To Night

To Night

So thou art come again, old black-winged night,
Like an huge bird, between us and the sun,
Hiding, with out-stretched form, the genial light;
And still, beneath thine icy bosom's dun
And cloudy plumage, hatching fog-breathed blight
And embryo storms, and crabbéd frosts, that shun
Day's warm caress. The owls from ivied loop
Are shrieking homage, as thou cowerest high;
Like sable crow pausing in eager stoop
On the dim world thou gluttest thy clouded eye,
Silently waiting latest time's fell whoop,
When thou shalt quit thine eyrie in the sky,
To pounce upon the world with eager claw,
And tomb time, death, and substance in thy maw.


Thomas Lovell Beddoes
from The Penguin Book of the Sonnet, ed. Phillis Levin

As an example of taking a simile to its limits, this is wonderful.

That weary "so thou art come again...." , as if Night is an annoying kill-joy who keeps ruining the party soon becomes much more ominous - an evil bird-spirit hatching blight, storms and frost, a predator, waiting silently to destroy.

And the words! The words!

 

Genial - dun - plumage - blight - embryo - crabbed - shun - caress - homage - sable - stoop - gluttest - fell - whoop - eyrie - pounce - maw

 

 

The poem may be in strict sonnet form, but the words are wild!

 

 

The Instinct of Hope

Unknown

The Instinct of Hope

Is there another world for this frail dust

To warm with life and be itself again?

Something about me daily speaks there must,

And why should instinct nourish hopes in vain?

'Tis nature's prophesy that such will be,

And everything seems struggling to explain

The close sealed volume of its mystery.

Time wandering onward keeps its usual pace

As seeming anxious of eternity,

To meet that calm and find a resting place.

E'en the small violet feels a future power

And waits each year renewing blooms to bring,

And surely man is no inferior flower

To die unworthy of a second spring?

John Clare

 "Why should instinct nourish hopes in vain?" Now that's a good question.
(John Clare! The more of his poems I read, the more I like them.) This line - "everything seems struggling to explain/the close sealed volume of its mystery."  A hidden-in-plain-sight secret? If all of nature dies, or lies dormant, hibernates, but "feels a future power", should we not trust to this also? I like that "surely man is no inferior flower". We have dormant seasons too; times of holding back, of waiting, of saying goodbye, of letting go. And all these are a kind of preparation, a storing up - of strength? of hope? of "future power"? Nature shows us faithfully, year after year, a new season is coming.

Sea Pebbles

Unknown

Sea Pebbles

My love, how time makes hardness shine.

They come in every color, pure or mixed

gray-green of basalt, blood-soaked jasper, quartz,

granite and feldspar, even bits of glass,

smoothed by the patient jeweller of the tides.

Volcano-born, earthquake-quarried,

shaven by glaciers, wind-carved, heat-cracked,

stratified, speckled, bright in the wet surf—

no two alike, all torn from the dry land

tossed up in millions on this empty shore.

How small death seems among the rocks. It drifts

light as a splintered bone the tide uncovers.

It glints among the shattered oyster shells,

gutted by gulls, bleached by salt and sun—

the broken crockery of living things.

Cormorants glide across the quiet bay.

A falcon watches from the ridge, indifferent

to the burdens I have carried here.

No point in walking farther, so I sit,

hollow as driftwood, dead as any stone.

Dana Gioia

"How small death seems among the rocks. It drifts/light as a splintered bone the tide uncovers." A beautiful but chilling line. 

 

The description of the stones, too, "blood-soaked jasper", "volcano-born, earthquake-quarried, shaven by glaciers, wind-carved..torn..tossed up..." is one of violence. There on the beach before him, the speaker sees a panoply of violence and death. 

 

And yet, there is something else, too. "The patient jeweller of the tides", who works the broken glass bits into sea- glowing gems, the forgotten, broken discards made mysteriously new/old, once common buttons or bits now uncommon, rare. 

 

The strangeness of shells, which, though nothing but remains, skeletons of once living molluscs, become something like pieces of art; sculpted minute monuments to the lives they once housed. 

 

This is how Time and the ocean work upon life and death. Curiously, with rhythmic alchemy, so that what was once merely a multitudinous brokenness, becomes a  treasure, a sign of hope. 

 

The speaker, though, sits among all this like a shell of himself, indifferent, unresponsive. 

 Is there hope that Time and the patient jeweller will do their work on him as well? 

 

 

 

 If stones can be made to shine, can broken humans be made new?

The Debtor

Mark Powell

The Debtor

I am debtor to all, to all am I bounden,
Fellowman and beast, season and solstice, darkness and light,
And life and death. On the backs of the dead,
See, I am borne, on lost errands led,
By spent harvests nourished. Forgotten prayers
To gods forgotten bring blessings upon me.
Rusted arrow and broken bow, look, they preserve me
Here in this place. The never-won stronghold
That sank in the ground as the years into time,
Slowly with all its men steadfast and watching,
Keeps me safe now. The ancient waters
Cleanse me, revive me. Victor and vanquished
Give me their passion, their peace and the field.
The meadows of Lethe shed twilight around me.
The dead in their silences keep me in memory,
Have me in hold. To all I am bounden.


Edwin Muir

Reading Eliot's "Little Gidding"  in the last post, brought "The Debtor" to mind. Where Eliot says "we are born with the dead", Muir says, "On the backs of the dead, see I am borne." Born and borne. Interesting. (And the word "borne" too, has two sides - carried, or bearing something.) Yes, the dead and their discoveries, their accomplishments, lift us up, elevate our life experience. But we also bear the consequences of their mistakes. It's a mixed bag. The speaker seems encouraged and strengthened by the harvests and prayers of the past, but he is nonetheless "held". That word calls up other words - "captive, "constrained". The way he writes, "The meadows of Lethe shed twilight around me. The dead in their silences keep me in memory.", seems to describe someone under a spell. Are we under a spell? Are we lifted up by those who have gone before, or held down? Or both? Is it a debt or an inheritance? Whichever, the poem feels of a quest, a journey - a battle, "Rusted arrow and broken bow, look, they preserve me..."  That sense of testing and being tried, of being half enchanted and half awake, of voices and people from many places and times speaking to us and lending their strength appeals to me. The (past) dead carry us, the present moment engages us, and the future draws us. Maybe "bounden" also means "committed", or "resolved". Perhaps the speaker has come awake, weighed his situation in life, and turned toward it, taking it up, intending to see it through. To see where the story goes. 



 

 

From Blossoms

Claude Monet

From Blossoms

From blossoms comes

this brown paper bag of peaches

we bought from the boy

at the bend in the road where we turned toward  

signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,

from sweet fellowship in the bins,

comes nectar at the roadside, succulent

peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,

comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,

to carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the skin, but the shade,

not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into  

the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live

as if death were nowhere

in the background; from joy

to joy to joy, from wing to wing,

from blossom to blossom to

impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Li-Young Lee

"To take what we love inside, to carry within us an orchard..."  What a gorgeous image. If only I could, if only that were possible. Can we get something into our heads enough that nothing can shake it out? I'd like to think that on some dark day to come, some future moment of despair I might take the thread in my hand and follow it down twisting trails to this orchard of joy, this reserve of sweetness, this living breathing growing hope for always flowers and fruit. Is that possible? I can only find out if I take what I love inside, if I do some work on this orchard.

Crucifixion: Jesus is Nailed to the Cross

Arcabus

Crucifixion: Jesus is Nailed to the Cross

See, as they strip the robe from off his back
And spread his arms and nail them to the cross,
The dark nails pierce him and the sky turns black,
And love is firmly fastened onto loss.
But here a pure change happens. On this tree
Loss becomes gain, death opens into birth.
Here wounding heals and fastening makes free
Earth breathes in heaven, heaven roots in earth.
And here we see the length, the breadth, the height
Where love and hatred meet and love stays true
Where sin meets grace and darkness turns to light
We see what love can bear and be and do,
And here our saviour calls us to his side
His love is free, his arms are open wide.

Malcolm Guite


The inside-outness of this poem is wonderful. Guite captures the convergence of opposites in the person of Jesus – loss/gain, wound/heal, death/birth, defeat/victory. The Easter story goes against  every human instinct. Power in weakness? Victory in death? It bends my mind.  

Grass

Jeanette Rehahn - Fruition

Grass

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. 

Shovel them under and let me work— 

                                          I am the grass; I cover all. 

And pile them high at Gettysburg 

And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. 

Shovel them under and let me work. 

Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: 

                                          What place is this? 

                                          Where are we now? 

                                          I am the grass. 

                                          Let me work.

Carl Sandburg

I recently watched the documentary "A Nazi Legacy: What Our Fathers Did", which is basically the story of two men whose fathers were prominent Nazis during WW2, and who were responsible for the death of the family of the man interviewing them. It's disturbing, as you can imagine, but the moment that moved me the most was one in which the three are standing at the site of a mass grave ( 3,000 people including the members of the interviewer's family). It's just a field of wild grass with a monument. There is no sign of what happened all those years ago. They stand by the field in silence, and the grass moves in the wind. I watched it sway, and those words came to my mind - "I am the grass; I cover all."  It strikes me that grass, a symbol of human frailty, should also be the thing that covers our dead. Frailty upon frailty. It's a bleak image in some ways, and yet, I find the grass so beautiful, so much a symbol to me of endurance, resistance, and vigor. Persistence! That's it. Life, human and otherwise, returning. "I'm the grass. Let me work."

And Death Shall Have No Dominion

Unknown

And Death Shall Have No Dominion

And death shall have no dominion.

Dead man naked they shall be one

With the man in the wind and the west moon; 

When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,

They shall have stars at elbow and foot; 

Though they go mad they shall be sane,

Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again; 

Though lovers be lost love shall not; 

And death shall have no dominion.

Dylan Thomas

This is one stanza of a longer poem, but enough for today. (Thomas's images often baffle me, and I wish I had on hand my trusty guidebook to all things Thomas - "Where Have All the Old Words Got Me?" by Ralph Maud, who is wonderful at unraveling his poetry.) Last night, a dear family member of mine passed away. To know that love does not die, that death does not rule - matters a great deal.