Classic Japanese Haiku
Japanese Haiku, translated by Peter Beilenson [1955], from Peter Pauper Press book
https://www.sacred-texts.com/shi/jh/jh02.htm
Includes this one by Basho:
Must Springtime Fade?
Then Cry All Birds
And Fishes Cold Pale Eyes Pour Tears
Classic Chinese Poetry...
http://www.chinese-poems.com/
Quote from: JonSRB77 on March 12, 2022, 11:58:31 AM
Classic Chinese Poetry...
http://www.chinese-poems.com/
This is my absolutely favourite (translated) Chinese poem:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/I_built_my_hut_in_a_zone_of_human_habitation
I don't often read the Diner. This evening has been an exception. Good to see there is a poetry thread, though 😁
I am a huge reader of poetry following one of my undergrads majoring in poetry. Dissertation on Ted Hughes and the Metaphysical, one of the finest British poets, IMO.
Reading this now...
The Horses
I climbed through woods in the hour—before—dawn dark.
Evil air, a frost—making stillness,
Not a leaf, not a bird—
A world cast in frost. I came out above the wood
Where my breath left tortuous statues in the iron light.
But the valleys were draining the darkness
Till the moorline– blackening dregs of the brightening grey –
Halved the sky ahead. And I saw the horses:
Huge in the dense grey –ten together –
Megalith—still. They breathed, making no move,
With draped manes and tilted hind—hooves,
Making no sound.
I passed: not one snorted or jerked its head.
Grey silent fragments
Of a grey still world.
I listened in emptiness on the moor—ridge.
The curlew's tear turned its edge on the silence.
Slowly detail leafed from the darkness. Then the sun
Orange, red, red erupted
Silently, and splitting to its core tore and flung cloud,
Shook the gulf open, showed blue,
And the big planets hanging—
I turned
Stumbling in a fever of a dream, down towards
The dark woods, from the kindling tops,
And came the horses.
There, still they stood,
But now steaming, and glistening under the flow of light,
Their draped stone manes, their tilted hind—hooves
Stirring under a thaw while all around them
The frost showed its fires. But still they made no sound.
Not one snorted or stamped,
Their hung heads patient as the horizons,
High over valleys, in the red levelling rays—
In din of the crowded streets, going among the years, the faces,
May I still meet my memory in so lonely a place
Between the streams and the red clouds, hearing curlews,
Hearing the horizons endure.
I've done a few poetry readings (of others' work) on YouTube. Here's one of e.e.cummings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwflO_IRLPQ
The shirt I'm wearing has symbolic meaning. It symbolises that it was laundry day.
Quote from: KevinP on October 08, 2022, 03:51:13 PM
I've done a few poetry readings (of others' work) on YouTube. Here's one of e.e.cummings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwflO_IRLPQ
The shirt I'm wearing has symbolic meaning. It symbolises that it was laundry day.
Ah, niiice. You read well. Love your other videos, btw! We share some similar tastes 👍
Well thanks for the kind words!
I'm near positive that in posting the following four links, I will have shared every poem I've done a video for.
Langston Hughes, 'Kids who Die'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQo86jQW9Aw
Delmore Schwartz, 'Calmly We Walk through this April's Day'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HxKv15mSlA
Maya Angelou, 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0JutSJZhD4
Nikki Giovanni 'For Saundra'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwa3GmL88z8
Quote from: KevinP on October 08, 2022, 03:51:13 PM
I've done a few poetry readings (of others' work) on YouTube. Here's one of e.e.cummings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwflO_IRLPQ
The shirt I'm wearing has symbolic meaning. It symbolises that it was laundry day.
Hey, I'm wearing the same shirt...
he wrote it and he called it a poem
he wrote a poem about the things he sees
the hair of the person sitting before
the toes of the shoes of the person sitting behind
both black and with its own particular shine
the black cat crouched beneath the rose-bush
the cat running from the sound of his voice
the green of the leaf
the red of the single blossom
the green of the tag at the black cat's neck
the sound of the tag in the collar as the black cat runs
the black of the laptop of the person sitting beside
the gentle black of his suit
the cut of the suit
the black of his hair
the black of his turban
the smell of the green leaf
the scent of the red blossom
the feeling in his ears as he walks into the silence of the small backyard
for there is a feeling
that is a special feeling
apart from the silence itself
and if he could get at that feeling why
he would write a poem
and the sky would weep
and the tears would be joy
and that black cat would wish it had stayed indoors
(nearly a poem)
9.iv.99
There once was a man from Nantucket...
( As an aside, check out the last movement of Haydn's Symphony No. 98 in B-Flat Major, a limerick if l ever heard one. )
Here is one of mine. It's about seeing a former girlfriend (Marlene) at a Cleveland concert.
The other girl (conceived in May) was another girlfriend who coincidentally was born on the same February day as Marlene. Two Pisces who still haunt my dreams.
RED VELVET
Must I always touch in the moment, a remembered moment,
a remembered face?
-—Conrad Aiken, At a Concert of Music
Was it the dress? that red velvet drama
amid so much formal black?
or the toss of mane, the flash of flesh
by tailor riven cloth revealed
with every forward step that turned
so many heads that night at Severance
towards you, whom the crowd discerned?
Even Marlene, that spirit of summers past,
stared with an almost sapphic interest
(my entrance she hadn't noticed).
The slit was provocative:
from floor to high mid-thighs
and centrally sliced for easy access,
ocular or otherwise.
When I saw Marlene in the main foyer,
I left you to check your cape alone
and approached her dazed: to meet like this,
coincidental! after five eventful, and eternal, years.
She only puzzled seconds, then...that smile!
but quickly squelched to a look that meant she
was annotating changes to her mental file.
Almost at once she said "did you see the blonde
in red velvet?" and we both watched, dazzled,
as you, red velvet blonde, approached with Martin
and Mister Murray's daughter. Quick introductions
and quicker so longs, and you said "so that's Marlene"
you weren't impressed. Well, denim and dark corduroy couldn't
dazzle, but I saw through the rough cloth and she saw me.
We took our seats high in the balcony
while far below, Marlene, scruffy in jeans,
sat front row center with a good view
of the player's argyle taste in hosiery:
a tasteless clash with Bruckner's last, black strife
in delta minor, unfinished, a swan singing of faith fraying
at the edge of life.
But first Zukerman played Mendelssohn
and his sugar sweet tones sang music redolent
of summer birds and fairy tales romantic, half-remembered.
Though we--married, lovers --sat side by side
shoulders touching, though your hand possessive
stroked my thigh, it was winter
and I left you for another woman...The compulsive
music moved me to a grove of green
in bright summer shades, transported me
to a time now only half-remembered
and to another romance, another lover,
and a love more lyrical than ours
more Mendelssohnian.
As earth cradled warmth and us, Marlene picked dancing flowers;
near smiling mushrooms, in soft green moss, squirrels gossiped
while birds fluttered Disney-like near, serenading love lyrics.
But later, as we lay idyllic, side by side shoulders touching,
her hand possessive stroking my thigh, I left her for another...
for a child conceived in West Virginia prime,
a child-woman of chestnut and blue,
and a love, first love, as green as Appalachian springtime.
"Alas, can I never have peace in the shining instant?
...all I can grasp is an earlier, more haunted moment
and a happier place"
At a concert of music my reverie died away
as Mendelssohn died away
and guilty, I avoided your eyes. Though you were my life,
I left you that wintry eve, for two women, both conceived in May.
Quote from: Sergeant Rock on February 18, 2023, 09:59:43 AMHere is one of mine. It's about seeing a former girlfriend (Marlene) at a Cleveland concert.
The other girl (conceived in May) was another girlfriend who coincidentally was born on the same February day as Marlene. Two Pisces who still haunt my dreams.
RED VELVET
Must I always touch in the moment, a remembered moment,
a remembered face?
-—Conrad Aiken, At a Concert of Music
Was it the dress? that red velvet drama
amid so much formal black?
or the toss of mane, the flash of flesh
by tailor riven cloth revealed
with every forward step that turned
so many heads that night at Severance
towards you, whom the crowd discerned?
Even Marlene, that spirit of summers past,
stared with an almost sapphic interest
(my entrance she hadn't noticed).
The slit was provocative:
from floor to high mid-thighs
and centrally sliced for easy access,
ocular or otherwise.
When I saw Marlene in the main foyer,
I left you to check your cape alone
and approached her dazed: to meet like this,
coincidental! after five eventful, and eternal, years.
She only puzzled seconds, then...that smile!
but quickly squelched to a look that meant she
was annotating changes to her mental file.
Almost at once she said "did you see the blonde
in red velvet?" and we both watched, dazzled,
as you, red velvet blonde, approached with Martin
and Mister Murray's daughter. Quick introductions
and quicker so longs, and you said "so that's Marlene"
you weren't impressed. Well, denim and dark corduroy couldn't
dazzle, but I saw through the rough cloth and she saw me.
We took our seats high in the balcony
while far below, Marlene, scruffy in jeans,
sat front row center with a good view
of the player's argyle taste in hosiery:
a tasteless clash with Bruckner's last, black strife
in delta minor, unfinished, a swan singing of faith fraying
at the edge of life.
But first Zukerman played Mendelssohn
and his sugar sweet tones sang music redolent
of summer birds and fairy tales romantic, half-remembered.
Though we--married, lovers --sat side by side
shoulders touching, though your hand possessive
stroked my thigh, it was winter
and I left you for another woman...The compulsive
music moved me to a grove of green
in bright summer shades, transported me
to a time now only half-remembered
and to another romance, another lover,
and a love more lyrical than ours
more Mendelssohnian.
As earth cradled warmth and us, Marlene picked dancing flowers;
near smiling mushrooms, in soft green moss, squirrels gossiped
while birds fluttered Disney-like near, serenading love lyrics.
But later, as we lay idyllic, side by side shoulders touching,
her hand possessive stroking my thigh, I left her for another...
for a child conceived in West Virginia prime,
a child-woman of chestnut and blue,
and a love, first love, as green as Appalachian springtime.
"Alas, can I never have peace in the shining instant?
...all I can grasp is an earlier, more haunted moment
and a happier place"
At a concert of music my reverie died away
as Mendelssohn died away
and guilty, I avoided your eyes. Though you were my life,
I left you that wintry eve, for two women, both conceived in May.
Bud. WTF? I like this very much.
Quote from: foxandpeng on March 12, 2023, 02:10:53 PMBud. WTF? I like this very much.
Thank you...but your using WTF? is confusing. What do you mean by it?
Sarge
Quote from: Sergeant Rock on February 18, 2023, 09:59:43 AMHere is one of mine. It's about seeing a former girlfriend (Marlene) at a Cleveland concert.
The other girl (conceived in May) was another girlfriend who coincidentally was born on the same February day as Marlene. Two Pisces who still haunt my dreams.
RED VELVET
Must I always touch in the moment, a remembered moment,
a remembered face?
-—Conrad Aiken, At a Concert of Music
Was it the dress? that red velvet drama
amid so much formal black?
or the toss of mane, the flash of flesh
by tailor riven cloth revealed
with every forward step that turned
so many heads that night at Severance
towards you, whom the crowd discerned?
Even Marlene, that spirit of summers past,
stared with an almost sapphic interest
(my entrance she hadn't noticed).
The slit was provocative:
from floor to high mid-thighs
and centrally sliced for easy access,
ocular or otherwise.
When I saw Marlene in the main foyer,
I left you to check your cape alone
and approached her dazed: to meet like this,
coincidental! after five eventful, and eternal, years.
She only puzzled seconds, then...that smile!
but quickly squelched to a look that meant she
was annotating changes to her mental file.
Almost at once she said "did you see the blonde
in red velvet?" and we both watched, dazzled,
as you, red velvet blonde, approached with Martin
and Mister Murray's daughter. Quick introductions
and quicker so longs, and you said "so that's Marlene"
you weren't impressed. Well, denim and dark corduroy couldn't
dazzle, but I saw through the rough cloth and she saw me.
We took our seats high in the balcony
while far below, Marlene, scruffy in jeans,
sat front row center with a good view
of the player's argyle taste in hosiery:
a tasteless clash with Bruckner's last, black strife
in delta minor, unfinished, a swan singing of faith fraying
at the edge of life.
But first Zukerman played Mendelssohn
and his sugar sweet tones sang music redolent
of summer birds and fairy tales romantic, half-remembered.
Though we--married, lovers --sat side by side
shoulders touching, though your hand possessive
stroked my thigh, it was winter
and I left you for another woman...The compulsive
music moved me to a grove of green
in bright summer shades, transported me
to a time now only half-remembered
and to another romance, another lover,
and a love more lyrical than ours
more Mendelssohnian.
As earth cradled warmth and us, Marlene picked dancing flowers;
near smiling mushrooms, in soft green moss, squirrels gossiped
while birds fluttered Disney-like near, serenading love lyrics.
But later, as we lay idyllic, side by side shoulders touching,
her hand possessive stroking my thigh, I left her for another...
for a child conceived in West Virginia prime,
a child-woman of chestnut and blue,
and a love, first love, as green as Appalachian springtime.
"Alas, can I never have peace in the shining instant?
...all I can grasp is an earlier, more haunted moment
and a happier place"
At a concert of music my reverie died away
as Mendelssohn died away
and guilty, I avoided your eyes. Though you were my life,
I left you that wintry eve, for two women, both conceived in May.
This is lovely, thank you.
Gripping, Sarge! :)
Quote from: Sergeant Rock on March 15, 2023, 08:45:12 AMThanks, Karl!
Sarge
The Dacha awaits your comment, if you have time. ;)
Quote from: Sergeant Rock on March 15, 2023, 08:22:03 AMThank you...but your using WTF? is confusing. What do you mean by it?
Sarge
WTF... Who knew you had such a turn of phrase? Took me right by surprise! I'm really impressed, Sarge. Lots of poetry written by most people fails to reach the heady heights of 'doggerel', so this was a mature read.
Do you have more?
Quote from: foxandpeng on March 15, 2023, 09:17:28 AMWTF... Who knew you had such a turn of phrase? Took me right by surprise! I'm really impressed, Sarge. Lots of poetry written by most people fails to reach the heady heights of 'doggerel', so this was a mature read.
Do you have more?
Yes I have more. I have written about 200, most of them about the the women I loved and lost. Failure inspired me ;D
Jean was my first real love;together with Marlene, the two radically changed my life when those relationships failed and I quit university and enlisted in the army. Here is the first of some 50 Jean poems,written when I was 47. We met during high school band rehearsal She played trumpet, I tenor sax. She had auburn hair and the darkest blue eyes I've ever seen, which explains the last line.
JEAN ONE/SONNET TWENTY-ONE
My future shrinking at the same grave rate.
my past increases, and ages now I
have sighed for you. But when did I first sigh,
first fall; what day, what month...September late?
proximity of sax to trumpets, fate?
"How did you get stuck with me?" you wrote once,
in mock self-deprecation (I could sense
the smile, the tease). Why
did I concentrate
on you; what glue was used to blind and bind me?
The freshmen girls, your Class of 70,
were luscious, all; so fresh and ripe and new,
just right for picking: Marty, blonde Judy,
two Beckys, Vicki. But you, sigh...O you
were forbidden fruit, russet and dark blue.
And here is a poem describing my elation when she said yes for the first time.
JEAN TWO/SONNET FOURTEEN
(December 1966)
You don't know how many times
I've wished that I could hold you
—The Association,
CherishMy heart leapt, then blazed when I heard you say
Yes! but my facade so cool--though careen-
ing emotions I could not control, Jean,
roller-coastered me up & down hallway
stairs the rest of the delirious day!
And I a dream come true for you, I learned
later: Marty your friend asked who you yearned
for, burned for, who did you positively pray
for, and the whispered, confidential, girl
to girl answer was combustible me!
me who fired your..., who ignited your twirl
in giddy thought of high (teen) society:
orchid-dreams formal-dress clinging-dance swirl
with a boy who would
Cherish you...slowly
More tomorrow.
JEAN SEVENTEEN
(Christmas Formal, December 23rd 1967)
I realize that I am not going to be the one to share your dreams, I am not going to be the one to share what seems
to be the life that you could cherish as much as I do yours
—The Association, Cherish
After the Christmas formal, near midnight, Capricorn conflagrant
and she consubstantial, incandescent, when last we touched...
If I'd known, I would have preserved the moment more completely,
in memory and verse; as it is, most of that evening is gone
or buried so deep I'd need a psychologist to excavate.
Our final dance is now, I think, an amalgamation of memories
of all our dances. The very low cut gown, yellow--at that dance
or Homecoming?--exposing small half-globes of startling whiteness,
is razor sharp; our companions, at a table of four--at that dance or some other--aren't. Marty and her date?
Did we dance to Cherish one last time? Did I notice the lyrics,
with foreboding?--she'd refused my ring just days before:
Ohio University Class of 71; set heavily in gold, a garnet, garish.
75 dollars wasted. A year wasted too? But no...hope sprang etc the evening soared, my disappointment forgotten finally in her arms.
Mothlike I hugged the flame, dervished into a fiery dimension
as we converged to our own intense music, holding each to each
daunsinge, whiche betokeneth concorde or so it seemed then.
But we were in fact diverging, not coming together in an amaranthine
state signifying matrimonie. But it was sweet, the ignorance,
sweet and candent that Capricorn evening, when last we danced.
And later, sweet was her mouth, a vermilion vortex drawing me in;
that moist kiss (like our first kiss.like our last) transcendent, not simply lips touching, no but my mouth more her mouth, a dissolving of body and soul into body and soul. My house was strangely empty and quiet that evening near midnight. Jill, with her date, was engaged like me, too busy to note big brother
and she soon disappeared from my soft, rectangular universe with its single,
rufescent star: reclining Jean, radiant on the den couch, our only bed
(our August Eden being devoid of furniture). But from such a distance, three decades distorting like cosmic dust, her glow's obscured, the haze thickening with each passing year, the color fading like her photographs. Her voice is gone, the tone,the intimate sounds; her perfume gone now too...but not her passion or the feel, the taste, the texture of hr open mouth on mine,
like an exquisite single malt, the smooth Macallan say: sherry'd syrup,
liquid heather, mulled fire: incessant, lingering, intoxicating,
O unforgettable taste, as sweet as I could bear. And now, when Capricorn
rises, bringing cold days and colder nights, I, chilled and pensive,
recall a singular star, the brilliance and the heat, and I mourn.
JEAN TWENTY-NINE/SONNET SIXTEEN
(Grateful Dead, Ohio University, November 23rd 1968)
Saint Stephen boogie blues psychedelic
eleven in the morning dew and the other
one turn on the love light of the hippie chick
dancing her roommate: fluid they flower,
blonde on blonde, stoned, zoned-together, tumble.
I watch--feel their heat--jam! twist in a trance,
tonight sexual barriers crumble:
we, the grateful living, sweat, fuck, and dance!
Death don't have no mercy: we groove light, loose,
in the zone ... Jerry's silvery guitar
notes cascade down new potato caboose
and fly toward cosmic consequence: dark star.
". . .little schoolgirl," wails Pigpen, "without a warnin'
you broke my heart...you know I need you darlin'. . ."
Too bad Schoenberg isn't around anymore, he could set them to music. :)
CAT ONE
I am the color of striped flame
My eyes glow of setting sun
and devil and seductress
share My silent stare
penetrating your very thoughts
and far beyond
I dance an inward dance
waltz with the moon
and stars remember My hunts
CAT TWO
the Cat was Calico
She did a
slow
s l o w...
motion
yawn
and stretch
yawn and stretch
and after a doubt
or two
accepted my hand
like an empress her crown
THE D MINOR, THIRD VERSION, NOWAK
for David "Pete" Petersen
Conducting the Cleveland, Aldo Ceccato, baton
like a sword, was charging his way through the finale
of Bruckner's symphonic cathedral to Wagner
like it was the gallop from Rossini's Tell
(Latin temperament irrepressible, allowing
no monumental peasant piety nor Ländler lope)
when I noticed the Afro among the three thousand
palefaces in attendance at Severance:
as the coda approached, that majestic moment
when trumpet theme returns for a major recycling,
the white woman beside him tapped his shoulder,
alerting. He tensed forward, straining to hear,
fanfares rallentando and...wholly Hallelujah!!!
Cleveland explodes!
braying horns, tuba and trombones erupting,
trumpets machine-gunning triplets.
I was showered in brass shrapnel, fifths,
goose bumps; a silly grin spreading. And
black and white
beamed enormously at each other
as he shook his head yes! O yes! up and down,
up and down, yes! and yes! And yes,
I thought amazed, this ain't Miles or Marvin,
stereotypes burning away in Brucknerian blaze.
Yes. . .make color and culture irrelevant,
build your Gothic structure of sound,
hurl your themes toward heaven like spires
and stride, augmented, through the macrocosm, Anton: sainted!
And let your majors and minors linger in my mind...
This is a poem about a guy I knew while stationed on the DMZ in Korea, Nov 1969-Oct 1970.
CHUCK
Chuck looks like a caricature of Paul Newman:
amazing resemblance but everything (lips eyes nose length)
just way too much. Still,
he claims to get all the chicks in Nebraska
and I can see why.
I'm a bit envious of his commanding height and looks
(I'd murder for those eyes).
But he's celibate here, never goes crackin'
never jumps the back of the deuce'n'half to ride horny
into the vill' with the rest of us: he claims it's the smell,
open sewers, water buffalos sharing village space
the low-tide stench of the Imjin,
and the kim chee breath of the lithesome dolls
who dance the clubs with slender limbs
all elbows and knees, jet hair and eyes:
ravishing raven girls not yet eighteen--most;
their painted lips and pouty mouths
reeking of rotting cabbage, onion, garlic; clover gum.
The smell makes me hungry now that I'm addicted to
the local cuisine--the local toys.
Korea is real, not shrink-wrapped clean and odor free
like "The World" Chuck wants to return to so desperately.
He has (statistically) half a century left
but I wouldn't bet he'll be around
to witness tomorrow's flaming sunrise:
He's the Colonel's driver
and sits daily exposed in an open jeep,
cruising the Zone within easy sniper range.
Concerned, I enlist Robert Herrick's help
and together we try to inject some reality
into Chuck's situation with a poetic truth:
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may...
It doesn't work (in this century poetry never does).
Every day he drives towards his mortality
vainly vest'd and hopelessly helmet'd
against smooth or jagged metal penetration while:
north across the barrier Korean gunners aim and track
awaiting an inscrutable political decision to squeeze.
Every night he goes to bed alone
in our cold tin hooch, perversely dreaming of Kinney Shoes
and his future as assistant manager while:
south across the river Korean china dolls fully awake
dream of Hollywood stars--and settle for me.
JEAN SIX
(state track meet, Columbus Ohio, May 1967)
Birkbeck blew the mile.
Our school's one chance for glory gone,
we decided to explore the far side of the stadium
and (thank you God) the upper decks were deserted:
We clung and curved and kissed cathartic
through catacombs tunneled beneath ten thousand seats.
The bus ride home was yellow long and languid;
the warm western sun through the window
baked her bare flesh.
She issued an ambiguous challenge:
Feel my leg, she said,
it's really hot.
Chatter ceased and sixty silent students
waited, then watched
as I touched modestly at the knee
(years later I understood perfectly
the single erotic moment
in Eric Rohmer's Claire's Knee).
No. . .higher, she said with a Mona Lisa smile,
a direct blue stare
as unambiguous as a Balthus child.
With the driver's large eyes
in the rear view mirror,
watching our minor-aged moves,
I placed my hand high on her thigh
and the flame leapt,
my palm seared like a steak thrown on a grill.
Her power tested, and intact,
talk in the bus resumed with subdued snickers
while my hand sizzled until it was well done.
I'm not a poet but I once embarked on a set of poems in alphabetical order based on impressions from back country hikes in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. Maybe I'll finish one day(?) Probably not.
Ash
On the nether cusp
Powdered smoke
Plighted to the wind
Bone
Capillary scrimshaw
Etched in moss
Worms cored its marrow
Wind smoothed its scars
It cools my palm
With a last caress
It's laid to rest
On a bed of needles
By a hunters' path
Beneath the scattered stars
Crag
Dislocated fracture
Weathered, pocked with age
Collage of autumn far below
Crosshatched by birch and their shadows
A quick silver brook tears the page
Quote from: BasilValentine on March 28, 2023, 11:10:22 AMI'm not a poet but I once embarked on a set of poems in alphabetical order based on impressions from back country hikes in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. Maybe I'll finish one day(?) Probably not.
Ash
On the nether cusp
Powdered smoke
Plighted to the wind
Bone
Capillary scrimshaw
Etched in moss
Worms cored its marrow
Wind smoothed its scars
It cools my palm
With a last caress
It's laid to rest
On a bed of needles
By a hunters' path
Beneath the scattered stars
Crag
Dislocated fracture
Weathered, pocked with age
Collage of autumn far below
Crosshatched by birch and their shadows
A quick silver brook tears the page
Nice
A few words of explanation: a group of very young children caught us making out. We didn't even notice them at first
JEAN TWELVE
And there I dream'd
—John Keats, La Belle Dame sans Merci
It was exactly three, after the cacophony
of the band practice had finally faded
into the afternoon's hot summer silence,
when we met in the mead behind my house
and she was beautiful and magical, a faery's child
in blue short-shorts and tight knit top;
she seemed closer to naked than clothed
but not close enough:
I had to imagine parts of her body,
think the things I wanted to see
and aroused then, watched her reach a high
on one of Hazel's elementary swings.
We spoke tentatively, constrained by mysteries,
constrained by desire, and when I took her hand
as we entered the enchanted woods,
we became as silent as that August afternoon,
whose silence was like the fourth day of creation
before God's golden hand fashioned the animals:
the silence of rock and soil, of grass,
mold and mushroom, moss and ivy;
the silence of trees and bushes tall
who with their green and liberal leaves
conspired well to hide our love.
The world of other humans vanished.
Like children of the first garden,
innocent under the knowledge tree,
we touched in utter simplicity:
the beginning of my long dream.
But what we call the beginning is often the end
and the leaves were suddenly full of laughter,
excited, amused--bemused--by the adult invasion
of a children's faery land.
Shocked and surrounded, we stared them down
and lost our innocence when they scampered away.
I shut my eyes and held her tighter,
afraid of beauty I could barely endure.
In a language strange of moans and kisses
I thought I heard I love thee true;
she looked at me so dark and wild,
no longer a faery's child.
And in that elfin grove she wept
and held me fiercely to her body
and no birds sang the dream that was
both beginning, and an end.
Quote from: Sergeant Rock on April 01, 2023, 05:13:09 AMA few words of explanation: a group of very young children caught us making out. We didn't even notice them at first
JEAN TWELVE
And there I dream'd
—John Keats, La Belle Dame sans Merci
It was exactly three, after the cacophony
of the band practice had finally faded
into the afternoon's hot summer silence,
when we met in the mead behind my house
and she was beautiful and magical, a faery's child
in blue short-shorts and tight knit top;
she seemed closer to naked than clothed
but not close enough:
I had to imagine parts of her body,
think the things I wanted to see
and aroused then, watched her reach a high
on one of Hazel's elementary swings.
We spoke tentatively, constrained by mysteries,
constrained by desire, and when I took her hand
as we entered the enchanted woods,
we became as silent as that August afternoon,
whose silence was like the fourth day of creation
before God's golden hand fashioned the animals:
the silence of rock and soil, of grass,
mold and mushroom, moss and ivy;
the silence of trees and bushes tall
who with their green and liberal leaves
conspired well to hide our love.
The world of other humans vanished.
Like children of the first garden,
innocent under the knowledge tree,
we touched in utter simplicity:
the beginning of my long dream.
But what we call the beginning is often the end
and the leaves were suddenly full of laughter,
excited, amused--bemused--by the adult invasion
of a children's faery land.
Shocked and surrounded, we stared them down
and lost our innocence when they scampered away.
I shut my eyes and held her tighter,
afraid of beauty I could barely endure.
In a language strange of moans and kisses
I thought I heard I love thee true;
she looked at me so dark and wild,
no longer a faery's child.
And in that elfin grove she wept
and held me fiercely to her body
and no birds sang the dream that was
both beginning, and an end.
I really like your poetic voice, Sarge. I think you have something. Do you ever workshop your poems? There is a maturing voice in there...
Quote from: foxandpeng on April 01, 2023, 05:49:40 AMI really like your poetic voice, Sarge. I think you have something. Do you ever workshop your poems? There is a maturing voice in there...
Thank you. I really appreciate your kind words. No, I've never workshop'd my poems.
Sarge
Quote from: Sergeant Rock on April 01, 2023, 07:06:53 AMThank you. I really appreciate your kind words. No, I've never workshop'd my poems.
Sarge
Some of your writing puts me in mind of Ian Hamilton in works like The Garden or Returning. There is a matter-of-factness and immediacy that I see in his work that I see in yours. It isn't bare or dispassionate, but there is a realism and understatedness that is really interesting, while in no way detracting from the tenderness that you describe.
Quote from: foxandpeng on April 01, 2023, 07:18:15 AMSome of your writing puts me in mind of Ian Hamilton in works like The Garden or Returning. There is a matter-of-factness and immediacy that I see in his work that I see in yours. It isn't bare or dispassionate, but there is a realism and understatedness that is really interesting, while in no way detracting from the tenderness that you describe.
I"m not familiar with his poetry. I've ordered a copy of Selections.
Sarge
Quote from: Sergeant Rock on April 02, 2023, 05:43:02 AMI"m not familiar with his poetry. I've ordered a copy of Selections.
Sarge
I hope you enjoy 😀
SPARTA WISCONSIN, SUMMER OF 71
It was outrageously ideal
our honeymoon home
on the edge of town:
a farmhouse of radiant new yellow
like an earthbound sun in the middle of a garden.
The tomatoes grew fat and juicy in its warm reflection.
Our discrete landlady said help yourselves please
and green salads took on a whole new meaning, a richer
palette with picked fresh from the vine red decoration.
And within that warmth love too rainbowed with new meaning:
finally free of family, free of stress, the luxury of lazy days
and endless nights, you came with me for the first time
and life seemed perfect
until that evening the '66 Graves went sour
and spoiled what should have been a great dinner.
There were other premonitions
we didn't discern at the time,
forebodings: like Fauré's Sicilienne,
the theme of NPR's classical program
broadcast daily from LaCrosse.
That melancholy dance and presentiment
of Pelléas and Mélisande's fate
was a musical mirror
reflecting two other tragic characters.
A CONVERSATION WITH HUGO WILLIAMS
In the blindfold hours,
in the memory wars,
don't fool yourself it never happened,
that you never loved her...But Hugo,
if you don't, the pain confronts:
the realization that you weren't really the one,
the sensitive one to ride her amative moods,
soothing her fears, forcing her nature gently,
and accepting, accepting, her resistance with patience
while awaiting the inevitable leap,
the bloom beyond childhood legacy
into the woman you always wanted,
the woman you craved...the woman you lost.
In the fading light, through the dank late autumn leaves,
to enter the comfort of her room
a cluttered room, where the ashes
still glow warm with memory, five roses persist,
gold droplets of Piesporter mature in crystal
and a collage, echoic, of Mahler, Marieke,
Bluebird Wine and Le Meteque is heard;
where the waft of Charlie still lingers
sensuously in the cobwebbed rafters
and The Education of Don Juan lies
on the mantle in the dust
bookmarked at that certain page--is to come
face to face with loss,
the horror of regret...if I did love her.
Better to browse with feigned disinterest,
seeking no lost treasures: no easy
laughter nor cat eyes crinkled, seducing; no summer
body, all blonde and bronzed; no unique
and feminine source, welling the sea; no chansons.
Ignore the heat, the musky scent.
Then congratulate yourself on how little you find,
how little you feel.
After all, you only need chilled air to breathe.
Open a window:
listen to the leaves tumbling in the wind,
feel the hint of frost, inhale the musty scent.
Quote from: foxandpeng on April 02, 2023, 11:56:58 AMI hope you enjoy 😀
The book arrived this afternoon. I've read about a third of the poems plus the story Money. Unfortunately The Garden and Returning aren't included. But other than that disappointment I am enjoying Hamilton's work.
Sarge
Quote from: Sergeant Rock on April 06, 2023, 09:08:11 AMThe book arrived this afternoon. I've read about a third of the poems plus the story Money. Unfortunately The Garden and Returning aren't included. But other than that disappointment I am enjoying Hamilton's work.
Sarge
I may be able to help you. PM incoming 🙂
Quote from: Sergeant Rock on April 06, 2023, 09:08:11 AMThe book arrived this afternoon. I've read about a third of the poems plus the story Money. Unfortunately The Garden and Returning aren't included. But other than that disappointment I am enjoying Hamilton's work.
Sarge
Although your inbox is full, atm... 😁
Quote from: foxandpeng on April 06, 2023, 09:13:23 AMAlthough your inbox is full, atm... 😁
You can send it to the addy posted in my profile
Sarge
Quote from: Sergeant Rock on April 06, 2023, 09:52:49 AMYou can send it to the addy posted in my profile
Sarge
Ah, no email address visible on your summary profile either 😔
irenedale75@googlemail.com
JEAN THIRTY-EIGHT
(University of Akron, January 1972 )
She wore her hair short
in a style that was fashionable
for high school girls in 1967.
Every girl wore her hair that way:
200 clones
200 Stepford students.
I liked individuality
in a person
and she was,
in at least one way,
individual:
She loved me.
I should have been content.
But I said, Let your hair grow,
let it grow for me.
She did once--for two weeks.
Years later I saw her again
at university.
I was stunned:
The short chestnut cut
of memory was gone
replaced by a long long mane
of Celtic auburn waves
reminiscent of those fabled women
in Pre-Raphaelite paintings.
My imagination had been surpassed a hundredfold:
It was the most beautiful head of hair
I'd ever seen
and exerted an attraction like a Siren's song.
She had finally let her hair grow long
--for someone else.
It was the cruelest thing she ever did.
JEAN FORTY-FIVE/SONNET TWENTY
You are my text, my reason to write. Not
a day has died since sixty-six, the Fall,
when you haven't appeared, disrupting thought
and dashing expectations like the "wrong"
notes in a sixteenth century madrigal
by Gesualdo that startle but enthrall
and weave us moody into dissonant
textures. You clash with my life; like a gong,
shatter my peaceful consonance in the light
of 9 p.m., walking down hillside vines;
the clashing note I use to fashion lines,
a song, as evening darkens into night,
broods into West where, still, a pale light shines,
where my text doth lie, my reason to write.
Me surrounded by Stepford girls.
(https://photos.imageevent.com/sgtrock/may2021/stepford.jpg)
Sarge
Some cummings.
And yes, that's me.
I regret the use of the limiter which brought up the volume of my breaths.
Langston Hughes' Kids who Die
These three complete all the poetry reading videos I've made, so
I won't be flooding this page with endless videos. I'm sure I'll make more, but only when the inspiration hits.
Delmore Schwartz' 'Calmly we Walk through this April Day'
Nikki Giovanni's 'For Saundra'
Maya Angelou's 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'
LOCAL HEROES
PFC Kim Raupach 4 Nov 1948-14 Jun 1969
PFC James Clark 15 Nov 1949-18 Feb 1970
SP5 Forestal "Mutt" Stevens 20 Jun 1946-25 Aug 1968
Where have all the soldiers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the soldiers gone, long time ago?
Kim is gone:
Kim with his elegance and gentleness and quietness
who studiously carried more books home from school than anyone
was tossed casually into his first feral firefight
and consumed in seconds like a paper match
and I don't know why.
Jimmy is gone:
Jimmy with his hillbilly soul
whom I loved almost as much as Sherry Daniel in 5th grade
did his duty like all proud patriotic southern gentlemen
and died for another South
and I don't know why.
Mutt is gone:
Mutt with his priapic passion and love
who caused a minor scandal in our small town
turned his love and lust into a green-beret'd desire for death
and left his babes fatherless
and I don't know why.
I am gone:
I with my romantic belief in love
who lost all love and then all belief
stand frozen in a winter wasteland M16 locked and loaded
staring into northern hell with a dead soul
and I don't know why.
There must be meaning in death
or how can we live?
But I can fathom no meaning.
At sunset I stand near the Imjin but see the Styx. I shiver.
I watch the sun sinking slowly over the wide winter river;
it seems to touch the frozen water setting it alight
in a paradoxical blaze of fire and ice
just before the coming of darkness and night.
Perhaps the Beat manifesto
of Orlovsky Ginsberg and Corso is right:
Only the wonders of sunset have any meaning.
The Imjin moans as the ice shifts: sounds like keening.
AUBADE FOR MISS KIM
(Yobo is a Korean term of affection between lovers)
I stood beside you in the chill October
morn and you so warm, Kim Kil Cha, cocooned nude
in the fat, garish quilt, your flesh like fire
hidden. Yobo, you wake? Come back to bed.
Come. I think on these things as I read her
old letters of pressed clover and flower
once letters of luck, the stationary of spring.
But twenty-eight autumns crumble like leaves
in my hand, dusty and dried to a sullen
yellow, a terminal gangrene.
Raked by the years, I see you standing
where the sadness ran so deep that morning,
in the doorway, a stricken Butterfly
in the dawn, the servant at your side, smiling,
dust rag in hand, waving goodbye, goodbye...
But you, Kil Cha, you my love, my yobo,
said nothing, moved not in the morning chill.
Your final word, your last goodbye, a soundless O
but I heard what you felt, I felt you cry, No!
It doth make me still.
JEAN FORTY-THREE
What will become of you and me
besides the photo and the memory?
—Delmore Schwartz, For Rhoda
Our world fades and shrinks as we grow:
that old throw rug was once a plateau;
the cramped attic room, now so petite,
contained a child's vaulted penthouse suite.
Fathers who towered ten feet tall--giants inspiring a child's awe
--today look up at us, their good but frail hearts weak as straw.
Grandfather bears, burly and big, who sat with us at the piano
and smothered our senses in song, shaving soap, Old Spice, tobacco
who conquered with baritone ease the immense music of Wagner
and fought the world with iron-cross'd valor,
pale to whispers and skeletal fear in wards of cancer.
And Jean--once upon, once upon....my muse, my nymphet,
my sin and my soul, my love and regret
--is a fading three by five photo three decades old
kept in a worn notebook like a nostalgic quote.
A project I've been toying with:
A lobster roll on a wharf in Maine. Hazy writing for solo flute. Triad is officially dying. Happy as a clam at high tide. "I am the Bishop of East Anglia." My friend took me out for a quick sail, the only time I've been on so cozy a sailboat. "The Business Ain't Nothing But the Blues." I'm certainly sad about the demise of a choir at whose formation I was present and which was dedicated to new music. A speeding ticket (my only such) while driving from New Jersey to Maine. "According to my careful prosthesis." In some ways, it's the Summer of Rahsaan Roland Kirk. In the chamber orchestra adaptation, I decided right away to lose the timpani. It was only on the Internet, but I met the bra designed especially for small boobs. "Crisp, aggressive water chestnuts." Not that I was in a hurry for the lobster roll. No tomato for Plato. Notwithstanding a number of elements (Liz Taylor, Montgomery Clift, a screenplay based on Dreiser's An American Tragedy) the movie just didn't draw me in and I gave up after perhaps half an hour. In some ways it has been a trying week, but I'm okay. Given my plans for the piece, shedding timpani is no disappointment. Kirk and I share the coincidence of suffering a stroke the week of Thanksgiving. Funny, in a way, remembering what finding one's way by car was like, in the pre-GPS epoch. And Molson Golden Ale. One of my unfulfilled pipe-dreams was that Triad sing the entire Mass, Opus 106. The trailer trying to sell it as "one of the great on-screen romances" may not have helped much. At the time of the trip to Maine, I had not yet formed a definite idea of being a composer. Philip has lost his Melinda, and my heart goes out to him. Triad did, after all, sing the Kyrie, Gloria and Agnus Dei, and beautifully, too. My black Mustang was totaled by a privileged white jerk who ran a red light. That angle in the trailer really alerted my skepticism sensors; I don't apologize for that. Also of suffering impairment of the left hand as a result. Not yet formed a definite idea of being a composer? I still hadn't any idea of how to go to college. Since I am unable at present to play clarinet, composing for flute solo is gratifyingly vicarious. Those were days (not to glamorize them) of my being an unmoored clarinetist in his late teens. Predictably, the cop let the fat cat skate. Nice work, if you can get it.
I'm still wavering on this.
Enjoyed that, Karl.
Not sure I understood much, but seemingly there's a nice "polyphony" of sub-narratives.
OTOH I recall once being surprised that you listened to RRK, and I hadn't realized the connection mentioned.
Agreed. I'd like to hear a reading of that.
e e cummings died on this day in 1962.
anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did.
Excerpt of E.E. Cummings, "[anyone lived in a pretty how town]" from Complete Poems 1904-1962, edited by George J. Firmage. Copyright 1926, 1954, 1991 by the Trustees for the E.E. Cummings Trust. Copyright © 1985 by George James Firmage.
sleep took me—i was seeking asylum driven out of the world of waking
women i once loved ringed me round
bandying the edges of undullable disappointment
they bade me adieu with smiles & kisses
H. P. Lovecraft checked my coat & i raced up
the stairs to catch the last bars of sleep's
sweet overture
sleep dragged me into a plush
velvet seat and i smiled knowing it would be
hours before the fat lady would ring but
before i lapsed fully into the first act
i stepped up to read a little Dostoyevsky
while listening to Dire Straits **** i slept
but my ambitions fidgeted and climbed off
my shoulders they reached up to caress
the windowpane to feel the imprint of
moonlight (i dreamt i and my love saw Venus
shining over the Lunacharsky Prospect) as my
ambition rested its cheek against the cooling glass
night shuttered the windows with political ambiguities
and the claws gripping the sill were commas
changing the meaning of love-letter sentences
(...pillow talk 3 October 1993)
This will be too long for one message so I'll post it in several parts. I spent most of the night reading, writng and drinking on the 28th anniversary of Jean dumping me. This poem ends with Jean's story.
Part 1
WHISKEY AND INK, WHISKEY AND INK
(March 18th 1996)
Quiet his loves lay, at the bottom of his mind.
Now & then, O now & then, at intervals
he took one out & inspected it.
They did him homage. Which he did repay with memory.
—John Berryman
Reading (the Berryman of youth remembered from middle-age,
Love & Fame) after midnight, I slide back the years
as Irish whisk' (the Dew) lubricates memory
and Satie (Gnossiennes) supplies the mood: wistful melancholy exposed.
"La musique de Satie va toute nue" said Cocteau.
Berryman's music, too, goes forth naked:
"...in one of Brooks Hall's little visiting rooms
in blunt view of whoever might pass by
we fondled each other's wonders"
"...who turned out to have nothing on under her gown
sprawled out half-drunk across her hostess's bed
moaning, Put it in! Put it in!"
The reception room of the women's residence
at Barnard College, in the early thirties, more
interesting than any co-ed dorm (ruled in loco parentis)
at Ohio University during the sexual revolution. Apparently!
But student/faculty parties I recognize, the women of arts liberal & hot! (Oral Interp prodigies, English Lit muses, the Nude in Art models,
the best & the brightest, the buxom & the barest;
and not just the potential poets, painters, actresses & trophy wives: the music department, too, sounded diverse possibilities:
modern sexual symphonies, short, perversely complex, fuguing!
two, three, even four part inventions,
interweaving lives & loves in cacophonous counterpoint,
building quickly toward dissonant climaxes
of emotional & structural disintegration.
Or orgies operatic of Wagnerian endurance:
"I need a man who can do it three times a night, who can go all night"bluntly challenged one Valkyrian girl with an amazing embouchure: mouthlipstongue tireless from ten years of blowing
French horn.
And I gave it a damned good try!
Berryman's poetry (mine too) not exactly she walks in beauty like the night but we're closer to the real language & passions of youth. Romantics don't flourish in the late twentieth century; women don't swoon to the tune of my love is like a red red rose any longer. They want a hard body, a firm guiding grip,
and power & prose, not an artsy-fartsy wimp dispensing
posies & poesies!
Love poetry has only this use now: to conserve the memory
of ancient ecstasies and preserve the regrets of grizzled poets.
And Berryman is my biographical twin in love & regret;
I read in his poetic history me:
Part 2
"She was keen on me but too tall for my then romantic image"
And I remember, see again from thirty years, tall Barb & Ann
Barb's playground pose & seductive debate;
Ann's earth mother body and wifely virtues list giantesses both,keen on me but rejected for statuesque sin. See, across the field,stunning Mary Jo, with her blazing braid of antique hair,
just an inch an inch! too tall for romantic consideration.
All I can do now is shake my touch of grey in disbelief.
"...up & down in front of her blue house passionate
in the late afternoon barely to be noticed. O Charlotte"
O Sherry! my secret love from fifth to ninth grade
and my secret lust from tenth till today (but betrothed,
then married, to a friend of a friend; her body off-limits):
so many adolescent afternoons, walking up & down Clinton,
hoping to glance her by chance & domestic,
but she didn't exist outside the academic, I guess.
At age eleven I saw her daily at school, bespectacled, studious,
and years later, short-skirted & twirling our dissonant blue band but never once near her home or downtown D-town.
Didn't she ever buy milk & meat at Dave's? grab a pizza?
or melt a Sweet Shop cone with lascivious licks? But I saw her
sans glasses, nearly naked, once. At Clay's Park. Once was enough because she blinded!—golden like the sun: a radiant, bikini'd goddess with long everything (limbs, body, blonde) playmate proportioned and the girl next door O yes! Someone should've tip'd Hef.
(Her future, in Dakota, with clown fish & cockers, lonely & barren while Fred flew aborted Armageddons;
the fading scream of the Stratofortress,
the soundtrack of her life.)
"Dance! from Savannah...with your slur hypnotic"
To an Ohio boy who couldn't get no satisfaction,
Judy Spurgeon Savannah Georgia born & bred,
was a mesmeric sound: her odd last name, her magnolia drawl,
sent off vibrations, creating desires visceral & decades deep.
Blonde beyond blonde like a pur sang Dane, the idea of north,
island isolated, millennia unmolested by the dark barbarian,
she possessed a purity as cool & white as an angel in the snow
and seemed untouchable. So I didn't try...
not even that vernal afternoon we spent alone, field tripping,
hours on the hunt for the rarest insect, in a verdant place
as close to the Garden as is possible in this millenium, in Ohio.
She appeared & disappeared during my sixteenth year; last seen
dancing slow dancing! with Fred B her dramatic topology,
set in relief by short tight cloth, caressed & embraced
by the barbarous boy: black haired, older, wheeled, her steady.
Those textile contours, the cotton peaks & silken valleys,
her bare white legs, her white blonde hair, her pale white face,
that face, that look! the estral smile, blue eyes closed, ecstatic
as she danced! haunt me like the thought of pallid death...
Part 3
"I almost lost not only my mind but my physical well-being!
night on night...intertangled breathless, sweating,
on a verge...but she wouldn't quite sleep with me"
Nor would early Pear throughout nights (& days) of pain & passion: at the prom, Mohican, her house, my house, frontseats, backseats,
all around Big Rock, near the swings at Hazel Harvey,
and in the green grass behind the stadium vide Van Morrison
(but he got the color wrong: she was a blue not brown eyed girl).
Love was whispered because parents near, in real proximity often
(just a closed door or disturbed sleep away) and always in her mind near. She drove me crazy, necking & petting for hours & hours, day after day, night after night. We practiced safe sex, 60s style: sweaty intense intercourse, wearing double denim condoms... Arrghhh!!!
She sympathetic (& satisfied) but wouldn't quite help me.
We saw Goodbye, Columbus. Thereafter, I lifted cars
with an imploring puppy dog look;
her laughter, not the exercise, deflationary: a temporary cure.
Then Dylan crooned lay lady lay, lay across my big brass bed:
radiating every two hours from WHLO Akron, the not subliminal message
why wait any longer for the one you love beamed directly
into the hearts & minds of smalltown American maidens.
It climbed the Top 40, stalled at number 9: a Top 10 hit! just.
But that cured her; then me. O the Power of Pop! Thank you, Bob.
"I fell in love with a girl. . .
She muttered something in my ear I've forgotten as we danced"
And in my senior year I fell in love with Jean:
Betty Jean Stevens, Chippewa cheerleader, a girl of fourteen.
We danced a million times but whatever she
muttered, moaned, whispered or claimed in my ear
is forgotten in a fog of living & dancing other women.
"I bet she now has seven lousy children"
Does Jean have children? a sure bet, a genetic certainty,
even seven's possible: her parents were prolific: seven-teen!
Number sixteen she was...she made headlines!
Her big, blue-eyed, baby-faced facade, front-paging
a West Virginia weekly, warmed many a hillbilly heart
in the deep chill of February '52.
As the clan's baby she wallowed in goo-goo celebrity
until that night Helen Seventeen was casually conceived & Jean's special status revoked.
(Years later she spoiled daddy
by cooking chicken livers she hated
but he loved—to regain his attention.
She earned three star parental praise
and hugs she valued more highly than my hugs & praise!)
"I wish she'd write to me"
In '68 she went suddenly silent, during a disagreement, mild,
about a trivial dance; a silence that is stretching towards forever.
I've wished for years she would write
or speak to me I dream it! Often.
Once, from a combat zone,
I sent a pure silk card, white as Christmas.
I thought she couldn't romantically resist a little soldier boy
far, far from home
or his words elegant & simple, I still dream about you
and literally true: she haunted my REM
(that was when I still believed in the Shirelles & romance,
the orange cat my confrère). But she could & did resist
and her silence is twenty-eight years old today.
Happy Anniversary!
Her father is long gone now; her mother just last month;
and Jean could be dead I really don't know. . .
her silence like the grave anyway.
My poetic congratulations she'll never read, I guess.
Part 4
"How did we break off. . .I puzzle"
She not only broke our relationship & my heart,
she broke my life.
How it happened, & why, is a long puzzle,
a mystery for nearly three decades pondered
in silence & solitude...sometimes despair;
her forty letters read & reread
for clues that remain elusive after half a lifetime.
"...bleary as an envelope cried-over
after the letter's lost"
I have all her letters save one: "Dear John" it should've begun.
That final (dis)missive went up in flames seven years later
just like the relationship its sacrifice was supposed to save
but Fricka refused the burnt offering & Cherie walked
as the funereal fire consumed, like Valhalla, our marriage by the Rhine.
I still have the envelope, though, postmarked
DOYLESTOWN, OH APR 10 1968 AM.
I stare at it often, try to conjure whole the ashen contents
but nothing materializes except I can't make you happy.
She did make me happy: ecstatic! orgasmic! all fuzzy & delirious!
So I thought, What a strange thing for her to write. And not true.
Perhaps that's why I remember it still: the incongruity.
The winter quarter, like her hometown girl wait for me,
was long & cold & lonely: too long? too lonely?
too cold? her body, another body wanting,
unable to create (like two sticks rub heat) even a spark of warmth?
Twelve weeks apart...forever on a teenager's time scale:
a time of life when eight periods stretch eternal
and patience prepubescent, squirming
is a virtue nearly nonexistent;
a time of life when social quacking
and feathered & crested conformity confirm self
within the flock's course & safety;
and hallway flirting, the note passed,
knees touching in basketball bleachers, confirm love.
Did her love, separated from love's object, unconfirmed,
just suddenly cool & burn out
like a single flare descending in a winter night's landscape?
I don't know: with several pieces hidden or missing,
Jean is a puzzle with no possible solution.
I only know the reality of love lost,
the reality of Jean gone, the reality of silence;
and only in dreams is reality revoked.
The Tullamore Dew is gone now too,
passed on a few minutes ago
not tragically:
the bottle lived well, if briefly.
I shed few tears
(knowing I'll witness a resurrection at the Supermarkt tomorrow).
With my lubrication gone, imagination & memory, rubbing reality,
begin to heat up. Friction flares what is, what was, what might have been;
there is a danger of burning...until Tom & Delmore
remind me that time is always time & time is unredeemable;
the past is inevitable.
Saved by poetic grace, I sip San Pellegrino & lime.
My mind slowly cools, goes blank.
The quartz glows nearly three, way past my bedtime.
I shelve Love & Fame
and stumble towards bed, perhaps to dream:
"I've had some rare girls since, but Jean..."
One of my favourite poems.
The Whitsun Weddings
By Philip Larkin
That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence
The river's level drifting breadth began,
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.
All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept
For miles inland,
A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.
Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and
Canals with floatings of industrial froth;
A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped
And rose: and now and then a smell of grass
Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth
Until the next town, new and nondescript,
Approached with acres of dismantled cars.
At first, I didn't notice what a noise
The weddings made
Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys
The interest of what's happening in the shade,
And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls
I took for porters larking with the mails,
And went on reading. Once we started, though,
We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls
In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,
All posed irresolutely, watching us go,
As if out on the end of an event
Waving goodbye
To something that survived it. Struck, I leant
More promptly out next time, more curiously,
And saw it all again in different terms:
The fathers with broad belts under their suits
And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;
An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms,
The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes,
The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that
Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.
Yes, from cafés
And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed
Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days
Were coming to an end. All down the line
Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round;
The last confetti and advice were thrown,
And, as we moved, each face seemed to define
Just what it saw departing: children frowned
At something dull; fathers had never known
Success so huge and wholly farcical;
The women shared
The secret like a happy funeral;
While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared
At a religious wounding. Free at last,
And loaded with the sum of all they saw,
We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.
Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast
Long shadows over major roads, and for
Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem
Just long enough to settle hats and say
I nearly died,
A dozen marriages got under way.
They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
—An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,
And someone running up to bowl—and none
Thought of the others they would never meet
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:
There we were aimed. And as we raced across
Bright knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
Travelling coincidence; and what it held
Stood ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.
Quote from: Iota on March 30, 2025, 09:58:13 AMshort-shadowed cattle...
That's just perfect, isn't it?
I was in R.S. Thomas country at the weekend, visited the grave (well, tiny 30 x 15cm slate plaque) at Porthmadog church, and managed to recite from memory, with some degree of accuracy:
SERVANT
You served me well, Prytherch.
From my all questionings and doubts;
From brief acceptance of the times'
Deities; from ache of the mind
Or body's tyranny, I turned,
Often after a whole year,
Often twice in the same day,
To where you read in the slow book
Of the farm, turning the fields' pages
So patiently, never tired
Of the land's story; not just believing,
But proving in your bone and your blood
Its accuracy; willing to stand
Always aside from the main road,
Where life's flashier illustrations
Were marginal.
Not that you gave
The whole answer. Is truth so bare,
So dark, so dumb, as on your hearth
And in your company I found it?
Is not the evolving print of the sky
To be read, too; the mineral
Of the mind worked? Is not truth choice,
With a clear eye and a free hand,
From life's bounty?
Not choice for you,
But seed sown upon the thin
Soil of a heart, not rich, nor fertile,
Yet capable of the one crop,
Which is the bread of truth that I break.
Quote from: DaveF on April 02, 2025, 05:05:49 AMThat's just perfect, isn't it?
I was in R.S. Thomas country at the weekend, visited the grave (well, tiny 30 x 15cm slate plaque) at Porthmadog church, and managed to recite from memory, with some degree of accuracy:
SERVANT
You served me well, Prytherch.
From my all questionings and doubts;
From brief acceptance of the times'
Deities; from ache of the mind
Or body's tyranny, I turned,
Often after a whole year,
Often twice in the same day,
To where you read in the slow book
Of the farm, turning the fields' pages
So patiently, never tired
Of the land's story; not just believing,
But proving in your bone and your blood
Its accuracy; willing to stand
Always aside from the main road,
Where life's flashier illustrations
Were marginal.
Not that you gave
The whole answer. Is truth so bare,
So dark, so dumb, as on your hearth
And in your company I found it?
Is not the evolving print of the sky
To be read, too; the mineral
Of the mind worked? Is not truth choice,
With a clear eye and a free hand,
From life's bounty?
Not choice for you,
But seed sown upon the thin
Soil of a heart, not rich, nor fertile,
Yet capable of the one crop,
Which is the bread of truth that I break.
I like that a lot. It made much more sense to me once I found out about the generic figure of Prytherch and the poet's involvement with the hill farmers who inspired him. Very interesting poet.
Quote from: Iota on April 03, 2025, 02:43:55 AMI like that a lot. It made much more sense to me once I found out about the generic figure of Prytherch and the poet's involvement with the hill farmers who inspired him. Very interesting poet.
Glad to have introduced you to that one (if indeed I did). Yes, it helps to know who he's talking to. It's a key work in his output, since it marks a turning-away from the hill-farmer figures ("You
served me well") towards the spiritual concerns of his later work. I like to imagine that he conceived the piece at the very instant of celebrating Mass, if you read the last line to mean "that I (now) break". And typically of the cussed old so-and-so that he became in later years, he omitted such a crucial work (which even gave the title to the collection in which it appeared,
The Bread of Truth) from an anthology that he compiled shortly before his death.
Quote from: DaveF on April 03, 2025, 05:23:12 AMGlad to have introduced you to that one (if indeed I did).
You did! Thank you, glad of the introduction.
A rather moving poem from Tennyson:
A Farewell
Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea,
Thy tribute wave deliver:
No more by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.
Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea,
A rivulet then a river:
Nowhere by thee my steps shall be
For ever and for ever.
But here will sigh thine alder tree
And here thine aspen shiver;
And here by thee will hum the bee,
For ever and for ever.
A thousand suns will stream on thee,
A thousand moons will quiver;
But not by thee my steps shall be,
For ever and for ever.
Quote from: Der lächelnde Schatten on April 06, 2025, 08:59:59 PMA rather moving poem from Tennyson:
Hardy is good at that sort of thing too:
The Comet at Yell'hamIt bends far over Yell'ham Plain,
And we, from Yell'ham Height,
Stand and regard its fiery train,
So soon to swim from sight.
It will return long years hence, when
As now its strange swift shine
Will fall on Yell'ham; but not then
On that sweet form of thine.
Ah, those Victorians!
Another very affecting Hardy poem I think.
The Darkling Thrush
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
As an aside, when l saw the word " Poetry " l instantly recalled Haydn's Symphony No. 98. The last movement's principal theme is essentially a musical limerick.
There was a young man from Nantucket...
Quote from: Iota on April 07, 2025, 07:36:25 AMAnother very affecting Hardy poem I think.
The Darkling Thrush
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
Always valued this. He does, indeed, write affectingly.
The opening of the Hardy with its iambic rhythm made me instantly think of this
The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead.
My father taught me this parody
The boy stood on the burning deck
His feet were full of blisters
The flames burned off his underpants
So now he wears his sisters
Quote from: Mandryka on April 09, 2025, 01:48:14 AMThe opening of the Hardy with its iambic rhythm made me instantly think of this
The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead.
My father taught me this parody
The boy stood on the burning deck
His feet were full of blisters
The flames burned off his underpants
So now he wears his sisters
Made me laugh, though l reckon His Majesty's Royal Navy wouldn't.
who am I?
if I seem indifferent to the
question,
there are reasons
sipping water in the sultry shade
although not shy of poems
that are lists
just take it as read,
I entreat you,
that numerous other questions
instead
engage me with
the strength of
perhaps imaginary tides
he calls himself a "journey agent,"
a "Eulipion."
who am I?
although that's very near
what I feel,
I don't say,
where did that question
even come from?
it's merely an echo of something
which earlier fell on my ears
I have become
highly selective
of echoes
I find new things
not to understand
nearly daily.
while I shun misunderstanding
and its myriad echoes
I have learnt to make room
for non-understanding
"This was my attempt to write about joy," said the poetess.
it was perhaps odd,
hearing them talk of the moon
on a bright summer afternoon
who am I?
perhaps I should be
one of the objects joy seeks.
(... on seating myself within a small crowd)
Received a signed copy in the post today, of Simon Armitage's new poetry collection, 'Dwell'. Very kind gift from my boss, with whom I have a really warm working relationship. Part of a more than generous house warming gift from my team at work - really thoughtful of them.
Armitage is a great Poet Laureate.
Quote from: foxandpeng on August 02, 2025, 01:29:15 PMReceived a signed copy in the post today, of Simon Armitage's new poetry collection, 'Dwell'. Very kind gift from my boss, with whom I have a really warm working relationship. Part of a more than generous house warming gift from my team at work - really thoughtful of them.
Armitage is a great Poet Laureate.
Just looked up a couple of his poems, 'Remains' and 'Nest Box', quite punchy, immediate stuff. Thanks for mentioning.
Quote from: foxandpeng on August 02, 2025, 01:29:15 PMReceived a signed copy in the post today, of Simon Armitage's new poetry collection, 'Dwell'. Very kind gift from my boss, with whom I have a really warm working relationship. Part of a more than generous house warming gift from my team at work - really thoughtful of them.
Armitage is a great Poet Laureate.
You might like to check his podcast (2020-2023) "The Poet Laureate has gone to his shed".
I did listen to the episodes with Lucy Beaumont and (at the time) Prince Charles out of curiosity a while back.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p085jg48/episodes/downloads (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p085jg48/episodes/downloads)
Armitage has a soothing voice for radio ;D
light sky of a july evening
half a lifetime later
appreciating afresh
a sweet face
glowing, intelligent,
beautiful eyes
and a dancing heart
remembering
not merely the evening
but the enveloping magic
of an evening
not even knowing
aught of future days
and evenings
of bridges
of islands
of the many fingers
of Neva as she
tirelessly seeks
the Finnish gulf
having as yet
not the least idea
of the riches
of the grandeur
into which my life
would be born anew
just a stranger
trying to purchase train fare
not home
but to the place
then serving as home
and thinking on the lines of
Is that my heart
resting at such ease
in your fair hands?
decades later
me in a lawn chair
at a concert in a park
appreciating afresh
just how great a chance
she took on me
and what was I
and now a much older me
a much older me
who dawdled so
I didn't finish writing this
until august.
" white nights" 4.viii.25
Quote from: Papy Oli on August 04, 2025, 01:43:31 AMYou might like to check his podcast (2020-2023) "The Poet Laureate has gone to his shed".
I did listen to the episodes with Lucy Beaumont and (at the time) Prince Charles out of curiosity a while back.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p085jg48/episodes/downloads (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p085jg48/episodes/downloads)
Armitage has a soothing voice for radio ;D
Great to hear this. Much appreciated!