Straunge Strondes

Must be April. More than 600 years ago, Geoffrey Chaucer (1342-1400) got it right in Middle English:

Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open eye-
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;

or in far less beautiful modern English:

When in April the sweet showers fall
That pierce March's drought to the root and all
And bathed every vein in liquor that has power
To generate therein and sire the flower;
5When Zephyr also has with his sweet breath,
Filled again, in every holt and heath,
The tender shoots and leaves, and the young sun
His half-course in the sign of the Ram has run,
And many little birds make melody
That sleep through all the night with open eye
(So Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage)
Then folk do long to go on pilgrimage,
And palmers to go seeking out strange strands,
To distant shrines well known in distant lands.

If there were a contest for all time greatest early Spring stanzas, this would be in the running. Has it been topped in the past 6 Centuries? Doubtful.

Ai, RIP

The NY Times reports:

The prominent American poet Ai, whose work — known for its raw power, jagged edges and unflinching examination of violence and despair — stood as a damning indictment of American society, died on March 20 in Stillwater, Okla. She was 62 and lived in Stillwater.

And then there's this extraordinary poem:

I scissor the stem of the red carnation

and set it in a bowl of water.

It floats the way your head would,

if I cut it off.

But what if I tore you apart

for those afternoons

when I was fifteen

and so like a bird of paradise

slaughtered for its feathers.

Even my name suggested wings,

wicker cages, flight.

Come, sit on my lap, you said.

I felt as if I had flown there;

I was weightless.

You were forty and married.

That she was my mother never mattered.

She was a door that opened onto me.

Walt Whitman Remembered

Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Just in case we might have forgotten:

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then;
In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass;
I find letters from God dropt in the street—and every one is sign’d by God’s name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go,
Others will punctually come forever and ever.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (Verse 48)

I too find letters from God dropped in the street. I find them everywhere. But sometimes I forget what they are. Then they look to me like leaves. Just leaves. Cast off, abandoned, blowing in the breeze. But then after a while of forgetfulness, something always reminds me. There's always something there to remind me. These reminders punctually come forever and ever.

For this reminder, I thank "Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos, disorderly, fleshly, and sensual, no sentimentalist, no stander above men or women or apart from them, no more modest than immodest."

The Mirror And The Mask

Carrowkeel

I thought I wrote this article before. But when I was in Ireland last week, I wanted to show it to a friend, and I couldn't find it here. I carefully searched this blog; it had to be here, but it was not. How, I wondered, could I be so confused. How could I have such a clear recollection of something I had written, only to find out that, in fact, I hadn't written it at all. Was my memory playing tricks on me? Maybe I thought I would write this piece, but never did it? Hardly. I remember making revisions. I'm disturbed by this. I have no explanations.

In the Book of Sand (El Libro de Arena) (1975), Jorge Luis Borges gives us insight in "The Mirror And The Mask" into what it takes to be a great, wandering poet. The King of Ireland, having won an important battle, wants the poet to write a poem about the victory. Would the poet undertake this task and make both the King and the poet immortal? Does the poet have the necessary gifts? The poet responds:

Yes, great king, I do," answered the poet. "I am Olan. For twelve winters I have honed my skills at meter. I know by heart the three hundred sixty fables which are the foundation of all true poetry. The Ulster cycle and the Munster cycle lie within my harp strings. I am licensed by law to employ the most archaic words of the language, and its most complex metaphors. I have mastered the secret script which guards our art from the prying eyes of the common folk. I can sing of love, of cattle theft, of sailing ships, of war. I know the mythological lineage of all the royal houses of Ireland. I possess the secret knowledge of herbs, astrology, mathematics and cannon law. I have defeated my rivals in public contest. I have trained myself in satire, which causes diseases of the skin, including leprosy. And I also wield the sword, as I have prove in your battle. There is but one thing that I do not know: how to express my thanks for this gift you make me.

After the poet successfully completes this initial task, the king speaks:

I accept this labor. It is another victory. You have given to each word its true meaning, to each noun the epithet bestowed upon it by the first poets. In all the work there is not an image which the classics did not employ. War is 'the fair cloth wov'n of men' and blood is 'sword-drink.' The seas has its god and the clouds foretell the future. You have marshaled rhyme, alliteration, assonance, scansion, the artifices of erudite rhetoric, the wise alternation of meters, and all with greatest skillfulness. If the whole of the literature of Ireland should-- omen absit-- be lost, well might it all be reconstructed, without loss, from your classic ode. Thirty scribes shall transcribe it, twelve times each."

What competence. What gifts. What language. But of course, of course, of course things take a turn toward the infinite in the story. Borges after all is the writer. I will not spoil it for you. It deserves to be read in full.

My point here is incredibly modest: I loved this story before I ever saw Ireland. And now, having seen Ireland, I love it all the more. Amidst all of the island's antiquity, and its long, oral tradition, a story about the love of language and writing fits surprisingly and beautifully.

Picking Blueberries In Austerlitz

How interesting. A Mary Oliver poem about the town where I live:

Picking Blueberries, Austerlitz, New York -1957

Once, in summer
in the blueberries,
I fell asleep, and woke
when a deer stumbled against me.

I guess
she was so busy with her own happiness
she had grown careless
and was just wandering along

listening
to the wind as she leaned down
to lip up the sweetness.
So, there we were

with nothing between us
but a few leaves, and wind’s
glossy voice
shouting instructions.

The deer
backed away finally
and flung up her white tail
and went floating off toward the trees -

but the moment she did that
was so wide and so deep
it has lasted to this day;
I have only to think of her -

the flower of her amazement
and the stalled breath of her curiosity,
and even the damp touch of her solicitude
before she took flight -

to be absent again from this world
and alive, again, in another
for thirty years
sleepy and amazed,

rising out of the rough weeds
listening and looking.
Beautiful girl,
where are you?

And now, 52 years later, there is a gigantic herd of deer in the Town of Austerlitz, Columbia County, New York. It has grown enormously since the dairy farm dispersal of the early '80's, which freed up huge grazing areas, and with the slow but steady decrease in the number of fall hunters. And that's where she and her descendants are, grazing in my fields in Spencertown.

Octavio Paz

Octavio Paz (1914-1998)

Mexico this week marks the 10th anniversary of Octavio Paz's death. In the 1960's he was appointed Ambassador to India, but resigned to protest the Tlatelolco Massacre. Paz won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1990. In his memory, a poem.

Movimiento

Si tú eres la yegua de ámbar
yo soy el camino de sangre
Si tú eres la primer nevada
yo soy el que enciende el brasero del alba
Si tú eres la torre de la noche
yo soy el clavo ardiendo en tu frente
Si tú eres la marea matutina
yo soy el grito del primer pájaro
Si tú eres la cesta de naranjas
yo soy el cuchillo de sol
Si tú eres el altar de piedra
yo soy la mano sacrílega
Si tú eres la tierra acostada
yo soy la caña verde
Si tú eres el salto del viento
yo soy el fuego enterrado
Si tú eres la boca del agua
yo soy la boca del musgo
Si tú eres el bosque de las nubes
yo soy el hacha que las parte
Si tú eres la ciudad profanada
yo soy la lluvia de consagración
Si tú eres la montaña amarilla
yo soy los brazos rojos del liquen
Si tú eres el sol que se levanta
yo soy el camino de sangre

Motion

If you are the amber mare
I am the road of blood
If you are the first snow
I am he who lights the hearth of dawn
If you are the tower of night
I am the spike burning in your mind
If you are the morning tide
I am the first bird's cry
If you are the basket of oranges
I am the knife of the sun
If you are the stone altar
I am the sacrilegious hand
If you are the sleeping land
I am the green cane
If you are the wind's leap
I am the buried fire
If you are the water's mouth
I am the mouth of moss
If you are the forest of the clouds
I am the axe that parts it
If you are the profaned city
I am the rain of consecration
If you are the yellow mountain
I am the red arms of lichen
If you are the rising sun
I am the road of blood