Saturday, 29. March 2008, 20:02:29
Poetry
Truly this is a silent, lonely place for grieving, and the breath of
the West Wind owns the empty wood. Here I can speak my secret
sorrows freely, if only these solitary cliffs could be trusted.
What cause shall I attribute your disdain to,
my Cynthia? Cynthia, what reason for my grief did you give me?
I who but now was numbered among the joyous lovers, now am
forced to look for signs of your love. Why do I merit all this?
What spell turns you away from me? Is some new girl the root of
your anger? You can give yourself to me again, fickle girl, since
no other has ever set lovely foot on my threshold. Though my
sorrow is indebted to you for much grief, my anger will not be
so fierce with you that rage would ever be justified in you, or
your weeping eyes be disfigured with falling tears.
Is it because I show few signs of altered
complexion, and my faith does not shout aloud in my face? Beech
tree and pine, beloved of the Arcadian god, you will be witnesses,
if trees know these passions. O, how often my words echo under
gentle shadows, and Cynthia is carved in your bark.
O, how often has your injustice caused me pains
as only your silent threshold knows? I am used to suffering your
tyrannous orders with diffidence, without moaning about it in noisy
complaints. For this I receive sacred springs, cold rocks, and rough
sleep by a wilderness track. And whatever my complaining can tell of
must be uttered alone to melodious birds.
Yet whatever you are, let the woods echo ‘Cynthia’
to me, and let not the wild cliffs be free of your name.
Saturday, 29. March 2008, 19:06:09
Poetry
I do not fear the sad shadows now, my Cynthia, or care about death,
destined for the final fires. But this fear is harder to bear than my
funeral procession, that perhaps my corpse would lack your love.
Cupid has not so lightly clung to my eyelids that my dust can be
void, love forgotten.
The hero, Protesilaus, could not forget his sweet
wife even in the dark region. The Thessalian came as a shade to his
former home, longing with ghostly hands to touch his delight. Whatever
I am there, I will always be known as your shadow. A great love crosses
the shore of death.
Let the choir of lovely women of old come to greet
me there, those whom the spoils of Troy yielded to Argive men, none of
whose beauty shall mean more to me than yours, Cynthia, and (O allow
this, Earth, and be just) though a destined old age keeps you back, your
bones will still be dear to my sad eyes. May you, living, feel this when
I am dust. Then no place of death will be bitter to me. How I fear lest you
ignore my tomb, Cynthia, that some inimical passion will draw you away
from my ashes, and force you, unwillingly, to dry the tears that fall.
Constant threats won't persuade a loyal girl. So
while we can, let there be joy between lovers. No length of time is
enough for lasting love.
Thursday, 31. January 2008, 22:15:52
Poetry, Photography
Tuesday, 7. August 2007, 23:55:33
Poetry, Rilke
Here is the time for the sayable, here is its homeland.
Speak and bear witness. More than ever
the Things that we might experience are vanishing, for
what crowds them out and replaces them is an imageless act.
An act under a shell, which easily cracks open as soon as
the business inside outgrows it and seeks new limits.
Between the hammers our heart
endures, just as the tongue does
between the teeth and, despite that,
still is able to praise.
Praise this world to the angel, not the unsayable one,
you can't impress him with glorious emotion; in the universe
where he feels more powerfully, you are a novice. So show him
something simple which, formed over generations,
live as our own, near our hand and within our gaze.
Tell him of Things. He will stand astonished; as you stood
by the rope-maker in Rome or the potter along the Nile.
Show him how happy a Thing can be, how innocent and ours,
how even lamenting grief purely decides to take form,
serves as a Thing, or dies into a Thing -- and blissfully
escapes far beyond the violin -- And these Things,
which live by perishing, know you are praising them; transient,
they look to us for deliverance: us, the most transient of all.
They want us to change them, utterly, in our invisible heart,
within --- oh endlessly -- within us! Whoever we may be at last.
Earth, isn't this what you want: to arrive within us,
invisible? Isn't it your dream
to be wholly invisible someday? -- Oh Earth, invisible! --
What, if not transformation, is your urgent command?
Earth, my dearest, I will. Oh believe me, you no longer
need your springtimes to win me over -- one of them,
ah, even one, is already too much for my blood.
Unspeakably I have belonged to you, from the first.
You were always right, and your holiest inspiration
is our intimate companion, Death.
Look, I am living. On what? Neither childhood nor future
grows any smaller...Superabundant being
wells up in my heart.
Ranier Maria Rilke -- excerpt from the Ninth Duino Elegy
tr. by Stephen Mitchell
Rilke's poetry is dense and difficult. And I am certainly no literary
scholar. But what this passage means for me is that in a world of the
transitory, that language may give those transitory things a kind of
extended existence in the world. And that like the tongue, the heart
responds to those transitory things also, though we may be transitory
beings ourselves, and can compress our existence into the moment of
pure being -- dasein.
Saturday, 21. April 2007, 21:14:42
Poetry
Well this is bound to pale in comparison to the forgoing, but I thought
I would "man-up" and post one of my own poems. This one is from 1999,
when the upcoming Millenium was on everyone's minds. I had pretty much
quit writing when I went back to college in 1998, but I did manage to
crank a few things out between the cracks.
"At the Millenium"
This year there were houses built on sand
sliding into the sea at Malibu,
due to El Nino, it was said.
This year a tornado hit Georgia and
as if that was not enough
came back for the rest of them
a week or so later.
Fire fights fire I've learned
(engineering-wise)
at the Dream School. Where they're now
forced to give lectures on Hate groups
while a thick fog of smoke melts up
from Mexico, and Malaysia.
And it looks to be a wet summer,
or a dry one, depending on who you ask,
or where you are.
But amidst all the major hype at the millenium
And a certain passing minor madness
-- sometimes my own --
the only thing that came to mind
was in the past;
of Gregory, the reformer, putting his stamp
on the new calendar;
and of how in order to make it right
they had to skip a week;
and all of them (or most of them) yelling
"Give us our week back!
You've stolen a week of our lives!"
and rioted then, casting the calendar into the flames,
-- "Flat burglary as ever was committed."
Saturday, 21. April 2007, 19:58:54
Jane Miller, Poetry
Jane Miller
I posted a Robert Pinsky poem for National Poetry Month. But I got to
thinking that I should put one up by my favorite contemporary poet, Jane
Miller -- and thus avoid regret. This is from her book August Zero.
I would rather have posted my favorite Miller poem, "Marin Headland," but
it is really too long -- and so it seems regret comes anyway.
"By Nature"
If it could be, it would be 7 o'clock.
Two men who have all day
been picking peaches and pears
go back through the rows
for the fallen and pecked fruit
left for dead.
They take them for themselves,
filling the wire baskets of their motorbikes.
They light cigarettes
and petal their engines to a running start.
Then an unexpected thing.
It cannot even be said
the sun was setting --
in itself still something --
the sky behind it so recently
darkening "brightens"
but only by my recollection.
I surprise myself
with an angry thought
I'm as far away as you
make me, you shit
about my lover,
whom I had until this moment
the option of missing.
When I understood my being
half a globe away,
I assumed I could get there in time.
The earth is now
like a fruit a human
has knifed,
tumbling fruitlessly
through space.
You notice when you finally stop
running through your day,
at table, the dizziness,
the blown earth in the red wine.
And the constant
bruising as we fall up,
like falling in love
where you are suddenly free,
terribly guilty
without caring.
No longer is there a single self
but a whole host
of opposition, completely random
pellets and debris,
mistresses and masters of the universe,
who will be there for you I promise, always.
Saturday, 21. April 2007, 02:39:19
Robert Pinsky, Poetry
Robert Pinsky
It's National Poetry Month here in the U.S. So I thought I would post a
poem. The following is by Robert Pinsky, from a little volume I have called
Sadness and Happiness (1975).
"Spelunker"
With flecks of web like foam
Still clinging to his brow and back
The deep explorer in his dream
Of rescue turns to seek
The faces of his friends
Already, as his arms come out
Into their cheering hands
Pulling him to the light
(Which thanks to certain drugs
Will not offend his eyes or skin)
And they will all be there; his legs
Will still be hanging down
Into the simple depth
(No symbol, no Womb, or Self or Grave,
Neither his birth nor death
But a confusing cave
Where he is hurt and lost),
His feet still hanging in the dark
When to his mouth which they have kissed
The friends will hold a drink
Miraculously bright and cool,
The elixir of his dream,
His dream which marks the pall
Of darkness with cool stars for him,
Hallucinations which he knows
Are common in his plight
And which he now construes
As will-to-live, a faith in light
Surviving, so that he has come
To welcome this false Zodiac
Because it is his dream
Or rescue: for the sake
Of untrue light to climb
Or burrow the expanding darkness
Which is also his dream
Of rescue, or the dream's dark likeness.
WIDGETIZE