all nearness pauses

Maxfield Parrish

all nearness pauses, while a star can grow
all distance breathes a final dream of bells;
perfectly outlined against afterglow
are all amazing and the peaceful hills
(not where not here but neither’s blue most both)

and history immeasurably is
wealthier by a single sweet day’s death:
as not imagined secrecies comprise

goldenly huge whole the upfloating moon.

Times a strange fellow;
more he gives than takes
(and he takes all)nor any marvel finds
quite disappearance but some keener makes
losing, gaining
—love! if a world ends
more than all worlds begin to(see?) begin

e.e. cummings 

 

Cummings' poems are so compact, how does a person begin to take them in? He sets out the opposites - "nearness", "farness" and then melds them together, he divides and then makes whole. He says, " not this, not that, but both", he is an "All" poet, a grand swirler and mixer of Everythings. And though stammered and ungrammered, utterly clear and true. 

That golden line:

 

"...and history immeasurably is

sweeter by a single sweet day's death"

 

I mean, who makes you think of the fine details of a minute within the breadth of all time quite as instantaneously as this?

Or:

 

"Time's a strange fellow;

More he gives than takes."

The briefest summation of the greatest complication!

I sit back and chew, just chew on his words.

fr. Plaited Like the Generations of Men

Unknown

fr. Plaited Like the Generations of Men

Come, follow me into the realm of music. Here is the gate

Which separates the earthly from the eternal.

It is not like stepping into a strange country

As we once did. We soon learn to know everything there

And nothing surprises us more. Here

Our wonderment will have no end, and yet

From the very beginning we feel at home.

At first you hear nothing, because everything sounds.

But now you begin to distinguish between them. Listen,

Each star has its rhythm and each world its beat.

The heart of each separate living thing

Beats differently, acording to its needs,

And all the beats are in harmony.

Your inner ear grows sharper. Do you hear

Your deep notes and the high notes?

They are immeasurable in space and infinite as to number.

Like ribbons, undreamt-of scales lead from one world to another,

Steadfast and eternally moved.

Hugh MacDiarmid

This is just to support my other post about music. See? There are a few who have put thought into this. "Come, follow me." "From the very beginning we feel at home." Yes, I do. Music is sometimes the only thing that keeps me in this world, and I know I am not alone in this. Sometimes music is the only thing that reaches into the dark hole where I am. Something, a mystery – a pulse, a heartbeat, rhythm – something - calls me home, recalls me to myself, drags me up from the depths from which I cannot pull myself. There is power in that. I don’t know what it is. Is it that these vibrations, these rhythms, they “lead from one world to another”? Is it that they give us a glimpse of a world where we can be truly ourselves, truly at home, fully accepted, wholly known, and yet complete, full, satisfied? I wonder. But there is no doubt about this, music runs through all of us. Animate or inanimate. No one, nothing is exempt. So we cannot easily dismiss it. Whatever it is.

Music

Henri Fantin-Latour

Music



It must be somewhere, the original harmony,

somewhere in great nature, hidden.

Is it in the furious infinite,

in distant stars’ orbits,

is it in the sun’s scorn,

in a tiny flower, in treegossip,

in heartmusic’s mothersong

or in tears?

It must be somewhere, immortality,

somewhere the original harmony must be found:

how else could it infuse

the human soul,


that music?

 

Juhan Liiv

Translated from the Estonian by H.L. Hix & Jüri Talvet 

 

Somewhere. The original music. The sound that all of us dream in. The song that all of us find ourselves within. Singing, dancing, moving, and we resist or surrender to it. Where is it? This original music, this rhythm that persists in spite of our anger, in spite of our lostness. "The furious infinite". Yes. How could it not be so?  An anger that resists Untruth and Less than Right and Not Quite Beautiful. "It Must Be Somewhere".

Somewhere.

"How else could it/infuse the the human soul"?

Indeed. How?




 

Anenome

Unknown

Anenome

In the meadow the anemone

is creaking open to the dawn.

By noon, the sky’s polyphony

will flood her white lap till she drowns.

The tiny muscle in her star

is tensed to open to the All,

yet the daylight’s blast so deafens her

she barely heeds the sunset’s call

or finds the willpower to refurl

her petal-edges – her, the power

and will of how many other worlds.

In our violence, we outlive her.

But which new life will see us flower

and face the skies, as true receivers?

Rilke

“The sky’s polyphony.” I had to look that up to make sure I had it right. Polyphony = ‘the style of simultaneously combining a number of parts, each forming an individual melody and harmonizing with each other”. So does that make the anenome like an open ear? Is she listening to the music of the spheres? Rilke calls her a star, so that makes her an earth-star receiving messages from a sky-star. And though delicate, she takes everything in, something we “in our violence” don’t do though we outlive her. The thing that speaks to me most is the question whether we also can flower and become “true receivers.” It's against our nature to receive. We want to act, accomplish, conquer – hence our “violence”. But the anenome shows us that a life of beauty, though breathtakingly short and fragile, is in fully opening ourselves, listening, and receiving. Can we do it? Rilke doesn’t know.