In a Dark Time

 

Yaroslav Gerzhedovich

 

In a Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,

I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;   

I hear my echo in the echoing wood—

A lord of nature weeping to a tree.

I live between the heron and the wren,   

Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul

At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!   

I know the purity of pure despair,

My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.   

That place among the rocks—is it a cave,   

Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!

A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,   

And in broad day the midnight come again!   

A man goes far to find out what he is—

Death of the self in a long, tearless night,   

All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.   

My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,   

Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?

A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.   

The mind enters itself, and God the mind,   

And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

Theodore Roethke

This poem has been on my mind a long time. Most of us are put off by poems we don't understand. It feels like failure to not grasp what's being said. And yet, I wonder if good poems (it doesn't do to respect a poem too much, like anything, there are differences in quality) aren't purposely intended to be wrestled with. Aren't they a questioning, a puzzling-out-loud? It seems to me that I can enter a poem and walk around, look through its rooms, pick up an object here, wonder why it's there, try sitting in a chair - no, it doesn't quite suit, look out the window at the view from here. The poem seems to be a living contender, an arrangement of ideas I talk to, and who talk back. A construction that either stands when shaken, or falls flat.

 

So I wrestle with the poem. That first line "In a dark time, the eye begins to see" gets me immediately. Isn't that just how our eyes adjust to darkness? It takes time, but slowly, we begin to make out the edges of things, the shapes of familiar objects - that's the garage, there's the fence-line, oh, the pine tree and the gate-latch. At this moment in life, that line alone (never mind the rest of the poem) captures my experience. I am trying to make out familiar shapes in the darkness. I'm fumbling around, not sure what I bumped into, but, oh yes, I see now - that was here before, but I didn't recognize it. 

 

"What's madness but nobility of soul/ At odds with circumstance?" I'm chewing on that one. 

 

"I know the purity of pure despair/ My shadow pinned against a sweating wall." Isn't it remarkable how an image can perfectly embody a feeling? It's as if there is another language out there, or an incarnation for each thought and state of mind. Maybe that's what poets are doing - fumbling through a dark alphabet- forest, searching for a familiar shape to bring back with them into the light? 

 

What does "the mind enters itself" mean?

 

And isn't it so true, "A man goes far to find out what he is."?

 

And then, even though I can't explain why, "the edge is what I have" is dead-on accurate. Maybe it's that I am finally making out the lines of certain objects in the darkness - not the entirety, certainly not the whole.No, the edge is what I have.

Well, it's a beginning.

 

 

 

Slug

Rosetsu Nagasawa

Slug

How I loved one like you when I was little! -

With his stripes of silver and his small house on his back,

Making a slow journey around the well-curb.

I longed to be like him, and was,

In my way, close cousin

To the dirt, my knees scrubbing

The gravel, my nose wetter than his.

When I slip, just slightly, in the dark,

I know it isn't a wet leaf,

But you, loose toe from the old life,

The cold slime come into being.

A fat, five-inch appendage

Creeping slowly over the wet grass,

Eating the heart out of my garden.

And you refuse to die decently! - 

Flying upward through the knives of my lawnmower

Like pieces of smoked eel or raw oyster,

And I go faster in my rage to get done with it,

Until I'm scraping and scratching at you, on the doormat,

The small dead pieces sticking under an instep;

Or, poisoned, dragging a white skein of spittle over a path -

Beautiful, in its way, like quicksilver -

You shrink to something less,

A rain-drenched fly or spider.

I'm sure I've been a toad, one time or another.

With bats, weasels, worms - I rejoice in the kinship.

Even the caterpillar I can love, and the various vermin.

But as for you, most odious -

Would Blake call you holy?

Theodore Roethke 

My hunt for a slug poem has not been very successful. Pablo Neruda didn't get to the humble slug, it seems, or I've missed it somehow. For a moment there, I thought I was going to have to write one myself. Well, Roethke does pretty well, although I was hoping for more of a hymn. I like slugs, strangely. They impress me. You know, they glisten - and my gosh, what IS that stuff they make to slide on? The poem is right - they make silver trails. As a child I remember summer mornings when the sun shone at just the right angle on the doorstep to reveal a map of the slug's night-wanderings. I wondered where they got off to. Turns out, not far away - right under the doormat. A congregation of them right underfoot. (What would that be called? A slew of slugs? No way! I looked it up. A group of slugs is called a "cornucopia"! How very odd!) But now that I live in the Pacific Northwest, I get to see the primo slugs - Banana and Leopard - glorious slugs, if you appreciate that sort of thing. Very large, and royal in their procession. Nonetheless, and this is why I (reluctantly) decided to add Roethke's poem to the scrapbook (in spite of that gaff about the "small house on his back" - does he not know the difference between a slug and a snail?), because as much as I admire them, they eat my iris leaves, and this is not to be borne. Something has to be done. And it's not nice. Hence, this poem seems very true to life. (Even though I consider slugs holy.)

A Light Breather

Jiang Debin

A Light Breather

The spirit moves,

Yet stays:

Stirs as a blossom stirs,

Still wet from its bud-sheath,

Slowly unfolding,

Turning in the light with its tendrils;

Plays as a minnow plays,

Tethered to a limp weed, swinging,

Tail around, nosing in and out of the current,

Its shadows loose, a watery finger;

Moves, like the snail,

Still inward,

Taking and embracing its surroundings,

Never wishing itself away,

Unafraid of what it is,

A music in a hood,

A small thing,

Singing.

Theodore Roethke

I hardly know what to say about this one. It says it all, and with a lovely back and forth rhythm just like a water eddy. And the arrangement of the lines, too, seems to echo the idea of something small stretching out a little, moving, testing the space around it. And then that last line, the last word - "singing" - perfect. "Taking and embracing its surroundings, never wishing itself away, unafraid of what it is..." words to hold close.