all men are bad

Yesterday, April 23, was Shakespeare's alleged birthday and death day, and my tradition is to post a poem that is tangentially related to Shakespeare—often referencing one of the plays, as in this case—and one sonnet. Shakespeare wrote a lot of beautiful sonnets, some of which are incredible exercises in craft and poetry, and many of which are very queer and sexy. This is not really one of those.

My shoes are unpolished, my words smudged.
I come to you undressed (the lord, he whispers
Smut; that man, he whispers such). I bend
My thoughts, I submit, but a bird
Keeps flying from my mind, it slippers
My feet and sings—barren world,
I have been a little minx in it, not at all
Domestic, not at all clean, not at all blinking
At my lies. First he thought he had a wife, then
(of course) he thought he had a whore. All
I wanted (if I may speak for myself) was: more.
If only one of you had said, I hold
Your craven breaking soul, I see the pieces,
I feel them in my hands, idle silver, idle gold...
You see I cannot speak without telling what I am.
I disobey the death you gave me, love.
If you must be, then be not with me.

—Meghan O'Rourke, "Ophelia to the Court," 2010.

*

Tis better to be vile than vile esteemed
When not to be receives reproach of being,
And the just pleasures lost, which is so deemed
Not by our feeling, but by others' seeing.
For why should others' false adulterate eyes
Give salutation to my sportive blood?
Or on my frailties why are frailer spies,
Which in their wills count bad what I think good?
No, I am that I am, and they that level
At my abuses reckon up their own;
I may be straight though they themselves be bevel.
By their rank thoughts my deeds must not be shown,
Unless this general evil they maintain:
All men are bad and in their badness reign.

—William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Sonnet 121. All men are bad, thank you, Will.

will in overplus

Today is Shakespeare Day! The tradition in recent years, on Shakespeare Day, has been to post one sonnet and one poem that is not by Shakespeare, but relates in some way to Shakespeare. This year, a pun-filled sonnet (sometimes the sonnets are really ludicrous), and an incredible poem that I was introduced to by a friend, which has some things to say about Hamlet. 

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy 'Will,'

And 'Will' to boot, and 'Will' in overplus;

More than enough am I that vex thee still,

To thy sweet will making addition thus.

Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious,

Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?

Shall will in others seem right gracious,

And in my will no fair acceptance shine?

The sea all water, yet receives rain still

And in abundance addeth to his store;

So thou, being rich in 'Will,' add to thy 'Will'

One will of mine, to make thy large 'Will' more.

Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill;

Think all but one, and me in that one 'Will.'

—William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Sonnet 135

*

To C.M.

Now that we're alone we can talk prince man to man

though you lie on the stairs and see no more than a dead ant

nothing but black sun with broken rays

I could never think of your hands without smiling

and now that they lie on the stone like fallen nests

they are as defenceless as before The end is exactly this

The hands lie apart The sword lies apart The head apart

and the knight's feet in soft slippers

You will have a soldier's funeral without having been a soldier

the only ritual I am acquainted with a little

There will be no candles no singing only cannon-fuses and bursts

crepe dragged on the pavement helmets boots artillery horses drums

drums I know nothing exquisite

those will be my manoeuvres before I start to rule

one has to take the city by neck and shake it a bit

Anyhow you had to perish Hamlet you were not for life

you believed in crystal notions not in human clay

always twitching as if asleep you hunted chimeras

wolfishly you crunched the air only to vomit

you knew no human thing you did not know even how to breathe

Now you have peace Hamlet you accomplished what you had to

and you have peace The rest is not silence but belongs to me

you chose the easier part an elegant thrust

but what is heroic death compared with eternal watching

with a cold apple in one's hand on a narrow chair

with a view of the ant-hill and the clock’s dial

Adieu prince I have tasks a sewer project

and a decree on prostitutes and beggars

I must also elaborate a better system of prisons

since as you justly said Denmark is a prison

I go to my affairs This night is born

a star named Hamlet We shall never meet

what I shall leave will not be worth a tragedy

It is not for us to greet each other or bid farewell we live on archipelagos

and that water these words what can they do what can they do prince

—Zbigniew Herbert (1924-1998), "Elegy of Fortinbras," translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott. Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004) is also the "C. M." of the dedication. The poem was originally published in 1961, but I couldn't find a date for the translation. Thanks to Clare for this poem.

this is a torch song

And, on the third poetry-and-theatre night of this week, a poem at least somewhat in keeping with the show I saw tonight—Norma Jeane Baker of Troy at The Shed—about which...I have some mixed feelings. Content warning for discussion of rape in this poem. 

The world is full of women

who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself

if they had the chance. Quit dancing.

Get some self-respect

and a day job.

Right. And minimum wage,

and varicose veins, just standing

in one place for eight hours

behind a glass counter

bundled up to the neck, instead of 

naked as a meat sandwich.

Selling gloves, or something.

Instead of what I do sell.

You have to have talent 

to peddle a thing so nebulous

and without material form.

Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way

you cut it, but I've a choice

of how, and I'll take the money.

I do give value.

Like preachers, I sell vision,

like perfume ads, desire

or its facsimile. Like jokes

or war, it's all in the timing.

I sell men back their worse suspicions:

that everything's for sale,

and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see

a chain-saw murder just before it happens,

when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple

are still connected.

Such hatred leaps in them,

my beery worshippers! That, or a bleary

hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads 

and upturned eyes, imploring

but ready to snap at my ankles,

I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge 

to step on ants. I keep the beat,

and dance for them because

they can't. The music smells like foxes,

crisp as heated metal

searing the nostrils

or humid as August, hazy and languorous

as a looted city the day after,

when all the rape's been done

already, and the killing,

and the survivors wander around

looking for garbage

to eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion.

Speaking of which, it's the smiling

tires me out the most. 

This, and the pretence

that I can't hear them.

And I can't, because I'm after all

a foreigner to them.

The speech here is all warty gutturals,

obvious as a slab of ham,

but I come from the province of the gods

where meanings are lilting and oblique.

I don't let on to everyone,

but lean close, and I'll whisper:

My mother was raped by a holy swan.

You believe that? You can take me out to dinner. 

That's what we tell all the husbands.

There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.

Not that anyone here

but you would understand.

The rest of them would like to watch me

and feel nothing. Reduce me to components

as in a clock factory or abattoir.

Crush out the mystery.

Wall me up alive

in my own body. 

They'd like to see through me, 

but nothing is more opaque

than absolute transparency.

Look—my feet don't hit the marble!

Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising,

I hover six inches in the air

in my blazing swan-egg of light.

You think I’m not a goddess?

Try me.

This is a torch song.

Touch me and you'll burn.

—Margaret Atwood, "Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing," from Morning in the Burned House, 1995.

flux

Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolves
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

—Lisel Mueller (b. 1924), "Monet Refuses the Operation" from Second Language (Louisiana State University Press, 1996). This is another poem I definitely got from the wonderful wintercreek, and, yeah, I love the Impressionists. I also love this gorgeous, gorgeous poem.

where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings

We're in Venice! I should probably be posting Byron, but I just can't make myself do it (sorry, bro). Have some Robert Browning instead; he was just as weird, albeit in a totally different way.

I
Oh Galuppi, Baldassaro, this is very sad to find!
I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind;
But although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind!

II
Here you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings.
What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the kings,
Where Saint Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?

III
Ay, because the sea's the street there; and 'tis arched by . . . what you call
. . . Shylock's bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival:
I was never out of England—it's as if I saw it all.

IV
Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?
Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day,
When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?

V
Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red,—
On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its bed,
O'er the breast's superb abundance where a man might base his head?

VI
Well, and it was graceful of them—they'd break talk off and afford
—She, to bite her mask's black velvet—he, to finger on his sword,
While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?

VII
What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh,
Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions—"Must we die?"
Those commiserating sevenths—"Life might last! we can but try!

VIII
"Were you happy?" —"Yes."—"And are you still as happy?"—"Yes. And you?"
—"Then, more kisses!"—"Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few?"
Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be answered to!

IX
So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!
"Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!
"I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!"

X
Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one,
Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,
Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun.

XI
But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve,
While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve,
In you come with your cold music till I creep thro' every nerve.

XII
Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned:
"Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned.
"The soul, doubtless, is immortal—where a soul can be discerned.

XIII
"Yours for instance: you know physics, something of geology,
"Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;
"Butterflies may dread extinction,—you'll not die, it cannot be!

XIV
"As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop,
"Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:
"What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

XV
"Dust and ashes!" So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.
Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what's become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.

—Robert Browning (1812-1899), "A Toccata of Galuppi's," from Men and Women, 1855. The meter of this poem, for those who care about such things, is trochaic octameter catalectic. I TOLD YOU BROWNING WAS WEIRD.

kill something

Carol Ann Duffy has a way with the poetic phrase and narrative voice that leaves me sort of breathless and wide-eyed, and sometimes slightly terrified. I have learned from Wikipedia that, until 2008, this poem was taught in the GCSE curriculum, and then removed because of the subject matter. What is your supervillain origin story? 

Today I am going to kill something. Anything.

I have had enough of being ignored and today

I am going to play God. It is an ordinary day,

a sort of grey with boredom stirring in the streets.

I squash a fly against the window with my thumb.

We did that at school. Shakespeare. It was in

another language and now the fly is in another language.

I breathe out talent on the glass to write my name.

I am a genius. I could be anything at all, with half

the chance. But today I am going to change the world.

Something's world. The cat avoids me. The cat

knows I am a genius, and has hidden itself.

I pour the goldfish down the bog. I pull the chain.

I see that it is good. The budgie is panicking.

Once a fortnight, I walk the two miles into town

for signing on. They don't appreciate my autograph.

There is nothing left to kill. I dial the radio

and tell the man he's talking to a superstar.

He cuts me off. I get our bread-knife and go out.
The pavements glitter suddenly. I touch your arm.

—Carol Ann Duffy (b. 1955), "Education for Leisure," from Standing Female Nude, 1985. 

body politic

I spent today (and yesterday and Thursday) at a big academic conference, having a lot of feelings about the Renaissance. Relatedly, I have been sitting on this poem for a few years, waiting for the right moment.

Elizabeth, The Lodge at Woodstock, 1554

Less than the charting of each dawn’s resolutions,
less than each evening’s trickle of doubt,
less than a crown’s weight in silver, a diamond’s                
scratch against glass, less than the touted

ill luck of my rich beginnings—and yet
more than Eve’s silence, my mute ingratitude.
More than music’s safe passage, its rapturous net,
more than this stockpile of words, their liquid solicitude;
       
more desired than praise (the least-prized of my dreams),
less real than dreaming (castle keep for my sins),
more than no more, which seems
much less than hoped-for, again—

one mutiny, quelled; one wish lost, a forgotten treasure:
to live without scrutiny, beyond constant measure.

—Rita Dove (b. 1952), "Lines Composed on the Body Politic: An Accounting" from Shakespeare’s Sisters: Women Writers Bridge Five Centuries (Folger Shakespeare Library,  2012). Shoutout to both the wonderful Folger Shakespeare Library, and the wonderful Rita Dove.

hands on the openable book

A couple of weeks ago I was having a really extraordinarily bad day, and Molly sent me this poem. Sending me this poem was a really good call.

Just days ago we sat upon this rock
Watching the ignorant armies marching past
With the scholar's sense of knowing more than they.
Now you are in England
And the soldiers somewhere as grave,
And I seem to know nothing at all.
Oh, I can name you stones, planets, stars,
By Agricola, Linnaeus, and Tycho;
Words I know, objects, machineries, but mechanism
Has ceased to be sufficient for events.
I still do not believe in ghosts, say I.
A lamp burns blue from gasses in the flame,
Light blooms in unstruck conduits of the eye
And the shape-seeking mind gives it shadow substance:
I saw a phosphene with a silvered beard.
It was easier for the others: they believed.
Unpolished by the wheels of Wittenberg
They roughly knew that death sleeps not
When trouble wakes it. We were so very cold.
What did you see by darkness, then? Your mind
Had always a good eye, and your soul
Always a muted voice. Some recollection
Was it, some fatherly advice
On power, trust, and counsels in the court
Rose up to haunt you, and you called it Father.
Why there I have deduced it, QED.
I will believe that men are stricken mad
When I can think naught else, as I believe
That they are dead when I do see a corpse.
Recall that night in the days of our study
We went up to the tower in Wittenberg
Because the old professor, Johann Faust
The wondersmith, the one who could not choose
If God had mercy, promised us a wonder.
Shortly he gave it, with his body and crossed timbers
And a thunderclap. Demons, you said,
Had rent him. I never thought you
More than metaphorical. Surely
Something in an alembic had gone wrong,
A spark touched to a firework, perhaps
Those strange heavy metals he said were Philosopher's Stone.
He swore he could wall Germany with brass
And all knew he meant cannon: Gustavus Aldophus
Taught the world that trick. You and Rosencrantz and I
Looked on Faustus in pieces among his instruments:
Thence Ros went off to form that fond attachment
To Guildenstern with his horrid clarinet,
Flowering Narcissus. You said demons,
Meaning more I think now than I thought then.
I confess to this air that I saw first and mainly
Anatomized Man, in exploded view,
And wondered which of all those riven vessels,
Those open hollow parts, had spilled his soul.
There's a mystery wants answering.
You did not stab Polonius in the brains,
Nor heart, nor anything particularly.
(The doctors never thought to open him;
A lung, the liver portal veins, I'd guess.)
You did not stay to see the transference
Of wounds. Your thrust went further than you know.
Here is where we define Horatio's courage.
If I put this message to paper and ink
Instead of casting it on water after you
Would I tell you, reasonable friend,
How Ophelia's reason cries out in its sleep?
They gave me charge of the distracted maiden,
Thinking her safe thus, I suppose;
How flattering to my mind. Though safe she was,
Not just because she was, in my faith, yours,
But out of simple fear. Not simple. Mine.
I think she knew it. It was she who kissed
My palms as if they smoked, then ran, light-foot,
Trailing blossoms, laughing. Laughing, laughing,
There was never such laughter at Wittenberg,
Nor demons either. And now the girl is tended
By some old hen who fears to go near water.
Does any of this matter to you, damn it,
Who turned her aside for reasons I trust are good
Who'd have her without taking her? At school
You thought on sex. I heard you through the walls.
Of course it's not a cloud of autumn light;
It's awkward and it's noisy and it's humid
And leaves you feeling half like Jupiter
And one third set to vomit. Do I shock you?
Oh yes, friend, women have delighted me,
As, I should hope, I them. Consider it
Research, hands on the openable book,
Affording here and there to the caring student
A subtle glimpse of Time and God.
No. No. It is my faith to understand,
Not to disprove, your motives. I would know,
And now that I am here, I think I do.
My parents' house had walls and doors and roof,
Elsinore none of these. The place is open
As diagram in a book; here read the legend:
A represents a whispering-gallery,
B indicating a confessor's alcove,
C shows a hollow underneath the stairs.
This is no house, it is a theatre,
A cockpit in continuous performance,
All actors, all audience, no interval.
You hurt me when you would not take my oath
Of silence, but you did not mean to do:
You only knew your ground, the listeners' kingdom,
Where intimacy's the rarest paradox.
I wonder if this place does wound the mind,
Echoing nights with auditors and ghosts
(Memories I mean, the ghosts I will acknowledge)
Toxic with stone-dust, lead in wine and paint,
The moldy wheat that dements villages?
It is the time, near war, too near to death,
The witchfinder's needle bearing down,
Demanding, scream or be burned alive?
I learned in Wittenberg, I learn here
To watch men die and women suffer
With the same Apollonian detachment I kept
For the droppings of unidentified wildlife
And tumors in jars, driven by the passion
Of glands undiscoverable by knife, and the thought
That the world might not be left
So bad as when one entered;
If demonless Wittenberg and haunted Elsinore
Were brought together in some essential coitus
Would the child be good?
Gone friend, what do you dream
What my philosophy dreams of?
Words fall in water, and the world shall end
No different for Horatio's tenancy.
Down yonder hill two clowns are digging holes
For dead men. Every doctor knows
Whence comes his study-matter; I'll go there
And see if spades have brought up interest.
There's motion, out to sea. A pirate sail,
Black sheet on silver water. That's a legend:
Of grief and trouble come to royal fathers,
Trouble and grief come unto princely sons.

—John M. Ford (1957-2006), "Letter from Elsinore," 1993. (In this case, from Heat of Fusion and Other Stories, 2004).

I love so many things about this poem. I love how it positions Hamlet in history, how the play exists (as it really must) in the same world as Faustus; I love Horatio, and I love that we know what comes after this -- a pirate sail -- and Horatio sort of does, too, but not quite, because he's in the middle of the story; I love that the poem is both about renaissance education and lives in a world of renaissance education, as a letter, and as a fictional letter imagined from one fictional character to another (cf. Ovid's Heroides); and of course, I love that it's a transformative work.

Happy birthday, Mike.

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"

panopticon

Last year, I posted Rita Dove's "Ludwig Van Beethovens' Return to Vienna", from Sonata Mulattica (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009). I hadn't read the rest of Sonata Mulattica at the time, but I checked it out of the library for poetry month this year. The whole collection (she calls it "A Life in Five Movements and a Short Play", and it really is exactly that) is utterly brilliant, and I highly recommend it; it's a historical novel -- or maybe a play -- in poetry: poetic and musical and layered and character-driven and political.

Of course, the problem with it being character-driven, and largely narrative, is that it turns out to be very difficult to excerpt. I don't really feel like I can do justice to the collection's protagonist, or its scope, with a single excerpted poem; what I can do is illustrate one particular moment of setting and time (out of a much larger movement and life; this poem is still much better in the context of the whole book). And really, while she is very, very good at many different kinds of poetry, Rita Dove especially excels at the dramatic monologue.

For everyone who has ever lost themselves in a Regency romance, or been briefly -- or more extensively -- obsessed with the Hanoverians.

1811: The Prince Regent celebrates himself

I have always believed that love is
an overflowing, an abundance one needs
to be rid of, to pour into another. That other
can be a man or a woman, dog or hillock
or headdress of ostrich feathers; it can be
sculpture or shoreline or even a sunless day
seeping its silvery light over the Thames.
It may arrive quietly, a moment between moments
in the river of talk, after the hot soup but before
the mutton; or it can be the mutton, too—
its ginger tang and musky finish.
However it comes, the sensation is
massive, inconvenient, undeniable.

If one were to banish extravagance,
all longing would take on edges. Witness
the general, poised on the smoking field,
as he surveys the strewn body bits
with a ghoulish mix of rue and relish;
he has won another snippet of territory
and is hungry for more. Love is rounder
and less dignified; if love brandished a sword
I would kneel and bare my neck.

Some call me gaudy, capricious; it's true
that I drool when I drink and cannot walk the path
from bed to breakfast tray without wheezing.
I'm gouty, corseted, flatulent—but it's all
because I cannot refuse a thing its chance
to shine, to sigh or deliquesce. So let there be
stars in every glass and fireworks over the park,
spun sugar pagodas on mirrored lakes, diamonds,
a footman in ancient armor, crimson drapery;
and down the center of the banquet table
set for two hundred in the Gothic conservatory

an actual stream—pure water cascading
between banks of real moss with tiny flowers—
and fish flashing, gold and silver, down the sluice.

More pineapples, more cherry wine!
Tell the other two thousand guests
gathered in Carlton House
that we are here to show the world
England's swaggering heart;
and that I intend to celebrate all century,
until something even grander arrives—
more outrageous and beautiful—to swallow me
in its monstrous, invisible embrace.

~Rita Dove (b. 1952), "The Regency Fete" from Sonata Mulattica, 2009.

by nature a conflagration

Molly has been after me to read Rita Dove for years, and with good reason, because Rita Dove is a really brilliant poet. I read this one on the poets.org National Poetry Month page, and fell totally in love. But then, I do adore a good dramatic monologue.

Oh you men who think or say that I am malevolent, stubborn,
or misanthropic, how greatly do you wrong me....
~The Heiligenstadt Testament

Three miles from my adopted city
lies a village where I came to peace.
The world there was a calm place,
even the great Danube no more
than a pale ribbon tossed onto the landscape
by a girl's careless hand. Into this stillness

I had been ordered to recover.
The hills were gold with late summer;
my rooms were two, plus a small kitchen,
situated upstairs in the back of a cottage
at the end of the Herrengasse.
From my window I could see onto the courtyard
where a linden tree twined skyward —
leafy umbilicus canted toward light,
warped in the very act of yearning —
and I would feed on the sun as if that alone
would dismantle the silence around me.

At first I raged. Then music raged in me,
rising so swiftly I could not write quickly enough
to ease the roiling. I would stop
to light a lamp, and whatever I'd missed —
larks flying to nest, church bells, the shepherd's
home-toward-evening song — rushed in, and I
would rage again.

I am by nature a conflagration;
I would rather leap
than sit and be looked at.
So when my proud city spread
her gypsy skirts, I reentered,
burning towards her greater, constant light.

Call me rough, ill-tempered, slovenly— I tell you,
every tenderness I have ever known
has been nothing
but thwarted violence, an ache
so permanent and deep, the lightest touch
awakens it. . . . It is impossible

to care enough. I have returned
with a second Symphony
and 15 Piano Variations
which I've named Prometheus,
after the rogue Titan, the half-a-god
who knew the worst sin is to take
what cannot be given back.

I smile and bow, and the world is loud.
And though I dare not lean in to shout
Can't you see that I'm deaf? —
I also cannot stop listening.

~Rita Dove, "Ludwig Van Beethovens' Return to Vienna", from Sonata Mulattica, 2009.

and yet god has not said a word

The rain set early in to-night,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listen'd with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneel'd and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soil'd gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And call'd me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me—she
Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me for ever.
But passion sometimes would prevail,
Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain
A sudden thought of one so pale
For love of her, and all in vain:
So, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I look'd up at her eyes
Happy and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria worshipp'd me; surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laugh'd the blue eyes without a stain.
And I untighten'd next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blush'd bright beneath my burning kiss:
I propp'd her head up as before,
Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
That all it scorn'd at once is fled,
And I, its love, am gain'd instead!
Porphyria's love: she guess'd not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirr'd,
And yet God has not said a word!

~Robert Browning, Porphyria's Lover, 1836

I was going to post this without any explanation, but Sarah tells me that would be a poor choice. I love this poem, and wrote my one and only, much beloved Alias story with it in mind. It's creepy, and fantastic, and very, very Browning. Although when I think about Browning I mostly think about Elizabeth Barrett Browning and how difficult it would be to elope with dogs.

this ghoul-haunted woodland

It is a blustery day, and that puts me in mind of Gothic Melodrama. Consequently, I shall provide Gothic Melodrama. Although really, given my taste for dramatic, blustery poetry, I wonder if October, not April, should be National Poetry Month. I think my favorite part of this poem is the rhyme of "senescent" and "liquescent." Oh, Edgar Allen, how silly you are in your doom and gloom.

The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crispèd and sere,
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
In the misty mid region of Weir:
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

Here once, through an alley Titanic
Of cypress, I roamed with my Soul—
Of cypress, with Psyche, my Soul.
These were days when my heart was volcanic
As the scoriac rivers that roll,
As the lavas that restlessly roll
Their sulphurous currents down Yaanek
In the ultimate climes of the pole,
That groan as they roll down Mount Yaanek
In the realms of the boreal pole.

Our talk had been serious and sober,
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere,
Our memories were treacherous and sere,
For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year,
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)
We noted not the dim lake of Auber
(Though once we had journeyed down here),
Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.

And now, as the night was senescent
And star-dials pointed to morn,
As the star-dials hinted of morn,
At the end of our path a liquescent
And nebulous lustre was born,
Out of which a miraculous crescent
Arose with a duplicate horn,
Astarte's bediamonded crescent
Distinct with its duplicate horn.

And I said—"She is warmer than Dian:
She rolls through an ether of sighs,
She revels in a region of sighs:
She has seen that the tears are not dry on
These cheeks, where the worm never dies,
And has come past the stars of the Lion
To point us the path to the skies,
To the Lethean peace of the skies:
Come up, in despite of the Lion,
To shine on us with her bright eyes:
Come up through the lair of the Lion,
With love in her luminous eyes."

But Psyche, uplifting her finger,
Said—"Sadly this star I mistrust,
Her pallor I strangely mistrust:
Oh, hasten!—oh, let us not linger!
Oh, fly!—let us fly! for we must."
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Wings until they trailed in the dust,
In agony sobbed, letting sink her
Plumes till they trailed in the dust,
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.

I replied—"This is nothing but dreaming:
Let us on by this tremulous light!
Let us bathe in this crystalline light!
Its sibyllic splendor is beaming
With hope and in beauty to-night:
See, it flickers up the sky through the night!
Ah, we safely may trust to its gleaming,
And be sure it will lead us aright:
We safely may trust to a gleaming
That cannot but guide us aright,
Since it flickers up to Heaven through the night."

Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,
And tempted her out of her gloom,
And conquered her scruples and gloom;
And we passed to the end of the vista,
But were stopped by the door of a tomb,
By the door of a legended tomb;
And I said—"What is written, sweet sister,
On the door of this legended tomb?"
She replied—"Ulalume—Ulalume—
'Tis the vault of thy lost Ulalume!"

Then my heart it grew ashen and sober
As the leaves that were crispèd and sere,
As the leaves that were withering and sere,
And I cried—"It was surely October
On this very night of last year
That I journeyed—I journeyed down here,
That I brought a dread burden down here:
On this night of all nights in the year,
Ah, what demon has tempted me here?
Well I know, now, this dim lake of Auber,
This misty mid region of Weir:
Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,
This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir."

~Edgar Allen Poe, Ulalume, 1847