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Poetry

The Other Forest

 

The hike report of this week ends with a poem by one of my favorite poets of all times. The WW I site he refers to is of course far from here, but our land, too, has seen its share of death inflicted by the colonialists.(Although I say with teary relief, there will be fewer dead after the Senate vote less night sunk the American Healthcare Freedom Act….. )

The Ardennes Forest

Cup your hands to scoop up sleep
as you would draw a grain of water
and the forest will come: a green cloud
a birch trunk like a chord of light
and a thousand eyelids fluttering
with forgotten leafy speech
then you will recall the white morning
when you waited for the opening of the gates

you know this land is opened by a bird
that sleeps in a tree and the tree in the earth
but here is a spring of new questions
underfoot the currents of bad roots
look at the pattern on the bark where
a chord of music tightens
the lute player who presses the frets
so the silent resounds

push away leaves: a wild strawberry
dew on a leaf the comb of grass
further a wing of a yellow damselfly
and an ant burying its sister
a wild pear sweetly ripens
above the treacheries of belladonnas
without waiting for greater rewards
sit under the tree

cup your hands to draw up memory
of the dead names dried grain
again the forest: a charred cloud
forehead branded by black light
and a thousand lids pressed
tightly on motionless eyeballs
a tree and the air broken
betrayed faith of empty shelters

that other forest is for us is for you
the dead also ask for fairy tales
for a handful of herbs water of memories
therefore by needles by rustling
and faint threads of fragrances–
no matter that a branch stops you
a shadow leads you through winding passages–
you will find and open
our Ardennes Forest

Zbigniew Herbert
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In Need of Cheer?

The goldfinch it shall be…..captured year-round in places near Portland.

At Least 47 Shades

The goldfinch in its full spring molt.
The bee pollen of sticky and thick.
The quince to perfume a new bride’s kiss.
The ocher yellow in Vermeer’s pearl-necklaced woman.
The opal cream floral on a kimonoed sleeve.
The zest yellow of a Nike Quickstrike in limited numbers.
The imperial yellow embroided robes.
The Aztec gold send by Cortés to Spain.
The Zinnia gold favored by butterflies.
The iguana who keeps watch on Mayan ruins.
The straw hat a cone woven with young bamboo.
The rising sun of Japan’s Amaterasu leaving her cave.
The sand dune that swallows the film’s lovers but keeps them alive.
The coastlight of sun lost in fog.
The chilled lemonade from the fruit of bitterness.
The Manila tint to sunny the laundry room.
The blond and boring heartthrob.
The yellow flash before the grin gets too tight.
The lemon tart with a mouth to match.
The star fruit which can mean two-faced in Tagalog.
The fool’s gold of sojourners and farmers.
The golden promise that still lures us here.
The sunshower which turns my tawny skin brown.
The banana split of Asian outside white underneath.
The Chinese mustard stirred with a dribble of soy sauce.
The yellowtail tuna father cleaned and sliced thin.
The yolk we ate raw with sukiyaki and rice.
The pear ice cream we licked that Tohoku summer.
The moonscape suffusing a rice paper screen.
The theater lights which make the audience vanish.
The electric yellow called Lake Malawi’s yellow prince.
The daffodil that doesn’t match these mean streets.
The marigold for night sweats and contusions.
The summer haze which splits open the sky.
The slicker yellow bands on those 9/11 jackets.
The dandelion that bursts through sidewalks.
The blazing star we still can’t see rushing toward us.
The yellow rose legend of a Texas slave woman.
The atomic tangerine of Los Alamos, New Mexico.
The Jasper yellow of gemstone and James Byrd.
The flame yellow as bone turns to ash.
The wick moving in time with my measured breath.
The first light an eye latches on to.
The whisper yellow as a pale strand of moon.
The yellow lotus that’s nourished by mud.
The poppy spring returns to the Antelope Valley.
The wonderstruck even in those old eyes.
The Chinese lantern riding a night sky.
The sparkler a child waves in the dark.

by Amy Uyematsu
from The Yellow Door
Red Hen Press, 2015

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I did it – 3 full minutes without thinking of that dismal orange hue…

 

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Poetic Flora or Modest Bloom?

An April Thursday delights the eye with modest treasures – small blossoms, peeking out from here or there.

Back home, on the computer screen, a cornucopia of all kinds of plants lights up: a new book that catalogues and beautifully illustrates the botanicals used by Shakespeare in his writings – all 175 them!

 

The plant drawings are set next to excerpts of the verses they inhabit, what a grandiose idea! Gardener friends, you know what you’ll find on your birthday table.

 

A Compendium of Shakespeare’s Plants, from Juliet’s Rose to Ophelia’s Bouquet

 

 

Much reason, then, to bellow this today:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwzwmgdYZJY

 

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From Prelude to Swan-Song

 

Maybe we should look this week at some favorite pieces of music paired with some writings that have the shared attribute of making us think. We’ll cover preludes, swan songs and a number of things in-between; all choices are related to ways one might make sense of what is going on around us and put it in some historical context.

I want to start with Carl Sandberg’s poem in the link below, published in 1920, shortly after WW I had ended. Four preludes on playthings of the wind is a cautionary and repetitive tale about the fleeting nature of past, present and future, faith in nations; it is also a dire warning against nationalistic pride that comes before the fall.

The last stanza claims:

And the wind shifts
and the dust on a doorsill shifts
and even the writing of the rat footprints
tells us nothing, nothing at all
about the greatest city, the greatest nation
where the strong men listened
and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever was.

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/four-preludes-on-playthings-of-the-wind/

(PS For your laugh of the day: the poem hunter site that displays the poem has it categorized as: about girls.)

The matching musical prelude can be found here, from Glass’ opera about the pharaoh Akhenaten: a pharaoh who was one of the first founders of a monotheistic religion, oblivious to the country falling apart around him. It did not end well. Blind nationalism and blind religion never does.

 

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On the last day of 2016

I have so many things in mind on this last day of 2016. My gratitude for the support and encouragement of a growing number of blog readers. My joy when I get comments that have me feel heard. Or put me in my place. Or help me to learn more. The blog was a band-aid during those many months when I could not photograph or create montages due to my eye problems; it has now become a central part of my daily attempts to work my brain. Although I do know it is time to get back to making art, I look forward to blogging in 2017.

The year will start with revelations about where we are headed as a country, as of January 20th. It will also start with me heading to Europe for a short stint, so your daily picture(s) might be not quite as regular as usual.

I want to close 2016 with a Brecht poem that is perhaps overused (if it was a musical piece I’d call it a war horse.) But it is optimistic and dialectical, and those are two mind-sets I intend to focus on in 2017.

Happy New Year to you all.

EVERYTHING CHANGES

Everything changes. You can make
A fresh start with your final breath.
But what has happened has happened. And the water
You once poured into the wine cannot be
Drained off again.

What has happened has happened. The water
You once poured into the wine cannot be
Drained off again, but
Everything changes. You can make
A fresh start with your final breath.

Berthold Brecht (translated, I believe, by John Willet.)

(Images from the Rodin sculpture garden at Stanford)

4 Comments

Blind Faith

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Don’t call me Pollyanna. In fact, those who know me often complain about my tendency towards catastrophic thinking. But the only light that gets through my swollen lids right now is strong light.  So this week’s theme will be the search for bright spots. In the visual as well as the thought-inspiring world.

The poem below by 1996 Nobel Laureate W. S. reminds us that there were always people bent and/or stumbling on destruction. Though we have no guarantee of retreat from those impulses or those means, we can hope. Which in turn allows us to muddle on. Not that hope and blind faith are enough. But maybe they keep us going in the direction of action. I read the poem as an expression of ultimate faith in humanity even when history teaches us the many exceptions where that faith has been destroyed – and so I find it to be a bright spot.

 

img_1497-copyDiscovery 

I believe in the great discovery.
I believe in the man who will make the discovery.
I believe in the fear of the man who will make the discovery.

I believe in his face going white,
His queasiness, his upper lip drenched in cold sweat.

I believe in the burning of his notes,
burning them into ashes,
burning them to the last scrap.

I believe in the scattering of numbers,
scattering them without regret.

I believe in the man’s haste,
in the precision of his movements,
in his free will.

I believe in the shattering of tablets,
the pouring out of liquids,
the extinguishing of rays.

I am convinced this will end well,
that it will not be too late,
that it will take place without witnesses.

I’m sure no one will find out what happened,
not the wife, not the wall,
not even the bird that might squeal in its song.

I believe in the refusal to take part.
I believe in the ruined career.
I believe in the wasted years of work.
I believe in the secret taken to the grave.

These words soar for me beyond all rules
without seeking support from actual examples.
My faith is strong, blind, and without foundation.

By Wislawa Szymborska
from View With a Grain of Sand
Harcourt Brace

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Truth, then and now

 

Barbarians 2

EXPECTING THE BARBARIANS

 

What are we expecting, gathered here in the marketplace?

 

It’s the barbarians, they are coming today.

 

Why is nothing happening in the Senate house?

Why are the senators just sitting, passing no laws?

 

Because the barbarians are coming today.

What new laws could the senators pass?

The barbarians will come and do the legislating.

 

Why is the emperor up so early this morning,

sitting at the main gate of the city,

high on his throne, dignified, wearing his crown?

 

Because the barbarians are coming today

and the emperor expects to be introduced

to their leader. He’s especially eager

to give him a parchment scroll. On it

he’s written a number of titles and names.

 

Why did the consuls and praetors come out today

dressed in their red, embroidered togas? Why

are they wearing bracelets studded with amethysts

and rings with brilliant, glittering emeralds?

Why today are they carrying their valuable canes

beautifully inlaid with silver and gold?

 

Because the barbarians are coming today,

and such objects delight the barbarians.

 

Why are the best orators not here as usual

to offer their eloquence, to speak their wisdom?

 

Because the barbarians are coming today,

and they are bored by speeches and oratory.

 

Why all of a sudden is there uncertainty

and confusion? (How serious everyone looks.)

Why are the streets and squares emptying so quickly,

sending the gathered crowds back to their home?

 

Because it’s night and the barbarians didn’t come.

And people came back from the border country

to report there are no barbarians any more.

 

So now what shall we do without barbarians?

Those people were a kind of solution.

 

– Constantine P. Cavafy

This poem is from a book Poems 1904 that was the first published volume of Cavafy’s poetry.  It is the most recent translation from the Greek by Paul Merchant (I am posting here with his gracious permission) and published by Tavern Books in Portland.  http://www.tavernbooks.com

The introduction of that book gives you a glimpse of this tormented poet, who is considered the most distinguished Greek poet of the 20th century.

E.M.Forster brought him to the attention of readers in 1919, describing hims as “a Greek gentleman in a straw hat, standing absolutely motionless at a slight angle to the universe.” The poem inspired Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) a novel by South African novelist J.M. Coetzee, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. Both poem and novel are considered crucial metaphors in literary reactions to western colonialism and the war on terror.

 

Barbarians

 

 

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Betrayed

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I will rise and go
Down into Troy, and ere the stars come forth
Talk with the wild Cassandra, for she says
A fire dances before her, and a sound
Rings ever in her ears of armed men.
What this may be I know not, but I know
That, wheresoe’er I am by night and day,
All earth and air seem only burning fire.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Oenone (last lines)  (of a book-length but beautiful and haunting poem)

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Christa Wolf’s Cassandra is, by the way, still on my top twenty list of books I liked the best.

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Brains and Personality

DSC_0106Felix Crow
BY KAY RYAN

Crow school
is basic and
short as a rule—
just the rudiments
of quid pro crow
for most students.
Then each lives out
his unenlightened
span, adding his
bit of blight
to the collected
history of pushing out
the sweeter species;
briefly swaggering the
swagger of his
aggravating ancestors
down my street.
And every time
I like him
when we meet.

 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/kay-ryan

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Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner, fellow of both Guggenheim and McArthur foundations…. the woman is smart as a whip and I’ve never read an unsentimental poet I liked more, well, still thinking about Philip Larkin.

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Bound to Nature

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From Endymion
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
‘Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.
     —John Keats
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