like the cathedral bell

I'm trying to feel this one today, because it is so tender and perfect and beautiful in a week when both Lucy and I are struggling with bad pain days and work stressors and shitty weather and the post-vacation blues, and I have been feeling cranky and prickly for—I was about to say "no good reason," but then I looked at the above reasons—some good reasons but also some stupid ones. So. Lean in to the softness.

Mornings are blind as newborn cats.
Fingernails grow so trustfully, for a while
they don't know what they're going to touch. Dreams
are soft, and tenderness looms over us
like fog, like the cathedral bell of Cracow
before it cooled.

—Adam Zagajewski (1945-2021), "Ode to Softness," from Tremor (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1985).

let the skie raine potatoes

I've been feeling fairly dreadful since Monday, and as a result—obviously—have fallen behind on the poetry. But I do have poems I want to post, so I'm going to post a few at once. I might even run over into May. Time is pretty meaningless!

I have also been watching a lot of old seasons of Top Chef, and it's amazing how many different ways people have figured out to fuck up potatoes. Potatoes are too great to fuck up, people. Here's a poem about potatoes.

"They eat a lot of French fries here," my mother
     announces after a week in Paris, and she's right,
not only about les pommes frites but the celestial tuber
     in all its forms: rotie, purée, not to mention
au gratin or boiled and oiled in la salade niçoise.
     Batata edulis discovered by gold-mad conquistadors
in the West Indies, and only a 100 years later
     in The Merry Wives of Windsor Falstaff cries,
"Let the skie raine Potatoes," for what would we be
     without you—lost in a sea of fried turnips,
mashed beets, roasted parsnips? Mi corazón, mon coeur,
     my core is not the heart but the stomach, tuber
of the body, its hollow stem the throat and esophagus,
     leafing out to the nose and eyes and mouth. Hail
the conquering spud, all its names marvelous: Solanum
     tuberosum, Igname, Caribe, Russian Banana, Yukon Gold.
When you turned black, Ireland mourned. O Mr. Potato Head,
     how many deals can a man make before he stops being
small potatoes? How many men can a woman drop
     like a hot potato? Eat it cooked or raw like an apple
with salt of the earth, apple of the earth, pomme de terre.
     Tuber, tuber burning bright in a kingdom without light,
deep within the earth where the Incan potato gods rule,
     forging their golden orbs for the world's ravening gorge.

—Barbara Hamby, "Ode to the Potato," from Babel, 2004.

where are the songs of spring?

Good morning, April! April is the cruelest month, breeding | Lilacs out of the dead land, | Mixing memory and desire, stirring | Dull roots with spring rain my favorite month, and it is my favorite month not only because it is the month of my birth, but also because it is National Poetry Month in the U.S. For those of you new to this journal, this will be my -- holy crap -- fourth year posting poetry for National Poetry Month. I post a poem every day, and I endeavor (with varying degrees of success) not to repeat myself. I have a spreadsheet! I look forward to this all year!

This year, I am going to begin with a poem that has nothing to do with spring. I never post this poem, because it's about entirely the wrong time of year -- still, though, it seems a good place to start, with the warm breeze, and the slightly-hazy blue sky, and the birds twittering outside my open window. It's my favorite of his odes, no matter what time of year. And I do like beginning with Keats.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, --
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

~John Keats (1795–1821), To Autumn, 1819.

darkling, I listen

An old favorite, today.

1.

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,—
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

2.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

3.

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs,
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.

4.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

5.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;
And mid-May’s eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

6.

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.

7.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

8.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toil me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?

~John Keats (1795–1821), Ode to a Nightingale. It's weird that I haven't posted this one before, actually, but there is a lot of Keats to go around, and a lot of Keats that I love, and as gorgeous as this poem is, it is also very dark. I like that, though.

heard melodies are sweet

JJ and I were talking about "Ode on a Grecian Urn," yesterday, and while I am somewhat loathe to squander Keats so early in the month -- much less be so Romantics-centric so early in the month -- I can't seem to get the poem out of my head.

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

~John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn," 1819/20. I've left the quotation marks off the last two lines; read them how best you like. Keats will, probably forever, make me think of Aurora's adage: "Keats is like kissing people." Try reading the poem aloud, and you'll see what she means.