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

New Favorite...

September Twilight

I gathered you together,
I can dispense with you -

I'm tired of you, chaos
of the living world -
I can only extend myself
for so long to a living thing.

I summoned you into existence
by opening my mouth, by lifting
my little finger, shimmering

blues of the wild
aster, blossom
of the lily, immense,
gold-veined -

you come and go; eventually
I forget your names.

You come and go, every one of you
flawed in some way,
in some way compromised: you are worth
one life, no more than that.

I gathered you together;
I can erase you
as though you were a draft to be thrown away,

an exercise

because I've finished you, vision
of deepest mourning.

Louise Glück, from The Wild Iris

The Eternal Moment

"To refine, to clarify, to intensify that eternal moment in which we alone live there is but a single force - the imagination." - William Carlos Williams, Spring and All

Today, I think I understood the eternal moment. To be entirely content in one moment, entirely at peace with whatever has led me here, and whatever is ahead of me... "All times contemporaneous in the mind." (Ezra Pound) Not just living in the moment, but living in all moments, letting the imagination "refine, clarify, and intensify that eternal moment"... Sorry if this makes no sense. If you take a class on Pound and Williams, you may understand what I'm saying. Or not. I don't understand half the things I said in that class...

Anyway, something about this poem seems relevant, but I haven't spent enough time with it to really know why... (PS I love the last line)

Anytime - W.S. Merwin

How long ago the day is
when at last I look at it
with the time it has taken
to be there still in it
now in the transparent light
with the flight in the voices
the beginning in the leaves
everything I remember
and before it before me
present at the speed of light
in the distance that I am
who keep reaching out to it
seeing all the time faster
where it has never stirred from
before there is anything
the darkness thinking the light

Rain Stick

My sister and I were reminiscing today about the good old days when we danced around in our Pocahontas dresses, listening to Peruvian panflute music, and playing the rain stick. So here's a Seamus Heaney poem about a rain stick:

Upend the rain stick and what happens next
Is a music that you never would have known
To listen for. In a cactus stalk
Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash
Come flowing through. You stand there like a pipe
Being played by water, you shake it again lightly
And diminuendo runs through all its scales
Like a gutter stopping trickling. And now here comes
A sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,
Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;
Then glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.
Upend the stick again. What happens next
Is undiminished for having happened once,
Twice, ten, a thousand times before.
Who cares if all the music that transpires
Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?
You are like a rich man entering heaven
Through the ear of a raindrop. Listen now again.

Emily Bronte

 Apparently, I have yet to post Emily Bronte on here. So, here it is:

No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear.

O God within my breast,
Almighty, ever-present Deity!
Life--that in me has rest,
As I--undying Life--have power in thee!

Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts: unutterably vain;
Worthless as withered weeds,
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main,

To waken doubt in one
Holding so fast by thine infinity;
So surely anchored on
The stedfast rock of immortality.

With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.

Though earth and man were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou were left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.

There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou--THOU art Being and Breath,
And what THOU art may never be destroyed

Chicago

So.... I'm in Chicago. Here's a Creeley poem, aptly named "Chicago":

Say that you're
       lonely - and want
something to
       place you -

going around groping
       either by mind
or hand - but behind
       the pun is a

door you keep open,
       one way,
so they won't touch you
       and still let you stay.

I can't see in
       this place more
than the walls
       and door -
a light flat
       and air hot,
and drab, drab, drab
       and locked.

Would dying be here?
Never go anywhere you
       can't live.

Concrete blocks painted an "off white" yellow tone - institu-
tional - very noisy, senses of people next side of wall, etc.
Get used to shrinking space - They'll let you out when
there's reason.

Just Now

Thanks, poetry buddies, for making me read Merwin... (PS we need a better name than poetry buddies!)

In the morning as the storm begins to blow away
the clear sky appears for a moment and it seems to me
that there has been something simpler than I could ever
believe
simpler than I could have begun to find words for
not patient not even waiting no more hidden
than the air itself that became part of me for a while
with every breath and remained with me unnoticed
something that was here unnamed unknown in the days
and the nights not separate from them
not separate from them as they came and were gone
it must have been here neither early nor late then
by what name can I address it now holding out my thanks

- W.S. Merwin

Like the wheel that keeps travelers traveling on...

Sorry, I didn't post yesterday... I was busy finishing up what has probably been my best quarter of college to date! (100% thumbs up on fire!) Only three people will get that....
Anyway, this song is in my head today, and it's so beautiful, I have to share:

Like the Wheel - Tallest Man on Earth

Oh I wish I was the sparrow in your kid's eye
that could fly above this summer all day long
on an island in the heart he has to carry
past the many you have let into your song

And I said Oh, my Lord, why I am I not strong
like the wheel that keeps travelers traveling on
like the wheel that will take you home

And in the forest someone's whispering to a tree now
this is all I am so please don't follow me
and it's your brother in the shaft that I'm a-swinging
please let the kindness of forgetting set me free

And on this Sunday someone's sitting down to wonder
where the hell among these mountains will I be?
there's a cloud behind the cloud to which I'm yelling
oh, I could hear you sneak around so easily

And I said oh, my Lord, why I am I not strong
like the branch that keeps hangman hanging on
like the branch that will take me home

PS this is a recording of three different songs, none of which are this one, but it's so good! His finger picking is unreal...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLRTleMY_mc&feature=related

I who have died am alive again today...

i thank you God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of
the gay great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing
seeing breathing any, - lifted from the
no of all nothing - human merely
being doubt unimaginable you?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

- E.E. Cummings

The Tide

Sorry about all the Levertov, but she's just so perfect...

Where is the Giver to whom my gratitude
rose? In this emptiness
there seems no Presence.

                          How confidently the desires
                          of God are spoken of!
                          Perhaps God wants
                          something quite different.
                          Or nothing, nothing at all.

Blue smoke from small
peaceable hearths ascending
without resistance in luminous
evening air.
Or eager mornings - waking
as if to a song's call.
Easily I can conjure
a myriad of images
of faith.
Remote. They pass
as I turn a page.

                          Outlying houses, and the train's rhythm
                          slows, there's a signal box,
                          People are taking their luggage
                          down from the racks.
                          Then you wake and discover
                          you have not left
                          to begin the journey.

Faith's a tide, it seems, ebbs and flows responsive
to action and inaction.
Remain in stasis, blown sand
stings your face, anemones
shrivel in rock pools no wave renews.
Clean the littered beach, clear
the lines of a forming poem,
the waters flood inward.
Dull stones again fulfill
their glowing destinies, and emptiness
is a cup, and holds
the ocean.

A Portrait in Greys

A Portrait in Greys

Will it never be possible
to separate you from your greyness?
Must you be always sinking backward
into your grey-brown landscapes - and trees
always in the distance, always against
a grey sky?
              Must I be always
moving counter to you? Is there no place
where we can be at peace together
and the motion of our drawing apart
be altogether taken up?
               I see myself
standing upon your shoulders touching
a grey, broken sky -
but you, weighted down with me,
yet gripping my ankles, - move
              laboriously on,
where it is level and undisturbed by colors.

- William Carlos Williams

Grey is the price of neighboring with eagles...

This morning, as I was looking out my window at all the "sundry" grayness, a bald eagle and a seagull came out of nowhere and flew right up to my window. They chased each other around for awhile, before the eagle took off toward Chuckanut Mountain. Bald eagles are all over the place just east of here, along the Nooksack River, but I've never seen one right in Bellingham. So naturally, this is the poem for today:

Settling

I was welcomed here - clear gold
of late summer, of opening autumn,
the dawn eagle sunning himself on the highest tree,
the mountain revealing herself unclouded, her snow
tinted apricot as she looked west,
tolerant, in her steadfastness, of the restless sun
forever rising and setting.
                                      Now I am given
a taste of the grey foretold by all and sundry,
a grey both heavy and chill. I've boasted I would not care,
I'm London-born. And I won't. I'll dig in,
into my days, having come here to live, not to visit.
Grey is the price
of neighboring with eagles, of knowing
a mountain's vast presence, seen or unseen.

- Denise Levertov

Intimations

From Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, Part 11

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

- William Wordsworth

Seamus Heaney

Too brilliant for words...

Oysters

Our shells clacked on the plates.

My tongue was a filling estuary,

My palate hung with starlight:

As I tasted the salty Pleiades

Orion dipped his foot into the water.

Alive and violated
They lay on their beds of ice:
Bivalves: the split bulb
And philandering sigh of ocean.
Millions of them ripped and shucked and scattered.

We had driven to the coast
Through flowers and limestone
And there we were, toasting friendship,
Laying down a perfect memory
In the cool thatch and crockery.

Over the Alps, packed deep in hay and snow,
The Romans hauled their oysters south to Rome:
I saw damp panniers disgorge
The frond-lipped, brine-stung
Glut of privilege

And was angry that my trust could not repose
In the clear light, like poetry or freedom
Leaning in from the sea. I ate the day
Deliberately, that its tang
Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb.

To Paula in Late Spring

Let me imagine that we will come again
when we want to and it will be spring
we will be no older than we ever were
the worn griefs will have eased like the early cloud
through which the morning slowly comes to itself
and the ancient defenses against the dead
will be done with and left to the dead at last
the light will be as it is now in the garden
that we have made here these years together
of our long evenings and astonishment.

-W.S. Merwin

The Freedom of Storms

This is what I woke up to this morning:

What a beautiful thing God has made winter to be,
by stripping the trees and letting us see their shapes and forms.
What a freedom does it seem to give to the storms.
- Dorothy Wordsworth

How to Catch a Poem

Another Ars Poetica poem:

It begins with one leaf rubbing against another,
a light, a rift in a cloud, the weight of a feather
spiraling down, a ripple on water -

its shape rising from the dark and fusing
with a sound, a touch, a peculiar scent. Now it begins
to show plumage, the gleam of a pelt, pausing

to stare with an ebony eye. One twitch - it's gone,
fled into that darker wood behind the eyes. Stunned,
you trace its tracks on paper, stumble,

pick yourself up and go down each sly
cheat of a path vanishing in a thicket, lie
still, listening for its breath, a twig breaking

where you think.... Avoid sleep, follow all day,
at night listen for its cry under the moon. Finally you may
gather enough to show its presence. Delay

finishing what you have. Take your time. Return home
and frame the cast of its footprint: that is the poem.

- Robert Siegel

Ars Poetica

Ars Poetica means, "On the nature of poetry"; a poem about poetry. Thus:


Ars Poetica?
by Czeslaw Milosz
I have always aspired to a more spacious form   

that would be free from the claims of poetry or prose   

and would let us understand each other without exposing   

the author or reader to sublime agonies.   

In the very essence of poetry there is something indecent:   

a thing is brought forth which we didn’t know we had in us,   

so we blink our eyes, as if a tiger had sprung out   

and stood in the light, lashing his tail.   

That’s why poetry is rightly said to be dictated by a daimonion,   

though it’s an exaggeration to maintain that he must be an angel.   

It’s hard to guess where that pride of poets comes from,   

when so often they’re put to shame by the disclosure of their frailty.   

What reasonable man would like to be a city of demons,   

who behave as if they were at home, speak in many tongues,   

and who, not satisfied with stealing his lips or hand,   

work at changing his destiny for their convenience?   

It’s true that what is morbid is highly valued today,   

and so you may think that I am only joking   

or that I’ve devised just one more means   

of praising Art with the help of irony.   

There was a time when only wise books were read,   

helping us to bear our pain and misery.   

This, after all, is not quite the same   

as leafing through a thousand works fresh from psychiatric clinics.   

And yet the world is different from what it seems to be   

and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.

People therefore preserve silent integrity,   

thus earning the respect of their relatives and neighbors.   

The purpose of poetry is to remind us   

how difficult it is to remain just one person,   

for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,   

and invisible guests come in and out at will.

What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry,   

as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,   

under unbearable duress and only with the hope   

that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.

The Head and the Heart

I had a dream a couple nights ago that I was hanging out with The Head and the Heart at a cabin in the woods. I played music with them every night, and we were about to barbecue a salmon when I woke up. It was definitely one of my better dreams...
So, since I've been hanging out with The Head and the Heart lately, here's a beautiful video of them:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2SHJQXaqds&feature=related

Levertov again...

I didn't get around to posting yesterday... So here's a two-part poem by none other than Denise Levertov:

Lovers (1)

With one I learned
how roots turn
to grip loam,
learned
the pulse of stone,
mineral arteries,
skyless auroras.

Was it so indeed?
I remember now
only telling myself
it was so.

Another led me
under the wing of
the waterfall. Light
was fine mist.
My skin was myself.

I remember now
only the words,
what they tell is gone.

And others I loved -
what were their kingdoms?
What songs did I sing of them,
and gazed from what high windows
toward their borders?

I journeyed
onward, my road always
drawing me further.



Lovers (II) : Reminder

'But that other:
he danced like a gypsy's bear at the winter crossroads,
the days of your youth and his are a bit of blue glass
bevelled by the oceans and kept in his pocket,
wherever he is is always
now.
Touch, mass, weight, warmth:
a language you found you knew.
He brought you
the bread of sunlight on great platters of laughter."

Read those last two lines again please - "the bread of sunlight on great platters of laughter"! And "a bit of blue glass bevelled by the oceans"! Love it.