In a Dark Time

 

Yaroslav Gerzhedovich

 

In a Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,

I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;   

I hear my echo in the echoing wood—

A lord of nature weeping to a tree.

I live between the heron and the wren,   

Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul

At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!   

I know the purity of pure despair,

My shadow pinned against a sweating wall.   

That place among the rocks—is it a cave,   

Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!

A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,   

And in broad day the midnight come again!   

A man goes far to find out what he is—

Death of the self in a long, tearless night,   

All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.   

My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,   

Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?

A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.   

The mind enters itself, and God the mind,   

And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

Theodore Roethke

This poem has been on my mind a long time. Most of us are put off by poems we don't understand. It feels like failure to not grasp what's being said. And yet, I wonder if good poems (it doesn't do to respect a poem too much, like anything, there are differences in quality) aren't purposely intended to be wrestled with. Aren't they a questioning, a puzzling-out-loud? It seems to me that I can enter a poem and walk around, look through its rooms, pick up an object here, wonder why it's there, try sitting in a chair - no, it doesn't quite suit, look out the window at the view from here. The poem seems to be a living contender, an arrangement of ideas I talk to, and who talk back. A construction that either stands when shaken, or falls flat.

 

So I wrestle with the poem. That first line "In a dark time, the eye begins to see" gets me immediately. Isn't that just how our eyes adjust to darkness? It takes time, but slowly, we begin to make out the edges of things, the shapes of familiar objects - that's the garage, there's the fence-line, oh, the pine tree and the gate-latch. At this moment in life, that line alone (never mind the rest of the poem) captures my experience. I am trying to make out familiar shapes in the darkness. I'm fumbling around, not sure what I bumped into, but, oh yes, I see now - that was here before, but I didn't recognize it. 

 

"What's madness but nobility of soul/ At odds with circumstance?" I'm chewing on that one. 

 

"I know the purity of pure despair/ My shadow pinned against a sweating wall." Isn't it remarkable how an image can perfectly embody a feeling? It's as if there is another language out there, or an incarnation for each thought and state of mind. Maybe that's what poets are doing - fumbling through a dark alphabet- forest, searching for a familiar shape to bring back with them into the light? 

 

What does "the mind enters itself" mean?

 

And isn't it so true, "A man goes far to find out what he is."?

 

And then, even though I can't explain why, "the edge is what I have" is dead-on accurate. Maybe it's that I am finally making out the lines of certain objects in the darkness - not the entirety, certainly not the whole.No, the edge is what I have.

Well, it's a beginning.

 

 

 

Eyesight

Morna Rhys

Eyesight


It was May before my
attention came
to spring and


my word I said
to the southern slopes
I've

missed it, it

came and went before
I got right to see:


don't worry, said the mountain,
try the later northern slopes
or if


you can climb, climb
into spring: but
said the mountain


it's not that way
with all things, some
that go are gone


A.R. Ammons


It isn't true this year. I haven't missed it. In fact, I was waiting for it, and it seemed to take longer than it should to get here. I think we're a month behind - could be I'm wrong, but that's the impression I have. 

And still, it is passing too fast. The cherry blossoms are beginning to fall, the daffodils and tulips are ragged. Like Ammons says, we could climb higher up the mountain to a colder level and find spring at an earlier stage, we could go North and search for the same, and we could find the place where the blooms are beginning, the buds are not yet open. 

This poem is a bit of a twist to the heart, though.  

"Some things that go are gone".

Ouch.

(last post)

         

Charles Frederick Tunnicliffe

Shorebird-Watching

For S.

 
To more than give names
to these random arrivals--
teeterings and dawdlings
of dunlin and turnstone,
black-bellied or golden
plover, all bound for

what may be construed as
a kind of avian Althing,
out on the Thingstead,

the unroofed synagogue
of the tundra--is already
to have begun to go wrong.

What calculus, what
tuning, what unparsed
telemetry within the
retina, what oversdrive
of hunger for the nightlong
daylight of the arctic,

are we voyeurs of? Our
bearings gone, we fumble
a welter of appearance,
of seasonal plumages
that go dim in winter:
these bright backs'

tweeded saffron, dark
underparts the relic
of what sibylline
descents, what harrowings?
Idiot savants, we've
brought into focus

But Adam, drawn toward
that dark underside,
its mesmerizing
circumstantial thumbprint,
would already have
been aware of this.

 

 

Amy Clampitt 

 

It's not just the question of what the birds think (last post), but how can we think of the birds? The sheer numbers of them! The kinds - "dunlin and turnstone, black-bellied or golden plover", the bewildering migrations- "all bound for what may be construed as a kind of avian Allthing", and gatherings - "out on the Thingstead, the unroofed synagogue of the tundra". What are all these? What pattern are we witness to? What instinct? What marvels are these indicative of?

No one has expressed this consternation quite like Amy Clampitt. 

 

Wingtip

               

Robin Bouttell

 

Wingtip

 

The birds – are they worth remembering?
Is flight a wonder and one wingtip a
space marvel?
When will man know what birds know?

 

 

Carl Sandburg

 

from "Rainbows are Made"

 

 

"When will man know what birds know?" Not a small question. Is there a person who hasn't wondered what a bird knows? (Breathes there a man with soul so dead...?!!) It's not a simple question - putting ourselves behind a bird's eyes, with the vision of a bird, what is the sky, what are clouds, what is rain to a bird? What is that moment of tipping from sky to earth? That skimming across an air current, that smack from a gust of wind? And what is the instinct to sing? Is it joy? Is it speech? Are birds artists or carpenters? What do birds think?

And does it matter? That's rhetorical, that question. Just like, "The birds - are they worth remembering?" Certainly they are. Sandburg wouldn't have written the poem if he didn't know so. It's more than rhetoric, it's close to being a laugh. Are the birds worth remembering?!!

"Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And yet not one of them shall fall to the ground without your Father knowing." (Matthew 10:29) He knows what they know. He can see through their eyes. It has made me wonder over the years - is there a unique relationship between animals and their Creator? Do they know things about Him that we don't? Is that possible? I don't mean these questions in a sentimental way - Sandburg writes simply, plainly, (a child could understand) but his thoughts are deep.

 

 

Autotomy

 

Kylie Parks

Autotomy

 

In danger, the holothurian splits itself in two:

it offers one self to be devoured by the world

and, in its second self, escapes.

 

Violently it divides itself into a doom and a salvation,

into a penalty and a recompense, into what was and what 

will be.

 

In the middle of the holothurian's body a chasm opens

and its edges immediately become alien to each other.

 

On the one edge, death, on the other, life.

Here despair, there hope.

 

If there is a balance, the scales do not move.

If there is justice, here it is.

 

To die as much as necessary, without overstepping the bounds.

To grow again from a salvaged remnant.

 

We, too, know how to split ourselves

but only into the flesh and a broken whisper.

Into the flesh and poetry.

 

On one side the throat, on the other, laughter,

slight, quickly dying down.

 

Here a heavy heart, there non omnis moriar,

Three little words, like three little plumes of light.

 

We are not cut in two by a chasm.

A chasm surrounds us.

 

Wislawa Szymborska 

 

"We too, know how to split ourselves..."  Marine biology for poetry lovers, or poetry for marine biology lovers - or both. Szymborska took a few liberties here, though. The holothurian (AKA sea cucumber) doesn't split itself in two, it eviscerates itself, that is, expels its insides.( A division for sure.) The sea star does a more straight-forward division like the one described in this poem, but the metaphor of offering oneself to be devoured still holds. Having to divide (for preservation's sake) "what was" from "what will be", to separate the despair from the hope in order to escape with our lives is something familiar to many of us.

"To die as much as necessary, without overstepping the bounds.\To grow again from a salvaged remnant."  Beautiful. And the three words, too. Non omnis moriar = I shall not wholly die. That's comfort. For a time I may be only partly myself, but there will be enough left to move ahead, to recover strength, to become whole again.

 

 

 

Home

Ravilious

Home

Night lifts the roofs

from houses, reaches in,

pushes chairs further

into corners, studies people

who do not move

from room to room.

Dreams return, spiders

back to thread the same webs

of sleep. The moist dust

of the carpenter's dream

clings to his shoes and skin.

The Tailor's dream

turns itself inside out

again and again.

The body shifts

in bed. The dream

dances in darkness.

The tongue slides in

the closed mouth

and no one is far from home.

Gregoire Turgeon

A strange poem, yet somehow familiar. It puzzles me. It feels like I've been here, as if I know this poem from the inside but the memory is just beyond reach.

Does night move us around like dolls in a dollhouse? Does it observe our behaviour and wonder why we act the way we do? 

And the dreams! Is night also recording those? Does night lift the roofs of our heads to see the dramas playing out inside?

"And no one is far from home." Hmmm. Are we at home in our houses, in our heads, in our dreams? Are we nested within these protective layers? Who or what is working upon us, and for what purpose?

Fire Wood

The Firewood Poem

Beechwood fires are bright and clear
If the logs are kept a year,
Chestnut's only good they say,
If for logs 'tis laid away.
Make a fire of Elder tree,
Death within your house will be;
But ash new or ash old,
Is fit for a queen with crown of gold

Birch and fir logs burn too fast
Blaze up bright and do not last,
it is by the Irish said
Hawthorn bakes the sweetest bread.
Elm wood burns like churchyard mould,
E'en the very flames are cold
But ash green or ash brown
Is fit for a queen with golden crown

Poplar gives a bitter smoke,

Fills your eyes and makes you choke,

Apple wood will scent your room
Pear wood smells like flowers in bloom
Oaken logs, if dry and old
keep away the winter's cold
But ash wet or ash dry
a king shall warm his slippers by.

Lady Celia Congreve

Snow again! Even at the end of February! We thought it was spring - the little green shoots in the flowerbed made us hopeful. But now the woodpile is needed, and given the choices listed here, I'd go for pear wood. A fire that smells like flowers? Heck yeah.