reading gunnar björling [i]
melt me your handbook
give me your worldview, and maps
lake tõya globed, full
portcullis between
metalwork of pigeons, finch
above a steeple
how to interpret?
how now, of architecture
that lives, out of lines?
an imagined shape
an arc into an escher –
monet’s wrists, castles
* These four haiku are a response to Björling’s lines “it is and that time / that a no-room, no-when / it is / and that one time / it was so bright, so quiet / I hear everything everything”. This translation by Fredrik Hertzberg can be found in You go the words, a collection of Björling’s poems published by Action Books.
reading gunnar björling [ii]
don’t look at the world in vacuo – in vacuo
it loses sight of its space;
open to creeley’s birth poems
staircase words folded in her red purse
humanity:
experimentum crucis in other arms
reach into the crucible, feel the angular velocity
hand in a fist and old stone, instantia crucis
* This octave, comprising twin twitter quatrains, dialogues with Björling’s lines: “In the lindenalley twitter / very dove in the trees / Shadow me well / here, and so good....” These lines are excerpted from a poem dedicated to Martin A. Hansen.
Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé has edited more than 10 books and co-produced 3 audio books. A recipient of the Singapore Internationale Grant and Hiew Siew Nam Academic Award, he also works in clay, his ceramic pieces housed in museums and private collections in India, the Netherlands, the UK and the US.
melt me your handbook
give me your worldview, and maps
lake tõya globed, full
portcullis between
metalwork of pigeons, finch
above a steeple
how to interpret?
how now, of architecture
that lives, out of lines?
an imagined shape
an arc into an escher –
monet’s wrists, castles
* These four haiku are a response to Björling’s lines “it is and that time / that a no-room, no-when / it is / and that one time / it was so bright, so quiet / I hear everything everything”. This translation by Fredrik Hertzberg can be found in You go the words, a collection of Björling’s poems published by Action Books.
reading gunnar björling [ii]
don’t look at the world in vacuo – in vacuo
it loses sight of its space;
open to creeley’s birth poems
staircase words folded in her red purse
humanity:
experimentum crucis in other arms
reach into the crucible, feel the angular velocity
hand in a fist and old stone, instantia crucis
* This octave, comprising twin twitter quatrains, dialogues with Björling’s lines: “In the lindenalley twitter / very dove in the trees / Shadow me well / here, and so good....” These lines are excerpted from a poem dedicated to Martin A. Hansen.
Desmond Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé has edited more than 10 books and co-produced 3 audio books. A recipient of the Singapore Internationale Grant and Hiew Siew Nam Academic Award, he also works in clay, his ceramic pieces housed in museums and private collections in India, the Netherlands, the UK and the US.
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