Memory Green

Simon Garden

Memory Green 

Yes and when the warm unseasonable weather

Comes at the year’s end of the next late year

And the southwest wind that smells of rain and summer

Strips the huge branches of their dying leaves,

And you at dusk along the Friedrichstrasse

Or you in Paris on the windy quay

Shuffle the shallow fallen leaves before you

Thinking the thoughts that like the grey clouds change,

You will not understand why suddenly sweetness

Fills in your heart nor the tears come to your eyes:

You will stand in the June-warm wind and the leaves falling:

When was it so before, you will say, With whom?

You will not remember this at all: you will stand there

Feeling the wind on your throat, the wind in your sleeves,

You will smell the dead leaves in the grass of a garden:

You will close your eyes: With whom, you will say,

Ah where?

Archibald MacLeish

"You will not understand why..."

"You will not remember this at all."

 

 

I don't even know how to talk about this poem. It's about sensations and as-if's, about inexplicable emotions, states of mind and memory for which there are no words.

 

 I see that this is the poet's territory. The poet's work. Travel to the unmapped parts of the human experience and examine what is there. Not what is imagined, hoped for, dreamed - only what is true.

 

 

 "I Carried With Me Poems", by Gail Dusenbery  talks about becoming "the poet's accomplice".

I want to be that too. I want to go to the places there are no words for, and learn with the poets what is true.

 

 

 

The Way Through the Woods

 

The Way Through the Woods

 

They shut the way through the woods

Seventy years ago.

Weather and rain have undone it again,

And now you would never know

There was once a way through the woods

Before they planted the trees. 

It is underneath the coppice and the heath,

And the thin anemones.

Only the keeper sees 

That, where the ring-dove broods,

And the badgers roll at ease,

There was once a road through the woods. 

 

Yet, if you enter the woods

Of a summer evening late,

When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools,

Where the otter whistles his mate,

(They fear not men in the woods, 

Because they see so few.)

You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,

And the swish of a skirt in the dew,

Steadily cantering through 

The misty solitudes,

As though they perfectly knew

The old lost road through the woods.

But there is no road through the woods.

 

Rudyard Kipling

 

This poem happened to me a couple weeks ago. 

 

I was driving down some back roads in the countryside where I'd lived years ago. Everything was so familiar. Each curve of the road brought back memories. Trees even, were familiar. The farms, the riverbank, the train tracks and the way the cattails swayed in the ditch alongside the road were like the past come to life. 

But then I came to a dead-end.

The road up the hill was blocked off. It was so strange, beyond the barrier was only forest. 

There was no road at all.

Completely overgrown! No sign even of a path. Trees, underbrush, ferns, nothing else.  It was almost as if I had been wrong, as if I had never traveled there, as if I had imagined or dreamed all the times we had driven around the sharp corners, hit the potholes, splashed through the puddles.

 

I couldn't shake off the feeling afterward. I calculated in my head - it had been two years since I'd last driven up that road. Only two years!

 

So when I read this poem, I thought - it's the ghost of a road he's writing about. 

An unearthly, eerie feeling. It's still with me.

 

How quickly, how completely things can be erased! 

  

 

from Mossbawn

  

  

For Mary Heaney

 

 Sunlight 

There was a sunlit absence.
The helmeted pump in the yard
heated its iron,
water honeyed

in the slung bucket
and the sun stood
like a griddle cooling
against the wall

of each long afternoon.
So, her hands scuffled
over the bakeboard,
the reddening stove

sent its plaque of heat
against her where she stood
in a floury apron
by the window.

Now she dusts the board
with a goose's wing,
now sits, broad-lapped,
with whitened nails

and measling shins:
here is a space
again, the scone rising
to the tick of two clocks.

And here is love
like a tinsmith's scoop
sunk past its gleam
in the meal-bin.

Seamus Heaney

 
From "North"

Notice the objects named in this poem:

Pump, bucket, water, griddle, wall, bakeboard, stove, apron, window, goose-wing, nails, shins, two clocks, scoop, meal-bin.

And the two phrases:

"Here is a space", and "here is love."

The way Heaney shows that each object is worked upon by something else. The sun heats the iron of the pump, the water honeys in the bucket, the sun heats the wall.

And she is like this. She works upon the things she touches. She changes things. Warms them, moves them, works them, touches them.

And Time works and moves as well. 

This "sunlit absence", this woman, this remembered warmth of love -

so beautiful.

Marine Surface, Low Overcast

 

 

Marine Surface, Low Overcast 

 

Out of churned aureoles

this buttermilk, this

herringbone of albatross,

floss of mercury,

deshabille of spun

aluminum, furred with a veloute

of looking-glass,

 

a stuff so single

it might almost be lifted,

folded over, crawled underneath

or slid between, as nakedness-

caressing sheets, or donned

and worn, the train-borne

trapping of an unrepeatable

occasion,

 

this wind-silver

rumpling as of oatfields,

a suede of meadow,

a nub, a nap, a mane of lustre

lithe as the slide

of muscle in its

sheath of skin,

 

laminae of living tissue,

mysteries of flex,

affinities of texture,

subtleties of touch, of pressure

and release, the suppleness

of long and intimate

association,

 

new synchronies of fingertip,

of breath, of sequence,

entities that still can rouse,

can stir or solder,

whip to a froth, or force

to march in strictly

hierarchical formation

 

down galleries of sheen, of flux,

cathedral domes that seem to hover

overturned and shaken like a basin

to the noise of voices,

from a rustle to the jostle

of such rush-hour

conglomerations

 

no loom, no spinneret, no forge, no factor,

no process whatsoever, patent

applied or not applied for,

no five-year formula, no fabric

for which pure imagining,

except thus prompted,

can invent the equal.

 

Amy Clampitt 

 

When it comes to description - if there were a Hall of Fame - Amy Clampitt 

would deserve a place there. 

 

"floss of mercury" 

"deshabille of spun aluminum" 

"down galleries of sheen"...

 

  

Can these descriptions ever be equaled? 

 

 

 

 

Swimming After Thoughts

Ana Teresa Fernandez

Swimming After Thoughts 

In Memoriam: Robert Penn Warren

 

Across the blackened pond and back again,

he's swimming in an ether all his own;

lap after lap, he finds the groove

no champion of motion would approve,

since time and distance hardly cross his mind

except as something someone else might find

of interest. He swims and turns, making

his way through frogspawn, lily pads, and shaking

reeds, a slow and lofty lolling stroke

that cunningly preserves what's left to stoke

his engines further, like a steamwheel plunging

through its loop of light. He knows that lunging

only breaks the arc of his full reach.

He pulls the long, slow oar of speech,

addressing camber-backed and copper fish;

the minnows darken like ungathered wishes,

flash and fade - ideas in a haze of hopes

ungathered into syntax, sounding tropes.

The waterbugs pluck circles round his ears

while, overhead, a black hawk veers

to reappraise his slithering neck and frogs

take sides on what or who he is: a log

or lanky, milk-white beast. He goes on swimming,

trolling in the green-dark glistening

silence and subtending mud where things

begin, where thoughts amass in broken rings

and surface, break to light, the brokered sound

of lost beginnings - fished for, found.

 

Jay Parini 

 

 

 "Swimming is a wonderful way of writing. Your body is totally occupied, there's nothing else and your mind goes blank." 

 

Robert Penn Warren

 

"In the green-dark glistening silence..."

 

I wanted to write something in praise of this most excellent poem, but the images and rhythms and words are so beautiful that I just want to read it, and be quiet.

 

Through Morning Mist

 

Through morning mist, preceded by its moo,
The lowing cow looms slowly into view.

Issa

fr. A Net of Fireflies
translated by Harold Stewart

See?

There's a poem for everything.

Question VII

 

 

 

Albrecht Durer

VII.

 

What is it that upsets the volcanoes

that spit fire, cold and rage?

Why wasn't Christopher Columbus

able to discover Spain?

How many questions does a cat have?

Do tears not yet spilled

wait in small lakes?

Or are they invisible rivers

that run toward sadness?

 

Pablo Neruda

 

 

These questions! - when I first came across these, something broke in my brain. It wasn't until I read these poems that I understood what poetry does, or what the possibilities truly were. In all my years of reading poems, I hadn't seen it. And I don't even know if I can put into words what I am beginning to learn.

At first, the questions seemed child-like and beautiful, but not particularly poetic or deep. Where is the rhythm, the wordplay, for instance? Where is the development of metaphor? But my curiosity was piqued. I read more.

I wrote about this before -( LXXII), and I still hold to those thoughts, but since  then they have grown. Something else is happening in the words - something more than mere childlike wondering. For instance, in that question, "How many questions does a cat have?" 

 
That's not naive wondering, it's questioning whether I have been wrong about the world I live in. We are very "scientific" about the things around us. We have tested things on certain levels, and have come to conclusions. But what if we got it wrong? What if we made a specific answer cover too large an area? Or too small?

What if we have skewed our vision of reality so much that we have lost the path and are now traveling down some self-invented by-way leading only into more distortion?


Neruda's question poems cracked open a treasure box for me. When I look at the cat, I see what I have been told is there, and forget that I have agency in seeing, that I need to take up my eyes and use them in a fresh way. 

 

Science is too small explain a cat.


What I am learning is that poetry is thinking and seeing, or something that is both - seeking? (I just noticed that when I patch those two words together, "seeking" is what get.) Seeking the fuller truth of things. Seeking the possibilities. Cracking out of smallthink.

Does a cat ask questions?
Obviously.

Now what we need is a poet to hear them. 

 

 

 

 

Nerves

 

Martin Lewis

                                                 

Nerves

You have noticed the curious increased exasperation

Of human nerves these late years? Not only in Europe,

Where reasons exist, but universal; a rope or a net

Is being hauled in, a tension screwed higher;

Few minds now are quite sane; nearly every person 

Seems to be listening for a crash, listening...

And wishing for it, with a kind of enraged

Sensibility.

                   Or is it that we really feel

A gathering in the air of something that hates

Humanity, and in that storm-light see

Ourselves with too much pity and the others too clearly?

Well, this is February, nineteen-three-nine.

We count the months now, we shall count the days.

It seems time that we find something outside our

Own nerves to lean on.

Robinson Jeffers

 

I read this with amazement. The date this poem was written!! 

It could be describing today.

 

 

 

On a Boat

Barry Moser

On a Boat, Awake at Night

Faint wind rustles reeds and cattails;

I open the hatch, expecting rain -- moon floods the lake.

Boatmen and water birds dream the same dream;

a big fish splashes off like a frightened fox.

It's late -- men and creatures forget each other

while my shadow and I amuse ourselves alone.

Dark tides creep over the flats -- I pity the cold mud-worms;

the setting moon, caught in a willow, lights a dangling spider.

Life passes swiftly, hedged by sorrow;

how long before you've lost it -- a scene like this?

Cocks crow, bells ring, a hundred birds scatter;

drums pound from the bow, shout answers shout.

Su Tung-p'o (1037-1101) (translated by Burton Watson)

 

 

 

This scene, described in such specific detail, comes alive. I am there, seeing and hearing these things, thinking these thoughts. 

 

It's magic. 

 

And then I look at the dates! Really? 

 

1037-1101? 

 

It could be this minute! 

 

What is the name for this? Time travel + mind meld + the ability to repeat this experience every time we want?

 

If you know of a word for it, tell me please!

 

The Waggon-Maker

 

Carl Larsson

The Waggon-Maker

I have made tales in verse, but this man made

Waggons of elm to last a hundred years;

The blacksmith forged the rims and iron gears,

His was the magic that the wood obeyed.

Each deft device that country wisdom bade,

Or farmers' practice needed, he preserved.

He wrought the subtle contours, straight and curved

Only by eye, and instinct of the trade.

No weakness, no offense in any part,

It stood the strain in mired fields and roads

In all a century's struggle for its bread;

Bearing, perhaps, eight thousand heavy loads,

Beautiful always as a work of art,

Homing the bride, and harvest, and men dead.

John Masefield

A perfect poem. How every word fits snug in its place!  - I feel an intertwining of the writer and his subject. In his appreciation of the carpenter's craft, there is an equal echo in his own. 

The way he writes, "I have made tales in verse, but this man made..." and then describes the wisdom of the woodworker and blacksmith, how they use a knowledge passed down to them through time, and with this create something useful and beautiful to last a hundred years.

That sense of Time! And wisdom passed down! And that "only by eye" and instinct! This is an artist recognizing another's artistry.

It gives me chills. 

There is something gorgeous in the meeting of arts.

A recognition of the highest purposes? Beauty and Truth, or Beauty and Usefulness?

Together, they are a powerhouse, an explosion, a celebration.

I walk away from the poem wishing I had a part in that Beauty-work.