I went to bed at 8 pm last night -- despite a desperate need for things
to be otherwise, I am still a little bit of an exhausted wreck this week
-- and so failed to post my last poem of the month. Instead, here it is
at dawn on a very rainy May 1st, where it does not really belong at
all; I'm okay with that, though.
I wanted to speak at length about
the happiness of my body and the
delight of my mind for it was
April, night, a
full moon and—
but something in myself or maybe
from somewhere other said: not too
many words, please, in the
muddy shallows the
frogs are singing.
—Mary Oliver (b. 1935), "April".
Happy National Poetry Month, friends. ♥
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Sunday, April 29, 2012
follow, poet, follow right
There
are some things about poetry month that are really inevitable: like, at
some point I am going to post some Auden. The end of this month has
actually been inscribed in my spreadsheet since sometime in March; but
picking which Auden poem to post can be a challenge. This one is
more well-known than some of my usual selections, and it is an elegy to
another poet, which is a kind of poetry to which I am particularly
attached. I really, really love this poem.
I
He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.
Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.
But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
II
You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.
III
Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.
In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
—W. H. Auden, "In Memory of W. B. Yeats (d. Jan. 1939)," February 1939, from Another Time, 1940.
The things I love about this poem are legion, but here are a few of them: I love that it is exemplary of Auden's extraordinary poetic competence (pace Christopher Isherwood), and that it is both very Auden and very Yeats -- and that Auden, in tribute to Yeats, writes like both of them; I love that it is about Yeats, on the eve of WWII; I love that it's an elegy, but also very ironic; I love that even though it's ironic, it also means what it says; I love that, like Yeats and sometimes -- although not always -- like Wystan, it believes in the power of poetry to stand tall in the face of darkness.
I
He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.
Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.
But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
II
You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.
III
Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.
In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
—W. H. Auden, "In Memory of W. B. Yeats (d. Jan. 1939)," February 1939, from Another Time, 1940.
The things I love about this poem are legion, but here are a few of them: I love that it is exemplary of Auden's extraordinary poetic competence (pace Christopher Isherwood), and that it is both very Auden and very Yeats -- and that Auden, in tribute to Yeats, writes like both of them; I love that it is about Yeats, on the eve of WWII; I love that it's an elegy, but also very ironic; I love that even though it's ironic, it also means what it says; I love that, like Yeats and sometimes -- although not always -- like Wystan, it believes in the power of poetry to stand tall in the face of darkness.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
all the rooms of the castle except this one
It is not that I have given up on commentary, it is just that -- well. I
am going to go keep doing my laundry, and leave this here to speak for
itself.
Every morning the maple leaves.
Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts
from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big
and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out
So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog
of non-definitive acts,
something other than the desperation.
Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your party.
Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I came to your party
and seduced you
and left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.
A forest, then. Beautiful trees. And a lady singing.
Love on the water, love underwater, love, love and so on.
What a sweet lady. Sing lady, sing! Of course, she wakes the dragon.
Love always wakes the dragon and suddenly
I can tell already you think I’m the dragon,
that would be so like me, but I’m not. I’m not the dragon.
I’m not the princess either.
Who am I? I’m just a writer. I write things down.
I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure,
I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow
glass, but that comes later.
flush against the wall and every part of your body rubs against the bricks,
shut up
I’m getting to it.
For a while I thought I was the dragon.
I guess I can tell you that now. And, for a while, I thought I was
cotton candy pink, sitting there in my room, in the tower of the castle,
young and beautiful and in love and waiting for you with
confidence
but the princess looks into her mirror and only sees the princess,
while I’m out here, slogging through the mud, breathing fire,
Okay,
You still get to be the hero.
You get magic gloves! A fish that talks! You get eyes like flashlights!
What more do you want?
I make you pancakes, I take you hunting, I talk to you as if you’re
really there.
Are you there, sweetheart? Do you know me? Is this microphone live?
for the record, let me make a thing of cream and stars that becomes,
you know the story, simply heaven.
Inside your head you hear a phone ringing
only a clearing with deer in it. Hello deer.
Inside your head the sound of glass,
a car crash sound as the trucks roll over and explode in slow motion.
Hello darling, sorry about that.
lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell
and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud.
Especially that, but I should have known.
You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together
to make a creature that will do what I say
or love me back.
I’m not really sure why I do it, but in this version you are not
feeding yourself to a bad man
I take it back.
The wooden halls like caskets. These terms from the lower depths.
Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed.
Clumsy hands in a dark room. Crossed out. There is something
underneath the floorboards.
Crossed out. And here is the tabernacle
Here is the part where everyone was happy all the time and we were all
forgiven,
even though we didn’t deserve it.
a phone ringing, and when you open your eyes you’re washing up
in a stranger’s bathroom,
standing by the window in a yellow towel, only twenty minutes away
from the dirtiest thing you know.
All the rooms of the castle except this one, says someone, and suddenly
In the living room, in the broken yard,
in the back of the car as the lights go by. In the airport
bathroom’s gurgle and flush, bathed in a pharmacy of
unnatural light,
my hands looking weird, my face weird, my feet too far away.
And then the airplane, the window seat over the wing with a view
I arrived in the city and you met me at the station,
smiling in a way
that made me frightened. Down the alley, around the arcade,
up the stairs of the building
to the little room with the broken faucets, your drawings, all your things,
This doesn’t look that much different from home,
because it didn’t,
but then I noticed the black sky and all those lights.
All these buildings, all that glass and the shiny beautiful
We were inside the train car when I started to cry. You were crying too,
smiling and crying in a way that made me
even more hysterical. You said I could have anything I wanted, but I
Actually, you said Love, for you,
is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s
Okay, if you’re so great, you do it—
here’s the pencil, make it work . . .
If the window is on your right, you are in your own bed. If the window
is over your heart, and it is painted shut, then we are breathing
river water.
Build me a city and call it Jerusalem. Build me another and call it
We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not
what we sought, so do it over, give me another version,
a different room, another hallway, the kitchen painted over
and over,
another bowl of soup.
The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell.
Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time.
leave the gun on the table, this has nothing to do with happiness.
Let’s jump ahead to the moment of epiphany,
in gold light, as the camera pans to where
the action is,
lakeside and backlit, and it all falls into frame, close enough to see
I never liked that ending either. More love streaming out the wrong way,
and I don’t want to be the kind that says the wrong way.
But it doesn’t work, these erasures, this constant refolding of the pleats.
all lemondrop and mellonball, laughing in silk pajamas
and the grains of sugar
on the toast, love love or whatever, take a number. I’m sorry
Dear Forgiveness, you know that recently
we have had our difficulties and there are many things
I tried that one time, high school, second lunch, and then again,
years later, in the chlorinated pool.
I am still talking to you about help. I still do not have
these luxuries.
I have told you where I’m coming from, so put it together.
When I say this, it should mean laughter,
not poison.
I want more applesauce. I want more seats reserved for heroes.
Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you.
—Richard Siken, "Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out" from Crush, 2005.
Every morning the maple leaves.
Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts
from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big
and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out
So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog
of non-definitive acts,
something other than the desperation.
Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your party.
Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I came to your party
and seduced you
and left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.
A forest, then. Beautiful trees. And a lady singing.
Love on the water, love underwater, love, love and so on.
What a sweet lady. Sing lady, sing! Of course, she wakes the dragon.
Love always wakes the dragon and suddenly
I can tell already you think I’m the dragon,
that would be so like me, but I’m not. I’m not the dragon.
I’m not the princess either.
Who am I? I’m just a writer. I write things down.
I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure,
I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow
glass, but that comes later.
flush against the wall and every part of your body rubs against the bricks,
shut up
I’m getting to it.
For a while I thought I was the dragon.
I guess I can tell you that now. And, for a while, I thought I was
cotton candy pink, sitting there in my room, in the tower of the castle,
young and beautiful and in love and waiting for you with
confidence
but the princess looks into her mirror and only sees the princess,
while I’m out here, slogging through the mud, breathing fire,
Okay,
You still get to be the hero.
You get magic gloves! A fish that talks! You get eyes like flashlights!
What more do you want?
I make you pancakes, I take you hunting, I talk to you as if you’re
really there.
Are you there, sweetheart? Do you know me? Is this microphone live?
for the record, let me make a thing of cream and stars that becomes,
you know the story, simply heaven.
Inside your head you hear a phone ringing
only a clearing with deer in it. Hello deer.
Inside your head the sound of glass,
a car crash sound as the trucks roll over and explode in slow motion.
Hello darling, sorry about that.
lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell
and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud.
Especially that, but I should have known.
You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together
to make a creature that will do what I say
or love me back.
I’m not really sure why I do it, but in this version you are not
feeding yourself to a bad man
I take it back.
The wooden halls like caskets. These terms from the lower depths.
Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed.
Clumsy hands in a dark room. Crossed out. There is something
underneath the floorboards.
Crossed out. And here is the tabernacle
Here is the part where everyone was happy all the time and we were all
forgiven,
even though we didn’t deserve it.
a phone ringing, and when you open your eyes you’re washing up
in a stranger’s bathroom,
standing by the window in a yellow towel, only twenty minutes away
from the dirtiest thing you know.
All the rooms of the castle except this one, says someone, and suddenly
In the living room, in the broken yard,
in the back of the car as the lights go by. In the airport
bathroom’s gurgle and flush, bathed in a pharmacy of
unnatural light,
my hands looking weird, my face weird, my feet too far away.
And then the airplane, the window seat over the wing with a view
I arrived in the city and you met me at the station,
smiling in a way
that made me frightened. Down the alley, around the arcade,
up the stairs of the building
to the little room with the broken faucets, your drawings, all your things,
This doesn’t look that much different from home,
because it didn’t,
but then I noticed the black sky and all those lights.
All these buildings, all that glass and the shiny beautiful
We were inside the train car when I started to cry. You were crying too,
smiling and crying in a way that made me
even more hysterical. You said I could have anything I wanted, but I
Actually, you said Love, for you,
is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s
Okay, if you’re so great, you do it—
here’s the pencil, make it work . . .
If the window is on your right, you are in your own bed. If the window
is over your heart, and it is painted shut, then we are breathing
river water.
Build me a city and call it Jerusalem. Build me another and call it
We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not
what we sought, so do it over, give me another version,
a different room, another hallway, the kitchen painted over
and over,
another bowl of soup.
The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell.
Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time.
leave the gun on the table, this has nothing to do with happiness.
Let’s jump ahead to the moment of epiphany,
in gold light, as the camera pans to where
the action is,
lakeside and backlit, and it all falls into frame, close enough to see
I never liked that ending either. More love streaming out the wrong way,
and I don’t want to be the kind that says the wrong way.
But it doesn’t work, these erasures, this constant refolding of the pleats.
all lemondrop and mellonball, laughing in silk pajamas
and the grains of sugar
on the toast, love love or whatever, take a number. I’m sorry
Dear Forgiveness, you know that recently
we have had our difficulties and there are many things
I tried that one time, high school, second lunch, and then again,
years later, in the chlorinated pool.
I am still talking to you about help. I still do not have
these luxuries.
I have told you where I’m coming from, so put it together.
When I say this, it should mean laughter,
not poison.
I want more applesauce. I want more seats reserved for heroes.
Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you.
—Richard Siken, "Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out" from Crush, 2005.
Friday, April 27, 2012
knock at a star
I just read this poem aloud to my roommate, and it is
exceedingly ridiculous. I have mixed feelings about a lot of the
Cavalier poets, but this poem has my favorite title of possibly any poem
ever, and is also hilarious, if only for its sheer passionate Royalism.
Dull to myself, and almost dead to these
My many fresh and fragrant mistresses;
Lost to all music now, since everything
Puts on the semblance here of sorrowing.
Sick is the land to th' heart, and doth endure
More dangerous faintings by her desp'rate cure.
But if that golden age would come again
And Charles here rule, as he before did reign;
If smooth and unperplex'd the seasons were
As when the sweet Maria lived here;
I should delight to have my curls half drown'd
In Tyrian dews, and head with roses crown'd.
And once more yet (ere I am laid out dead)
Knock at a star with my exalted head.
—Robert Herrick (1591-1674), "The Bad Season Makes The Poet Sad" from Hesperides, 1648.
Dull to myself, and almost dead to these
My many fresh and fragrant mistresses;
Lost to all music now, since everything
Puts on the semblance here of sorrowing.
Sick is the land to th' heart, and doth endure
More dangerous faintings by her desp'rate cure.
But if that golden age would come again
And Charles here rule, as he before did reign;
If smooth and unperplex'd the seasons were
As when the sweet Maria lived here;
I should delight to have my curls half drown'd
In Tyrian dews, and head with roses crown'd.
And once more yet (ere I am laid out dead)
Knock at a star with my exalted head.
—Robert Herrick (1591-1674), "The Bad Season Makes The Poet Sad" from Hesperides, 1648.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
learn by going where to go
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
—Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), "The Waking" from Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, 1953. I love a good villanelle.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
—Theodore Roethke (1908-1963), "The Waking" from Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke, 1953. I love a good villanelle.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
where everything seems to happen in waves
I have all these happy poems about spring that I want to post, but I am
not having the sort of week (or, in all honesty, the sort of month) that
allows for those sorts of poems. Mostly I just keep accidentally
falling to pieces around my friends. There is a lot of crying; also, a
lot of feeling like I am only holding myself together with, like, tape
and string and sheer pig-headed tenacity.
For Louise Crane
In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays, and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:
taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,
and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,
and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,
and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.
— Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.
—Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), "Letter to N.Y."
For Louise Crane
In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays, and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:
taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,
and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,
and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,
and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.
— Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.
—Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979), "Letter to N.Y."
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
like a shadow or a friend
Things are a little rough again, here in the Houses of Slightly
Regressed Healing -- I called us the Houses of Pelennor Fields a week or
two ago, and I think that may still hold true. I would really like it,
if I could come out of this seemingly endless tunnel into a place where
every single day is not a trial of my resilience. On the other hand,
apparently my resilience is kind of kick ass; and through all of this, I
continue to have extraordinary friends, and exceptional family, and
really excellent poetry.
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.
—Naomi Shihab Nye, "Kindness," from Different Ways to Pray, 1980 (reprinted in The Words Under the Words, 1995).
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.
—Naomi Shihab Nye, "Kindness," from Different Ways to Pray, 1980 (reprinted in The Words Under the Words, 1995).
Monday, April 23, 2012
that kings for such a tomb
Today is Shakespeare's alleged birthday, and given that I owe the
inestimable W. S. a whole damn lot, I like to honor him in poetry month.
One of my favorite things is poets writing
about other poets, so here is a prefatory poem to Shakespeare which appeared in the second folio of 1632.
What needs my Shakespear for his honour'd Bones,
The labour of an age in piled Stones,
Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid
Under a Star-ypointing Pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame,
What need'st thou such weak witnes of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thy self a live-long Monument.
For whilst to th' shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu'd Book,
Those Delphick lines with deep impression took,
Then thou our fancy of it self bereaving,
Dost make us Marble with too much conceaving;
And so Sepulcher'd in such pomp dost lie,
That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die.
—John Milton, "On Shakespear," 1630.
What needs my Shakespear for his honour'd Bones,
The labour of an age in piled Stones,
Or that his hallow'd reliques should be hid
Under a Star-ypointing Pyramid?
Dear son of memory, great heir of Fame,
What need'st thou such weak witnes of thy name?
Thou in our wonder and astonishment
Hast built thy self a live-long Monument.
For whilst to th' shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easie numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath from the leaves of thy unvalu'd Book,
Those Delphick lines with deep impression took,
Then thou our fancy of it self bereaving,
Dost make us Marble with too much conceaving;
And so Sepulcher'd in such pomp dost lie,
That Kings for such a Tomb would wish to die.
—John Milton, "On Shakespear," 1630.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
after nine hundred years of failure
Love is like a garden in the heart, he said.
They asked him what he meant by garden.
He explained about gardens. "In the cities,"
he said, "there are places walled off where color
and decorum are magnified into a civilization.
Like a beautiful woman," he said. How like
a woman, they asked. He remembered their wives
and said garden was just a figure of speech,
then called for drinks all around. Two rounds later
he was crying. Talking about how Charlemagne
couldn't read but still made a world. About Hagia
Sophia and putting a round dome on a square
base after nine hundred years of failure.
The hand holding him slipped and he fell.
"White stone in the white sunlight," he said
as they picked him up. "Not the great fires
built on the edge of the world." His voice grew
fainter as they carried him away. "Both the melody
and the symphony. The imperfect dancing
in the beautiful dance. The dance most of all."
—Jack Gilbert (b. 1925), "Ovid in Tears," from The Dance Most of All, 2009.
In all honesty, the poem I wanted to post today was Derek Walcott's Sea Grapes, which is a poem that sometimes haunts me by virtue of being absolutely stunning, and that I kind of want to post every year because I love it so much; but I posted "Sea Grapes" in 2009, and I try not to repeat myself. This is a very different poem, but, well. Jack Gilbert on Ovid is very relevant to my interests.
They asked him what he meant by garden.
He explained about gardens. "In the cities,"
he said, "there are places walled off where color
and decorum are magnified into a civilization.
Like a beautiful woman," he said. How like
a woman, they asked. He remembered their wives
and said garden was just a figure of speech,
then called for drinks all around. Two rounds later
he was crying. Talking about how Charlemagne
couldn't read but still made a world. About Hagia
Sophia and putting a round dome on a square
base after nine hundred years of failure.
The hand holding him slipped and he fell.
"White stone in the white sunlight," he said
as they picked him up. "Not the great fires
built on the edge of the world." His voice grew
fainter as they carried him away. "Both the melody
and the symphony. The imperfect dancing
in the beautiful dance. The dance most of all."
—Jack Gilbert (b. 1925), "Ovid in Tears," from The Dance Most of All, 2009.
In all honesty, the poem I wanted to post today was Derek Walcott's Sea Grapes, which is a poem that sometimes haunts me by virtue of being absolutely stunning, and that I kind of want to post every year because I love it so much; but I posted "Sea Grapes" in 2009, and I try not to repeat myself. This is a very different poem, but, well. Jack Gilbert on Ovid is very relevant to my interests.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
the reticent volcano
It has been a while since I posted any Dickinson, and I have had this
poem stuck in my head recently. No reason why, exactly, but Dickinson
does that. Also I really love this one.
The reticent volcano keeps
His never slumbering plan;
Confided are his projects pink
To no precarious man.
If nature will not tell the tale
Jehovah told to her,
Can human nature not survive
Without a listener?
Admonished by her buckled lips
Let every babbler be.
The only secret people keep
Is Immortality.
—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), "The reticent volcano keeps," no. 1748, or no. 107 from "Part One: Life" in The Complete Poems, 1924.
The reticent volcano keeps
His never slumbering plan;
Confided are his projects pink
To no precarious man.
If nature will not tell the tale
Jehovah told to her,
Can human nature not survive
Without a listener?
Admonished by her buckled lips
Let every babbler be.
The only secret people keep
Is Immortality.
—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), "The reticent volcano keeps," no. 1748, or no. 107 from "Part One: Life" in The Complete Poems, 1924.
Friday, April 20, 2012
easing the spring
Variations on a theme: war poetry of 1942, continued. This one is Dira's
fault, but also a classic, and also pretty extraordinary. I think I
might just let it speak for itself; I am thinking I might get offline
for a while, and go sit on my couch under the open window and read.
To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
And to-day we have naming of parts.
This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.
This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using their finger.
And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.
They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For to-day we have naming of parts.
—Henry Reed (1914-1986), "Naming of Parts," New Statesman and Nation 24, no. 598 (8 August 1942): 92. From Lessons of the War.
To-day we have naming of parts. Yesterday,
We had daily cleaning. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have what to do after firing. But to-day,
To-day we have naming of parts. Japonica
Glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens,
And to-day we have naming of parts.
This is the lower sling swivel. And this
Is the upper sling swivel, whose use you will see,
When you are given your slings. And this is the piling swivel,
Which in your case you have not got. The branches
Hold in the gardens their silent, eloquent gestures,
Which in our case we have not got.
This is the safety-catch, which is always released
With an easy flick of the thumb. And please do not let me
See anyone using his finger. You can do it quite easy
If you have any strength in your thumb. The blossoms
Are fragile and motionless, never letting anyone see
Any of them using their finger.
And this you can see is the bolt. The purpose of this
Is to open the breech, as you see. We can slide it
Rapidly backwards and forwards: we call this
Easing the spring. And rapidly backwards and forwards
The early bees are assaulting and fumbling the flowers:
They call it easing the Spring.
They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For to-day we have naming of parts.
—Henry Reed (1914-1986), "Naming of Parts," New Statesman and Nation 24, no. 598 (8 August 1942): 92. From Lessons of the War.
though the world explode
This is the poem I have been holding in reserve for a day
when I have lots of feelings that do not easily align themselves with
poetry. Although actually this poem is totally relevant today, because I
have wonderful friends who take really good care of me when I am
totally insane and on the wrong drugs. In truth this is a great poem,
and I really appreciate a fandom that is as long-lasting and literary as
this one.
Here dwell together still two men of note
Who never lived and so can never die:
How very near they seem, yet how remote
That age before the world went all awry.
But still the game’s afoot for those with ears
Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:
England is England yet, for all our fears—
Only those things the heart believes are true.
A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane
As night descends upon this fabled street:
A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,
The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.
Here, though the world explode, these two survive,
And it is always eighteen ninety-five.
—Vincent Starrett (1886–1974), "221B," 1942.
So actually I have two other things to say about this poem: first, it is a sonnet, and I really love sonnets. Second, I didn't know the date of this poem until I looked it up to make this post, and I just -- it's a war poem. It's a war poem about Sherlock Holmes fandom, and nostalgia, and how stories survive, and about protecting ourselves from the terrors of the world with stories, and yes, there are some potentially problematic things about all of that (also Starrett was an American, which seems kind of strange to me in the context of this poem, despite being an American myself), but nevertheless: Holmes and Watson, always, against all odds.
Here dwell together still two men of note
Who never lived and so can never die:
How very near they seem, yet how remote
That age before the world went all awry.
But still the game’s afoot for those with ears
Attuned to catch the distant view-halloo:
England is England yet, for all our fears—
Only those things the heart believes are true.
A yellow fog swirls past the window-pane
As night descends upon this fabled street:
A lonely hansom splashes through the rain,
The ghostly gas lamps fail at twenty feet.
Here, though the world explode, these two survive,
And it is always eighteen ninety-five.
—Vincent Starrett (1886–1974), "221B," 1942.
So actually I have two other things to say about this poem: first, it is a sonnet, and I really love sonnets. Second, I didn't know the date of this poem until I looked it up to make this post, and I just -- it's a war poem. It's a war poem about Sherlock Holmes fandom, and nostalgia, and how stories survive, and about protecting ourselves from the terrors of the world with stories, and yes, there are some potentially problematic things about all of that (also Starrett was an American, which seems kind of strange to me in the context of this poem, despite being an American myself), but nevertheless: Holmes and Watson, always, against all odds.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
lapsarian
All days are made better by Rita Dove. Honestly, I could spend an entire
month posting nothing but poems by Rita Dove. This is also probably my
favorite poem on this topic, aside from Paradise Lost.
Life's spell is so exquisite, everything conspires to break it.
Emily Dickinson
It wasn't bliss. What was bliss
but the ordinary life? She'd spend hours
in patter, moving through whole days
touching, sniffing, tasting . . . exquisite
housekeeping in a charmed world.
And yet there was always
more of the same, all that happiness,
the aimless Being There.
So she wandered for a while, bush to arbor,
lingered to look through a pond's restive mirror.
He was off cataloging the universe, probably,
pretending he could organize
what was clearly someone else's chaos.
That's when she found the tree,
the dark, crabbed branches
bearing up such speechless bounty,
she knew without being told
this was forbidden. It wasn't
a question of ownership—
who could lay claim to
such maddening perfection?
And there was no voice in her head,
no whispered intelligence lurking
in the leaves—just an ache that grew
until she knew she'd already lost everything
except desire, the red heft of it
warming her outstretched palm.
—Rita Dove (b. 1952), "'I have been a stranger in a strange land'" from American Smooth, 2004.
Life's spell is so exquisite, everything conspires to break it.
Emily Dickinson
It wasn't bliss. What was bliss
but the ordinary life? She'd spend hours
in patter, moving through whole days
touching, sniffing, tasting . . . exquisite
housekeeping in a charmed world.
And yet there was always
more of the same, all that happiness,
the aimless Being There.
So she wandered for a while, bush to arbor,
lingered to look through a pond's restive mirror.
He was off cataloging the universe, probably,
pretending he could organize
what was clearly someone else's chaos.
That's when she found the tree,
the dark, crabbed branches
bearing up such speechless bounty,
she knew without being told
this was forbidden. It wasn't
a question of ownership—
who could lay claim to
such maddening perfection?
And there was no voice in her head,
no whispered intelligence lurking
in the leaves—just an ache that grew
until she knew she'd already lost everything
except desire, the red heft of it
warming her outstretched palm.
—Rita Dove (b. 1952), "'I have been a stranger in a strange land'" from American Smooth, 2004.
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
pray for him that made this book
On a long oak table in a formal room
in the rare book department of the library
is the fifteenth-century manuscript—Middle English—
from which I mean to wring a dissertation.
The librarian, anxious for this precious object
left to my handling, offers me a bookweight.
I settle into the captain's chair and the task.
These first steps are detective work, forensics.
Hand: Anglicana; Secretary features.
Materials: paper. Visible watermarks.
Though faded, the pen strokes have the ebb and flow
of a bending quill tip in a moving hand.
The heavy paper still shows peaks and troughs
that speak to the moving pen. My own right hand,
knows pens and writing, and it feels these moves,
knows in its bones another hand was here.
I move on steadily, noting organization,
stories, verse forms, language variants,
marginal scribbles. I don't know how long
I've worked like this when I come to the colophon.
The words are, /Pray for him that made this book/.
It hits like a stone: Handwritten words on paper,
like any scrawl on spiral-bound, ripped out
and passed across the classroom, any note
on an envelope's back, left on the kitchen table,
and in my cradle-Catholic head, the prayer
has said itself before the doubt could speak.
It's only later, as I walk toward home,
plowing head down into the wind of spring,
that I picture a grave—somewhere near Hull, I think—
and wonder how long the bones of a hand would last.
—Maryann Corbett, "Hand," published in Strong Verse in 2008, and quite possibly elsewhere.
in the rare book department of the library
is the fifteenth-century manuscript—Middle English—
from which I mean to wring a dissertation.
The librarian, anxious for this precious object
left to my handling, offers me a bookweight.
I settle into the captain's chair and the task.
These first steps are detective work, forensics.
Hand: Anglicana; Secretary features.
Materials: paper. Visible watermarks.
Though faded, the pen strokes have the ebb and flow
of a bending quill tip in a moving hand.
The heavy paper still shows peaks and troughs
that speak to the moving pen. My own right hand,
knows pens and writing, and it feels these moves,
knows in its bones another hand was here.
I move on steadily, noting organization,
stories, verse forms, language variants,
marginal scribbles. I don't know how long
I've worked like this when I come to the colophon.
The words are, /Pray for him that made this book/.
It hits like a stone: Handwritten words on paper,
like any scrawl on spiral-bound, ripped out
and passed across the classroom, any note
on an envelope's back, left on the kitchen table,
and in my cradle-Catholic head, the prayer
has said itself before the doubt could speak.
It's only later, as I walk toward home,
plowing head down into the wind of spring,
that I picture a grave—somewhere near Hull, I think—
and wonder how long the bones of a hand would last.
—Maryann Corbett, "Hand," published in Strong Verse in 2008, and quite possibly elsewhere.
Monday, April 16, 2012
words came halting forth
Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That the dear she might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain:
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain;
Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburnt brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay;
Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame study's blows,
And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart and write."
—Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), Sonnet 1 from Astrophil and Stella.
This might be my favorite ars poetica, although it's a tough call; this is also probably the most famous poem from Astrophil and Stella, and indeed one of Sidney's most famous in general. I really love it, because every time I read it I am like, "yes, that." Plus, I mean, Invention is the red-headed stepchild of Study! Sidney is pregnant with poetry! Pleasure makes reading makes knowledge makes pity makes grace! I am also obsessed with the fact that this poem -- the first in a sequence that is mostly, but not entirely, in iambic pentameter -- is in hexameters. I should probably be writing the paper I am writing today all about the inexplicable hexameters in Astrophil and Stella, instead of on Mary Wroth's imitations of her uncle; but I backed myself into this Mary Wroth corner, and I am going to make the best of it, even if I turn out not to care very much at all about sonnet sequences as a genre. "Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart and write."
That the dear she might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain:
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,
Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain;
Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburnt brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay;
Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame study's blows,
And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way.
Thus great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart and write."
—Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), Sonnet 1 from Astrophil and Stella.
This might be my favorite ars poetica, although it's a tough call; this is also probably the most famous poem from Astrophil and Stella, and indeed one of Sidney's most famous in general. I really love it, because every time I read it I am like, "yes, that." Plus, I mean, Invention is the red-headed stepchild of Study! Sidney is pregnant with poetry! Pleasure makes reading makes knowledge makes pity makes grace! I am also obsessed with the fact that this poem -- the first in a sequence that is mostly, but not entirely, in iambic pentameter -- is in hexameters. I should probably be writing the paper I am writing today all about the inexplicable hexameters in Astrophil and Stella, instead of on Mary Wroth's imitations of her uncle; but I backed myself into this Mary Wroth corner, and I am going to make the best of it, even if I turn out not to care very much at all about sonnet sequences as a genre. "Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart and write."
Sunday, April 15, 2012
and my own inconsolable heart
Sometimes
posting poems in translation drives me crazy, especially when I am too
lazy to go to the library and must rely on my (actually very decent)
internet research skills and the grace of google books. This is especially
a problem when I have a translation that I like already, but neither
the original nor an attribution for the translator. In any case, I have
conquered the internet; and it is worth it, and I really love Pablo
Neruda.
Si me preguntáis en dónde he estado
debo decir "Sucede".
Debo de hablar del suelo que oscurecen las piedras,
del río que durando se destruye:
no sé sino las cosas que los pájaros pierden,
el mar dejado atrás, o mi hermana llorando.
Por qué tantas regiones, por qué un día
se junta con un día? Por qué una negra noche
se acumula en la boca? Por qué muertos?
Si me preguntáis de dónde vengo tengo que conversar con cosas rotas,
con utensilios demasiado amargos,
con grandes bestias a menudo podridas
y con mi acongojado corazón.
No son recuerdos los que se han cruzado
ni es la paloma amarillenta que duerme en el olvido,
sino caras con lágrimas,
dedos en la garganta,
y lo que se desploma de las hojas:
la oscuridad de un día transcurrido,
de un día alimentado con nuestra triste sangre.
He aquí violetas, golondrinas,
todo cuanto nos gusta y aparece
en las dulces tarjetas de larga cola
por donde se pasean el tiempo y la dulzura.
Pero no penetremos más allá de esos dientes,
no mordamos las cáscaras que el silencio acumula,
porque no sé qué contestar:
hay tantos muertos,
y tantos malecones que el sol rojo partía
y tantas cabezas que golpean los buques,
y tantas manos que han encerrado besos,
y tantas cosas que quiero olvidar.
Ask me where I have been
and I'll tell you: "Things keep on happening."
I must talk of the rubble that darkens the clay;
of the river's duration, destroying itself;
I know only the things that the birds have abandoned,
or the ocean behind me, or my sorrowing sister.
Why the distinctions of place? Why should day
follow day? Why must the blackness
of nighttime collect in our mouths? Why the dead?
If you question me: where have you come from, I must talk with things falling away,
artifacts tart to the taste,
great beasts, always rotting away,
and my own inconsolable heart.
Those who cross over with us, are no keepsakes,
nor the yellowing pigeon that sleeps in forgetfulness:
only the face with its tears,
the hands at our throats,
whatever the leafage dissevers:
the dark of an obsolete day,
a day that has tasted the grief in our blood.
Here are violets, swallows—
all things that delight us, the delicate tablets
that show us the lengthening train
through which pleasure and transiency pass.
Here let us halt, in the teeth of a barrier:
useless to gnaw on the husks that the silence assembles.
For I come without answers:
see: the dying are legion,
legion, the breakwaters breached by the red of the sun,
all the heads knocking the ship's side,
the hands closing over their kisses,
and legion the things I would give to oblivion.
—Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), "No Hay Olvido: Sonata" or "There Is No Forgetting: Sonata" translated by Ben Belitt, from Pablo Neruda: Five Decades, a Selection (Poems 1925-1970), 1931-1935.
Si me preguntáis en dónde he estado
debo decir "Sucede".
Debo de hablar del suelo que oscurecen las piedras,
del río que durando se destruye:
no sé sino las cosas que los pájaros pierden,
el mar dejado atrás, o mi hermana llorando.
Por qué tantas regiones, por qué un día
se junta con un día? Por qué una negra noche
se acumula en la boca? Por qué muertos?
Si me preguntáis de dónde vengo tengo que conversar con cosas rotas,
con utensilios demasiado amargos,
con grandes bestias a menudo podridas
y con mi acongojado corazón.
No son recuerdos los que se han cruzado
ni es la paloma amarillenta que duerme en el olvido,
sino caras con lágrimas,
dedos en la garganta,
y lo que se desploma de las hojas:
la oscuridad de un día transcurrido,
de un día alimentado con nuestra triste sangre.
He aquí violetas, golondrinas,
todo cuanto nos gusta y aparece
en las dulces tarjetas de larga cola
por donde se pasean el tiempo y la dulzura.
Pero no penetremos más allá de esos dientes,
no mordamos las cáscaras que el silencio acumula,
porque no sé qué contestar:
hay tantos muertos,
y tantos malecones que el sol rojo partía
y tantas cabezas que golpean los buques,
y tantas manos que han encerrado besos,
y tantas cosas que quiero olvidar.
Ask me where I have been
and I'll tell you: "Things keep on happening."
I must talk of the rubble that darkens the clay;
of the river's duration, destroying itself;
I know only the things that the birds have abandoned,
or the ocean behind me, or my sorrowing sister.
Why the distinctions of place? Why should day
follow day? Why must the blackness
of nighttime collect in our mouths? Why the dead?
If you question me: where have you come from, I must talk with things falling away,
artifacts tart to the taste,
great beasts, always rotting away,
and my own inconsolable heart.
Those who cross over with us, are no keepsakes,
nor the yellowing pigeon that sleeps in forgetfulness:
only the face with its tears,
the hands at our throats,
whatever the leafage dissevers:
the dark of an obsolete day,
a day that has tasted the grief in our blood.
Here are violets, swallows—
all things that delight us, the delicate tablets
that show us the lengthening train
through which pleasure and transiency pass.
Here let us halt, in the teeth of a barrier:
useless to gnaw on the husks that the silence assembles.
For I come without answers:
see: the dying are legion,
legion, the breakwaters breached by the red of the sun,
all the heads knocking the ship's side,
the hands closing over their kisses,
and legion the things I would give to oblivion.
—Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), "No Hay Olvido: Sonata" or "There Is No Forgetting: Sonata" translated by Ben Belitt, from Pablo Neruda: Five Decades, a Selection (Poems 1925-1970), 1931-1935.
Saturday, April 14, 2012
before, behind, between, above, below
When I made my new reorganized spreadsheet for National Poetry Month, I
discovered a pattern: on my birthday, every year since I began in 2007, I
have alternated between Donne and Auden. (There has only been one
exception: in 2008, which was a weird year in general, I posted the
entire first book of Paradise Lost on my birthday.) Last year was
an Auden year, so this year is a Donne year; I love Donne, both dirty
and sublime, and I thought perhaps this was a year to break into the
Elegies. Also I like to post sexy poems on my birthday.
Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tir'd with standing, though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven's zone glittering,
But a fair fairer world incompassing.
Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
That th' eyes of busy fools may be stopt there.
Unlace your self, for that harmonious chime,
Tells me from you, that now it is bed time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals,
As when from flowery meads th'hill's shadow steals.
Off with your wyerie Coronet and show
The hairy Diademe which on you doth grow.
Now off with those shoes, and then softly tread
In this love's hallow'd temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes, heaven's Angels used to be
Receaved by men: thou Angel bring'st with thee
A heaven like Mahomet's Paradise, and though
Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know,
By this these Angels from an evil sprite,
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
Licence my roaving hands, and let them go,
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America, my new-found-land,
My kingdome, safeliest when with one man man'd,
My mine of precious stones, my Emperie,
How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth'd must be,
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
Are like Atlanta's balls cast, in men's views,
That when a fool's eye lighteth on a gem,
His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them:
Like pictures, or like books gay coverings made
For laymen, are all women thus array'd.
Themselves are mystick books, which only we
(Whom their imputed grace will dignify)
Must see reveal'd. Then since that I may know;
As liberally, as to a Midwife show
Thy self: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,
There is no penance, much less innocence:
To teach thee, I am naked first; why then,
What needst thou have more covering than a man?
—John Donne (1572-1631), Elegie XIX, "To His Mistress Going To Bed." I made some random editorial decisions about punctuation and orthography.
It's been a good birthday. Some of my friends are still here, and we've been talking about Donne and how there should be a Doctor Who episode called "Jack and the Doctor" in which Donne is a companion, and Clarissa, and 18th century fanfiction, and YA fantasy, and the Wizard's Oath. We also had cake and ice cream cake, and earlier today I took my roommate out to breakfast and went and bought myself things and wandered around in the beautiful weather and cleaned my apartment and painted my toenails. I am also wearing lots and lots of glitter and a little black dress. Here's to 27.
Also: a very happy birthday to all the other birthdays today and this week (it is a week of birthdays!); and I love you all. ♥
Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tir'd with standing, though he never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven's zone glittering,
But a fair fairer world incompassing.
Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
That th' eyes of busy fools may be stopt there.
Unlace your self, for that harmonious chime,
Tells me from you, that now it is bed time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals,
As when from flowery meads th'hill's shadow steals.
Off with your wyerie Coronet and show
The hairy Diademe which on you doth grow.
Now off with those shoes, and then softly tread
In this love's hallow'd temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes, heaven's Angels used to be
Receaved by men: thou Angel bring'st with thee
A heaven like Mahomet's Paradise, and though
Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know,
By this these Angels from an evil sprite,
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
Licence my roaving hands, and let them go,
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America, my new-found-land,
My kingdome, safeliest when with one man man'd,
My mine of precious stones, my Emperie,
How blest am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
Full nakedness! All joys are due to thee,
As souls unbodied, bodies uncloth'd must be,
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
Are like Atlanta's balls cast, in men's views,
That when a fool's eye lighteth on a gem,
His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them:
Like pictures, or like books gay coverings made
For laymen, are all women thus array'd.
Themselves are mystick books, which only we
(Whom their imputed grace will dignify)
Must see reveal'd. Then since that I may know;
As liberally, as to a Midwife show
Thy self: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,
There is no penance, much less innocence:
To teach thee, I am naked first; why then,
What needst thou have more covering than a man?
—John Donne (1572-1631), Elegie XIX, "To His Mistress Going To Bed." I made some random editorial decisions about punctuation and orthography.
It's been a good birthday. Some of my friends are still here, and we've been talking about Donne and how there should be a Doctor Who episode called "Jack and the Doctor" in which Donne is a companion, and Clarissa, and 18th century fanfiction, and YA fantasy, and the Wizard's Oath. We also had cake and ice cream cake, and earlier today I took my roommate out to breakfast and went and bought myself things and wandered around in the beautiful weather and cleaned my apartment and painted my toenails. I am also wearing lots and lots of glitter and a little black dress. Here's to 27.
Also: a very happy birthday to all the other birthdays today and this week (it is a week of birthdays!); and I love you all. ♥
Friday, April 13, 2012
crowds of ghosts among the trees
I promised war poetry, and I really like war poetry, so here we go.
Heads up, this is a poem about PTSD. Sassoon wrote this poem around the
time that he was hospitalized for shell shock after declining to return
to duty and writing his famously dissenting letter against the war;
"shell shock" was the official story—rather than a court martial, they
declared him unfit for duty and sent him to hospital—but reportedly
Sassoon actually just hung out in hospital in Scotland playing golf with
his psychiatrist (W. H. Rivers, who gave the lecture on shell shock
after which this poem is titled) and dating becoming
BFFs with Wilfred Owen. I love how cutting this poem is; but then, I
honestly love most things about Siegfried Sassoon.
Now light the candles; one; two; there’s a moth;
What silly beggars they are to blunder in
And scorch their wings with glory, liquid flame—
No, no, not that,—it’s bad to think of war,
When thoughts you’ve gagged all day come back to scare you;
And it’s been proved that soldiers don’t go mad
Unless they lose control of ugly thoughts
That drive them out to jabber among the trees.
Now light your pipe; look, what a steady hand.
Draw a deep breath; stop thinking; count fifteen,
And you’re as right as rain...
Why won’t it rain?...
I wish there’d be a thunder-storm to-night,
With bucketsful of water to sluice the dark,
And make the roses hang their dripping heads.
Books; what a jolly company they are,
Standing so quiet and patient on their shelves,
Dressed in dim brown, and black, and white, and green,
And every kind of colour. Which will you read?
Come on; O do read something; they’re so wise.
I tell you all the wisdom of the world
Is waiting for you on those shelves; and yet
You sit and gnaw your nails, and let your pipe out,
And listen to the silence: on the ceiling
There’s one big, dizzy moth that bumps and flutters;
And in the breathless air outside the house
The garden waits for something that delays.
There must be crowds of ghosts among the trees,—
Not people killed in battle,—they’re in France,—
But horrible shapes in shrouds—old men who died
Slow, natural deaths,—old men with ugly souls,
Who wore their bodies out with nasty sins.
. . .
You’re quiet and peaceful, summering safe at home;
You’d never think there was a bloody war on!...
O yes, you would ... why, you can hear the guns.
Hark! Thud, thud, thud,—quite soft ... they never cease—
Those whispering guns—O Christ, I want to go out
And screech at them to stop—I’m going crazy;
I’m going stark, staring mad because of the guns.
—Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), "Repression of War Experience," from Counter-Attack and Other Poems, 1918.
Now light the candles; one; two; there’s a moth;
What silly beggars they are to blunder in
And scorch their wings with glory, liquid flame—
No, no, not that,—it’s bad to think of war,
When thoughts you’ve gagged all day come back to scare you;
And it’s been proved that soldiers don’t go mad
Unless they lose control of ugly thoughts
That drive them out to jabber among the trees.
Now light your pipe; look, what a steady hand.
Draw a deep breath; stop thinking; count fifteen,
And you’re as right as rain...
Why won’t it rain?...
I wish there’d be a thunder-storm to-night,
With bucketsful of water to sluice the dark,
And make the roses hang their dripping heads.
Books; what a jolly company they are,
Standing so quiet and patient on their shelves,
Dressed in dim brown, and black, and white, and green,
And every kind of colour. Which will you read?
Come on; O do read something; they’re so wise.
I tell you all the wisdom of the world
Is waiting for you on those shelves; and yet
You sit and gnaw your nails, and let your pipe out,
And listen to the silence: on the ceiling
There’s one big, dizzy moth that bumps and flutters;
And in the breathless air outside the house
The garden waits for something that delays.
There must be crowds of ghosts among the trees,—
Not people killed in battle,—they’re in France,—
But horrible shapes in shrouds—old men who died
Slow, natural deaths,—old men with ugly souls,
Who wore their bodies out with nasty sins.
. . .
You’re quiet and peaceful, summering safe at home;
You’d never think there was a bloody war on!...
O yes, you would ... why, you can hear the guns.
Hark! Thud, thud, thud,—quite soft ... they never cease—
Those whispering guns—O Christ, I want to go out
And screech at them to stop—I’m going crazy;
I’m going stark, staring mad because of the guns.
—Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), "Repression of War Experience," from Counter-Attack and Other Poems, 1918.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
writing poetry is not a real skill applicable post-apocalypse
This poem is courtesy of wintercreek, who has a habit of introducing me to stunning poetry I have never heard of:
I am writing you from an eight foot snow drift
somewhere south of somewhere.
I would call, but I lost my phone two days ago
at the ice rink pity party that was really just me,
a frozen lake, some cheap Russian vodka and
a depressed polar bear. (Those guys are dark.)
I still have six waterproof matches
and what Vogue Magazine assures me
is twenty extra pounds of body fat.
No, I am not proud of myself.
No, I am not "done with my obsession with Survivalism."
But I am sorry, I am sorry we fought.
You were right when you said writing poetry is not a real skill
applicable post-apocalypse, and I said but who will tell the good stories,
and you said guys who can fish with their bare hands.
It turns out that's really hard.
Trout are ticklish,
and my hands do not have to do what I tell them to,
some sort of freezing cold water clause.
I have nothing but the time and space I've been pining for now,
and I am using this opportunity to try and remember
why I thought this was a good idea.
I think it had something to do with Escape,
which has permanent offices in the romance division of my brain
and ground troops in my solar plexus.
The flight instinct comes on quicksand,
muscles out all rational thought,
starts Morse coding my limbic system with
complex dots and dashes for strange verbs that mean,
roughly translated: "joyous chewing your leash off,"
and "fire without readiness or aim."
It always feels so right to go,
like it's the only story my body knows by heart:
the creation myth of Alaskan shorebirds,
the bedtime story highways whisper to dirt roads,
the real reason horses sometimes obey.
You really wanted to marry me didn't you?
My eyelashes are soaked now.
I'm beginning to think I will never see you again,
that I will never see anything again
but the twenty yards or so of visibility
in stark panorama around my broken sled.
I feel like an idiot, but I'm not scared.
You'd think I would be scared.
These are the soft frozen fields tundra vacations to,
the great white quiet.
No one to distrust.
I deserve this.
You would be amazed how much light there is.
The stars stay out all night.
Each snow flake is a mirror.
—Mindy Nettifee, "To The Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me"
I am writing you from an eight foot snow drift
somewhere south of somewhere.
I would call, but I lost my phone two days ago
at the ice rink pity party that was really just me,
a frozen lake, some cheap Russian vodka and
a depressed polar bear. (Those guys are dark.)
I still have six waterproof matches
and what Vogue Magazine assures me
is twenty extra pounds of body fat.
No, I am not proud of myself.
No, I am not "done with my obsession with Survivalism."
But I am sorry, I am sorry we fought.
You were right when you said writing poetry is not a real skill
applicable post-apocalypse, and I said but who will tell the good stories,
and you said guys who can fish with their bare hands.
It turns out that's really hard.
Trout are ticklish,
and my hands do not have to do what I tell them to,
some sort of freezing cold water clause.
I have nothing but the time and space I've been pining for now,
and I am using this opportunity to try and remember
why I thought this was a good idea.
I think it had something to do with Escape,
which has permanent offices in the romance division of my brain
and ground troops in my solar plexus.
The flight instinct comes on quicksand,
muscles out all rational thought,
starts Morse coding my limbic system with
complex dots and dashes for strange verbs that mean,
roughly translated: "joyous chewing your leash off,"
and "fire without readiness or aim."
It always feels so right to go,
like it's the only story my body knows by heart:
the creation myth of Alaskan shorebirds,
the bedtime story highways whisper to dirt roads,
the real reason horses sometimes obey.
You really wanted to marry me didn't you?
My eyelashes are soaked now.
I'm beginning to think I will never see you again,
that I will never see anything again
but the twenty yards or so of visibility
in stark panorama around my broken sled.
I feel like an idiot, but I'm not scared.
You'd think I would be scared.
These are the soft frozen fields tundra vacations to,
the great white quiet.
No one to distrust.
I deserve this.
You would be amazed how much light there is.
The stars stay out all night.
Each snow flake is a mirror.
—Mindy Nettifee, "To The Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me"
Monday, April 9, 2012
for every year of peace
It is possible that we may be entering a week of war poetry, but I make no firm promises. Thanks to Marina for this one.
Confess: it’s my profession
that alarms you.
This is why few people ask me to dinner,
though Lord knows I don’t go out of my way to be scary.
I wear dresses of sensible cut
and unalarming shades of beige,
I smell of lavender and go to the hairdresser’s:
no prophetess mane of mine,
complete with snakes, will frighten the youngsters.
If my eyes roll and I mutter,
if my arms are gloved in blood right up to the elbow,
if I clutch at my heart and scream in horror
like a third-rate actress chewing up a mad scene,
I do it in private and nobody sees
but the bathroom mirror.
In general I might agree with you:
women should not contemplate war,
should not weigh tactics impartially,
or evade the word enemy,
or view both sides and denounce nothing.
Women should march for peace,
or hand out white feathers to inspire bravery,
spit themselves on bayonets
to protect their babies,
whose skulls will be split anyway,
or, having been raped repeatedly,
hang themselves with their own hair.
These are the functions that inspire general comfort.
That, and the knitting of socks for the troops
and a sort of moral cheerleading.
Also: mourning the dead.
Sons, lovers, and so forth.
All the killed children.
Instead of this, I tell
what I hope will pass as truth.
A blunt thing, not lovely.
The truth is seldom welcome,
especially at dinner,
though I am good at what I do.
My trade is in courage and atrocities.
I look at them and do not condemn.
I write things down the way they happened,
as near as can be remembered.
I don’t ask why because it is mostly the same.
Wars happen because the ones who start them
think they can win.
In my dreams there is glamour.
The Vikings leave their fields
each year for a few months of killing and plunder
much as the boys go hunting.
In real life they were farmers.
They come back loaded with splendor.
The Arabs ride against Crusaders
with scimitars that could sever
silk in the air. A swift cut to the horse’s neck
and a hunk of armor crashes down
like a tower. Fire against metal.
A poet might say: romance against banality.
When awake I know better.
Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters,
or none that can be finally buried.
Finish one off and circumstances
and the radio create another.
Believe me: whole armies have prayed fervently
to God all night and meant it,
and been slaughtered anyway.
Brutality wins frequently,
and large outcomes have turned on the invention
of a mechanical device, viz. radar.
True, sometimes valor counts for something,
as at Thermopylae. Sometimes being right,
though ultimate virtue by agreed tradition
is decided by the winner.
Sometimes men throw themselves on grenades
and burst like paper bags of guts
to save their comrades.
I can admire that.
But rats and cholera have won many wars.
Those, and potatoes
or the absence of them.
It’s no use pinning all those medals
across the chests of the dead.
Impressive, but I know too much.
Grand exploits merely depress me.
In the interests of research
I have walked on many battlefields
that once were liquid with pulped
men’s bodies and spangled with burst
shells and splayed bone.
All of them have been green again
by the time I got there.
Each has inspired a few good quotes in its day.
Sad marble angels brood like hens
over the grassy nests where nothing hatches.
(The angels could just as well be described as vulgar,
or pitiless, depending on camera angle.)
The word glory figures a lot on gateways.
Of course I pick a flower or two
from each, and press it in the hotel
Bible, for a souvenir.
I’m just as human as you.
But it’s no use asking me for a final statement.
As I say, I deal in tactics.
Also statistics:
for every year of peace there have been four hundred
years of war.
—Margaret Atwood (b. 1939), "The Loneliness of the Military Historian" from Morning in the Burned House, 1995.
Confess: it’s my profession
that alarms you.
This is why few people ask me to dinner,
though Lord knows I don’t go out of my way to be scary.
I wear dresses of sensible cut
and unalarming shades of beige,
I smell of lavender and go to the hairdresser’s:
no prophetess mane of mine,
complete with snakes, will frighten the youngsters.
If my eyes roll and I mutter,
if my arms are gloved in blood right up to the elbow,
if I clutch at my heart and scream in horror
like a third-rate actress chewing up a mad scene,
I do it in private and nobody sees
but the bathroom mirror.
In general I might agree with you:
women should not contemplate war,
should not weigh tactics impartially,
or evade the word enemy,
or view both sides and denounce nothing.
Women should march for peace,
or hand out white feathers to inspire bravery,
spit themselves on bayonets
to protect their babies,
whose skulls will be split anyway,
or, having been raped repeatedly,
hang themselves with their own hair.
These are the functions that inspire general comfort.
That, and the knitting of socks for the troops
and a sort of moral cheerleading.
Also: mourning the dead.
Sons, lovers, and so forth.
All the killed children.
Instead of this, I tell
what I hope will pass as truth.
A blunt thing, not lovely.
The truth is seldom welcome,
especially at dinner,
though I am good at what I do.
My trade is in courage and atrocities.
I look at them and do not condemn.
I write things down the way they happened,
as near as can be remembered.
I don’t ask why because it is mostly the same.
Wars happen because the ones who start them
think they can win.
In my dreams there is glamour.
The Vikings leave their fields
each year for a few months of killing and plunder
much as the boys go hunting.
In real life they were farmers.
They come back loaded with splendor.
The Arabs ride against Crusaders
with scimitars that could sever
silk in the air. A swift cut to the horse’s neck
and a hunk of armor crashes down
like a tower. Fire against metal.
A poet might say: romance against banality.
When awake I know better.
Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters,
or none that can be finally buried.
Finish one off and circumstances
and the radio create another.
Believe me: whole armies have prayed fervently
to God all night and meant it,
and been slaughtered anyway.
Brutality wins frequently,
and large outcomes have turned on the invention
of a mechanical device, viz. radar.
True, sometimes valor counts for something,
as at Thermopylae. Sometimes being right,
though ultimate virtue by agreed tradition
is decided by the winner.
Sometimes men throw themselves on grenades
and burst like paper bags of guts
to save their comrades.
I can admire that.
But rats and cholera have won many wars.
Those, and potatoes
or the absence of them.
It’s no use pinning all those medals
across the chests of the dead.
Impressive, but I know too much.
Grand exploits merely depress me.
In the interests of research
I have walked on many battlefields
that once were liquid with pulped
men’s bodies and spangled with burst
shells and splayed bone.
All of them have been green again
by the time I got there.
Each has inspired a few good quotes in its day.
Sad marble angels brood like hens
over the grassy nests where nothing hatches.
(The angels could just as well be described as vulgar,
or pitiless, depending on camera angle.)
The word glory figures a lot on gateways.
Of course I pick a flower or two
from each, and press it in the hotel
Bible, for a souvenir.
I’m just as human as you.
But it’s no use asking me for a final statement.
As I say, I deal in tactics.
Also statistics:
for every year of peace there have been four hundred
years of war.
—Margaret Atwood (b. 1939), "The Loneliness of the Military Historian" from Morning in the Burned House, 1995.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
april's green endures
I am off to brunch, but before I go:
I
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.
II
Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.
III
Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to desire
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.
IV
She says, "I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?"
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.
V
She says, "But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss."
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.
VI
Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set the pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.
VII
Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feet shall manifest.
VIII
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay."
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
—Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), "Sunday Morning," from Harmonium, 1923. As is often the case with Stevens, I cannot say that I entirely agree with the message, but the poem is beautiful; and anyway I think Stevens is a little conflicted about his own message, and there are parts of it that I really love. You guys can decide whether this is better or worse than that time I posted "The Second Coming" on Easter.
I
Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.
She dreams a little, and she feels the dark
Encroachment of that old catastrophe,
As a calm darkens among water-lights.
The pungent oranges and bright, green wings
Seem things in some procession of the dead,
Winding across wide water, without sound.
The day is like wide water, without sound,
Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet
Over the seas, to silent Palestine,
Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.
II
Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measures destined for her soul.
III
Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.
No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave
Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind
He moved among us, as a muttering king,
Magnificent, would move among his hinds,
Until our blood, commingling, virginal,
With heaven, brought such requital to desire
The very hinds discerned it, in a star.
Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be
The blood of paradise? And shall the earth
Seem all of paradise that we shall know?
The sky will be much friendlier then than now,
A part of labor and a part of pain,
And next in glory to enduring love,
Not this dividing and indifferent blue.
IV
She says, "I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?"
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.
V
She says, "But in contentment I still feel
The need of some imperishable bliss."
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams
And our desires. Although she strews the leaves
Of sure obliteration on our paths,
The path sick sorrow took, the many paths
Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love
Whispered a little out of tenderness,
She makes the willow shiver in the sun
For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze
Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.
She causes boys to pile new plums and pears
On disregarded plate. The maidens taste
And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.
VI
Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs
Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,
Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,
With rivers like our own that seek for seas
They never find, the same receding shores
That never touch with inarticulate pang?
Why set the pear upon those river-banks
Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?
Alas, that they should wear our colors there,
The silken weavings of our afternoons,
And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!
Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.
VII
Supple and turbulent, a ring of men
Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn
Their boisterous devotion to the sun,
Not as a god, but as a god might be,
Naked among them, like a savage source.
Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,
Out of their blood, returning to the sky;
And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,
The windy lake wherein their lord delights,
The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,
That choir among themselves long afterward.
They shall know well the heavenly fellowship
Of men that perish and of summer morn.
And whence they came and whither they shall go
The dew upon their feet shall manifest.
VIII
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, "The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay."
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
—Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), "Sunday Morning," from Harmonium, 1923. As is often the case with Stevens, I cannot say that I entirely agree with the message, but the poem is beautiful; and anyway I think Stevens is a little conflicted about his own message, and there are parts of it that I really love. You guys can decide whether this is better or worse than that time I posted "The Second Coming" on Easter.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
as well a well-wrought urn becomes
It is genuinely baffling that I have never posted this poem.
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
—Marge Piercy (b. 1936), "To Be of Use"
I am having one of those beautiful Saturdays of grocery shopping and apartment cleaning, cooking and laundry and household productivity and organization. Admittedly I am a little haunted by all of the other work I have to do; on the other hand, there's a kind of peace in the household work that makes me feel a whole lot better about everything else. Calmer, more focused, more able to take on the world.
Meanwhile: Chag Sameach. Happy Easter. Happy spring. Happy weekend.
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
—Marge Piercy (b. 1936), "To Be of Use"
I am having one of those beautiful Saturdays of grocery shopping and apartment cleaning, cooking and laundry and household productivity and organization. Admittedly I am a little haunted by all of the other work I have to do; on the other hand, there's a kind of peace in the household work that makes me feel a whole lot better about everything else. Calmer, more focused, more able to take on the world.
Meanwhile: Chag Sameach. Happy Easter. Happy spring. Happy weekend.
Friday, April 6, 2012
and I have come upon this place by lost ways
For reasons passing understand (but about which I cannot really
complain), I sometimes get this poem stuck in my head. Thanks, as is
often the case with my poetry selections, to Polaris.
And I have come upon this place
By lost ways, by a nod, by words,
By faces, by an old man's face
At Morlaix lifted to the birds,
By hands upon the tablecloth
At Aldebori's, by the thin
Child's hands that opened to the moth
And let the flutter of the moonlight in,
By hands, by voices, by the voice
Of Mrs. Whitman on the stair,
By Margaret's 'If we had the choice
To choose or not - 'through her thick hair,
By voices, by the creak and fall
Of footsteps on the upper floor,
By silence waiting in the hall
Between the doorbell and the door,
By words, by voices, a lost way - ,
And here above the chimney stack
The unknown constellations sway -
And by what way shall I go back?
—Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982), "L'An Trentiesme de Mon Eage".
And I have come upon this place
By lost ways, by a nod, by words,
By faces, by an old man's face
At Morlaix lifted to the birds,
By hands upon the tablecloth
At Aldebori's, by the thin
Child's hands that opened to the moth
And let the flutter of the moonlight in,
By hands, by voices, by the voice
Of Mrs. Whitman on the stair,
By Margaret's 'If we had the choice
To choose or not - 'through her thick hair,
By voices, by the creak and fall
Of footsteps on the upper floor,
By silence waiting in the hall
Between the doorbell and the door,
By words, by voices, a lost way - ,
And here above the chimney stack
The unknown constellations sway -
And by what way shall I go back?
—Archibald MacLeish (1892-1982), "L'An Trentiesme de Mon Eage".
Thursday, April 5, 2012
in perpetuum
My brother's memorial service was a year ago today. I thought, at the
time, about posting the speech I gave, and then I thought about posting
that speech today, a year later in memorium; but I actually don't
really want to reread that speech, even though it was a good one and I
meant everything I said. Let's go with this instead, shall we? Last year
it was a little too immediately topical, but this year it feels just
about right.
Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus
advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias,
ut te postremo donarem munere mortis
et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem,
quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum,
heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi.
Nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum
tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,
accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,
atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.
Transported through many peoples and many seas,
I have come, O my brother, for these wretched offerings,
So that I might honor the dead with final gifts
and speak pointlessly to your silent ashes,
Because Fate stole you yourself away from me,
Oh, my wretched brother, taken from me undeservedly.
Yet now in these circumstances, these offerings
handed down from our ancestors, ancient custom and sad duty --
Accept them dripping with tears from your brother,
and for eternity, O my brother: "hail and farewell."
—Gaius Valerius Catullus, Carmina 101. The translation is starlady's. She posted it last year, and I quoted it in the speech I gave at the memorial; there are thousands of different translations of Carmina 101 -- it's one of Catullus's most famous poems, and most quoted -- but I like this one.
Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus
advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias,
ut te postremo donarem munere mortis
et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem,
quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum,
heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi.
Nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum
tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,
accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,
atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.
Transported through many peoples and many seas,
I have come, O my brother, for these wretched offerings,
So that I might honor the dead with final gifts
and speak pointlessly to your silent ashes,
Because Fate stole you yourself away from me,
Oh, my wretched brother, taken from me undeservedly.
Yet now in these circumstances, these offerings
handed down from our ancestors, ancient custom and sad duty --
Accept them dripping with tears from your brother,
and for eternity, O my brother: "hail and farewell."
—Gaius Valerius Catullus, Carmina 101. The translation is starlady's. She posted it last year, and I quoted it in the speech I gave at the memorial; there are thousands of different translations of Carmina 101 -- it's one of Catullus's most famous poems, and most quoted -- but I like this one.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
like a flaring thing
Sometimes I have this problem with National Poetry Month. The problem goes like this: I know
today is a Herbert day -- for about ten different reasons, starting
with drinking champagne and reading Erasmus on the lawn in the sunshine
instead of eating lunch, and ending with my friend who just passed her
oral exams drunkenly folding $20 bills into frogs -- but then after a
very long day of excellent classes and glorious weather and good
friends, I get lost rereading The Temple; and then it is half
past 11, and somewhere in this book is the right poem for the day, but
the thing is that once you cross that threshold, The Temple is a
whole lot bigger on the inside, and choosing the right poem becomes
weighted, complicated, more than just a choice. A heart in a building in
a heart that is a building. The TARDIS effect of Metaphysical Poetry.
Your relationship with God.
Herbert is not always wonderful, and in any case I think he may be an acquired taste, but I love him. Feel free to speculate about what my selection of this poem says about me. Alternatively, go read the rest of The Temple. You might hate it, especially if you're not into devotional poetry; on the other hand, you'll get to enjoy the dubious pleasure of the Anamarygram.
Lord, how can man preach thy eternall word?
He is a brittle crazie glass;
Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford
This glorious and transcendent place,
To be a window, through thy grace.
But when thou dost anneal in glasse thy story,
Making thy life to shine within
The holy preachers, then the light and glorie
More rev'rend grows, & more doth win;
Which else shows watrish, bleak, & thin.
Doctrine and life, colours and light, in one
When they combine and mingle, bring
A strong regard and awe; but speech alone
Doth vanish like a flaring thing,
And in the ear, not conscience, ring.
—George Herbert (1593-1633), "The Windows" from The Temple, 1633.
Herbert is not always wonderful, and in any case I think he may be an acquired taste, but I love him. Feel free to speculate about what my selection of this poem says about me. Alternatively, go read the rest of The Temple. You might hate it, especially if you're not into devotional poetry; on the other hand, you'll get to enjoy the dubious pleasure of the Anamarygram.
Lord, how can man preach thy eternall word?
He is a brittle crazie glass;
Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford
This glorious and transcendent place,
To be a window, through thy grace.
But when thou dost anneal in glasse thy story,
Making thy life to shine within
The holy preachers, then the light and glorie
More rev'rend grows, & more doth win;
Which else shows watrish, bleak, & thin.
Doctrine and life, colours and light, in one
When they combine and mingle, bring
A strong regard and awe; but speech alone
Doth vanish like a flaring thing,
And in the ear, not conscience, ring.
—George Herbert (1593-1633), "The Windows" from The Temple, 1633.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
city of hurried and sparkling waters
Today was not a good day. I didn't get enough sleep last night, and then
I got some bad news, and I was (am) anxious and depressed and exhausted
and hormonal, and worryingly full, this week, of recriminations and
self-doubt.
On the other hand, all the trees in New York City are blooming, and today was a perfect spring day, all flowers and clear blue skies. My afternoon class up at Fordham was unusually excellent, and on the drive back we took the northern route, picking up the Hudson Parkway in the Bronx and crossing into Manhattan at the very top, and the drive along the Hudson in the evening light, watching the sun just start to set over the river, was almost unbearably beautiful. There are days when I love this city passionately; and you know, nobody loves this city quite so much as Walt Whitman.
I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
Whereupon, lo! upsprang the aboriginal name!
Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly, musical, self-sufficient;
I see that the word of my city is that word up there,
Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb, with tall and wonderful spires,
Rich, hemm’d thick all around with sailships and steamships—an island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,
Numberless crowded streets—high growths of iron, slender, strong, light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies;
Tide swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward sundown,
The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining islands, the heights, the villas,
The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, the ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers well-model’d;
The down-town streets, the jobbers’ houses of business—the houses of business of the ship-merchants, and money-brokers—the river-streets;
Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week;
The carts hauling goods—the manly race of drivers of horses—the brown-faced sailors;
The summer air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing clouds aloft;
The winter snows, the sleigh-bells—the broken ice in the river, passing along, up or down, with the flood tide or ebb-tide;
The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form’d, beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes;
Trottoirs throng’d—vehicles—Broadway—the women—the shops and shows,
The parades, processions, bugles playing, flags flying, drums beating;
A million people—manners free and superb—open voices—hospitality—the most courageous and friendly young men;
The free city! no slaves! no owners of slaves!
The beautiful city, the city of hurried and sparkling waters! the city of spires and masts!
The city nested in bays! my city!
The city of such women, I am mad to be with them! I will return after death to be with them!
The city of such young men, I swear I cannot live happy, without I often go talk, walk, eat, drink, sleep, with them!
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892), "Mannahatta" from Leaves of Grass, 1900; first published in 1860.
You sleep with those young men, Uncle Walt! In all honesty this is not really my favorite Walt Whitman poem -- although in general, and somewhat to my own shame, I run a little hot and cold on Whitman -- but I did not really get to sing the praises of Manhattan in poetry, last year, and I wanted to make up for that lack this time around.
On the other hand, all the trees in New York City are blooming, and today was a perfect spring day, all flowers and clear blue skies. My afternoon class up at Fordham was unusually excellent, and on the drive back we took the northern route, picking up the Hudson Parkway in the Bronx and crossing into Manhattan at the very top, and the drive along the Hudson in the evening light, watching the sun just start to set over the river, was almost unbearably beautiful. There are days when I love this city passionately; and you know, nobody loves this city quite so much as Walt Whitman.
I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,
Whereupon, lo! upsprang the aboriginal name!
Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly, musical, self-sufficient;
I see that the word of my city is that word up there,
Because I see that word nested in nests of water-bays, superb, with tall and wonderful spires,
Rich, hemm’d thick all around with sailships and steamships—an island sixteen miles long, solid-founded,
Numberless crowded streets—high growths of iron, slender, strong, light, splendidly uprising toward clear skies;
Tide swift and ample, well-loved by me, toward sundown,
The flowing sea-currents, the little islands, larger adjoining islands, the heights, the villas,
The countless masts, the white shore-steamers, the lighters, the ferry-boats, the black sea-steamers well-model’d;
The down-town streets, the jobbers’ houses of business—the houses of business of the ship-merchants, and money-brokers—the river-streets;
Immigrants arriving, fifteen or twenty thousand in a week;
The carts hauling goods—the manly race of drivers of horses—the brown-faced sailors;
The summer air, the bright sun shining, and the sailing clouds aloft;
The winter snows, the sleigh-bells—the broken ice in the river, passing along, up or down, with the flood tide or ebb-tide;
The mechanics of the city, the masters, well-form’d, beautiful-faced, looking you straight in the eyes;
Trottoirs throng’d—vehicles—Broadway—the women—the shops and shows,
The parades, processions, bugles playing, flags flying, drums beating;
A million people—manners free and superb—open voices—hospitality—the most courageous and friendly young men;
The free city! no slaves! no owners of slaves!
The beautiful city, the city of hurried and sparkling waters! the city of spires and masts!
The city nested in bays! my city!
The city of such women, I am mad to be with them! I will return after death to be with them!
The city of such young men, I swear I cannot live happy, without I often go talk, walk, eat, drink, sleep, with them!
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892), "Mannahatta" from Leaves of Grass, 1900; first published in 1860.
You sleep with those young men, Uncle Walt! In all honesty this is not really my favorite Walt Whitman poem -- although in general, and somewhat to my own shame, I run a little hot and cold on Whitman -- but I did not really get to sing the praises of Manhattan in poetry, last year, and I wanted to make up for that lack this time around.
Monday, April 2, 2012
leave comfort root-room
I am overplaying my hand, a bit, posting Hopkins this early in the
month. It was that kind of day, though; maybe one of these years I will
post a Hopkins poem that isn't a sonnet. MAYBE SOMEDAY I WILL POST THE EPITHALAMION. Anyway, not today.
My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.
Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
'S not wrung, see you; unforseentimes rather—as skies
Betweenpie mountains—lights a lovely mile.
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), "My own heart"
Oh gosh, the things he does with language. It cannot have been easy to live in your head, GMH, but I remain extraordinarily glad that you wrote it all down.
My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.
I cast for comfort I can no more get
By groping round my comfortless than blind
Eyes in their dark can day or thirst can find
Thirst's all-in-all in all a world of wet.
Soul, self; come, poor Jackself, I do advise
You, jaded, let be; call off thoughts awhile
Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room; let joy size
At God knows when to God knows what; whose smile
'S not wrung, see you; unforseentimes rather—as skies
Betweenpie mountains—lights a lovely mile.
—Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889), "My own heart"
Oh gosh, the things he does with language. It cannot have been easy to live in your head, GMH, but I remain extraordinarily glad that you wrote it all down.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
weather in the heart
Hello everyone! Here we go: year six of
National Poetry Month at Casa Olivia. There will be something
approximating a poem a day from today until the end of the month. I am
both eclectic and predictable. I try not to repeat poets within the
course of the month, and I try not to repeat poems I have posted in
previous years, but I don't promise not to break my own rules.
This last week has been very bad, in both expected and unexpected ways; and it has been good, from time to time -- at least, having my parents here was good, even if I was not in any kind of emotional state to really enjoy their company. (I also really appreciate all the text messages and twitter hearts and emails and long distance hugs; you guys are very, very wonderful, as I hope you know. ♥) But it was a bad week, and so I want to start this April as I mean to go on: with better things. I am drinking very good coffee out of a mug my roommate bought me that reads, "anyone can be cool, but awesome takes practice," and I cleaned the kitchen while I made coffee; I have poetry books on most available surfaces and a whole damn lot of work to do; and I have Adrienne Rich.
The glass has been falling all the afternoon,
And knowing better than the instrument
What winds are walking overhead, what zone
Of gray unrest is moving across the land,
I leave the book upon a pillowed chair
And walk from window to closed window, watching
Boughs strain against the sky
And think again, as often when the air
Moves inward toward a silent core of waiting,
How with a single purpose time has traveled
By secret currents of the undiscerned
Into this polar realm. Weather abroad
And weather in the heart alike come on
Regardless of prediction.
Between foreseeing and averting change
Lies all the mastery of elements
Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter.
Time in the hand is not control of time,
Nor shattered fragments of an instrument
A proof against the wind; the wind will rise,
We can only close the shutters.
I draw the curtains as the sky goes black
And set a match to candles sheathed in glass
Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine
Of weather through the unsealed aperture.
This is our sole defense against the season;
These are the things that we have learned to do
Who live in troubled regions.
—Adrienne Rich, "Storm Warnings," from A Change of World, 1951.
Adrienne Rich died last Tuesday, a year and a day after my brother. I continue to think that he keeps rather good company. I thought about posting several different Adrienne Rich poems for today, including a few I have posted in previous years, and some that are happier than this one, and some that were more recent; but I love this one, rather in the same way that I love thunderstorms.
This last week has been very bad, in both expected and unexpected ways; and it has been good, from time to time -- at least, having my parents here was good, even if I was not in any kind of emotional state to really enjoy their company. (I also really appreciate all the text messages and twitter hearts and emails and long distance hugs; you guys are very, very wonderful, as I hope you know. ♥) But it was a bad week, and so I want to start this April as I mean to go on: with better things. I am drinking very good coffee out of a mug my roommate bought me that reads, "anyone can be cool, but awesome takes practice," and I cleaned the kitchen while I made coffee; I have poetry books on most available surfaces and a whole damn lot of work to do; and I have Adrienne Rich.
The glass has been falling all the afternoon,
And knowing better than the instrument
What winds are walking overhead, what zone
Of gray unrest is moving across the land,
I leave the book upon a pillowed chair
And walk from window to closed window, watching
Boughs strain against the sky
And think again, as often when the air
Moves inward toward a silent core of waiting,
How with a single purpose time has traveled
By secret currents of the undiscerned
Into this polar realm. Weather abroad
And weather in the heart alike come on
Regardless of prediction.
Between foreseeing and averting change
Lies all the mastery of elements
Which clocks and weatherglasses cannot alter.
Time in the hand is not control of time,
Nor shattered fragments of an instrument
A proof against the wind; the wind will rise,
We can only close the shutters.
I draw the curtains as the sky goes black
And set a match to candles sheathed in glass
Against the keyhole draught, the insistent whine
Of weather through the unsealed aperture.
This is our sole defense against the season;
These are the things that we have learned to do
Who live in troubled regions.
—Adrienne Rich, "Storm Warnings," from A Change of World, 1951.
Adrienne Rich died last Tuesday, a year and a day after my brother. I continue to think that he keeps rather good company. I thought about posting several different Adrienne Rich poems for today, including a few I have posted in previous years, and some that are happier than this one, and some that were more recent; but I love this one, rather in the same way that I love thunderstorms.
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