And I'm not thinking too clearly either. Brought in 2000 with a flu, bringing in 2010 with a bad head cold. So today's theme: flus and colds and related maladies. Here, to start the day (today's title comes from T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land") is Charles Bukowski, on the transformations people go through as they get older:
"having the flu and with nothing else to do"
I read a book about John Dos Passos and according to
the book once radical-communist
John ended up in the Hollywood Hills living off investments
and reading the
Wall Street Journal
this seems to happen all too often.
what hardly ever happens is
a man going from being a young conservative to becoming an
old wild-ass radical
however:
young conservatives always seem to become old
conservatives.
it's a kind of lifelong mental vapor-lock.
but when a young radical ends up an
old radical
the critics
and the conservatives
treat him as if he escaped from a mental
institution.
such is our politics and you can have it
all.
keep it.
sail it up your
ass.
--Charles Bukowski
The poem reminds me of the old joke: Q: What's the definition of a conservative? A: A liberal who's been mugged. The challenge of being a liberal and remaining a liberal--or a "wild-ass radical"--is translating one's beliefs in the worth of mankind, other than man's monetary or pecuniary worth, into action despite the setbacks and travails we face, or even worse, acquiescing to the comforts of contentment. And the point Bukowski seems to make is this: who is sick? The man at home with the flu, or the man who has given up his idealism and now reads the stock reports in the Wall Street Journal?
In a completely different tone, here's Shel Silverstein:
"Sick"
'I cannot go to school today, '
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
'I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox
And there's one more-that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut-my eyes are blue-
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I'm sure that my left leg is broke-
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button's caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,
My 'pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb.
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is-what?
What's that? What's that you say?
You say today is...Saturday?
G'bye, I'm going out to play!'
--Shel Silverstein
There's a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon in which Calvin's mom checks on the imaginative terror one morning because he has not gotten out of bed yet, and it's getting late. He tells her that he doesn't feel well, and she reminds him that it's Saturday morning. "I know Mom, but I don't feel good." Last panel: She sprints to make a call for the doctor.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Snow
Yesterday the East Coast was socked in by a rock-em, sock-em, snow storm. Not quite a blizzard, but a decent deep dusting--in my area, a foot or more. Enough to cancel mass transit, keep people off the roads, and close the malls early, only a week before Xmas. So what more appropriate theme for today than the good white fluffy stuff? Here are two:
December Moon
Before going to bed
After a fall of snow
I look out on the field
Shining there in the moonlight
So calm, untouched and white
Snow silence fills my head
After I leave the window.
Hours later near dawn
When I look down again
The whole landscape has changed
The perfect surface gone
Criss-crossed and written on
Where the wild creatures ranged
While the moon rose and shone.
Why did my dog not bark?
Why did hear no sound
There on the snow-locked ground
In the tumultuous dark?
How much can come, how much can go
When the December moon is bright,
What worlds of play we'll never know
Sleeping away the cold white night
After a fall of snow.
--May Sarton
(And if you want more Sarton, go here: http://www.languageisavirus.com/may-sarton/.)
And this one, which introduced me to the work of William Stafford, who quickly became a favorite poet.
Snow
Without a word I arrive quietly. A random stranger,
sometimes I appear at a farm window and look in.
They panic, I don't know why. Will I quell
their fire? I tap to enter, to embrace them.
Why do they struggle so? Surely their lives
have a place for this gift I bring.
I turn with my millions, unroll a robe constantly
offered, and go where my limber fate invents
itself, always different and always the same.
I try a new farm, to be a stranger again;
at the schoolground I try to heal the children,
to muffle their screams. Where earth is torn open
I fill it in. Nobody can escape this embrace;
nobody will be left alone. In the cemetery
every grave has its decoration, reverently
placed. On even the littlest grave I trace
each word and carefully spell the names.
"I turn with my millions": This line in itself is a fair description of Stafford's output: a life's output of about 22,000 poems, 3,000 of which were published in 57 volumes of poetry. Here's the kicker: his first book wasn't published until he was in his late 40's. Never too late to start. For more Stafford: http://williamstaffordarchives.org/
December Moon
Before going to bed
After a fall of snow
I look out on the field
Shining there in the moonlight
So calm, untouched and white
Snow silence fills my head
After I leave the window.
Hours later near dawn
When I look down again
The whole landscape has changed
The perfect surface gone
Criss-crossed and written on
Where the wild creatures ranged
While the moon rose and shone.
Why did my dog not bark?
Why did hear no sound
There on the snow-locked ground
In the tumultuous dark?
How much can come, how much can go
When the December moon is bright,
What worlds of play we'll never know
Sleeping away the cold white night
After a fall of snow.
--May Sarton
(And if you want more Sarton, go here: http://www.languageisavirus.com/may-sarton/.)
And this one, which introduced me to the work of William Stafford, who quickly became a favorite poet.
Snow
Without a word I arrive quietly. A random stranger,
sometimes I appear at a farm window and look in.
They panic, I don't know why. Will I quell
their fire? I tap to enter, to embrace them.
Why do they struggle so? Surely their lives
have a place for this gift I bring.
I turn with my millions, unroll a robe constantly
offered, and go where my limber fate invents
itself, always different and always the same.
I try a new farm, to be a stranger again;
at the schoolground I try to heal the children,
to muffle their screams. Where earth is torn open
I fill it in. Nobody can escape this embrace;
nobody will be left alone. In the cemetery
every grave has its decoration, reverently
placed. On even the littlest grave I trace
each word and carefully spell the names.
"I turn with my millions": This line in itself is a fair description of Stafford's output: a life's output of about 22,000 poems, 3,000 of which were published in 57 volumes of poetry. Here's the kicker: his first book wasn't published until he was in his late 40's. Never too late to start. For more Stafford: http://williamstaffordarchives.org/
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Camelot
Since I saw the musical Camelot last night (Saturday, Dec. 12) on stage in Maryland, today's theme is--what else?--Camelot. The musical itself makes anachronistic mention of Mallory and Tennyson, who both famously wrote epics about King Arthur and his Roundtable. This post includes poems and poem excepts from other visits to ancient England.
Warm-bosomed as she breathed the passionate air
Of old romance, and did in fancy move
'Mong the gay knights who died for ladies fair;
Until she heard the thunder of the press,
And so became a lover; her heart rang
The note of love's alarm, his tenderness,
When in the onset all the tourney sang.
And she was one of the dead ladies who,
In beauty's blazon, to his misty bower
With Launcelot, when the Queen was gone, withdrew
Under the shadow of the tourney tower;
And, lilting to him through the gloaming, made
His heart a lyre whereon her passion played.
Robert Crawford (1868-1930)
Avalon
Upon a high-raised hill in Avalon,
Four dragon sentinels with burnished scales
Keep ward and watch, and whether the sleets and hails
Of winter beat their caves, or in May magic the lawn.
Like a dull emerald smitten with the dawn,
Up brightens, guard and gleam; and still the Grail's
Enchaliced splendors shake over those sweet dales,
Where, 'neath a thick-leaved canopy unwithdrawn
Since the old days of Vivien's sorcery,
Sleeps Merlin in a nest of nightingales--
Thus one clear moment--then the vision fails,
As his, who lone on a wreak-littered lea
Has mocking glimpse of star-mist on the sails,
Of some great ship that lies out to sea.
Robert Eliott Gonzales (1888-1916)
Not everything about Arthur and his court has to be serious--it can't all be about questing, Green Knights, nobility, and affairs. Here's a bit of ridiculousness:
When good King Arthur ruled the land,
He was a goodly king:
He stole three pecks of barley meal,
To make a bag-pudding.
A bag-pudding the king did make,
And stuffed it well with plums;
And in it put great lumps of fat,
As big as my two thumbs.
The king and queen did eat thereof,
And noblemen beside;
And what they could not eat that night,
The queen next morning fried.
--unknown
Lastly, usually the best character to play in any play or movie is the bad guy. In Camelot, of course, that's Mordred, and for me last night, the actor stole the show--even though he doesn't make his appearance until Act II (I can see this actor playing a good Iago). So today's last selection is "Mordred's Lullaby," music by Heather Dale.
At Camelot
Her maiden dreams were redolent of love,Warm-bosomed as she breathed the passionate air
Of old romance, and did in fancy move
'Mong the gay knights who died for ladies fair;
Until she heard the thunder of the press,
And so became a lover; her heart rang
The note of love's alarm, his tenderness,
When in the onset all the tourney sang.
And she was one of the dead ladies who,
In beauty's blazon, to his misty bower
With Launcelot, when the Queen was gone, withdrew
Under the shadow of the tourney tower;
And, lilting to him through the gloaming, made
His heart a lyre whereon her passion played.
Robert Crawford (1868-1930)
Avalon
Upon a high-raised hill in Avalon,
Four dragon sentinels with burnished scales
Keep ward and watch, and whether the sleets and hails
Of winter beat their caves, or in May magic the lawn.
Like a dull emerald smitten with the dawn,
Up brightens, guard and gleam; and still the Grail's
Enchaliced splendors shake over those sweet dales,
Where, 'neath a thick-leaved canopy unwithdrawn
Since the old days of Vivien's sorcery,
Sleeps Merlin in a nest of nightingales--
Thus one clear moment--then the vision fails,
As his, who lone on a wreak-littered lea
Has mocking glimpse of star-mist on the sails,
Of some great ship that lies out to sea.
Robert Eliott Gonzales (1888-1916)
Not everything about Arthur and his court has to be serious--it can't all be about questing, Green Knights, nobility, and affairs. Here's a bit of ridiculousness:
When good King Arthur ruled the land,
He was a goodly king:
He stole three pecks of barley meal,
To make a bag-pudding.
A bag-pudding the king did make,
And stuffed it well with plums;
And in it put great lumps of fat,
As big as my two thumbs.
The king and queen did eat thereof,
And noblemen beside;
And what they could not eat that night,
The queen next morning fried.
--unknown
Lastly, usually the best character to play in any play or movie is the bad guy. In Camelot, of course, that's Mordred, and for me last night, the actor stole the show--even though he doesn't make his appearance until Act II (I can see this actor playing a good Iago). So today's last selection is "Mordred's Lullaby," music by Heather Dale.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Talking to the Sun
Poets (artists of any stripe) owe a great deal to those who came before them. Perhaps none of them should imagine too much that they choose a path in the wood that's never been trod before, only untrod by themselves. This week features three poets/lyricists/wordsmiths: Frank O'Hara, and Billy Bragg.
Here's Frank O'Hara, paying tribute to the 20's-era Russian poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky:
A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island
The Sun woke me this morning loud
and clear, saying "Hey! I've been
trying to wake you up for fifteen
minutes. Don't be so rude, you are
only the second poet I've ever chosen
to speak to personally
so why
aren't you more attentive? If I could
burn you through the window I would
to wake you up. I can't hang around
here all day."
"Sorry, Sun, I stayed
up late last night talking to Hal."
"When I woke up Mayakovsky he was
a lot more prompt" the Sun said
petulantly. "Most people are up
already waiting to see if I'm going
to put in an appearance."
I tried
to apologize "I missed you yesterday."
"That's better" he said. "I didn't
know you'd come out." "You may be
wondering why I've come so close?"
"Yes" I said beginning to feel hot
wondering if maybe he wasn't burning me
anyway.
"Frankly I wanted to tell you
I like your poetry. I see a lot
on my rounds and you're okay. You may
not be the greatest thing on earth, but
you're different. Now, I've heard some
say you're crazy, they being excessively
calm themselves to my mind, and other
crazy poets think that you're a boring
reactionary. Not me.
Just keep on
like I do and pay no attention. You'll
find that people always will complain
about the atmosphere, either too hot
or too cold too bright or too dark, days
too short or too long.
If you don't appear
at all one day they think you're lazy
or dead. Just keep right on, I like it.
And don't worry about your lineage
poetic or natural. The Sun shines on
the jungle, you know, on the tundra
the sea, the ghetto. Wherever you were
I knew it and saw you moving. I was waiting
for you to get to work.
And now that you
are making your own days, so to speak,
even if no one reads you but me
you won't be depressed. Not
everyone can look up, even at me. It
hurts their eyes."
"Oh Sun, I'm so grateful to you!"
"Thanks and remember I'm watching. It's
easier for me to speak to you out
here. I don't have to slide down
between buildings to get your ear.
I know you love Manhattan, but
you ought to look up more often.
And
always embrace things, people earth
sky stars, as I do, freely and with
the appropriate sense of space. That
is your inclination, known in the heavens
and you should follow it to hell, if
necessary, which I doubt.
Maybe we'll
speak again in Africa, of which I too
am specially fond. Go back to sleep now
Frank, and I may leave a tiny poem
in that brain of yours as my farewell."
"Sun, don't go!" I was awake
at last. "No, go I must, they're calling
me."
"Who are they?"
Rising he said "Some
day you'll know. They're calling to you
too." Darkly he rose, and then I slept.
Eight years after he wrote this farewell poem--which was never published during his too-brief lifetime--O'Hara was killed when a dune buggy on Fire Island struck him. Brad Gooch, who wrote a biography of O'Hara titled City Poet, mentions Kenneth Koch's reaction when Koch found the poem among O'Hara's papers:
Reading through the stack of poems later in his apartment on West Fourth Street, Koch came across for the first time "A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island," a poem that was to become a favorite anthology piece, which O'Hara hadn't shown to anyone while he was alive. A variation on Mayakovsky's "An Extraordinary Adventure Which Befell Vladimir Mayakovsky in a Summer Cottage," the poem had been written by O'Hara on July 10, 1958, when he was visiting Hal Fondren at his rented house at Fire Island Pines, not far from the spot where he would be hit almost exactly eight years later. The poem consists of a conversation between the Sun, who wakes O'Hara and complains petulantly, "When I woke up Mayakovsky he was / a lot more prompt," and the apologetic poet's comment, "Sorry, Sun, I stayed / up late last night talking to Hal."
"I almost fell off my chair," remembers Koch. "It was Frank talking about his own death." In the following months, Koch often read the poem at poetry readings to audiences who were invariably moved by its almost too neatly prophetic parting stanza:
"Sun, don't go!" I was awake
at last. "No, go I must, they're calling
me."
"Who are they?"
Rising he said "Some
day you'll know. They're calling to you
too." Darkly he rose, and then I slept.
From City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara. Copyright © 1993 by Brad Gooch.
About Vladimir Mayakovsky's poetry: The best way to read his poetry is ALOUD, imagining it with Whitman's "barbaric yawp." About the man: That's about the extent of commonality between those Whitman and the Russian: Whitman, the ultimate poet of syncretistic democracy, and Mayakovsky, the committed Bolshevik. Mayakovsky, ultimately let down by the results of the Revolution and Stalinist rule, died even younger than O'Hara, committing suicide in 1930 at age 36. But the following poem, unlike O'Hara's, isn't a farewell poem: it's much too ebullient for that.
AN EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURE WHICH HAPPENED TO ME, VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY, ONE SUMMER IN THE COUNTRY
(Pushkino, Mount Akula, Rumyantsev Cottage, 20 miles down the Yaroslav Railway)
A hundred suns the sunset fired,
into July summer shunted,
it was so hot,
even heat perspired--
it happened in the country.
The little hamlet known as Pushkino,
Akula's Mount
made hunchbacked.
Below, the village
seemed pushed-in so --
its crooked roof-crusts cracked.
And beyond that village
yawned a hole,
into that hole- and not just maybe -
the sun for certain always rolled,
slowly, surely, daily.
At morn
to flood the world
again
the sun rose up-
and ruddied it.
Day after day
it happened this way,
till I got
fed up with it.
And one day I let out such a shout,
that everything grew pale,
point-blank at the sun I yelled:
"Get out!
Enough of loafing there in hell!"
To the sun I yelled:
"You lazy mummer!
in the clouds cushioning,
while here - knowing neither winter nor summer,
I sit, just posters brushing!"
I yelled to the sun:
"Hey, wait there!
Listen, golden brightbrow,
instead of vainly
setting in the air,
have tea with me
right now!"
What have I done!
For ruin I'm heading!
To me,
of his own goodwill,
the sun himself,
ray-strides outspreading,
is marching over the hill.
Not wanting to show him I'm afraid-
back I retreat, guardedly.
Now his eyes lighten the garden shade.
He's actually in the garden now.
Through windows,
doors,
crannies he spread;
in flooded a sunny mass,
having burst in
he drew his breath,
and spoke in a deep bass.
"I've withheld my fires you see
the first time since creation began.
You've invited me?
So lay out the tea,
and, poet, lay on the jam!"
Tears from my poor eyes were streaming-
the heat really made me scary,
all the same-
I got the samovar steaming:
"Of course,
sit down, comrade luminary!"
What possessed me to shout at him like a fool,
inwardly myself I cursed, -
and sat confused
on the corner of a stool,
frightened it might be worse!
But a radiance strange
streamed from the sun, -
and my tact
no longer taxing,
I sit and chat with the luminated one,
gradually relaxing.
About this,
and about that I chatted,
worn out with ROSTA publicity,
but the sun:
"Alright,
don't get so rattled,
see things with greater simplicity!
You think it's easy
for me
to shine so?
- If so, come and have a test! -
But once you go -
why have a go
go - and shine your damnedest!"
We gossiped like that till darkness appeared,
till the night before, that is.
For how could there be any darkness here?
And now
like chums we chatted.
And soon,
in open friendship bonded,
to slap him on the back I dared.
And likewise the sun
warmly responded:
"Why, comrade, we're a pair!
Come, poet,
let us dawn
and sing
away the drabness of the universe.
As the sun, myself I'll fling,
and you - yourself,
in verse."
And shadows' walls,
and jails of night
fell to its double-barreled shot.
Battering barrage of poetry and light -
shine out, no matter what!
And when the sun gets tired,
and night
wants to rest
its sleepy-headed,
why suddenly -
I shine with all my might -
and once more day is trumpeted.
Shine all the time,
for ever shine.
the last days' depths to plumb,
to shine - !
spite every hell combined!
So runs my slogan -
and the sun's!
Onward ho to Billy Bragg, the Brit alt-rock musician who has been entertaining/agitating fans for about three decades now. Consider me one of those who is alternately entertained and agitated. The first album I picked up of his was Talking With the Taxman About Poetry, the title of which is taken from a Mayakovsky poem by the same title.
So let's have a look at that poem (Bragg included a translation in the liner notes of his album; this isn't his trans.). Like O'Hara, he says we ought not get too wrapped with the trivialities of our present--O'Hara talking all night long, sleeping in and forgetting to gree the sun), and hints at being remembered long after his death:
Our duty is
To roar
Like brass-throated sirens
In philistine fog
And in stormy weather...
Come, you smug dweller in the present era,
Buy your rail ticket
To Eternity
Here.
Calculate
The impact of verse
And distribute
All that I earn
Over three hundred years.
Here's Frank O'Hara, paying tribute to the 20's-era Russian poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky:
A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island
The Sun woke me this morning loud
and clear, saying "Hey! I've been
trying to wake you up for fifteen
minutes. Don't be so rude, you are
only the second poet I've ever chosen
to speak to personally
so why
aren't you more attentive? If I could
burn you through the window I would
to wake you up. I can't hang around
here all day."
"Sorry, Sun, I stayed
up late last night talking to Hal."
"When I woke up Mayakovsky he was
a lot more prompt" the Sun said
petulantly. "Most people are up
already waiting to see if I'm going
to put in an appearance."
I tried
to apologize "I missed you yesterday."
"That's better" he said. "I didn't
know you'd come out." "You may be
wondering why I've come so close?"
"Yes" I said beginning to feel hot
wondering if maybe he wasn't burning me
anyway.
"Frankly I wanted to tell you
I like your poetry. I see a lot
on my rounds and you're okay. You may
not be the greatest thing on earth, but
you're different. Now, I've heard some
say you're crazy, they being excessively
calm themselves to my mind, and other
crazy poets think that you're a boring
reactionary. Not me.
Just keep on
like I do and pay no attention. You'll
find that people always will complain
about the atmosphere, either too hot
or too cold too bright or too dark, days
too short or too long.
If you don't appear
at all one day they think you're lazy
or dead. Just keep right on, I like it.
And don't worry about your lineage
poetic or natural. The Sun shines on
the jungle, you know, on the tundra
the sea, the ghetto. Wherever you were
I knew it and saw you moving. I was waiting
for you to get to work.
And now that you
are making your own days, so to speak,
even if no one reads you but me
you won't be depressed. Not
everyone can look up, even at me. It
hurts their eyes."
"Oh Sun, I'm so grateful to you!"
"Thanks and remember I'm watching. It's
easier for me to speak to you out
here. I don't have to slide down
between buildings to get your ear.
I know you love Manhattan, but
you ought to look up more often.
And
always embrace things, people earth
sky stars, as I do, freely and with
the appropriate sense of space. That
is your inclination, known in the heavens
and you should follow it to hell, if
necessary, which I doubt.
Maybe we'll
speak again in Africa, of which I too
am specially fond. Go back to sleep now
Frank, and I may leave a tiny poem
in that brain of yours as my farewell."
"Sun, don't go!" I was awake
at last. "No, go I must, they're calling
me."
"Who are they?"
Rising he said "Some
day you'll know. They're calling to you
too." Darkly he rose, and then I slept.
Eight years after he wrote this farewell poem--which was never published during his too-brief lifetime--O'Hara was killed when a dune buggy on Fire Island struck him. Brad Gooch, who wrote a biography of O'Hara titled City Poet, mentions Kenneth Koch's reaction when Koch found the poem among O'Hara's papers:
Reading through the stack of poems later in his apartment on West Fourth Street, Koch came across for the first time "A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island," a poem that was to become a favorite anthology piece, which O'Hara hadn't shown to anyone while he was alive. A variation on Mayakovsky's "An Extraordinary Adventure Which Befell Vladimir Mayakovsky in a Summer Cottage," the poem had been written by O'Hara on July 10, 1958, when he was visiting Hal Fondren at his rented house at Fire Island Pines, not far from the spot where he would be hit almost exactly eight years later. The poem consists of a conversation between the Sun, who wakes O'Hara and complains petulantly, "When I woke up Mayakovsky he was / a lot more prompt," and the apologetic poet's comment, "Sorry, Sun, I stayed / up late last night talking to Hal."
"I almost fell off my chair," remembers Koch. "It was Frank talking about his own death." In the following months, Koch often read the poem at poetry readings to audiences who were invariably moved by its almost too neatly prophetic parting stanza:
"Sun, don't go!" I was awake
at last. "No, go I must, they're calling
me."
"Who are they?"
Rising he said "Some
day you'll know. They're calling to you
too." Darkly he rose, and then I slept.
From City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O’Hara. Copyright © 1993 by Brad Gooch.
About Vladimir Mayakovsky's poetry: The best way to read his poetry is ALOUD, imagining it with Whitman's "barbaric yawp." About the man: That's about the extent of commonality between those Whitman and the Russian: Whitman, the ultimate poet of syncretistic democracy, and Mayakovsky, the committed Bolshevik. Mayakovsky, ultimately let down by the results of the Revolution and Stalinist rule, died even younger than O'Hara, committing suicide in 1930 at age 36. But the following poem, unlike O'Hara's, isn't a farewell poem: it's much too ebullient for that.
AN EXTRAORDINARY ADVENTURE WHICH HAPPENED TO ME, VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY, ONE SUMMER IN THE COUNTRY
(Pushkino, Mount Akula, Rumyantsev Cottage, 20 miles down the Yaroslav Railway)
A hundred suns the sunset fired,
into July summer shunted,
it was so hot,
even heat perspired--
it happened in the country.
The little hamlet known as Pushkino,
Akula's Mount
made hunchbacked.
Below, the village
seemed pushed-in so --
its crooked roof-crusts cracked.
And beyond that village
yawned a hole,
into that hole- and not just maybe -
the sun for certain always rolled,
slowly, surely, daily.
At morn
to flood the world
again
the sun rose up-
and ruddied it.
Day after day
it happened this way,
till I got
fed up with it.
And one day I let out such a shout,
that everything grew pale,
point-blank at the sun I yelled:
"Get out!
Enough of loafing there in hell!"
To the sun I yelled:
"You lazy mummer!
in the clouds cushioning,
while here - knowing neither winter nor summer,
I sit, just posters brushing!"
I yelled to the sun:
"Hey, wait there!
Listen, golden brightbrow,
instead of vainly
setting in the air,
have tea with me
right now!"
What have I done!
For ruin I'm heading!
To me,
of his own goodwill,
the sun himself,
ray-strides outspreading,
is marching over the hill.
Not wanting to show him I'm afraid-
back I retreat, guardedly.
Now his eyes lighten the garden shade.
He's actually in the garden now.
Through windows,
doors,
crannies he spread;
in flooded a sunny mass,
having burst in
he drew his breath,
and spoke in a deep bass.
"I've withheld my fires you see
the first time since creation began.
You've invited me?
So lay out the tea,
and, poet, lay on the jam!"
Tears from my poor eyes were streaming-
the heat really made me scary,
all the same-
I got the samovar steaming:
"Of course,
sit down, comrade luminary!"
What possessed me to shout at him like a fool,
inwardly myself I cursed, -
and sat confused
on the corner of a stool,
frightened it might be worse!
But a radiance strange
streamed from the sun, -
and my tact
no longer taxing,
I sit and chat with the luminated one,
gradually relaxing.
About this,
and about that I chatted,
worn out with ROSTA publicity,
but the sun:
"Alright,
don't get so rattled,
see things with greater simplicity!
You think it's easy
for me
to shine so?
- If so, come and have a test! -
But once you go -
why have a go
go - and shine your damnedest!"
We gossiped like that till darkness appeared,
till the night before, that is.
For how could there be any darkness here?
And now
like chums we chatted.
And soon,
in open friendship bonded,
to slap him on the back I dared.
And likewise the sun
warmly responded:
"Why, comrade, we're a pair!
Come, poet,
let us dawn
and sing
away the drabness of the universe.
As the sun, myself I'll fling,
and you - yourself,
in verse."
And shadows' walls,
and jails of night
fell to its double-barreled shot.
Battering barrage of poetry and light -
shine out, no matter what!
And when the sun gets tired,
and night
wants to rest
its sleepy-headed,
why suddenly -
I shine with all my might -
and once more day is trumpeted.
Shine all the time,
for ever shine.
the last days' depths to plumb,
to shine - !
spite every hell combined!
So runs my slogan -
and the sun's!
Onward ho to Billy Bragg, the Brit alt-rock musician who has been entertaining/agitating fans for about three decades now. Consider me one of those who is alternately entertained and agitated. The first album I picked up of his was Talking With the Taxman About Poetry, the title of which is taken from a Mayakovsky poem by the same title.
So let's have a look at that poem (Bragg included a translation in the liner notes of his album; this isn't his trans.). Like O'Hara, he says we ought not get too wrapped with the trivialities of our present--O'Hara talking all night long, sleeping in and forgetting to gree the sun), and hints at being remembered long after his death:
Our duty is
To roar
Like brass-throated sirens
In philistine fog
And in stormy weather...
Come, you smug dweller in the present era,
Buy your rail ticket
To Eternity
Here.
Calculate
The impact of verse
And distribute
All that I earn
Over three hundred years.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Sunday Poems
These posts, such as they are, are typically made on Sundays (tho today's is an exception). In recognition of the Sunday habit, here are a couple poems where that day features prominently. What's remarkable about both of these poems is their secular nature. In both poems, the respective poets focus much more on "this Now" (as MacNiece puts it), rather than the ineffable beyond. Even better, what is "man" doing on Sunday morning? Fixing up the old jalopy. It's all about the weekend chores, the tasks that keep us grounded in a taciturn way to the present moment in which we exist.
Sunday Morning
Down the road someone is practising scales,
The notes like little fishes vanish with a wink of tails,
Man's heart expands to tinker with his car
For this is Sunday morning, Fate's great bazaar;
Regard these means as ends, concentrate on this Now,
And you may grow to music or drive beyond Hindhead anyhow,
Take corners on two wheels until you go so fast
That you can clutch a fringe or two of the windy past,
That you can abstract this day and make it to the week of time
A small eternity, a sonnet self-contained in rhyme.
But listen, up the road, something gulps, the church spire
Open its eight bells out, skulls' mouths which will not tire
To tell how there is no music or movement which secures
Escape from the weekday time. Which deadens and endures.
Louis MacNiece
Sunday Morning
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 prophesy,
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
Sunday Morning
Down the road someone is practising scales,
The notes like little fishes vanish with a wink of tails,
Man's heart expands to tinker with his car
For this is Sunday morning, Fate's great bazaar;
Regard these means as ends, concentrate on this Now,
And you may grow to music or drive beyond Hindhead anyhow,
Take corners on two wheels until you go so fast
That you can clutch a fringe or two of the windy past,
That you can abstract this day and make it to the week of time
A small eternity, a sonnet self-contained in rhyme.
But listen, up the road, something gulps, the church spire
Open its eight bells out, skulls' mouths which will not tire
To tell how there is no music or movement which secures
Escape from the weekday time. Which deadens and endures.
Louis MacNiece
Sunday Morning
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 prophesy,
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
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Candy (because Halloween was a week ago)
Today's theme is candy: ice cream, Snickers, and wax lips in the following three poems. I have a sweet tooth that's as difficult to train as a feral lion, but I don't have to worry about these high-calorie poems adding any pounds to the result I see on the scale.
Bleezer's Ice Cream
by Jack Prelutsky
I am Ebenezer Bleezer,
I run BLEEZER'S ICE CREAM STORE,
there are flavors in my freezer
you have never seen before,
twenty-eight divine creations
too delicious to resist,
why not do yourself a favor,
try the flavors on my list:
COCOA MOCHA MACARONI
TAPIOCA SMOKED BALONEY
CHECKERBERRY CHEDDAR CHEW
CHICKEN CHERRY HONEYDEW
TUTTI-FRUTTI STEWED TOMATO
TUNA TACO BAKED POTATO
LOBSTER LITCHI LIMA BEAN
MOZZARELLA MANGOSTEEN
ALMOND HAM MERINGUE SALAMI
YAM ANCHOVY PRUNE PASTRAMI
SASSAFRAS SOUVLAKI HASH
SUKIYAKI SUCCOTASH
BUTTER BRICKLE PEPPER PICKLE
POMEGRANATE PUMPERNICKEL
PEACH PIMENTO PIZZA PLUM
PEANUT PUMPKIN BUBBLEGUM
BROCCOLI BANANA BLUSTER
CHOCOLATE CHOP SUEY CLUSTER
AVOCADO BRUSSELS SPROUT
PERIWINKLE SAUERKRAUT
COTTON CANDY CARROT CUSTARD
CAULIFLOWER COLA MUSTARD
ONION DUMPLING DOUBLE DIP
TURNIP TRUFFLE TRIPLE FLIP
GARLIC GUMBO GRAVY GUAVA
LENTIL LEMON LIVER LAVA
ORANGE OLIVE BAGEL BEET
WATERMELON WAFFLE WHEAT
I am Ebenezer Bleezer,
I run BLEEZER'S ICE CREAM STORE,
taste a flavor from my freezer,
you will surely ask for more.
Brad Pitt
by Aaron Smith
With cotton candy armpits and sugary
Crevices, sweat glazing your donut skin.
Have you ever been fat, Brad?
Have you ever wanted a Snickers
More than love and lain on your bed
While the phone rang and rolled one
On your tongue, afraid to eat it, afraid
It would make your jeans too tight? Have you
Barfed, Brad, because you ate it,
Ate all the take-out, licked
Brown sauce off the box while you sobbed?
Brad Pitt down in the pits chaining menthol
Ciggys in your thick-wallet life,
It’s not so bad Brad, sad Brad, is it?
Wax Lips
by Cynthia Rylant
Todd’s Hardware was dust and a monkey—
a real one, on the second floor—
and Mrs. Todd there behind the glass cases.
We stepped over buckets of nails and lawnmowers
to get to the candy counter in the back,
and pointed at the red wax lips,
and Mary Janes,
and straws full of purple sugar.
Said goodbye to Mrs. Todd, she white-faced and silent,
and walked the streets of Beaver,
our teeth sunk hard in the wax,
and big red lips worth kissing.
Bleezer's Ice Cream
by Jack Prelutsky
I am Ebenezer Bleezer,
I run BLEEZER'S ICE CREAM STORE,
there are flavors in my freezer
you have never seen before,
twenty-eight divine creations
too delicious to resist,
why not do yourself a favor,
try the flavors on my list:
COCOA MOCHA MACARONI
TAPIOCA SMOKED BALONEY
CHECKERBERRY CHEDDAR CHEW
CHICKEN CHERRY HONEYDEW
TUTTI-FRUTTI STEWED TOMATO
TUNA TACO BAKED POTATO
LOBSTER LITCHI LIMA BEAN
MOZZARELLA MANGOSTEEN
ALMOND HAM MERINGUE SALAMI
YAM ANCHOVY PRUNE PASTRAMI
SASSAFRAS SOUVLAKI HASH
SUKIYAKI SUCCOTASH
BUTTER BRICKLE PEPPER PICKLE
POMEGRANATE PUMPERNICKEL
PEACH PIMENTO PIZZA PLUM
PEANUT PUMPKIN BUBBLEGUM
BROCCOLI BANANA BLUSTER
CHOCOLATE CHOP SUEY CLUSTER
AVOCADO BRUSSELS SPROUT
PERIWINKLE SAUERKRAUT
COTTON CANDY CARROT CUSTARD
CAULIFLOWER COLA MUSTARD
ONION DUMPLING DOUBLE DIP
TURNIP TRUFFLE TRIPLE FLIP
GARLIC GUMBO GRAVY GUAVA
LENTIL LEMON LIVER LAVA
ORANGE OLIVE BAGEL BEET
WATERMELON WAFFLE WHEAT
I am Ebenezer Bleezer,
I run BLEEZER'S ICE CREAM STORE,
taste a flavor from my freezer,
you will surely ask for more.
Brad Pitt
by Aaron Smith
With cotton candy armpits and sugary
Crevices, sweat glazing your donut skin.
Have you ever been fat, Brad?
Have you ever wanted a Snickers
More than love and lain on your bed
While the phone rang and rolled one
On your tongue, afraid to eat it, afraid
It would make your jeans too tight? Have you
Barfed, Brad, because you ate it,
Ate all the take-out, licked
Brown sauce off the box while you sobbed?
Brad Pitt down in the pits chaining menthol
Ciggys in your thick-wallet life,
It’s not so bad Brad, sad Brad, is it?
Wax Lips
by Cynthia Rylant
Todd’s Hardware was dust and a monkey—
a real one, on the second floor—
and Mrs. Todd there behind the glass cases.
We stepped over buckets of nails and lawnmowers
to get to the candy counter in the back,
and pointed at the red wax lips,
and Mary Janes,
and straws full of purple sugar.
Said goodbye to Mrs. Todd, she white-faced and silent,
and walked the streets of Beaver,
our teeth sunk hard in the wax,
and big red lips worth kissing.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Mountains
It doesn't take a great mountain to inspire a person, though a few great mountains certainly take prominence in our stories: Ararat, Sinai, Everest, the four mountains of the Navajo mythology, etc. Several years ago I lived for a brief while in Jerusalem during the winter. The ancient city in wintertime can be bleak: most buildings are made from the same monochromatic materials (Jerusalem stone), and the gray skies do little to lighten up the mood. At the beginning of springtime I headed out of the city, picking at random to visit a small town named Bet She'an. In this town there was a small tel (hill), which when you reached the top, gave with a surprise an expansive view of the verdant, flowering Israeli countryside. After that Jerusalem winter (which I endured with a miserable and long-lasting cold), that view changed my perspective on things.
So here's a couple poems on the theme of mountains:
The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain
There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.
He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.
It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction,
How he had recomposed the pines,
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,
For the outlook that would be right,
Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:
The exact rock where his inexactness
Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged,
Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea,
Recognize his unique and solitary home.
--Wallace Stevens
High Up on Suilven
Gulfs of blue air, two lochs like spectacles,
A frog (this height) and Harris in the sky--
There are more reasons for hills
Than being steep and reaching only sky.
Meeting the cliff face, the American wind
Stands up on end: chute going the wrong way.
Nine ravens play with it and
Go up and down its lift half the long day.
Reasons for them? the hill's one ... A web like this
Has a thread that goes beyond the possible;
The old spider outside space
Runs down it - and where's raven? Or where's hill?
--Norman MacCaig
So here's a couple poems on the theme of mountains:
The Poem That Took the Place of a Mountain
There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.
He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.
It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction,
How he had recomposed the pines,
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,
For the outlook that would be right,
Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:
The exact rock where his inexactness
Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged,
Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea,
Recognize his unique and solitary home.
--Wallace Stevens
High Up on Suilven
Gulfs of blue air, two lochs like spectacles,
A frog (this height) and Harris in the sky--
There are more reasons for hills
Than being steep and reaching only sky.
Meeting the cliff face, the American wind
Stands up on end: chute going the wrong way.
Nine ravens play with it and
Go up and down its lift half the long day.
Reasons for them? the hill's one ... A web like this
Has a thread that goes beyond the possible;
The old spider outside space
Runs down it - and where's raven? Or where's hill?
--Norman MacCaig
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