Ash-smothered Coals

Ash-smothered coals: and now at last it's hot,
The soup that simmers in the hermit's pot.

Buson

 
fr. A Net of Fireflies
translated by Harod Stewart

 

We had a campfire the other night. I was mesmerized by the glowing coals, as always. What is it about fire that draws us? More than its warmth, is it that it so often means food? And perhaps even music, and stories? 

It came to me that maybe the haiku is like its subject - that the words become a kind of fire in the mind. A few good words, like a few coals, are enough to warm and feed us. Enough to draw us mesmerized and dreamlike around it.

 

Snow

Snow

1.
'Who affirms that crystals are alive?'
I affirm it, let who will deny:
Crystals are engendered, wax and thrive,
Wane and wither; I have seen them die.

Trust me, masters, crystals have their day,
Eager to attain the perfect norm,
Lit with purpose, potent to display
Facet, angle, colour, beauty, form.

2.
Water-crystals need for flower and root
Sixty clear degrees, no less, no more;
Snow, so fickle, still in this acute
Angle thinks, and learns no other lore:

Such its life, and such its pleasure is,
Such its art and traffic, such its gain,
Evermore in new conjunctions this
Admirable angle to maintain.

Crystalcraft in every flower and flake
Snow exhibits, of the welkin free:
Crystalline are crystals for the sake,
All and singular, of crystalry.

Yet does every crystal of the snow
Individualize, a seedling sown
Broadcast, but instinct with power to grow
Beautiful in beauty of its own.

Every flake with all its prongs and dints
Burns ecstatic as a new-lit star:
Men are not more diverse, finger prints
More dissimilar than snow-flakes are.

Worlds of men and snow endure, increase,
Woven of power and passion to defy
Time and travail: only races cease,
Individual men and crystals die.

 

3.
Jewelled shapes of snow whose feathery showers,
Fallen or falling wither at a breath,
All are afraid are they, and loth as flowers
Beasts and men tread the way to death.

Once I saw it upon an object-glass,
Martyred underneath a microscope,
One elaborate snow-flake slowly pass,
Dying hard, beyond the reach of hope.

Still from shape to shape the crystal changed,
Writhing in its agony; and still,
Less and less elaborate, arranged
Potently the angle of its will.

Tortured to a simple final form,
Angles six and six divergent beams,
Lo, in death it touched the perfect norm
Verifying all its crystal dreams!

 
 

4.
Such the noble tragedy of one
Martyred snow-flake. Who can tell the fate
Heinous and uncouth of showers undone,
Fallen in cities! -- showers that expiate

Errant lives from polar worlds adrift
Where the great millennial snows abide;
Castaways from mountain-chains that lift
Snowy summits in perennial pride;

Nomad snows, or snows in evil day
Born to urban ruin, to be tossed,
Trampled, shovelled, ploughed and swept away
Down the seething sewers: all the frost

Flowers of heaven melted up with lees,
Offal, excrement, but every flake
Showing to the last in fixed degrees
Perfect crystals for the crystal's sake.

 
5.
Usefulness of snow is but a chance
Here in temperate climes with winter sent,
Sheltering earth's prolonged hibernal trance:
All utility is accident.

Sixty clear degrees the joyful snow,
Practising economy of means,
Fashions endless beauty in, and so
Glorifies the universe with scenes

Arctic and antarctic: stainless shrouds,
Peaks in every land among the clouds
Crowned with snows to catch the morning's fire. 

 

John Davidson 

 

 

 

 "Lit with purpose, potent to display/Facet, angle, colour, beauty, form."

     

Is a snowflake alive? The answer seems obvious until I read this poem. When Davidson records their beginning through to their end, there are so many parallels to our individual lives, it's undeniable. And, of course, it works the opposite way too. Our lives are very much like the snowflake's. We are fragile, "wither at a breath", we too are "lit with purpose", and cringe under a microscope.

 

I also like how he describes -  "a seedling sown/Broadcast, but instinct with power to grow/Beautiful in beauty of its own." - which is the same macro/micro theme that we use when speaking of humanity and the individual. How he portrays the death of one snowflake under a microscope and moves to the masses, the blizzards of crystal-work that have passed before our eyes - "Such the noble tragedy of one/Martyred snow-flake. Who can tell the fate/Heinous and uncouth of showers undone/,Fallen in cities! -- showers that expiate/Errant lives from polar worlds adrift
Where the great millennial snows abide;/Castaways from mountain-chains..." So interesting. Looking at history we see the correlation. Groups of people, nations, growing, spreading "broadcast" across the land, these also hold ground for a while and then fail. 

 

Rather beautiful, if you ask me. You might say "How homo-centric!" Quite true. I'm human, and I cannot see through other-than-human-eyes. It's a limited point of view, but it doesn't lack for beauty and insight. Thinking, examining, appreciating the world around me, seeing how I am like the snow - it's not a trivial thing. It helps me endure, sometimes it enlightens. It reveals the patterns we are all a part of.

 

 

"Worlds of men and snow endure, increase,
Woven of power and passion to defy
Time and travail: only races cease,
Individual men and crystals die."

 

 

The Republic of Motherhood

 

The Republic of Motherhood

 

I crossed the border into the Republic of Motherhood
and found it a queendom, a wild queendom.
I handed over my clothes and took its uniform,
its dressing gown and undergarments, a cardigan
soft as a creature, smelling of birth and milk,
and I lay down in Motherhood’s bed, the bed I had made
but could not sleep in, for I was called at once to work
in the factory of Motherhood. The owl shift,
the graveyard shift. Feedingcleaninglovingfeeding.
I walked home, heartsore, through pale streets,
the coins of Motherhood singing in my pockets.
Then I soaked my spindled bones
in the chill municipal baths of Motherhood,
watching strands of my hair float from my fingers.
Each day I pushed my pram through freeze and blossom
down the wide boulevards of Motherhood
where poplars bent their branches to stroke my brow.
I stood with my sisters in the queues of Motherhood—
the weighing clinic, the supermarket—waiting
for Motherhood’s bureaucracies to open their doors.
As required, I stood beneath the flag of Motherhood
and opened my mouth although I did not know the anthem.
When darkness fell I pushed my pram home again,
and by lamplight wrote urgent letters of complaint
to the Department of Motherhood but received no response.
I grew sick and was healed in the hospitals of Motherhood
with their long-closed isolation wards
and narrow beds watched over by a fat moon.
The doctors were slender and efficient
and when I was well they gave me my pram again
so I could stare at the daffodils in the parks of Motherhood
while winds pierced my breasts like silver arrows.
In snowfall, I haunted Motherhood’s cemeteries,
the sweet fallen beneath my feet—
Our Lady of the Birth Trauma, Our Lady of Psychosis.
I wanted to speak to them, tell them I understood,
but the words came out scrambled, so I knelt instead
and prayed in the chapel of Motherhood, prayed
for that whole wild fucking queendom,
its sorrow, its unbearable skinless beauty,
and all the souls that were in it. I prayed and prayed
until my voice was a nightcry
and sunlight pixelated my face like a kaleidoscope.


Liz Berry

 

Thank you to the friend who introduced me to this poem a few weeks back. I have been reading it every day or so since, mulling it over, trying to understand what makes it so electric and familiar (a little like my own skin), what it is that grips me in it and why. That image of Motherhood as a Republic! Not a season, or a physical state or a quality, but a Republic.  A place with rules, laws, norms (even a uniform), with its own flag and currency, industries and bureaucracies, its swimming pools and boulevards. 

What catches me off-guard is how it describes a place you "cross over into the borders of", an unfamiliar country where one stumbles along, trying desperately to learn the language and the customs, trying to fit in and do everything properly, but really finding oneself lost and isolated in a rather rigidly ordered new world, going through the expected motions - "As required, I stood beneath the flag of Motherhood/ and opened my mouth although I did not know the anthem." The first time I read that line I thought, "My gosh, that's exactly what it's like!"  I mean, we could talk all day about Motherhood - speaking of the child or the nurturing instinct or Nature or a dozen other aspects, but for someone to finally address the utter alienness of the crossing into this "queendom" - I haven't seen it done, not like this, not so beautifully. It's a place I recognized immediately - perhaps not all mothers will, but wow - for those millions of us who do, what a relief to hear the truth of our experience spoken out loud.

Speaking of "out loud", Liz Berry's performance of her poem is something special. You can find it here.