Writing Letters by Thunderstorm

Here is an utterly random Kerouac haiku:

Drunk as a hoot owl,
writing letters
by thunderstorm.

I Love You More Than All the Windows in New York City

The day turned into the city
and the city turned into the mind
and the moving trucks trumbled along
like loud worries speaking over
the bicycle’s idea
which wove between
the more armored vehicles of expression
and over planks left by the construction workers
on a holiday morning when no work was being done
because no matter the day, we tend towards
remaking parts of it—what we said
or did, or how we looked—
and the buildings were like faces
lining the banks of a parade
obstructing and highlighting each other
defining height and width for each other
offsetting grace and function
like Audrey Hepburn from
Jesse Owens, and the hearty pigeons collaborate
with wrought iron fences
and become recurring choruses of memory
reassembling around benches
we sat in once, while seagulls wheel
like immigrating thoughts, and never-leaving
chickadees hop bared hedges and low trees
like commas and semicolons, landing
where needed, separating
subjects from adjectives, stringing along
the long ideas, showing how the cage
has no door, and the lights changed
so the tide of sound ebbed and returned
like our own breath
and when I knew everything
was going to look the same as the mind
I stopped at a lively corner
where the signs themselves were like
perpendicular dialects in conversation and
I put both my feet on the ground
took the bag from the basket
so pleased it had not been crushed
by the mightiness of all else
that goes on and gave you the sentence inside.

- Jessica Greenbaum

A Blessing

Sometimes I wonder why I bother reading other poets... 

Hovering light embraces

the yellowing poplars, four spires

evenly spaced, a dozen clustered

apart, all of them backed by foresty dark,

a curtain of conifers.

Waking and sleeping, there was grace, reassurance,

during the hours of darkness:

a change in perception, such as we read of

in 19^th-century stories, when someone in fever

visibly passed from danger into a calm lagoon

of slumber, promising health.

The light on the trees a nimbus now

of downy yellow, embrace without pressure of weight,

compassionate light.

- Denise Levertov, “A Blessing”

For You Today

For You Today

Jessica Greenbaum

Of course there is a jackhammer. And a view, like Hopper,

but happier. Of course there is the newspaper—the daily

herald of our powerlessness. Easy go, easy come: thwash,

the next day another, an example of everything that gets done

in the dark. Like the initiative of the crocuses from a snow

that was, as it works out, warming them. Or in this case,

the strange October weather warming them. There were the

conclusions we jumped to. To which we jumped. There was

pain, and then there was suffering. Of course there was my

ambition to offer you the world, but one that I have rearranged

to make sense. Here are all the sensations of being alive

at the turn of the twenty-first century, here’s how they ring out

against each other, here’s how one brings out the sense of

another, here is the yellow next to the fathomless blue.

Fun fact: I ate grasshoppers this weekend.

Virginia Woolf in Mexico

“Let us simmer over our incalculable cauldron, our enthralling confusion, our hotch-potch of impulses, our perpetual miracle — for the soul throws up wonders every second. Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is death; conformity is death: let us say what comes into our heads, repeat ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or thinks or says. For nothing matters except life.” 

- Virginia Woolf from “Montaigne”.

Anecdote of the day: I've been desperate for good coffee every morning, and I found a place a couple days ago that's pretty good... I made a fool out of myself on Tuesday when I didn't understand the word for cinnamon, and then gave them the wrong change. Today, I went to the same place, confident that I would do it right this time - which I did, but as soon as they gave me my coffee, I spilled it all over everything. So to the people at La Charamusca Cafe, I will always be a clumsy, stupid American. There's no escaping it.

somewhere i have never traveled

Tonight, I'll be flying to Queretaro, Mexico, where I'll be living for the next two months. Yesterday, I moved to a new apartment in downtown Bellingham.
Currently, my life is......
Full.
Full of "blunders and absurdities", joy, stress, poetry, beauty, insanity, adventure, and love.
So I leave you with this poem:

somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

The Prayer of the Traveler Mr. Cogito

(by Zbigniew Herbert)

Lord
       I thank you for creating the world beautiful and various

       and for allowing me in Your fathomless goodness to visit places which
were not the sites of my daily torments
     
       - that at night in Tarquinia I lay in the square by the well and a gunmetal
pendulum rang out from the tower Your wrath or forgiveness

       and that a little donkey on the island Corkyra sang to me from the
unfathomable bellows of its lungs the melancholy of the landscape

       and that in the ugly city of Manchester I discovered kindhearted and
sensible people

       nature repeated its wise tautologies: the forest was a forest the sea the
sea a cliff a cliff

       stars revolved and it was as it ought to be  - Iovis omnia plena


       - forgive me - that I thought only of myself while the lives of others
cruel and inexorable turned around me like the great astrological clock of
St Pierre in Beauvais

       that I was lazy distracted too timid in labyrinths and caves

       and forgive me also that I did not fight like Lord Byron for the happiness
of oppressed peoples and studied only the rising moon and museums

       - I thank you that works created for Your greater glory yielded to me
particles of their mystery and that with great presumption I thought that
Duccio Vaan Eyck and Bellini painted for me also

       and also that the Acropolis which I never fully understood patiently
revealed to me its mutilated body

       - I ask You to reward the gray old woman who unbidden brought me
fruit from her garden on the sunburned native island of the son of Laertes

       and Miss Helen of the foggy island of Mull in the Hebrides for offering
Greek hospitality and asking me to leave a lamp lit at night in the window
facing Holy Iona so that the lights of earth would greet each other

       and also all those who gave me directions and said kato kyrie kato

       and take under Your protection Mama from Spoleto Spiridion from
Paxos the good student from Berlin who saved me from oppression and
then when met unexpectedly in Arizona drove me to the Grand Canyon
which is like a hundred thousand cathedrals standing on their heads

       - Lord let me not think of my moist-eyed gray deluded persecutors
when the sun sets on the truly indescribable Ionian Sea

       let me understand other people other languages other sufferings
       and above all let me be humble that is to say one who longs for the
             source

       I thank You Lord for creating the world beautiful and various and if this
is Your seduction I am seduced for good and past all forgiveness

Poemtrees

Poemtrees - W.G. Sebald

For how hard it is
to understand the landscape
as you pass in a train
from here to there
and mutely it
watches you vanish.

A colony of allotments
uphill into the fall.
Dead leaves swept
into heaps.
Soon - on Saturday -
a man will
set them alight.

Smoke will stir
no more, no more
the trees, now
evening closes
on the colors of the village.
An end is come
to the workings of shadow.
The response of the landscape
expects no answer.

The intention is sealed
of preserved signs.
Come through the rain
the address has smudged.
Suppose the "return"
at the end of the letter!
Sometimes, held to the light,
it reads: "of the soul".

Levertov is all I need...

I think I've posted this one before, but it captures my desperate need to escape from the craziness of school right now...

Emblem (1)

Dreaming, I rush
thrust from the cave of the winds,
into the midst of a wood of tasks.
The boughs part, I sweep
poems and people with me a little way;
dry twigs, small patches of earth
are cleared and covered.
Then I find myself
out over open heath, a sigh that holds
a single note, heading
far and far to the horizon's bent firtree.

Imaginary Career

New obsession: Rainer Maria Rilke. Enjoy:

At first a childhood, limitless and free
of any goals. Ahh sweet unconsciousness.
Then sudden terror, schoolrooms, slavery,
the plunge into temptation and deep loss.

Defiance. The child bent becomes the bender,
inflicts on others what he once went through.
Loved, feared, rescuer, wrestler, victor,
he takes his vengeance, blow by blow.

And now in vast, cold, empty space, alone.
Yet hidden deep within the grown-up heart,
a longing for the first world, the ancient one...

Then, from His place of ambush, God leapt out.

Old Pine

This is not a poem, but it's beautiful. It reminds me of camping. Which is what I've been doing this week.
Old Pine - Ben Howard

Henry David Thoreau - "Out" in the Woods

I may be a little bit insane to post my senior paper on my blog, but I'm rather proud of it, and I think it's important for people to understand Thoreau. General perception of Thoreau is quite misguided, due to a century and a half of scholarship that has skirted around a huge part of his life. Long story short, Thoreau was very likely (for lack of a better term) gay. He didn't have a secret life of scandal that was only recently uncovered or anything like that. More likely, he very intentionally hid his desire for other men from the public world, because as an aspiring writer, he couldn't risk being open. If he did have a relationship, though, it would have been with Alek Therien, whom he describes in great detail in Walden and in his journals. The queer reading of Thoreau is not just another one of those efforts to read queerness when it's not there. Walter Harding (a leading Thoreau scholar) published an article in the 90s that goes into detail about the evidence behind this theory. If you want to read it (it's fascinating), I can let you borrow it or copy it for you or something (It's not available online). When rereading Walden, I saw queerness written all over it. His understanding of the world is indicative of someone who is actively suppressing a part of himself which he desperately wants to express. Many more conservative (and bigoted?) Thoreauvians have been disappointed or offended by queer readings of Thoreau, but I think that this understanding of him deepens his writing immensely. This is what my paper is about (sorry it's so long!):

Henry David Thoreau – “Out” in the Woods

Gay identity is fundamentally shaped by the dualism of secrecy and disclosure, but since ‘telling’ is both prohibited and required, queer identity is always an internal contradiction between opacity and transparency, at once hidden and revealed.

- Elisa Glick, Materializing Queer Desire

I am under an awful necessity to be what I am.

- Henry David Thoreau, Journal IV

Henry David Thoreau’s writing, both public and private, is deeply concerned with the development of the self within and without society. He concludes Walden with the assertion that “it is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the laws of his being” (217). Thoreau’s search for the “laws of his being” brings him to Walden Pond, where he constructs a space for himself that is both separate from and actively engaged in discourse with the rest of the world. The text of Walden as well as Thoreau’s extensive journals are governed by “internal contradictions”. He confesses in Walden, “I am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another” (94). This “doubleness” goes unnamed throughout his writing. Walter Harding, in his article on “Thoreau’s Sexuality,” theorizes that “possibly some of Thoreau’s lifelong radicalism, the completely different angle of vision with which he viewed the world around him, his perennial habit of questioning all things may have derived from his realization that he was different from others” (41-42). This “difference”, according to Harding, arises from evidence that “both his actions and his words, consciously and/or subconsciously, indicate a specific sexual interest in members of his own sex” (40). During a time when homosexuality was not understood as an identity marker, Thoreau’s discussion of a hidden “nature” within himself suggests a more comprehensive awareness of sexual identity than his cultural moment allowed: “My nature it may [be] is secret – Others can confess and explain. I cannot. It is not that I am too proud, but that is not what is wanted” (J 213). He is driven by “an awful necessity” to discover and reveal his nature, but is cognizant of the social consequences of that divulgence. Thoreau’s omission of more explicitly homoerotic content from the final publication of Walden indicates a compulsion to disclose his inner self which is ultimately overruled by the social and legal consequences of sexual deviance. Thoreau was motivated by a desire for cohesion of the inner and outer self, although obligated by his cultural orientation to construct a closet for himself, in the form of a book called Walden, which simultaneously serves to express as much of Thoreau’s self as he felt he was allowed to divulge.

Discourse of Silence

Thoreau begins his essay on “Chastity and Sensuality” with this statement: “The subject of Sex is a remarkable one, since, though its phenomena concern us so much both directly and indirectly, and, sooner or later it occupies the thoughts of all, yet, all mankind, as it were, agree to be silent about it” (329). He marvels at the extraordinary efforts of “all mankind” to avoid open discussion of such an integral part of life, while he himself is under a strict obligation to remain silent. Thoreau is constantly restrained by the necessity of omission. He writes around the issue of homosexuality throughout his works, but never admits himself to be personally identified with such a discourse. His veiled language and careful omissions serve to emit undeniable undertones of sexual difference without the danger of explicit admission of transgressive desire. Eve Sedgwick states in The Epistemology of the Closet that “‘Closetedness’ itself is a performance initiated as such by the speech act of a silence” (3). Silence is not characterized by an absence but rather by the significant presence of a secret that is intentionally withheld. D.A. Miller asks, “If the secret subjective content is so well-concealed, how do we know it is there? What could the content of a subjectivity that is never substantiated possibly be?” (25). If the subject of Walden is hidden, then what is the nature of Thoreau’s secret subjectivity? Miller theorizes that “the secret subject is always an open secret” (26). Thoreau’s writing is a systematic performance in which silence becomes the subject. The “closetedness” of Walden – that is, the meticulous editing and very near revealing of secret subjects – is manifested in safely veiled language and the construction of Thoreau’s “Life in the Woods”.

According to Foucault’s History of Sexuality, “there is no binary division to be made between what one says and what one does not say; we must try to determine the different ways of not saying such things … There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses” (27). Sexuality of any kind has historically been spoken around, rather than spoken of. Foucault refers to a “policing of statements” (18), whereby vocabulary was limited by unspoken rules of sexual discourse: “Without even having to pronounce the word, modern prudishness was able to ensure that one did not speak of sex, merely through the interplay of prohibitions that referred back to one another: instances of muteness which, by dint of saying nothing, imposed silence” (17). Thoreau adopts this manner of speaking silences in his own discussion of sexuality, asking questions such as, “If it cannot be spoken of for shame, how can it be acted of?” (Chastity and Sensuality 329) without explicitly naming the subject of so-called shame.

In Massachusetts during the nineteenth century, state law categorized homosexuality as a “crime against nature”, stating that “Whoever commits the abominable and detestable crime against nature, either with mankind or with a beast, shall be punished by imprisonment in the state prison for not more than twenty years” (MGL c.272, s. 34). Notably, this legislation is concerned with acts, not orientation, and though there is still no substantial evidence that Thoreau engaged in any kind of sexual act with men, the potential danger of imprisonment would have been present in Thoreau’s mind. Eve Sedgwick discusses the effects of such legislation: “The most obvious fact about this history of judicial formulations is that it codifies an excruciating system of double binds, systematically oppressing gay people, identities, and acts by undermining through contradictory constraints on discourse the grounds of their very being” (70). Homosexuality in nineteenth-century America was necessarily a silent subject, due to sheer lack of terminology. When Thoreau expressed “an awful necessity to be what I am” (J 213), there was not a sufficient labeling system in place to define what he “was”. In the nineteenth century, homosexuality was not understood as an orientation or an identity, but was considered to be an aberration. The terms, ‘homosexual’, ‘gay’, ‘queer’, and ‘bisexual’ were not a part of the cultural vocabulary. Michel Foucault writes in The History of Sexuality that the term, “homosexual”, was not widely used until 1870, when Carl Westphal characterized homosexuality “less by a type of sexual relations than by a certain quality of sexual sensibility” (43). The concept of homosexual identity did not enter into American cultural discourse until the 1970s. Without a mode of discourse, queer expression during Thoreau’s time was naturally veiled, if not entirely silent. Thoreau’s identity is literally governed by a denial of full self-expression. He exists as the closeted version of himself, as presented in Walden.

Civil Disobedience

Thoreau speaks extensively on the contradiction between public opinion and private thought. During his time at Walden, he separated himself from the “tyranny of the majority” in order to develop and communicate his own understanding of self. He claims, “Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate” (8). In the first pages of Walden, Thoreau asserts that “it is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood tomorrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields” (9). Thoreau recognizes the arbitrariness of social constraints and predicts a time when “mere smoke of opinion” will dissipate and allow people like him to come out of the closet.

His rhetoric against majority rule in Civil Disobedience reflects a similar vein of frustration with the moral imposition of a dominant group upon minorities:

 After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience? – in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? (228)

This rhetoric could easily be applied to the gay rights movement in the twenty-first century. Thoreau’s powerful identification with the plight of the minority suggests that he considered himself to be marginalized in some way, and that he too was forced to “resign his conscience to the legislator”.

The Visible Self

In her book, Materializing Queer Desire, Elisa Glick writes that, “constituted as a mode of secrecy, and therefore haunted by invisibility, homosexuality risks becoming a disappearing act” (20). At the time he wrote Walden, Thoreau was struggling in his career to find a place for his voice in both the social and literary world. In disappearing to the woods, he indulges in this “mode of secrecy”, ultimately making himself highly visible with the publication of Walden. His construction of self at Walden Pond is still incomplete, due to his great pains to preserve the invisibility of his queer identity.

                Thoreau’s discussion of clothing in his chapter on “Economy” is indicative of an underlying concern over the conflict between exterior presentation and internal identity. Thoreau notes, “It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes” (19). In E.D.E.N. Southworth’s The Hidden Hand, Capitola is put into a position which requires a gendered disguise. She cross-dresses as a mode of protection from a society that does not allow for her existence as she is, so she transforms her identity in compliance with societal allowances. While her disguise protects her from bodily harm, it simultaneously grants her means to support herself. She describes the first time she dressed as a boy, exclaiming, “from that day forth I was happy and prosperous!” (47) Ironically, her effort at survival is a transgressive act as well, as she is arrested when her female identity is revealed.

Herman Melville’s Israel Potter changes his costume countless times as a means of survival. While his disguises function to shield his identity for a time, something inevitably gives him away. In Israel’s grand scheme to escape the Squire’s house, he assembles an elaborate costume and passes as the Squire’s ghost. Out in the country, however, his disguise is no longer relevant, and he is obliged to take clothes from a scarecrow. When the farmer visits his field, Israel almost fools him, but instead is forced to run. He then fails to ascertain help from a friend, because of the contradictory appearance of his lavish coin purse, coupled with his scarecrow rags. Israel manages to take on many identities throughout his time in exile, but his underlying self is always revealed in the end. He retains his Americanness, although he is repeatedly obligated to conceal his true allegiance. As he moves from one assumed identity to the next, he is unable to fully assert his existence. When the American patriot accidentally attaches himself to a British warship, he moves throughout the crew, insisting he is one of their own. When the captain asks, “Who the deuce are you?” (137) Israel is unable to provide a satisfying answer. The crew concludes that “He don’t seem to belong anywhere” (139), and the captain even suggests he might be a ghost. Israel does not exist as anything more substantial than an apparition when under disguise, as Thoreau does not entirely exist under the guise of heteronormativity.

Shawn Chandler Bingham critiques the culture of externality in America during Thoreau’s life: “External attributes and behavior – such as clothing and career – became symbols used by Americans to assess internal characteristics such as individual character” (41). Because society places constraints on acceptable clothing based on attributes such as gender, occupation, or socioeconomic status, an individual’s outward appearance becomes a signifier for identity. When the internal self is signified by a commodity, it becomes something to be bought and sold. A person’s identity may be determined by “the head monkey at Paris” who “puts on a traveler’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same” (21). Thoreau greatly criticizes the commoditization of identity through clothing. He wishes for clothing to reflect the true nature of the wearer, “for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind” (20). He does not offer up a satisfactory alternative, however, as the problem of internal and external self-expression is unsolvable for Thoreau.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, clothing serves both to conceal and proclaim the identity of the wearer. Hester Prynne’s ever-present embroidered letter is a blatant symbol of her “open secret”. She cannot move within society without her secret displayed for all to see. Arthur Dimmesdale suffers from the opposite fate. His secret is the same as Hester’s but he suffers under the curse of concealment. His scarlet letter is on his skin, effectively hidden under the weight of his clothing, which in his case signifies the purity of holy office. He embodies the “dualism of secrecy and disclosure” described by Glick, expressing a desire for the disclosure of his secret self: “I should long ago have thrown off these garments of mock holiness, and have shown myself to mankind as they will see me at the judgment-seat” (124). While Hester is physically exiled to the outskirts of town, Dimmesdale is internally exiled from the privilege of being truly known. When he converses with Hester, he exclaims, “Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! Mine burns in secret! Thou little knowest what a relief it is, after the torment of seven years’ cheat, to look into an eye that recognizes me for what I am!” (124). Thoreau labors under similar constraints, living in the tension between expression ad suppression of the self.

The Sympathetic Forest

Thoreau’s time at Walden constitutes a deliberate removal from the social confines of Concord, Massachusetts. From this displaced position, he undertakes an ambitious writing project with an ambiguous purpose. He states:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world. (65)

The implicit question here is, why did Thoreau think it necessary to distance himself from society simply in order to “live”? What was so “essential” about the forest and Walden Pond that allowed Thoreau to “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life”? Henry Abelove asks, “What is this vivid life he brags of?” (23). I would suggest that Thoreau deliberately moved himself to the margins in search of a space conducive to the expression of his entire self. He proclaims in Walden, “I desire to speak somewhere without bounds; like a man in a waking moment, to men in their waking moments; for I am convinced that I cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation of a true expression” (218). For Thoreau, the forest functions as a haven for secrecy. In that space, Thoreau could meet life on his own terms. He could be a transparent “self” at Walden without risk of exposure to the world at large. He could confide in the trees and the pond, creating in his mind a world in which he is “out” in the woods.

Thoreau entrusts his secret not to society, but to nature. He explicitly states in his journal that “Nature allows for no universal secrets … Nothing is too pointed too personal too immodest for her to blazon” (308). He often admires the open sexual expression of the flowers in the forest. He marvels that “the relations of sex transferred to flowers become the study of ladies in the drawing room. While men wear fig leaves she [Nature] grows the Phallus impudicus and P. caninus and other phallus-like fungi” (J 308). He finds irony in the open sexuality of flowers, so intricately and innocently studied by those who would faint at the explicit mention of sexuality between men. He is critical of this duality, pointing out that “We discourse freely without shame of one form of sensuality, and are silent about another. We are so degraded that we cannot speak simply of the necessary functions of human nature” (Walden 150). Thoreau speaks repeatedly of a desire for more open communication and expression of taboo subjects, although he personally rarely breaches the laws of propriety.

Thoreau finds no room for honest disclosure of his inner self among the “mass of men” (8), so he         removes himself to Walden, and the “open secret” of the forest provides sympathetic companionship:

The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature, – of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter, – such health, such cheer, they afford forever! And such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, and the sun’s brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in mid-summer, if any man should ever for a just cause grieve. (Walden 96)

This theme of innocence and purity is prominent throughout Walden and is extensively discussed in Thoreau’s essay, “Chastity and Sensuality”.

 He sees in nature what he considers to be a pure form of sexual expression, innocent because it is unrestricted and unhampered by the weight of shame. Nature imbibes Thoreau’s emotional, and even sexual, energy, thus rendering the forest sympathetic to his human frustrations.

This theme of the forest as secret keeper is present in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Hester Prynne arranges to meet with Arthur Dimmesdale in the woods, where they can speak openly in an environment that is well-versed in modes of secrecy: “All these giant trees and boulders of granite seemed intent on making a mystery of the course of this small brook; fearing, perhaps, that, with its never-ceasing loquacity, it should whisper tales out of the heart of the old forest whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on the smooth surface of a pool” (120). The trees guard the secrets contained in the stream, which threatens to leave the forest, delivering its confidences to the outside world. Hawthorne conflates the stream with Pearl, who is the physical embodiment of Hester and Dimmesdale’s secret: “Pearl resembled the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from a well-spring as mysterious” (121). The young, uninhibited girl constantly threatens to reveal the secret of her origin, by the simple nature of her existence. Pearl, like the stream, “could not help talking about it, and seemed to have nothing else to say” (121). Her open manner and intuitions about her father instill in Dimmesdale a constant fear of exposure. Within the protective bounds of the forest, however, the three characters are free to speak openly of their secret. This is the first instance when the former lovers can speak candidly about the reality of their situation. After the extreme relief of this unveiling, Hester and Dimmesdale are reluctant to leave the luxury of the sympathetic forest: “How dreary looked the forest-track that led backward to the settlement, where Hester Prynne must take up again the burden of her ignominy, and the minister the hollow mockery of his good name! So they lingered an instant longer” (126). The forest, as in Walden, assumes the weight of their shame: “The boughs were tossing heavily above their heads; while one solemn old tree groaned dolefully to another, as if telling the sad story of the pair that sat beneath” (126). The burden of telling is transferred to the trees, which rise to the occasion, spreading the word throughout the forest. This act of telling brings relief: “Here, seen only by her eyes, the scarlet letter need not burn into the bosom of the fallen woman! Here, seen only by her eyes, Arthur Dimmesdale, false to God and man, might be, for a moment, true” (126). The forest is the only setting in which their secret is known, and consequently, the only capacity in which Hester Prynne, Reverend Dimmesdale, and Pearl can safely present themselves as they truly are – a natural family. Like Thoreau, they are “under an awful necessity to be [who they are]”, but find they are able to do so only under protection of the sympathetic forest: “Such was the sympathy of Nature – that wild, heathen Nature of the forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by higher truth – with the bliss of these two spirits” (130).This removal can only be temporary, however, as they are required to reenter the world of social restrictions, as Thoreau returns to the “mass of men [who] lead lives of quiet desperation” (Walden 8). The individual self craves expression, but insists on being known not only by the trees, but by the core of humanity. Out of this desperate cry to be known, Walden emerges.

Thoreau’s Open Closet

                If the forest allows for full disclosure of the self, Thoreau’s house is the societal construction – and obstruction – of the natural self. He builds his house with his own hands, only reluctantly accepting the necessity of such a shelter from the natural world: “As for a Shelter, I will not deny that this is now a necessary of life” (22). He suggests, “It would be well perhaps if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from under a roof, or the saint dwell there so long” (23). In constructing his own dwelling, however, Thoreau creates a space that asserts and contains his own nature. This space is visible and expressive, while he himself is unable to attain the same level of openness:

A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird’s nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home there, – in solitary confinement. Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in the ally, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. (165)

Thoreau’s ideal of absolute hospitality may arise from the same desire that motivates him to higher modes of self-expression in the writing of Walden. He desires the interior of his house to be entirely known and understood by its visitors in a way that he personally never will. This ideal of the open house is not entirely realized, and he still feels confined by the “closetedness” of his four walls. He describes a habit of removing the entire contents of his small house in order to clean it. He sets his furniture and various interior trappings outside, and delights in their exposure to the exterior world: “They seemed glad to get out themselves, and as if unwilling to be brought in … It was worth the while to see the sun shine on these things, and hear the free wind blow on them; so much more interesting most familiar objects look out of doors than in the house” (80). His interior objects prefer not to be restricted to the confines of the closet. He allows them to “come out” where they are visible, where every aspect can be examined. This act of “outing” happens repeatedly for Thoreau within the safety of Walden, though he ultimately returns to the closet.

Thoreau’s Nature

Beneath Thoreau’s desire for articulation persists a deeper need for human connection. Thoreau retreats into solitude, not from a desire to be alone, rather than a want for a particular companionship which he believes to be entirely unattainable. He claims, “I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude” (Walden 94-95) almost in the same breath as this statement: “I think that I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes my way” (97). Let the innuendo speak for itself. His journal further reveals this desire for deep connection over discourse:

It is not words that I wish to hear or to utter – but relations that I seek to stand in – and it oftener happens methinks that I go away unmet unrecognized – ungreeted in my offered relation –than that you are disappointed of words.

If I can believe that we are related to one another as truly and gloriously as I have imagined, I ask nothing more and words are not required to convince me of this. I am disappointed of relations, you of words. (215)

Thoreau’s discussion of friendship in Walden and in his journals is riddled with disappointment and frustration. He hints at a desire for a deeper connection than he is allowed. He apologizes to his friends for having “seemingly preferred hate to love” (J 213), explaining that “It is not that I am too cold – but that our warmth and coldness are not of the same nature – hence when I am absolutely warmest, I may be coldest to you … That I am cold means that I am of another nature” (J 214). Thoreau repeatedly uses this word, “nature”, to name a hidden and perhaps mysterious difference between him and others around him. While he acknowledges this natural desire within himself, he is invested in its constant suppression: “Nature is hard to be overcome, but she must be overcome” (Walden 150). Thoreau aspires to a sensuality that he considers to be beyond the base instincts of sexual nature, because he is not allowed fulfillment:  “We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled … Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its nature” (Walden 149). Thoreau never denies the existence of his sexual nature, although he may deny himself its full expression.

Conclusion

Henry Abelove states in his article, “From Thoreau to Queer Politics”, “In some moods I have almost wanted to say that the production of Walden was the first queer action” (21). Thoreau may have been restricted from explicit admission of his sexuality, but the queer experience is scattered through the pages of his life’s work. He saw the world from a position of difference – he wished to distance himself from the “mass of men [who] lead lives of quiet desperation” (8), rejecting a traditional lifestyle in favor of marginalization. The way he relates to society, his obsession with the coherence of inner and outer self, communication of his hidden nature, the need to remove himself from society into nature in order to live freely “without bounds”, all speaks to a queer understanding of the world. If Thoreau had his way, he would present himself entirely stripped down to his nature, free from the encumbrance of social constraints. He states his intent in the epigraph to Walden: “I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up” (5). Imagine Thoreau, standing on a rooftop, unbound by convention, unfettered by shame, proud to proclaim to the world his whole and unimpeded self.

"You have come to the shore. There are no instructions."

A sudden listlessness;
An upheaval of all semblance of certainty,
hurled into a tumultuous torpidity,

           Feet on the edge of that ocean.

Desperate, undeniable necessity -
to be infused with insatiable wildness

With only the dregs of such calamity
surging about the soul.

Finally with vigor, and O, with such voracity,
these waves become a part of me.

And I am irrevocably,
                 exquisitely,
                 inscrutably,
                                                  yours.




That poem that you just read - I wrote it.
[The title is a quote from Levertov]

Metamorphic Journal 7

Installment number 7

Let me say
it is I who am a river.
Someone is walking along
the shore of me.

He is looking
sometimes at my surface,
the lights and the passing
wingshadows,

sometimes
through me, and down
towards rocks and sand,

sometimes across me
into another country.

Does he see me?

Metamorphic Journal 6

Installment Number 6!

Part II - February

'And what if the stream
is shallow?'

Then I will wade in it.

'-the current only a ripple
that will not bear you?'

I'll make my way,
not leaf nor stone, a human,
step by step, walking,
slipping, scrambling,
seeking the depth

where the waters will summon themselves
to lift me
off my feet.

I am looking always
for the sea.

Metamorphic Journal 5

Installment Number 5 - I think this is my favorite.

                I don't know how deep,
how cold. I want
to touch it, drink of it, open mouth
bent to it.

Sometimes as a child
I'd slip on the rocks and fall in.
Never mind.
I wanted to know
the river's riveriness with my self,

be stone or leaf, sink or be
swept downstream
to spin and vanish, spin
and hover, spin
and sweep on beyond sight.

Metamorphic Journal 4

"It would be well perhaps if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from under a roof, or the saint dwell there so long."
- Thoreau
(I slept outside again last night)

This is part 4:

Whether or not I find
words for you, to tell myself who you are,

I shan't mistake you
for a tree to cling to. Let me speak of you
as of a river:
quick-gleaming, conjuring
little pyramids of light that pass
in laughter from braided ripple to ripple;
but pausing, dark
in pools where boughs
lean over;
but never
at a standstill --

Jack Kerouac's American Haiku

This is the debut of my own poetry on this blog! This is probably a one-time thing, I don't generally share what I write, but these are fun, so there's not too high a risk of baring my soul.

Jack Kerouac reinvented the Haiku, saying, "I propose that the 'Western Haiku' simply say a lot in three short lines in any Western language. Above all, a Haiku must be very simple and free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi Pastorella". (Thanks for lending me the book, Tess!)

Some examples from Kerouac:

White clouds of this steamy planet
     obstruct
My vision of the blue void

Why'd I open my eyes?
      because
I wanted to

The pine woods
     move
In the mist

So, I woke up this morning, and wrote a few Kerouac-style American Haiku (Haiku is the plural). They're a bit wordier than his, but that's okay, because they aren't under syllabic constraint.

and this winter has turned to summer
     with a single wave of a
quivering leaf

I slept with the stars last night,
      to feel the closeness of their
celestial bodies

This morning an eagle
      flew over my head
straight to the mountains

I stole a bit of moss.
       You may laugh, but
I once had to live without forests.

If one stares at an object long enough
        in contemplation,
it becomes dear.

Metamorphic Journal 3

Installment number 3!

My friend... My friend, I would like
to talk to myself about you: beginning
with your bright, hazel, attentive eyes,
the curving lines of your mouth.
I would like to ponder the way
I have grown so slowly aware those lines
are beautiful, generous. Energy lights your
whole face, matching
the way you walk. A gradual seeing,
not in a phantom flash of storm...
But I'm not ready
to speak about you,
Not yet.
Perhaps I will never be ready,
nor you to be spoken of.

Metamorphic Journal 2

Installment Number 2!

If I came to a brook, off came my shoes,
looking could not be enough -
or my hands at least must be boats or fish for a minute,
to know the purling water at palm and wrist.
My mind would sink like stone
and shine underwater,
dry dull brown
                      turned to an amber glow.

Metamorphic Journal

I found this fantastic long-form poem by Denise Levertov. It's called "Metamorphic Journal", and it's broken up into 3 parts, which consist of several poems each. Thus, I'll be posting this poem, one piece at a time.
PS it's beautiful.

Part 1 - December

A child, no-one to stare, I'd run full tilt to a tree,
hug it, hold fast, loving the stolid way it
stood there, girth
arms couldn't round,
                               the way
only the wind made it speak, gave it
an autumn ocean of thoughts
creaking on big wings into the clouds, or rolling
in steady uncountable sevens in
to the wild cliffs when I shut my eyes.


Stay tuned for tomorrow's episode...

Levertov...

Somehow, this poem encapsulates today. I don't think I could even explain to myself exactly why. But this is what poetry does: it gets at something deep down, and takes hold until we understand it. Or we may never understand it, but it becomes a part of us...

Emblem (I)

Dreaming, I rush
thrust from the cave of the winds,
into the midst of a wood of tasks.
The boughs part, I sweep
poems and people with me a little way;
dry twigs, small patches of earth
are cleared and covered.
Then I find myself
out over open heath, a sigh that holds
a single note, heading
far and far to the horizon's bent firtree.

Emblem (II)

A silver quivering cocoon that shakes
from within, trying to break.
                                          What psyche
is wrestling with its shroud?
Blunt diamonds
scrape at its casing,
urging it out.
But there is too much grief. The world
is made of days, and is itself
a shrouded day.
It stifles. It's our world, and we
its dreams, its creased
compacted wings.

Beyond Pleasure

Beyond Pleasure
Jack Gilbert


Gradually we realize what is felt is not so important
(however lovely or cruel) as what the feeling contains.
Not what happens to us in childhood, but what was
inside what happened.  Ken Kesey sitting in the woods,
beyond his fence of whitewashed motorcycles, said when
he was writing on acid he was not writing about it.
He used what he wrote as blazes to find his way back
to what he knew then.  Poetry registers
feelings, delights and passion, but the best searches
out what is beyond pleasure, is outside process.
Not the passion so much as what the fervor can be
an ingress to.  Poetry fishes us to find a world
part by part, as the photograph interrupts the flux
to give us time to see each thing separate and enough.
The poem chooses part of our endless flowing forward
to know its merit with attention.

The Peace of Wild Things

The Peace of Wild Things

Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Jack Gilbert

Jack Gilbert is from Pittsburgh, and works the city into a lot of his poems. He tends to be quite philosophical in his poetry, and he beautifully captures the fullness of experience (the way W.C. Williams wished he could...)

Less Being More
Jack Gilbert

It started when he was a young man
and went to Italy. He climbed mountains,
wanting to be a poet. But was troubled
by what Dorothy Wordsworth wrote in
her journal about William having worn
himself out searching all day to find
a simile for nightingale. It seemed
a long way from the tug of passion.
He ended up staying in pensione
where the old women would take up
the children in the middle of the night
to rent the room, carrying them warm
and clinging to the mothers, the babies
making a mewing sound. He began hunting
for the second rate. The insignificant
ruins, the negligible museums, the back-
country villages with only one pizzeria
and two small bars. The unimproved.

Poetry is back.

I've had an insane quarter... but I'm still discovering poetry, so here's a bit of Gibran.


Song of the Flower XXIII
By Kahlil Gibran


By the voice of Nature;
I am a star fallen from the
Blue tent upon the green carpet.
I am the daughter of the elements
With whom Winter conceived;
To whom Spring gave birth; I was
Reared in the lap of Summer and I
Slept in the bed of Autumn.

At dawn I unite with the breeze
To announce the coming of light;
At eventide I join the birds
In bidding the light farewell.

The plains are decorated with
My beautiful colors, and the air
Is scented with my fragrance.

As I embrace Slumber the eyes of
Night watch over me, and as I
Awaken I stare at the sun, which is
The only eye of the day.

I drink dew for wine, and hearken to
The voices of the birds, and dance
To the rhythmic swaying of the grass.

I am the lover's gift; I am the wedding wreath;
I am the memory of a moment of happiness;
I am the last gift of the living to the dead;
I am a part of joy and a part of sorrow.

But I look up high to see only the light,
And never look down to see my shadow.
This is wisdom which man must learn.

You are Gorgeous and I am Coming

Sorry, I haven't posted for a while... I made it through Lent, and wanted to just sit for a while with all of the poems I've recently discovered, letting them sink in before I search for more poetry. But a friend told me about this poem today, and I have to share it. It's an acrostic (meaning, the first letter of each line spells out a name) by Frank O'Hara, for his lover, Vincent Warren, referring to the "el" train in Chicago:


Vaguely I hear the purple roar of the torn-down Third Avenue El
it sways slightly but firmly like a hand or a golden-downed thigh
normally I don’t think of sounds as colored unless I’m feeling corrupt
concrete Rimbaud obscurity of emotion which is simple and very definite
even lasting, yes it may be that dark and purifying wave, the death of boredom
nearing the heights themselves may destroy you in the pure air
to be further complicated, confused, empty but refilling, exposed to light

With the past falling away as an acceleration of nerves thundering and shaking
aims its aggregating force like the Métro towards a realm of encircling travel
rending the sound of adventure and becoming ultimately local and intimate 
repeating the phrases of an old romance which is constantly renewed by the
endless originality of human loss the air the stumbling quiet of breathing
newly the heavens’ stars all out we are all for the captured time of our being

Still in love with Levertov...

This is a simple, straightforward poem about having friends who are far away...

Complaint and Rejoinder

There's a kind of despair, when your friends
are scattered across the world; you see
how therefore never is there a way
each can envision truly
the others of whom you speak.
                    Oceans divide your life,
you want to place all of it -
people, places, their tones, atmospheres,
everything shared uniquely with each -
into a single bowl, like petals, like sand
in a pail. No one can ever hear or tell
the whole story.

(And do you really think
this would not be so if you lived
all of your life on an island,
in a village too small to contain
a single stranger?)

- Denise Levertov

Memory demands so much

Memory demands so much,
it wants every fiber
told and retold.                      
                      It gives and gives
but for a price, making you 
risk drudgery, lapse
into document, treacheries
of glaring noon and a slow march.
Leaf never before
seen or envisioned, flying spider
of rose-red autumn, playing
a lone current of undecided wind,
lift me with you, take me
off this ground of memory that clings
to my feet like thick clay,
exacting gratitude for gifts and gifts.
Take me flying before
you vanish, leaf, before
I have time to remember you,
intent instead on being
in the midst of that flight,
of those unforeseeable words.

- Denise Levertov

What Goes Unsaid

I love it when a poem forever changes the way I think about something... My mind will now forever be a forest:

In each mind, even the most candid,

there are forests, where needled haze overshadows

the slippery duff and patches of snow long-frozen, 

or else where mangroves, proliferant, vine-entwisted,

loom over warm mud that slowly bubbles.

In these forests there live certain events, shards 

of memory, scraps of once-heard lore, intimations

once familiar - some painful, shameful, some

drably or laughable inconsequent, others 

thoughts that the thinker 

could never hold fast and begin to tell.

And some - a few - that are noble, tender,

and so complete in themselves, they had 

no need of saying.

                           There they dwell,

no sky above them, resting

like dragonflies on the dense air, or nested

on inaccessible twigs.

It is right that there are these secrets

(even the weightless ones have perhaps

some part to play in the unperceiveable whole)

and these forests; privacies

and the deep terrain to receive them.

Right that they rise at times into our ken,

and are acknowledged.

- Denise Levertov

Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable...

As you plaited the harvest bow
You implicated the mellowed silence in you
In wheat that does not rust
But brightens as it tightens twist by twist
Into a knowable corona,
A throwaway love-know of straw.

Hands that aged round ashplants and cane sticks
And lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game cocks
Harked to their gift and worked with fine intent
Until your fingers moved somnambulant:
I tell and finger it like braille,
Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable,

And if I spy into its golden loops
I see us walk between the railway slopes
Into an evening of long grass and midges,
Blue smoke straight up, old beds and ploughs in hedges,
An auction notice on an outhouse wall -
You with a harvest bow in your lapel,

Me with the fishing rod, already homesick
For the big lift of these evenings, as your stick
Whacking the tips off weeds and bushes
Beats out of time, and beats, but flushes
Nothing: that original townland
Still tongue-tied in the straw tied by your hand.

The end of art is peace
Could be the motto of this frail device
That I have pinned up on our deal dresser -
Like a drawn snare
Slipped lately by the spirit of the corn
Yet burnished by its passage, and still warm.

- Seamus Heaney

More Louise...

Love in the Moonlight

Sometimes a man or woman forces his despair
on another person, which is called
baring the heart, alternatively, baring the soul -
meaning for this moment they acquired souls -
outside, a summer evening, a whole world
thrown away on the moon: groups of silver forms
which might be buildings or trees, the narrow garden
where the cat hides, rolling on its back in the dust,
the rose, the coreopsis, and in the dark, the gold
        dome of the capitol
converted to an alloy of moonlight, shape
without detail, the myth, the archetype, the soul
filled with fire that is moonlight really, taken
from another source, and briefly
shining as the moon shines: stone or not,
the moon is still that much of a living thing.

Nostalgia

Today, I'm nostalgic for Emily Bronte:

Shall earth no more inspire thee,
Thou lonely dreamer now?
Since passion may not fire thee
Shall Nature cease to bow?
Thy mind is ever moving
In regions dark to thee;
Recall its useless roving—
Come back and dwell with me.
I know my mountain breezes
Enchant and soothe thee still—
I know my sunshine pleases
Despite thy wayward will.
When day with evening blending
Sinks from the summer sky,
I’ve seen thy spirit bending
In fond idolatry.
I’ve watched thee every hour;
I know my mighty sway,
I know my magic power
To drive thy griefs away.
Few hearts to mortals given
On earth so wildly pine;
Yet none would ask a heaven
More like this earth than thine.
Then let my winds caress thee;
Thy comrade let me be—
Since nought beside can bless thee,
Return and dwell with me.

End of Winter

Over the still world, a bird calls
waking solitary among black boughs.

You wanted to be born; I let you be born.
When has my grief ever gotten
in the way of your pleasure?

Plunging ahead
into the dark and light at the same time
eager for sensation

as though you were some new thing, wanting
to express yourselves

all brilliance, all vivacity

never thinking this would cost anything,
never imagining the sound of my voice
as anything but part of you -

you won't hear it in the other world,
not clearly again,
not in birdcall or human cry,

not the clear sound, only
persistent echoing
in all sound that means good-bye, good-bye -

the one continuous line
that binds us to each other.

- Louise Glück

Solitary Swedish Houses

Tomas Tranströmer won the Nobel Prize in 2011. With good reason:

Solitary Swedish Houses

A confusion of black spruce
and smoking moonbeams.
Here's the cottage lying low
and not a sign of life.

Till the morning dew murmurs
and an old man opens
- with a shaky hand - his window
and lets out an owl.

Further off, the new building
stands streaming
with the laundry butterfly
fluttering at the corner

in the middle of a dying wood
where the moldering reads
through spectacles of sap
the proceedings of the bark-drillers.

Summer with flaxen-haired rain
or one solitary thundercloud
above a barking dog.
The seed is kicking inside the earth.

Agitated voices, faces
fly in the telephone wires
on stunted rapid wings
across the moorland miles.

The house on an island in the river
brooding on its stony foundations.
Perpetual smoke - they're burning
the forest's secret papers.

The rain wheels in the sky.
The light coils in the river.
Houses on the slope supervise
the waterfall's white oxen.

Autumn with a gang of starlings
holding dawn in check.
The people move stiffly
in the lamplight's theater.

Let them feel without alarm
the camouflaged wings
and God's energy
coiled up in the dark.

Tear it Down

We find out the heart only by dismantling what 
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of racoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within the body.


- Jack Gilbert

The Tools

The Tools - Robert Creeley

First there, it proves to be still here.   

Distant as seen, it comes then to be near.   

I found it here and there unclear.

What if my hand had only been   

extension of an outside reaching in

to work with common means to change me then?

All things are matter, yet these seem   

caught in the impatience of a dream,   

locked in the awkwardness they mean.

Vespers

I know what you planned, what you meant to do, teaching me
to love the world, making it impossible
to turn away completely, to shut it out completely
       ever again -
it is everywhere; when I close my eyes,
birdsong, scent of lilac in early spring, scent of summer roses:
you mean to take it away, each flower, each connection
       with earth -
 why would you wound me, why would you want me
desolate in the end, unless you wanted me so starved for hope
I would refuse to see that finally
nothing was left to me, and would believe instead
in the end you were left to me.

- Louise Glück