Mind of Winter

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.

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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, don’t 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:

from The Iliad

by Homer, Tr. Richmond Lattimore

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.

I’ve started upgrading the WordPress system to a new version (it’s supposed to fix a bunch of problems with the database and make it more “user-friendly”), and it seems that the internal structure has changed quite a bit, so all my original tweaking has to be readjusted. It’s going to take me some time to get everything back to normal.

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There were two points of discussion today (neither drawing directly from the poems we discussed, unfortunately) that I’d like to ruminate for a bit. We ate together—I hope you’ll pardon me this bit of public digestion. The first was Alan’s suggestion that some people believe poetry to be handicapped as a form of expression because its aim lies chiefly in avoiding a plain and clear articulation of the ideas it is used to express. I was for some time an adherent of a similar position, and I think it may still be at the root of my resistance to modern non-representational art (if an artist is trying to convey something to me, why can’t he articulate it in a way that I might more clearly understand?). The second is the idea that only the permanent is valuable; that the prospect of death might indict our attempts to achieve happiness as ultimately futile. I’m having difficulty with both of these ideas (and the difficulty will be apparent in what I write, I’m sure), so I’m going to “think aloud” a bit to see if I can begin to make sense of some vague notions that have been clouding my brain since this afternoon.

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