It's been a strange day.  Despite his professed optimism, I am sad to hear Drew's English adventure has been more short-lived than expected.  Mig's depressed and what with everyone focused on finding a cure for various infections of trolls and flu viruses, and now the death poetry...  it's quite bleak around here today.

I've been out of sorts and thinking it must have something to do with the fact that I watched Hotel Rwanda and Jane Eyre practically back-to-back yesterday.  It was painfully cold and the wind was howling so I stayed in and ended up making myself cry for the suffering of victims of genocide and gothic heroines...

Anyway, your poetry selections feel appropriate, even though I don't know what prompted them.

Here's another:

The Teacher's Monologue

"Thy golden sheaves are empty air."
All fades away; my very home
I think will soon be desolate;
I hear, at times, a warning come
Of bitter partings at its gate;
And, if I should return and see
The hearth-fire quenched, the vacant chair;
And hear it whispered mournfully,
That farewells have been spoken there,
What shall I do, and whither turn ?
Where look for peace ? When cease to mourn ?

'Tis not the air I wished to play,
The strain I wished to sing;
My wilful spirit slipped away
And struck another string.
I neither wanted smile nor tear,
Bright joy nor bitter woe,
But just a song that sweet and clear,
Though haply sad, might flow.

A quiet song, to solace me
When sleep refused to come;
A strain to chase despondency,
When sorrowful for home.
In vain I try; I cannot sing;
All feels so cold and dead;
No wild distress, no gushing spring
Of tears in anguish shed;

But all the impatient gloom of one
Who waits a distant day,
When, some great task of suffering done,
Repose shall toil repay.
For youth departs, and pleasure flies,
And life consumes away,
And youth's rejoicing ardour dies
Beneath this drear delay;

And Patience, weary with her yoke,
Is yielding to despair,
And Health's elastic spring is broke
Beneath the strain of care.
Life will be gone ere I have lived;
Where now is Life's first prime ?
I've worked and studied, longed and grieved,
Through all that rosy time.

To toil, to think, to long, to grieve,­
Is such my future fate ?
The morn was dreary, must the eve
Be also desolate ?
Well, such a life at least makes Death
A welcome, wished-for friend;
Then, aid me, Reason, Patience, Faith,
To suffer to the end

Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855)

Johan Huizinga, late professor of cultural history at University of Leiden, would have enjoyed them to.

Every read Huizinga?

His Waning of the Middle Ages was one of my favorites.

"When the abyss stares at me, it wets its pants." Brian Hopkins

Enguerrand de Coucy

"When the abyss stares at me, it wets its pants." Brian Hopkins

A Cat in an Empty Apartment

To die - you can't do that to a cat.
`Cause what's a cat to do
in an empty apartment.
Climb the walls.
Slink among the furniture
Seemingly nothing's changed,
 yet all transformed.
Seemingly nothing moved,
 yet all spread out.
And in the evening the lamp doesn't shine.

Steps on the stairs,
but not those.
The hand which places the fish on the saucer,
not the one as before.

Something isn't beginning here
at the normal time.
Something isn't happening here
as it should.
Somebody was and was,
and then suddenly disappeared
and is stubbornly not here.

Looked in all the closets
Ran through the shelves
Snuck under the carpet and checked
Even broke the rule
and scattered the papers.
What else is there to do.
Sleep and wait.

Just let him return,
yes, let him show himself.
He'll learn
that you can't do this to a cat
Walk towards him
oh so reluctantly,
slowly
on very offended paws.
And no jumps or cries, at first.

Wislawa Szymborska (translation mine)

Umrzeć - tego nie robi się kotu.  

    Bo co ma począć kot  

    w pustym mieszkaniu.  

    Wdrapywać się na ściany.  

    Ocierać między meblami.  

    Nic niby tu nie zmienione,  

    a jednak pozamieniane.  

    Niby nie przesunięte,  

    a jednak porozsuwane.  

    I wieczorami lampa już nie świeci.  

    Słychać kroki na schodach,  

    ale to nie te.  

    Ręka, co kładzie rybę na talerzyk,  

    także nie ta, co kładła.  

    Coś się tu nie zaczyna  

    w swojej zwykłej porze.  

    Coś się tu nie odbywa  

    jak powinno.  

    Ktoś tutaj był i był,  

    a potem nagle zniknął  

    i uporczywie go nie ma.  

    Do wszystkich szaf sie zajrzało.  

    Przez półki przebiegło.  

    Wcisneęł się pod dywan i sprawdziło.  

    Nawet złamało zakaz  

    i rozrzuciło papiery.  

    Co więcej jest do zrobienia.  

    Spać i czekać.  

    Niech no on tylko wróci,  

    niech no sie pokaże.  

    Już on się dowie,  

    że tak z kotem nie można.  

    Będzie się szło w jego stronę  

    jakby się wcale nie chciało,  

    pomalutku,  

    na bardzo obrażonych łapach.  

    I żadnych skoków pisków na początek.

All the poetry I can think of off the top of my head is horribly depressing and makes me cry.  (Think Wilfred Owen, if you must know.)

But I have felt like posting a particular snippet of lyrics for some time now, apropos of nothing, and so I will take this opportunity to do so here.

This band had a song {"Screenwriter's Blues, off the debut album) that had these lines, which I have always found terribly evocative:

It is five A.M.
And the sun has charred the other side of the world
And come back to us
And painted the smoke over our heads an imperial violet.
It is five A.M.
And you are listening
To Los Angeles.

The songwriter's blog...

I remember as you were last autumn.
You were the grey beret and the calm heart.
In your eyes the lights of the twilight fought.
And the leaves fell in the water of your soul.

Clinging to my arms like a climbing vine,
the leaves recognized your voice, slow and calm.
Bonfire of stupor in which my thirst burned.
Sweet blue hyacinth twisted about my soul.

I feel your eyes travel and distant is the autumn:
grey beret, a bird's voice and a house's heart
to where my deepest longings flew
and my kisses fell joyously like glowing embers.

Sky from a ship. Field from the hills.
Your memory is of light, of smoke, of the calm pool!
Beyond your eyes burned the twilights.
Dry autumn leaves twisted in your soul.

Nuf said :)

great Nomad.

A pleasure


I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude

"what if a keen of a lean wind flays
screaming hills with sleet and snow:
strangles valleys by ropes of thing
and stifles forests in white ago?
Blow hope to terror; blow seeing to blind
(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)
-whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,
it's they shall cry hello to the spring"

Spring shall come, Nomad, Spring shall come.

"I said, 'Wait a minute, Chester, You know I'm a peaceful man...'" Robbie Robertson

When I watch you
wrapped up like garbage
sitting, surrounded by the smell
of too old potato peels
or
when I watch you
in your old man's shoes
with the little toe cut out
sitting, waiting for your mind
like next week's grocery
I say
when I watch you
you wet brown bag of a woman
who used to be the best looking gal in Georgia
used to be called the Georgia Rose
I stand up
through your destruction
I stand up

::

GOD'S MOOD

these daughters are bone,
they break.
He wanted stone girls
and boys with branches for arms
that He could lift His life with
and be lifted by.
these sons are bone.

He is tired of years that keep turning into age
and flesh that keeps widening.
He is tired of waiting for His teeth to
bite Him and walk away.

He is tired of bone,
it breaks.
He is tired of eve's fancy and
adam's whining ways.

::

Lucille Clifton

A Brief for the Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

Jack Gilbert
from REFUSING HEAVEN (Knopf 2005)

not sure if I agree w/the exposition but it is a memorable piece.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

From "We Who Are Your Closest Friends," by Philip Lopate (this version was printed in Anne Lamott's "Bird by Bird," I hope I'm not stepping on copyright-toes):

We who are
your closest friends
feel the time
has come to tell you
that every Thursday
we have been meeting,
as a group,
to devise ways
to keep you
in perpetual uncertainty
frustration
discontent and
torture
by neither loving you
as much as you want
nor cutting you adrift.
Your analyst is
in on it,
plus your boyfriend
and your ex-husband;
and we have pledged
to disappoint you
as long as you need us.
In announcing our
association
we realize we have
placed in your hands
a possible antidote
against uncertainty
indeed against ourselves.
But since our Thursday nights
have brought us
to a community
of purpose
rare in itself
with you as
the natural center,
we feel hopeful you
will continue to make unreasonable
demands for affection
if not as a consequence
of your disastrous personality
then for the good of the collective.