Alone

Today, I'm feeling utterly alone. Perhaps it's because I'm cleaning out the garage--raking through the detrius of a life that has passed. Perhaps it's another reason which I'll keep to myself.

The bleakness I feel puts me in mind of one of my less favorite poems by Neruda.

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Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is starry
and the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me, sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another's. She will be another's. As she was before my kisses.
Her voice, her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

--Pablo Neruda

I will?

I WILL forget you,

perhaps
in a day,
or a week,

maybe
in a month,
or a year,

but...

I will forget you--

at least when
I fall into
that unwaking
sleep,

Or perchance...

that

one

small

secret

that lies
between us

will mingle
with dust

and
rest

with my bones
eternally.

Fragments

Raindrops falling
through leaves
whisper
your name.

Gold-rimmed clouds
at sunset
mirror
your smile.

Mountain
brooks' splash
peals with
your silver
laughter.

Shaded forest
breezes bring
your caress
to my cheek.

Soft hills
rimming
the wash
paint
the curve
of your back
and the
gentle swell
of your breast.

My world
is filled
with you,
yet
I am
alone.

Playful Companionship

Not all love burns with white-hot passion. In fact, if love is ONLY white-hot passion it's likely consume itself, then fall to ashes like burning paper. Of course there's a love that smoulders, occasionally bursting into flame. But love for the long-haul is often that companionly love that rests easily and confidently... and sometimes manifests itself playfully.

Such is the love in "Year Day" by Jane Kenyon. Before her death, Jane and her husband, poet Donald Hall, lived on his family farm in New Hampshire where they loved, laughed, cried, played and wrote.

Intimacy in Jane Kenyon's world often mingled loving with playfulness as in the following poem.

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Year Day


We are living together on the earth.
The clock's heart
beats in it's wooden chest.
The cats follow the sun through the house.
We lie down together at night.

Today, you work in your office,
and I in my study. Sometimes
we are busy and casual.
Sitting here, I can see
the path we have made on the rug.

The hermit gives up
after thirty years of hiding in the jungle.
The last door to the last room
comes unlatched. Here are the gestures
of my hands. Wear them in your hair.


Jane Kenyon

As the Ruin Falls

It's funny how things come back to us at odd moments in our lives. Just yesterday, I heard someone read C.S. Lewis's poem, "As the Ruin Falls," on the radio. I'd not seen it, heard it, nor thought of it in years. Looking at it now, I'm certain I didn't understand it then--especially not in the way I do now.

In the 1950's C.S. Lewis was unmarried, a world-renowned writer and professor at Oxford. In Joy Gresham, a divorced American poet with a small child, Lewis discoverd an unlikely friendship and then, unexpectedly, surprisingly a deep and profound love. After finding great love, Lewis experienced great pain when Joy developed terminal cancer.

In the brief space of the poem, Lewis speaks of how Joy awakened true love in him and also of his grief as her ravaged body failed--thus the title, "As the Ruin Falls."

The true story of C.S. Lewis and Joy Gresham is wonderfully depicted by Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger in the Richard Attenborough film, "Shadowlands." If you've not seen it, do yourself a favor and rent or buy the DVD today!


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As The Ruin Falls

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love—a scholar's parrot may talk Greek—
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

C.S. Lewis

A Tender Memory

A tender memory...

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Sonnet XVI


I love the handful of the earth you are.
Because of its meadows, vast as a planet,
I have no other star. You are my replica
of the multiplying universe.

Your wide eyes are the only light I know
from extinguished constellations;
your skin throbs like the streak
of a meteor through rain.

Your hips were that much of the moon for me;
your deep mouth and its delights, that much sun;
your heart, fiery with its long red rays,

was that much ardent light, like honey in the shade.
So I pass across your burning form, kissing
you--compact and planetary, my dove, my globe.


Pablo Neruda

The Passage of Time

Today I find myself thinking of two poems by the late Jane Kenyon. They’ve both been rolling around in my mind for a day or two now.

There are times in life when to simply wait is a great virtue. There are other times, however, when by waiting we lose “what might have been”—the dream, the hope, the aspiration—and thus are born regrets.

Some of the greatest regrets only become apparent when we realize time is inevitably, relentlessly slipping away. ‘The Pear’ puts me in mind of the passage of time.

Without further comment, the second poem ‘Heavy Summer Rain,’ touches me in it’s beauty and pathos.

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The Pear

There is a moment in middle age
when you grow bored, angered
by your middling mind,
afraid.

That day the sun
burns hot and bright,
making you more desolate.

It happens subtly, as when a pear
spoils from the inside out,
and you may not be aware
until things have gone too far.

Jane Kenyon

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Heavy Summer Rain

The grasses in the field have toppled,
and in places it seems that a large, now
absent, animal must have passed the night.
The hay will right itself if the day

turns dry. I miss you steadily, painfully.
None of your blustering entrances
or exits, doors swinging wildly
on their hinges, or your huge unconscious
sighs when you read something sad,
like Henry Adams’s letters from Japan,
where he traveled after Clover died.

Everything blooming bows down in the rain:
white irises, red peonies; and the poppies
with their black and secret centers
lie shattered on the lawn.

Jane Kenyon

Contemplating Mortality

The last few days, I've been contemplating mortality, and the importance of really contemplating who or what is really important in life--how crucial it is to at least reach for happiness while we are able to enjoy it.

The following verses are from Nahuatl (Aztec) Poets from the 14th and 15th centuries. I ran across them while reading the book, 1491.

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Not forever on earth; only a little while here.
Be it jade, it shatters.
Be it gold, it breaks.
Be it a quetzal feather, it tears apart.
Not forever on earth; only a little while here.

Nezahualcoyotl
(1402-72)

Like a painting, we will be erased.
Like a flower, we will dry up here on earth.
Like plumed vestments of the precious bird,
That precious bird with the agile neck,
We will come to an end.

Nezahualcoyotl
(1402-72)

Speaking of coyolli bird with its bell-like song:

He goes his way singing, offering flowers,
And his words rain down
Like jade and quetzal plumes.*
Is this what pleases the Giver of Life?
Is that the only truth on earth?

Ayocuan Cuetzpaltzin
14th century

*a synecdoche for great value like our "gold and silver."

Ayocuan Cuetzpaltzin seems to be saying that which brings beauty, like music, or art, or relationship is what is worth pursuing on earth.

Comments?

Storms of Flour

True appreciation of everything another is is always rooted in everyday reality. That includes the depths of sensual love.

Today there was mention of flour flying (you know who you are), and it drew me to memory of a favorite poem--and a favorite image. The image in Neruda's sonnet is made sweeter by drawing in thoughts of domesticity. (It was written to his wife, Matilde Urrutia).

The wonder of love is that we ordinary mortals touch the universe through one another.

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Sonnet XII

Full woman, fleshly apple, hot moon,
thick smell of seaweed, crushed mud and light,
what obscure brilliance opens between your columns?
What ancient night does a man touch with his senses?

Loving is a journey with water and with stars,
with smothered air and abrupt storms of flour:
loving is a clash of lightning-bolts
and two bodies defeated by a single drop of honey.

Kiss by kiss I move across your small infinity,
your borders, your rivers, your tiny villages,
and the genital fire transformed into delight

runs through the narrow pathways of the blood
until it plunges down, like a dark carnation,
until it is and is no more than a flash in the night.


Pablo Neruda

Tactic and Strategy

I was doing some reading today and ran across this poem by Mario Benedetti, an Uraguayan poet. I had to smile as I read it. I saw myself. Did you?


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TACTIC AND STRATEGY

My tactic is
Looking at you,
Learning how you are,
Loving you as you are,
My tactic is
Talking to you
And listening to you
To build with words
An indestructible bridge
My tactic is
Remaining in your memories
I don't know how
Nor with which pretext
But remaining with you.
My tactic is
Being frank,
And knowing that you are frank,
And not selling each other
Simulations
So that between us
There is no curtain
Nor abyss.

My strategy is,
However,
Deeper and
Easier,
My strategy is
That one of these days
I don't know how
Nor with which pretext
You finally
Need me.


Mario Benedetti

An Overcast Scottish Morn

I debated whether to post this here or over on the Legacy blog.

In June of '97 I was a participant in a conference in the English countryside near Oxford. Afterwards, I managed to wangle 3 days of trout fishing with the retired dad of a colleague from Scotland.

The last morning was overcast, soft, cool--a glorious time to be out in nature. Due to the wonders of modern travel, I had freshly caught, never frozen Scottish trout for supper the next evening in Tucson, Arizona! :-)

The watercolor above is a quick sketch from memory of the first hour of light on the loch.

Just for Fun

And now on a very light note... I love limericks. So I thought I would share a couple of fun ones. The first is for all those apple cider fans in the audience.

There was a young lady from Clyde,

who ate some green apples and died.

The apples fermented

inside the lamented,

and made cider inside her insides.

The second is from a wonderful little book, Biblical Limericks: Old Testament Stories Re-Versed, by D. R. Bensen. As a linguist in my former life I especially appreciate this one.

Babel

Their tower's impressive statistics

Pleased architects, boosters and mystics,

But their excess of pride

Caused the Lord to decide

It was time that they studied linguistics.

Genesis 11:1-9

Notes from the Other Side

Today's post is from Jane Kenyon, one of my favorite contemporary American poets. Jane was born in 1947 and died in 1995 after a 15-month battle with leukemia.



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Notes from the Other Side

I divested myself of despair
and fear when I came here.

Now there is no more catching
one's own eye in the mirror,

there are no bad books, no plastic,
no insurance premiums, and of course

no illness. Contrition
does not exist, nor gnashing

of teeth. No one howls as the first
clod of earth hits the casket.

The poor we no longer have with us.
Our calm hearts strike only the hour,

and God, as promised, proves
to be mercy clothed in light.


Jane Kenyon

And one of my own...

And one of my own...

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I am a dangerous man
fraught with hidden peril,
soul shoals, heart reefs,
riptides dragging spirits
from safe shores
to midnight depths
of prussian sea,

drowning you,
consuming me,
consuming you,
drowning me.


Dale

Laughter and love...

Another of my favorite poems by Neruda focuses on his lover's laughter and it's power to renew him in life's struggles.

"Your Laughter" ("Tu Risa") was written to Matilde Urrutia when she was his lover. As his wife, he wrote her 100 Love Sonnets (Cien Sonetos de Amor) which seems to dispel the rumor that marriage ultimately kills love.



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Your Laughter

Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.

Do not take away the rose,
the lanceflower that you pluck,
the water that suddenly
bursts forth in your joy,
the sudden wave
of silver born in you.

My struggle is harsh and I come back
with eyes tired
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but when your laughter enters
it rises to the sky seeking me
and it opens for me all
the doors of life.

My love, in the darkest
hour your laughter
opens, and if suddenly
you see my blood staining
the stones of the street,
laugh, because your laughter
will be for my hands
like a fresh sword.

Next to the sea in the autumn,
your laughter must raise
its foamy cascade,
and in the spring, love,
I want your laughter like
the flower I was waiting for,
the blue flower, the rose
of my echoing country.

Laugh at the night,
at the day, at the moon,
laugh at the twisted
streets of the island,
laugh at this clumsy
boy who loves you,
but when I open
my eyes and close them,
when my steps go,
when my steps return,
deny me bread, air,
light, spring,
but never your laughter
for I would die.


Pablo Neruda

A lot of talk about relationship...

I've been seeing a lot of talk about relationship lately. Of course it reminds me of just what I eventually hope to find. And the poet, Pablo Neruda, captured the very thing in a few poignant lines of his Sonnet XVII.

For the movie buffs out there, it's the lines Robin Williams quotes to the "love interest" coming out of the med school library in Patch Adams--starting with, "I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where..." From there to the end. I hope I eventually find that with someone.





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Sonnet XVII

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.


Pablo Neruda