementary confirmation of the hermaphroditic origin of gray matter and, perhaps, all matter; others deduce that it is a case of expropriation of the masculine solar substance: the rite would only be a ceremony of magical mutilation of the primordial ray. In the current state of our understanding, it is impossible to decide on any of these hypotheses. Let us point out, however, that the participants afterward ate incandescent embers—a custom that persists in the present day. (Blaz.): a talking coat of arms. (Phys.): for a long time the physical reality of the tree of Diana was denied. In effect, due to its extraordinary transparency, few can see it. Solitude, concentration & a general refinement of one’s sensibility are indispensable requisites for the vision. Some people, with a reputation for being intelligent, complain that, despite their preparation, they see nothing. In order to dispel their error, it suffices to recall that the tree of Diana is not a body that one may see: it is an (animate) object that allows us to see beyond, a natural instrument of vision. In any case, a small test of experimental criticism will, effectively & definitively, lay to rest the prejudices of the contemporary illustration: placed facing the sun, the tree of Diana reflects its rays & joins them in a central filament called a poem, which produces a luminous heat capable of burning, smelting & even volatilizing the non-believers. This test is recommended to the literary critics of our language.

Octavio Paz

Paris, April of 1962

I’ve taken the plunge from me to dawn.

I’ve left my body along with the light

& I’ve sung the sadness of what’s born.

These are the versions she puts on the table:

a hole, a wall that shakes...

only the thirst

the silence

no encounter

beware of me my love

beware of the silent one in the desert

of the traveler with a decanted canteen

& of her shadow’s shadow

SO THEN:

Who would stop diving down in search of the tribute

to the little forgotten one. Pay the cold will. The wind will pay.

Pay the rain will. The thunder will pay.

for a minute of fleeting life

one of a kind wide-eyed

for a minute to see

little flowers in the brain

dance like words in a mute’s mouth

(a drawing by Wols)

she undresses in the paradise

of her memory

she’s unaware of her visions’

fierce fate

she’s scared of not knowing how to name

what does not exist

Leaps with her shirt in flames

from star to star,

shadow after shadow.

Dies a distant death

does she who loves the wind.

Illuminated memory, gallery where

roams the shadow of what I await. It’s not

true that it will come. It’s not true that

it won’t come.

These bones glowing in the night

these words like precious stones

in the living throat of a petrified bird,

this very beloved green,

this heated lilac,

this heart only mysterious.

a gust of wind

full of twisted faces

I cut out in the shape of objects to love

right now

at this innocent hour

I & who I was sit down

in the doorway of my gaze

no more sweet metamorphoses of a silky girl

sleepwalking on the cornice of fog now

her awakening as a breathing hand

as a flower that opens into the wind

to explain with words from this world

that a boat from me has shoved off with me on board

The poem I don’t say

the one I don’t deserve.

Fear of being two

way of the mirror:

in me someone asleep

eats me & drinks me

I miss distancing myself

from the time when I was born.

I miss not carrying out

the newcomer role more

you’ve built your home

you’ve fledged your birds

you’ve beaten the wind

with your bones

you’ve finished alone

what no one began

Days when a distant word possesses me. I spend those days sleepwalking & transparent. The beautiful automaton chants to herself, enchants herself, tells herself about cafes & faces: stiff thread nest where I dance & cry to myself at my numerous funerals. She is her burnt to dust mirror, her cold fume wait, her mystical element, her fornication with names growing on their own in the dismal light.

like a poem aware

of the silence of things

you speak so as not to see me

when I see the eyes

that I’ve got tattooed in mine

says that she doesn’t know the fear of the death of love

says that she fears the death of love

says that love is death is fear

says that death is fear is love

says that she doesn’t know

To Laure Bataillon

so much I’ve been born

& doubly suffered

in the memory of here & of there

at night

a mirror for the dead little girl

an ashen mirror

a look out from the gutter

can be a world-view

rebellion consists in staring at a rose

until the eyes turn to dust

These threads imprison the shadows

& demand an answer for the silence

these threads unite the gaze & the sorrow

(Goya exhibition)

a hole in the night

suddenly invaded by an angel

(a drawing by Klee)

when the night palace

lights up its beauty

we’ll pluck the mirrors

until our faces sing like idols

from the dawn a gust in the flowers

abandons me drunk on nothing & on lilac light

drunk on immobility & on sureness

you step away from the names

that thread the silence of things together

Here we live with one hand in the throat. That nothing is possible they already know, those inventors of rain who wove words together in the torment of absence. That’s why in their prayers there was a sound of hands in love with the fog.

To André Pieyre de Mandiargues

in the fabulous winter

the ode of the wings in the rain

in the memory of the water fingers of fog

It’s to close the eyes & swear not to open them. Meanwhile they feed outside on clocks & flowers born out of guile. But with closed eyes & an ache truly far too great we pluck the mirrors until the forgotten words magically ring.

Plague zone where eats the sleeper

her heart made of midnight

at some point

at some point someday

I’ll go without staying

I’ll go like someone who leaves

the little traveler

died explaining her death

wise nostalgic animals

visited her heated body

Life, this life of mine, let yourself fall, let yourself suffer, life of mine, let yourself get tangled up in the fire, in gullible silence, in the night house’s green stones, let yourself fall & suffer, oh life of mine.

in the cage of time

the sleeper stares at lonely her eyes

brings her does the wind

the leaves’ slender response

To Alain Gloss

beyond any prohibited zone

there is a mirror for our sad transparency

This repentant chant, beacon behind my poems:

this chant denies me, gags me.

Thoughts on Pizarnik, Spanish language poetry, and translation can be found at Mulligan's The Smelting Process: http://jwmulligan.wordpress.com/