Spider

 

 

Spider

Teacher of Swedenborg and St. John of the Cross,

First anchorite, mysterious builder --

From the dark corner of my room

His destination

The distant northern star. . .

As he weaves, as he spreads his webs,

He is singing.

I'm certain of it,

He is singing.

Charles Simic

I can't say more about this than it already says - 

Singing! 

 

The Composer's Winter Dream

The Composer's Winter Dream

Vivid and heavy, he strolls through dark brick kitchens

Within the great house of Esterhazy:

A deaf servant’s candle

Is tipped toward bakers who are quarreling about

The green kindling! The wassail is

Being made by pouring beer and sherry from dusty bottles

Over thirty baked apples in a large bowl: into

The wassail, young girls empty their aprons of

Cinnamon, ground mace, and allspice berries. A cook adds

Egg whites and brandy. The giant glass snifters

On a silver tray are taken from the kitchen by two maids.

The anxious pianist eats the edges of a fig

Stuffed with Devonshire cream. In the sinks the gallbladders

Of geese are soaking in cold salted water.

Walking in the storm, this evening, he passed

Children in rags, singing carols; they were roped together

In the drifting snow outside the palace gate.

He knew he would remember those boys’ faces. . .

There’s a procession into the kitchens: larger boys, each

With a heavy shoe of coal. The pianist sits and looks

Hard at a long black sausage. He will not eat

Before playing the new sonata. Beside him

The table sags with hams, kidney pies, and two shoulders

Of lamb. A hand rings a bell in the parlor!

No longer able to hide, he walks

Straight into the large room that blinds him with light.

He sits before the piano still thinking of hulled berries. . .

The simple sonata which

He is playing has little

To do with what he’s feeling: something larger

Where a viola builds, in air, an infinite staircase.

An oboe joins the viola, they struggle

For a more florid harmony.   

But the silent violins now emerge

And, like the big wing of a bird, smother everything

In a darkness from which only a single horn escapes—

That feels effaced by the composer’s dream. . .

But he is not dreaming,

The composer is finishing two performances simultaneously!

He is back in the dark kitchens, sulking and counting

His few florins—they have paid him

With a snuffbox that was pressed

With two diamonds, in Holland!

This century discovers quinine.

And the sketchbooks of a mad, sad musician

Who threw a lantern at his landlord who was standing beside

A critic. He screamed: Here, take the snuffbox, I’ve filled

It with the dander of dragons! He apologizes

The next morning, instructing the landlord to take

This stuff (Da Ist Der Wisch) to a publisher,

And sell it! You'll have your velvet garters, Pig!

The composer is deaf, loud, and feverish. . . he went

To the countryside in a wet sedan chair.

He said to himself: for the piper, seventy ducats! He’d curse

While running his fingers through his tousled hair, he made

The poor viola climb the stairs.

He desired loquats, loquats with small pears!   

Ludwig, there are Spring bears under the pepper trees!

The picnic by the stone house. . . the minnows

Could have been sunlight striking fissures

In the stream; Ludwig, where your feet are

In the cold stream

Everything is horizontal like the land and living.

The stream saying, “In the beginning was the word

And without the word

Was not anything made that was made. . .

But let us believe in the word, Ludwig,

For it is like the sea grasses

Off which with giant snails eat, at twilight!” But then

The dream turns to autumn; the tinctures he

Swallows are doing nothing for him, and he shows

The physicians his spoon which has dissolved

In the mixtures the chemist has given him!

After the sonata was heard: the standing for applause

Over, he walked out where it was snowing.

It had been dark early that evening. It’s here that the

Dream becomes shocking: he sees a doctor

In white sleeves

Who is sawing at the temporal bones of his ears. There is

A bag of dampened plaster for the death mask. And

Though he is dead, a pool of urine runs to the

Middle of the sickroom. A brass urinal is on the floor, it is

The shape of his ears rusting on gauze. The doctors

Drink stale wassail. They frown over the dead Beethoven. Outside,

The same March storm that swept through Vienna an hour before

Has turned in its tracks like the black, caged panther

On exhibit in the Esterhazys’ candlelit ballroom. The storm crosses

Over Vienna once more: lightning strikes the Opera House, its eaves

And awnings filled with hailstones,

Flames leaping to the adjacent stables! Someone had known,

As thunder dropped flower boxes off windowsills,

Someone must have known

That, at this moment, the violins would emerge

In a struggle with the loud, combatant horns.

Norman Dubie

 

 

In all this fantastical compilation, this word-story, with image after image, scene after scene coming in waves, exactly as surrealistic as a dream - it is this line that stays with me -

 

"But he is not dreaming,

The composer is finishing two performances simultaneously!"

 

He is not dreaming?

What is dream and what is awake?

 

A wonderful question, don't you think?

 

Poem of Hope

 

Maxfield Parrish

 
  Poem of Hope


A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.

The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—

and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.


He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears;

but with righteousness he will judge the needy,
with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.


He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth;
with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. 

Righteousness will be his belt
and faithfulness the sash around his waist.


The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.

The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.

The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.

They will neither harm nor destroy

on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

 

Isaiah 11:1-9

Here I am in the Poem of Hope.

Here, where a dry root begins to grow, where a tree that has been cut down sprouts a new branch -  here where Hope crawls up from the ground and begins to fill the earth.

Goldwing Moth

 

   

 

Goldwing Moth

 

A goldwing moth is between the scissors and the ink bottle 

on the desk.

Last night it flew hundreds of circles around a glass bulb

and a flame wire.

The wings are a soft gold; it is the gold of illuminated

initials in manuscripts of the medieval monks.

 

Carl Sandburg 

 

I puzzle over this. 

 

The scissors and the ink bottle,

that circling a thing of light, an incandescence -

is this showing us the writer at his work?

Is the goldwing moth made holy by its object, 

by the light which compels it?

I go back over the poem, which only seems simple.

'As Imperceptibly as Grief'

 

 

 

Larry Welo

 

 As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away—
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy—
A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon—
The Dusk drew earlier in—
The Morning foreign shone—
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, that would be gone—
And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful. 

 

Emily Dickinson 

 

Dickinson has a way of putting everything in a poem

 without making it heavy.

A sadness without wallowing. A lightness without taking lightly.

And that "our Summer" - I see how one word changes everything.

Are the passing seasons of my life an "escape into the Beautiful"?

Or do I look back with regret at what is gone?

Into the Beautiful - !

That's where I want to go.

                                                          

 

 

 

Woods

 

 

 

Gina Signore

Woods

 

I part the out thrusting branches
and come in beneath
the blessed and the blessing trees.
Though I am silent
there is singing around me.
Though I am dark
there is vision around me.
Though I am heavy
there is flight around me. 

 

Wendell Berry 

Silence, darkness, heaviness.

Singing, vision, flight. 

There is an exchange here that is extraordinary.

 

How much does nature influence our being?

The movement and sound and light - these change us.

I don't know how, but they do.

The Promise and the Way He Kept It

 

Yongsung Kim

The Promise and the Way He Kept It

Isaiah 9:2-7

 

The people that walked in darkness

have seen a great light;

those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death,

upon them a light has shined.

 

You have multiplied the nation,

and increased it's joy;

they rejoice before you according to the joy of harvest,

as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.

 

For You have broken the yoke of his burden

and the staff of his shoulder,

the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian.

For every warrior's sandal from the noisy battle,

and garments rolled in blood

will be used for burning and fuel of fire.

For unto us a child is born,

unto us a Son is given;

and the government will be upon His shoulder.

And His name will be called

Wonderful,

Counselor,

the Mighty God,

Everlasting Father,

the Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of His government and peace there will be no end,

upon the throne of David and over His kingdom,

to order it and establish it with judgement and justice 

from that time forward, even forever.

the zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this.

 

*

 

 

Isaiah as a poet, well, if there ever were a Poet of Hope, he's It. No one stirs the heart and raises the courage like him. Every single line, one after the other, is as strong and true as it ever was - look how these words have weathered Time. 

If I was feeling worn down and discouraged by the state of the world, and someone were to say this poem aloud, it would stop me cold. Everything true and enduring and worthwhile would flood back into me in a transfusion of hope.

As the light breaks into the darkness, so the poem breaks into the despair.

The people living in oppression and suffering, the people battling and bleeding, the people struggling against insurmountable odds - are given a promise of freedom, and a kingdom of continuing and increasing justice. 

They will rejoice before God like people bringing in an overflowing harvest, like people dividing the spoil after winning a battle. And all the devastation of war, all the spilled blood and the implements of violence, will be used as fuel for fire. 

A new age will come. With the birth of a child. 

The Prince of Peace.

Emmanuel, God with us.

Jesus.

 

No poem more beautiful.