Mind of Winter

A Light Left On

by May Sarton

In the evening we came back
Into our yellow room,
For a moment taken aback
To find the light left on,
Falling on silent flowers,
Table, book, empty chair
While we had gone elsewhere,
Had been away for hours.

When we came home together
We found the inside weather.
All of our love unended
The quiet light demanded,
And we gave, in a look
At yellow walls and open book.
The deepest world we share
And do not talk about
But have to have, was there,
And by that light found out.

For The Anniversary Of My Death

by W.S. Merwin

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveller
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

Green Rain

by Dorothy Livesay

I remember the long veils of green rain
Feathered like the shawl of my grandmother—
Green from the half-green of the spring trees
Waving in the valley.

I remember the road
Like the one which leads to my grandmother’s house,
A warm house, with green carpets,
Geraniums, a trilling canary
And shining horse-hair chairs;
And the silence, full of the rain’s falling
Was like my grandmother’s parlour
Alive with herself and her voice, rising and falling—
Rain and wind intermingled.

I remember on that day
I was thinking only of my love
And of my love’s house.
But now I remember the day
As I remember my grandmother.
I remember the rain as the feathery fringe of her shawl.

Twelve Songs [Song V, March 1936]

by W. H. Auden

Fish in the unruffled lakes
Their swarming colours wear,
Swans in the winter air
A white perfection have,
And the great lion walks
Through his innocent grove;
Lion, fish, and swan
Act, and are gone
Upon Time’s toppling wave.

We, till shadowed days are done,
We must weep and sing
Duty’s conscious wrong,
The Devil in the clock,
The goodness carefully worn
For atonement or for luck;
We must lose our loves,
On each beast and bird that moves
Turn an envious look.

Sighs for folly done and said
Twist our narrow days,
But I must bless, I must praise
That you, my swan, who have
All gifts that to the swan
Impulsive nature gave,
The majesty and pride,
Last night should add
Your voluntary love.

The Course of a Particular

by Wallace Stevens

Today the leaves cry, hanging on branches swept by wind,
Yet the nothingness of winter becomes a little less.
It is still full of icy shades and shapen snow.

The leaves cry . . . One holds off and merely hears the cry.
It is a busy cry, concerning someone else.
And though one says that one is part of everything,

There is a conflict, there is a resistance involved;
And being part is an exertion that declines:
One feels the life of that which gives life as it is.

The leaves cry. It is not a cry of divine attention,
Nor the smoke-drift of puffed-out heroes, nor human cry.
It is the cry of leaves that do not transcend themselves,

In the absence of fantasia, without meaning more
Than they are in the final finding of the ear, in the thing
Itself, until, at last, the cry concerns no one at all.

I realize this has absolutely no impact on anyone’s behaviour here, since very few comments have ever been posted, but due to a massive wave of comment spam I had to turn the comment feature off. Don’t be surprised if nobody comments on your posts—they can’t. I’m really very sorry; I just don’t have time to update WordPress and learn how to innoculate the site against all the people in the world who want to ruin the internet. So, until certain other countries start passing and enforcing laws to keep such idiots off the ‘net (I’m a-lookin’ at you Malaysia, and you too, Bulgaria, and don’t even think I didn’t notice you, China), comments here will be turned off.

The Flight of Language

by W. S. Merwin

Some of the leaves stay on all winter
and spring comes without knowing
whether there is suffering in them
or ever was
and what it is in the tongue they speak
that cannot be remembered by listening
for the whole time that they are on the tree
and then as they fly off with the air
that always through their lives was there

On Growing Old

by John Masefield

Be with me, Beauty, for the fire is dying,
My dog and I are old, too old for roving,
Man, whose young passion sets the spindrift flying
Is soon too lame to march, too cold for loving.

I take the book and gather to the fire,
Turning old yellow leaves; minute by minute,
The clock ticks to my heart; a withered wire
Moves a thin ghost of music in the spinet.

I cannot sail your seas, I cannot wander
Your cornland, nor your hill-land, nor your valleys
Ever again, nor share the battle yonder
Where the young knight the broken squadron rallies.

Only stay quiet while my mind remembers
The beauty of fire from the beauty of embers.

Beauty, have pity! for the strong have power,
The rich their wealth, the beautiful their grace,
Summer of man its sunlight and its flower,
Spring-time of man, all April in a face.

Only, as in the jostling in the Strand,
Where the mob thrusts, or loiters, or is loud,
The beggar with the saucer in his hand
Asks only a penny from the passing crowd,

So, from this glittering world with all its fashion,
Its fire, and play of men, its stir, its march,
Let me have wisdom, Beauty, wisdom and passion,
Bread to the soul, rain when the summers parch.

Give me but these, and though the darkness close
Even the night will blossom as the rose.

The Stars at Tallapoosa

by Wallace Stevens

The lines are straight and swift between the stars.
The night is not the cradle that they cry,
The criers, undulating the deep-oceaned phrase.
The lines are much too dark and much too sharp.

The mind herein attains simplicity.
There is no moon, on single, silvered leaf.
The body is no body to be seen
But is an eye that studies it’s black lid.

Let these be your delight, secretive hunter,
Wading the sea-lines, moist and ever-mingling,
Mounting the earth-lines, long and lax, lethargic.
These lines are swift and fall without diverging.

The melon-flower nor dew nor web of either
Is like to these. But in yourself is like:
A sheaf of brilliant arrows flying straight,
Flying and falling straightway for their pleasure,

Their pleasure that is all bright-edged and cold;
Or, if not arrows, then the nimblest motions,
Making recoveries of young nakedness
and the lost vehemence the midnights hold.

London Rain

by Louis MacNeice

The rain of London pimples
The ebony street with white
And the neon lamps of London
Stain the canals of night
And the park becomes a jungle
In the alchemy of night.

My wishes turn to violent
Horses black as coal–
The randy mares of fancy,
The stallions of the soul–
Eager to take the fences
That fence about my soul.

Across the countless chimneys
The horses ride and across
The country to the channel
Where warning beacons toss,
To a place where God and No-God
Play at pitch and toss.

Whichever wins I am happy
For God will give me bliss
But No-God will absolve me
From all I do amiss
And I need not suffer conscience
If the world was made amiss.

Under God we can reckon
On pardon when we fall
But if we are under no God
Nothing will matter at all,
Arson and rape and murder
Must count for nothing at all.

So reinforced by logic
As having nothing to lose
My lust goes riding on horseback
To ravish where I choose,
To burgle all the turrets
Of beauty as I choose.

But now the rain gives over
Its dance upon the town,
Logic and lust together
Come dimly tumbling down,
And neither God nor No-God
Is either up or down.

The argument was wilful,
The alternatives untrue,
We need no metaphysics
To sanction what we do
Or to muffle us in comfort
From what we did not do.

Whether the living river
Began in bog or lake,
The world is what was given,
The world is what we make
And only we can discover
Life in the life we make.

So let the water sizzle
Upon the gleaming slates,
There will be sunshine after
When the rain abates
And rain returning duly
When the sun abates.

My wishes now come homeward,
Their gallopings in vain,
Logic and lust are quiet,
Once more it starts to rain.
Falling asleep I listen
To the falling London rain.

Sad Strains of a Gay Waltz

by Wallace Stevens

The truth is that there comes a time
When we can mourn no more over music
That is so much motionless sound.

There comes a time when the waltz
Is no longer a mode of desire, a mode
Of revealing desire and is empty of shadows.

Too many waltzes have ended. And then
There’s that mountain-minded Hoon,
For whom desire was never that of the waltz,

Who found all form and order in solitude,
For whom the shapes were never the figures of men.
Now, for him, his forms have vanished.

There is order in neither sea nor sun.
The shapes have lost their glistening.
There are these sudden mobs of men,

These sudden clouds of faces and arms,
An immense suppression, freed,
These voices crying without knowing for what,

Except to be happy, without knowing how,
Imposing forms they cannot describe,
Requiring order beyond their speech.

Too many waltzes have ended. Yet the shapes
For which the voices cry, these, too, may be
Modes of desire, modes of revealing desire.

Too many waltzes–The epic of disbelief
Blares oftener and soon, will soon be constant.
Some harmonious skeptic soon in a skeptical music

Will unite these figures of men and their shapes
Will glisten again with motion, the music
Will be motion and full of shadows.

Twelve Songs [Song VIII, April 1936]

by W. H. Auden

At last the secret is out, as it always must come in the end,
The delicious story is ripe to tell to the intimate friend;
Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire;
Still waters run deep, my dear, there’s never smoke without fire.

Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links,
Behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks,
Under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh
There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.

For the clear voice suddenly singing, high up in the convent wall,
The scent of the elder bushes, the sporting prints in the hall,
The croquet matches in summer, the handshake, the cough, the kiss,
There is always a wicked secret, a private reason for this.

On a particularly slow and boring evening, I happened to breeze through this site on my way to nowhere (side note: the post from June 18th is about the linotype; all of my graduate work was done in a building named after its inventor, Mergenthaler), and was reminded of a poem that has been a favorite since I read it in high school. I’m not usually a fan of William Carlos Williams—his “poem” about the red wheelbarrow has annoyed me for a long, long time—but his poem about the chilled plums is exquisite:

This Is Just to Say

by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Lawless said something today about how the poem itself resembled a plum, so I tried to eat it when I got home but was underwhelmed with the comparison. It seemed to make sense when he said it, though. You’ll have to ask him for clarification.

I also found an homage of sorts.

from Félise

by Swinburne

Two gifts perforce he has given us yet,
  Though sad things stay and glad things fly ;
Two gifts he has given us, to forget
  All glad and sad things that go by,
  And then to die.

from Ilicet

by Swinburne

A little sorrow, a little pleasure,
Fate metes us from the dusty measure
  That holds the date of all of us ;
We are born with travail and strong crying,
And from the birth-day to the dying
  The likeness of our life is thus.

from Satia te Sanguine

by Swinburne

Where, when the gods would be cruel,
  Do they go for a torture ? where
Plant thorns, set pain like a jewel ?
  Ah, not in the flesh, not there !

The racks of earth and the rods
  Are weak as foam on the sands ;
In the heart is the prey for gods,
  Who crucify hearts, not hands.

My sister will be in town this weekend, so it looks like another week delay. I’m hoping we can meet more regularly when the spring kicks in, but I can’t say why I think that would happen. Nice weather? Oh well.

The plan, as far as I can tell, is to do Wordsworth still. The poem is a little long to post here, so I’ll just link it. If anyone finds this poem boring and tedious, I’m open to changing it.

One other thing, I’ve just got a new computer, so I’m able to post/email/etc. when not at work. My home email adress (for now) is jmlawless@mac.com and my AOL IM is jonlawless77.

Here’s my thinking. I will be talking poetry this weekend. I am perfectly happy to talk with myself, as I have begun to do on my morning Metro commute, but I would also enjoy discussions involving other, actual people. If anyone else is interested in talking poetry, I’d be happy to participate. I am far too tired to dig up good suggestions for specific poems, but I’m not picky. I’ve been reading some Swinburne, which I realize may not appeal to anyone else, but I’ve also been having real trouble with Mallarmé (a lot of trouble), and I always enjoy some Yeats… Then again, Brian posted a couple of very nice poems not all that long ago as well. I just noticed a few days ago that I had completely misread “The Illiterate” the first time through. I’m pretty lazy on first reading, and I failed to notice that it’s not actually about someone who can’t read. It’s a big, long similie. Pretty obvious to everyone else, I suppose, but I’m a little slow sometimes.

So, yeah. I’ll be talking poetry. Anyone else interested?

Two of my favorites from Rupert Brooke:

The Voice

by Rupert Brooke

Safe in the magic of my woods
  I lay, and watched the dying light.
Faint in the pale high solitudes,
  And washed with rain and veiled by night,

Silver and blue and green were showing.
  And the dark woods grew darker still;
And birds were hushed; and peace was growing;
  And quietness crept up the hill;

And no wind was blowing…

And I knew
That this was the hour of knowing,
And the night and the woods and you
Were one together, and I should find
Soon in the silence the hidden key
Of all that had hurt and puzzled me—
Why you were you, and the night was kind,
And the woods were part of the heart of me.

And there I waited breathlessly,
Alone; and slowly the holy three,
The three that I loved, together grew
One, in the hour of knowing,
Night, and the woods, and you——

And suddenly
There was an uproar in my woods,
The noise of a fool in mock distress,
Crashing and laughing and blindly going,
Of ignorant feet and a swishing dress,
And a Voice profaning the solitudes.

The spell was broken, the key denied me,
And at length your flat clear voice beside me
Mouthed cheerful clear flat platitudes.

You came and quacked beside me in the wood.
You said, ‘The view from here is very good!’
You said, ‘It’s nice to be alone a bit!’
And, ‘How the days are drawing out!’ you said.
You said, ‘The sunset’s pretty, isn’t it?’

By God! I wish—I wish that you were dead!

Dawn

(From the train between Bologna and Milan, second class)

by Rupert Brooke

Opposite me two Germans snore and sweat.
  Through sullen swirling gloom we jolt and roar.
We have been here forever: even yet
  A dim watch tells two hours, two æons, more.
The windows are tight-shut and slimy-wet
  With a night’s fœtor. There are two hours more;
Two hours to dawn and Milan; two hours yet.
  Opposite me two Germans sweat and snore…

One of them wakes, and spits, and sleeps again.
  The darkness shivers. A wan light through the rain
Strikes on our faces, drawn and white. Somewhere
  A new day sprawls; and, inside, the foul air
Is chill, and damp, and fouler than before….
  Opposite me two Germans sweat and snore.

Just thought you should know.

Ye weep for those who weep? she said—
  Ah, fools! I bid you pass them by.
Go, weep for those whose hearts have bled
  What time their eyes were dry.
Whom sadder can I say? she said.

—from “The Mask” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Laura reminded me that a CD I was listening to quoted this poem in the liner notes. I believe it was originally published in Les Fleurs du mal. As it is simple enough for me to understand, even with my weak French, I thought I’d post it. I’m working on torturing my translation into rhyme, and am meeting with some success—it is tortured, to be sure. I’m not proposing this for a Sunday session, necessarily… just for our enjoyment.

L’Invitation au Voyage

par Charles Baudelaire

Mon enfant, ma sœur,
Songe à la douceur,
D’aller là-bas, vivre ensemble!
Aimer à loisir,
Aimer et mourir,
Au pays qui te ressemble!
Les soleils mouillés,
De ces ciels brouillés,
Pour mon esprit ont les charmes,
Si mystérieux,
De tes traîtres yeux,
Brillant à travers leurs larmes.

Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.

Des meubles luisants,
Polis par les ans,
Décoreraient notre chambre;
Les plus rares fleurs
Mêlant leurs odeurs
Aux vagues senteurs de l’ambre,
Les riches plafonds,
Les miroirs profonds,
La splendeur orientale,
Tout y parlerait
A l’âme en secret
Sa douce langue natale.

Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.

Vois sur ces canaux
Dormir ces vaisseaux
Dont l’humeur est vagabonde;
C’est pour assouvir
Ton moindre désir
Qu’ils viennent du bout du monde.
—Les soleils couchants
Revêtent les champs
Les canaux, la ville entière
D’hyacinthe et d’or;
Le monde s’endort
Dans une chaude lumière

Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.

(Read more…)

Thanks, Mike, for that post. I enjoyed it very much. I’d like to launch a few brief volleys on the topic of death.

First, I, myself, dont make the leap to permanence when I think about how death bears on question of whether life is meaningful. I don’t think life would only be meaningful if it lasted forever– I believe that this is actually incoherent.

I do find myself thinking a lot about how many more dead people there are than living ones. And how narrow the way is for we, the living. Just a little nudge and we are nothing, just an infinitesimal voice in the cacophonous choir of the dead. And, being dead, the world just trudges on, full of the still living, the barely living waiting for their nudge. I am not even sure it factors into my thinking that the world forgets us; that we would be lucky to have our footprint in the world persist as long as it takes the flesh to come off the bone. That’s just talk, though. What really makes a difference to me is the thought that so much consciousness (culture, sound, fury) is so fragile. And that it couldn’t be any other way.

Here is Achilles on death and the meaning of life:

Fate is the same for the man who holds back, the same if he fights hard.
We are all held in a single honour, the brave with the weaklings.
A man dies still if he has done nothing, as one who has done much.
Nothing is won for me, now that my heart has gone through its afflictions
in forever setting my life on the hazard of battle.

The translation is Richard Lattimore