Ode To Clothing

 

Paolo Quaresima

Ode To Clothing

 

 Each morning you’re waiting
My clothing, on a chair
For me to fill you
With my vanity, my love
My hope, my body
I hardly
Have gotten out of sleep
I say goodbye to the water
I enter into your sleeves
My legs look for
The hollowness of your legs
And so embraced
By your tireless faithfulness
I go out to walk in the grass
I enter into poetry
I look through windows
At things
Men, women,
Deeds and struggles
Keep forming me
Keep coming against me
Laboring with my hands
Opening my eyes
Using up my mouth
And so,
Clothing,
I also keep forming you
Poking out your elbows
Snapping your threads
And so your life grows
Into the image of my life.
In the wind
You ripple and rustle
As if you were my soul.
In bad minutes
You stick
To my bones
Empty, through the night
Darkness, sleep
Populate with their fantasies
Your wings and mine.
I ask
If one day
A bullet
From the enemy
Might leave a spot of my blood on you
And then
You would die with me
Or maybe
It won’t all be
So dramatic
But simple
And you’ll just get feeble,
Clothing,
Growing old
With me, with my body
And together
We will enter
The earth.
That’s why
Every day
I greet you
With reverence and then
You embrace me and I forget you
Because we are just one
And we’ll keep going on together
Against the wind, in the night
The streets, or the struggle
One single body
May be, may be, some time will be immobile.

 

Pablo Neruda 

 

The clothing - what is it about?

Is Neruda really talking about his shirt?!  This idea of putting clothes on, of filling a space, of making a shape, of pushing against and being pushed back - what is it?

"Men, woman, deeds and struggles, keep forming me keep coming against me...and so, clothing, I keep forming you."

Is Neruda speaking of a line between who he is and the life he lives? Is he saying that the things and places he inhabits - even down to the clothing he puts on, are in relationship of wearing and fitting together, of forming each other, of push and pull on both sides - and are also in a kind of protective companionship against bigger forces "...we'll keep going on together/against the wind, in the night"?

I don't know.

Neruda is such a curious poet. I am fascinated. I know so much is missed in translation, but the hook is well-baited, and I can't leave his work alone. 

Just thinking about that - even if it wasn't his point, is interesting. Our daily lives as something we put on and wear in, stretch and smooth - something which influences how we act, but also something we influence. A constraint sometimes, but also a companion. 

I hadn't thought of it quite like that before.

 And then that line -

 

 "I go out to walk in the grass 

I enter poetry

I look through windows" 

 

So help me, that is beauty.

Here I am, filling my clothes, looking out my kitchen window -

I see it too, I feel it all around me.

 Poetry. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Julia Loken

 

Ode To an Artichoke

The artichoke
With a tender heart
Dressed up like a warrior,
Standing at attention, it built
A small helmet
Under its scales
It remained
Unshakeable,
By its side
The crazy vegetables
Uncurled
Their tendrills and leaf-crowns,
Throbbing bulbs,
In the sub-soil
The carrot
With its red mustaches
Was sleeping,
The grapevine
Hung out to dry its branches
Through which the wine will rise,
The cabbage
Dedicated itself
To trying on skirts,
The oregano
To perfuming the world,
And the sweet
Artichoke
There in the garden,
Dressed like a warrior,
Burnished
Like a proud
Pomegrante.
And one day
Side by side
In big wicker baskets
Walking through the market
To realize their dream
The artichoke army
In formation.
Never was it so military
Like on parade.
The men
In their white shirts
Among the vegetables
Were
The Marshals
Of the artichokes
Lines in close order
Command voices,
And the bang
Of a falling box.

But
Then
Maria
Comes
With her basket
She chooses
An artichoke,
She's not afraid of it.
She examines it, she observes it
Up against the light like it was an egg,
She buys it,
She mixes it up
In her handbag
With a pair of shoes
With a cabbage head and a
Bottle
Of vinegar
Until
She enters the kitchen
And submerges it in a pot.

Thus ends
In peace
This career
Of the armed vegetable
Which is called an artichoke,
Then
Scale by scale,
We strip off
The delicacy
And eat
The peaceful mush
Of its green heart.

 

Pablo Neruda  

 

"In the subsoil/The carrot/With its red mustaches/Was sleeping..." 

 

Each vegetable/fruit/food poem by Neruda I have read has changed how I think. 

Somehow, ordinary objects become magnets to which history and art and life rush toward as if toward their true home. 

I'm not describing it well, but what I mean to say is that this is the magic of words, and especially poetry.

It unveils. It removes the dingy surface, and what it shows has almost endless possibilities.

The new question is - 

is anything ordinary?

Horseman in Rain

Unknown

Horseman in Rain

Primordial waters: clover and oat striving, water-walls,
a meshing of cords in the net of the night,
in the barbarous weave of the damp, dropping water,
a rending of water-drops, lamenting successions,
diagonal rage, cutting heaven.
Steeped in aromas, smashing the water, interposing
the roan of their gloss, like a foliage, between boulder water.
The horses gallop in water,
their vapor attending, in a lunatic milk,
a stampede of doves that hardens, like water.
Not day, but a cistern
of obdurate weather, green agitations,
where hooves join a landscape of haste
with the lapse of the rain and the bestial aroma of horses.
Blankets and pommels, clustering cloak-furs,
seedfalls of darkness
ablaze on the haunches of brimstone
that beat the considering jungle.


                         Beyond and beyond and beyond
And beyond and beyond and beyond and beyoooooond:
the horsemen demolish the rain, the horsemen
pass under the bittering hazelnut, the rain
weaves unperishing wheat in a shimmer of lustres.
Here is water's effulgence, confusion of lightning,
to spill on the leaf, here, from the noise of the gallop,
the water goes wounded to earth, without flight. 
The bridle reins dampen; branch-covered archways,
footfalls of footfalls, an herbage of darkness
in splintering starshapes, moonlike, icelike, a cyclone of horses
riddled with points like an icicle prism -
and born out of furor, the innocent fingers brim over,
the apple encompassing terror
and the terrible banners of empire, are smitten.
Pablo Neruda (translated by Ben Belitt)

What just happened?!!

What was that?

A kind of list? Of how water can fall or be smashed or be spilled, how it weaves and shimmers and spits - or this, "here is water's effulgence" (effulgence, what a great word - "a brilliant radiance, a shining forth")? I haven't come across many lists with the action and movement in this one. The horses galloping, stampeding, hooves flying - the smell and the sound of them - wonderful! This is the magic of Neruda.



 

LXXII.

Raymond C. Booth

LXXII.

If all rivers are sweet,

where does the sea get its salt?

How do the seasons know

they must change their shirt?

Why so slowly in winter

and later with such a rapid shudder?

And how do the roots know

they must climb towards the light?

And then greet the air

with so many flowers and colors?

Is it always the same spring

who revives her role?

Pablo Neruda

The best questions are the first questions. Child questions. Wonder questions. “Why is the sky blue?” The remarkable thing about that question is that the child is aware that the sky could have been a colour other than blue. It seems as if we adults lose the ability to think this way.  Like in the fantasy books where children experience magic, but forget it as they get older. That always makes me sad. Why do we forget? Is it possible that this magic can return as we get older/wiser? I remember my university professor saying that the story arc goes from Innocence to Experience to Experience + Innocence, and that the last was best of all because it was Innocence that cannot be taken away. Neruda’s question poems remind me of that. These are Musing and Marvelling Questions rather than Requiring-an-Answer Questions. Child-like without being childish. Here is acknowledgement of mystery, of puzzles, of possibilities; awareness that things could have been another way, and a sense of wonder that they are the way they are. Neruda’s questions give me hope that we jaded, cynical, so-called “realists” simply haven’t reached the age of Wonder Wisdom yet.  So here’s to the return of wonder! And God help us on our way.

Ode To the Present

Thomas Cooper Gotch

Ode To the Present

This

moment

as smooth

as a board,

and fresh,

this hour,

this day

as clean

as an untouched glass

--- not a single

spiderweb

from the past:

we touch

the moment

with our fingers,

we cut it

to size,

we direct

its blooming.

It's living,

it's alive:

it brings nothing

from yesterday that can't be redeemed,

nothing from the lost past.

This is our

creation,

it's growing

this very

instant, kicking up

sand or eating

out of our hand.

Catch it,

don't let it slip away!

Keep it from vanishing into dreams

or words!

Grab it,

pin it down,

make it

obey!

Make it a road

or a bell,

a kiss, a book

or a caress.

Slice into its sweet

scent of wood,

make yourself a chair

from it,

then weave yourself

a seat.

Try it out --

or, better,

try a ladder!

Yes,

a ladder:

rise

out of the moment

step

by step,

feet firmly

planted on the wood

of the moment.

Up and

up

but not too much --

just high enough

to

patch

the holes

in the roof.

Not too far;

you don't want to reach heaven.

Climb up

to the apples

but not as far as the clouds

(let

them

cruise the sky, drifting

toward the past).

You

are

your own moment,

your own apple:

pluck it

from your apple tree.

Hold it up

in your

hand:

it shines

like a star.

Stroke it,

sink your teeth into it -- now off you go

whistling on your way.

Pablo Neruda 

from Odes to Opposites

“This is our creation, it’s growing this very instant…sink your teeth into it…” Shall we make a meal out of the moment? Taste it, feel it, discover all its possibilities? Neruda knows more than any poet how to turn a thing in the light so all its facets sparkle in turn. He is so much like William Blake, seeing a world in a grain of sand. Blake tells us there are worlds there, but Neruda show us. And he sets us a challenge, "Catch it! Grab it! Pin it down! Don't let it get away!", and not only to take in in hand, but to grow from it, "Rise out of the moment step by step." Take the moment, let it feed you, and grow. Good words to take into a new year.