Max Jacob
Confession to the Pond or the Devil's Pond and the Other One to Dr Szygeti
The dragonfly is a blue streak that underlines the noonday heat. It is the conclusion of the serenity of the plains. The moving and motionless dragonfly! It darts about parallel to the virgin sky; it could be, it knows, the base of the everlasting triangle. What a lesson in abstraction for the purulent pond! Its trajectory is that of the fish but more direct. It soars humbly like the mind of a University philosopher. It does not hear the voracious croaking of the male frogs or the rustling of the bladders of the female frogs. The dragonfly comes to rest on a very small, short blade of grass and blends with it. Silence, silence!
Dragonfly, you are my sister. In front of it another pond opens as with a secret key, and for the first time I saw black purgatory. Above a pond without flowers, I saw on a dirty gangplank a useless bishop on a litter: it was I. A demon’s innocently white ass’s ears were those of a porter. The other porter had the profile of the sensual animal that is the dromedary. O abstract and serene dragonfly, here I am in three persons!
The dragonfly is a blue streak that underlines the noonday heat.
Translated by Michael Bullock
Page(s) 12
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The