Easter trauma

This crossed my path recently, and I don’t quite know what to think of it.

First off, I’m wondering who came up with this idea? Did s/he have any acquaintance with small children at all? If so, what would possess him/her to inflict this kind of trauma?

It’s absolutely no surprise to me at all that this kid is screaming. Because the egg laying is freaking me out.

Then it occurred to me that I’ve sat in many, many meetings with exactly this look of stunned disbelief on my face as colleagues and managers shot figurative eggs out of their plush metaphorical butts.

I’ve probably even screamed a little. In my throat.

Both this kid and I need therapy.

April soft and cold: How shall I hold my soul?

Oh, Lord—has it been two years since we’ve had anything auf Deutsch for National Poetry Month? Why, yes—yes, it has.

So let’s have two by Rainer Maria Rilke, the Czech-Austrian (born Prague in 1875) poet known for his lyric poems written in German.

When I was putting together yesterday’s post by Blake, I fell pretty much automatically into the cadence of his “The Tyger”. Because that’s my default when I think of him (before I move onto other works.). That moved me over to Rilke’s “The Panther”, which also makes use of a fierce animal to make a point about existence. For me, using the wild cat as a stand-in for constraining the human soul is a killer on two levels, and it’s actually hard for me to take it in.

See what you think:

“The Panther”

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,

has grown so weary that it cannot hold

anything else. It seems to him there are

a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,

the movement of his powerful soft strides

is like a ritual dance around a center

in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils

lifts, quietly--. An image enters in,

rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,

plunges into the heart and is gone.

In German, it’s:

Der Panther

Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehen der Stäbe

so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält.

Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe

und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt.

Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte,

der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht,

ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte,

in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht.

Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille

sich lautlos auf -. Dann geht ein Bild hinein,

geht durch der Glieder angespannter Stille –

und hört im Herzen auf zu sein.

I don’t know which is worse for me—the sense of confinement in such a small place that must press the breath out of one, or that image thrusting in through the eyes and piercing the heart.

But here, I’ll also give you something more poetish:

“Love Song”

How shall I hold my soul, that

It does not touch on yours?  How shall I lift it

Beyond you to other things?

Ah, gladly would I shelter it with something

Lost in the dark.

At a strange quiet place which

Does not co-vibrate when your depths resonate.

But everything that touches us, you and me,

Takes us together like one draw of a bow

Which pulls one voice from two strings.

On which instrument are we strung?

And what player has us in his hand?

O sweet song.

Wie soll ich meine Seele halten

Wie soll ich meine Seele halten, daß

sie nicht an deine rührt? Wie soll ich sie

hinheben über dich zu andern Dingen?

Ach gerne möcht ich sie bei irgendwas

Verlorenem im Dunkel unterbringen

an einer fremden stillen Stelle, die

nicht weiterschwingt, wenn deine Tiefen schwingen.

Doch alles, was uns anrührt, dich und mich,

nimmt uns zusammen wie ein Bogenstrich,

der aus zwei Saiten eine Stimme zieht.

Auf welches Instrument sind wir gespannt?

Und welcher Geiger hat uns in der Hand?

O süßes Lied.

April soft and cold: Pleasant pastures

For Good Friday in National Poetry Month, here’s one of my favorite hymns, which started out as a poem by William Blake.

Blake, whose life spanned the time when the landscape of Britain was literally and metaphorically being changed by the Industrial Revolution, wasn’t a poet by trade. He was an printmaker, who painted and wrote poetry on the side. Basically home schooled, he learned to read well enough to rip through the Bible every which way, and he learned to appreciate art by engraving copies of classical drawings.

From these humble beginnings he grew into a powerful poet/artist who took on highly metaphysical subjects in both those forms. He was a Dissenter in both religion and artistic style, despising, for example, the works of Joshua Reynolds.

This particular poem (not originally titled anything, actually) appeared in Blake’s preface to an epic poem he wrote about John Milton. It pulls from a number of elements from the Bible and ties them to the hope (or at least the inquiry) that the appearance of Christ might alter the face of England for the better.

We are left to work out for ourselves whether he’s talking about the Second Coming or the adoption of true Christian principles by the people.

“Jerusalem”

And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England's mountains green?

And was the holy Lamb of God

On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine

Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

And was Jerusalem builded here

Among these dark Satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold:

Bring me my arrows of desire:

Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!

Bring me my chariot of fire.

I will not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England's green and pleasant land.

The poem was set to music in 1916 by Sir Hubert Parry and it’s come to be associated with England itself. It’s often sung on Saint George’s Day (23 April), and it’s the unofficial anthem of Women’s Institute chapters everywhere, and at national sporting events.

I personally find it magnificent, especially when sung with the descant at the end. But the poem stands on its own.

Four cups and five Haggadot

In addition to Good Friday, today also brings us (at sundown) the beginning of Passover. If you’re in need of an extra Haggadah, it turns out that I have five of them:

They all have the Seder story in Hebrew, of course, but two of them are also in English, two in French (including one with commentary by Elie Wiesel) and one—Haggadah from the Four Corners of the Earth—has English, French, Spanish and Russian wrapped around the Hebrew on each page.

I find it interesting that German isn’t one of the languages of the four corners of the earth.

Also, one of the English ones has really beautiful illustrations, almost illuminations:

What these books remind me of (in addition to Seders I have been part of) is a long weekend in Paris and buying so many books that I had to take a taxi back to the Gare du Nord to get home. (Yes, I bought all of the Haggadot—including the English ones—in France. Along with a shedload of other books.) Because if I’d gone via the Métro, I’d have had to change lines and lug the damned things through long corridors and up and down steps.

I always forget about logistics when it comes to buying books, and looking at these beautiful things, I’m glad I didn’t when they crossed my path.

And if you need a Haggadah for the next few days, I've got some to spare.

April soft and cold: This eastern garden

Naturally, people writing poems about Spring generally focus on the freshness of the earth, of youth, of love—all those things betokened by the rebirth of the natural world around them.

Here’s one, though, that takes a different tack, one that recognizes that hidden in the sharp brilliance of Spring are the heat of Summer, the withering of Autumn and the death of Winter. And and that it goes on regardless of where we are in our individual cycle.

Su Ting was a courtier in service to both Tang and Zhou emperors in the 8^th Century. And he had a literary gift of great power. Look:

The year is ended, and it only adds to my age;

Spring has come, but I must take leave of my home.

Alas, that the trees in this eastern garden,

Without me, will still bear flowers.

The thing I’ve noticed about the East Asian poetic forms that I’ve come across—Korean, Chinese, Japanese—is that the poets can capture so much in so few words. Imagery, emotion, observation—it’s like they pare it all down to the bone and let a few strokes speak volumes. I don’t read their alphabets, but I wonder how much the visual form of the characters reinforces this spare presentation?

I’m trying to imagine how many stanzas it would take for Alexander Pope to say what Su does in four lines. Emily Dickinson might manage it in a few couplets, but she’d annoy the spit out of me while she was doing it. You can barely hear Su’s exhaled half-sigh as he acknowledges that—no matter how powerful he is in the human scheme of things—those trees will continue flowering long after he’s gone.

And that’s life, baby. I like it.

April soft and cold: Clean wantonness

Oh, looky here—it’s National Poetry Month. Again.

It hardly seems like a year has gone past since the last one, but here we are. So let’s get down to business, shall we?

I’m starting this month out with a couple of poems about…well, this month. Because April inspires all sorts of poetry. I suppose that’s on account of it’s the first full month of Spring, and folks and poets have had a little time to thaw out their creative sap. They’re watching trees come into leaf and flowers into bud. Cloaks, jackets and sweaters are coming off and children are outside playing in puddles.

In a few months, things will slow down in the summer heat and everyone will be content to lie on the grass watching clouds form and dissipate in the sky. Now, they’re shaking themselves like puppies getting ready for mischief.

So first off, Robert Herrick, a 17^th Century lyric poet, whose one collection of poetry, Hesperides, has only begun to be appreciated fairly recently. Is there a better introduction to the month or to poetry than this?

“The Argument of his Book”
 

I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers,

Of April, May, of June, and July flowers.

I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes,

Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes

I write of youth, of love, and have access

By these to sing of cleanly wantonness.

I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by piece

Of balm, of oil, of spice, and ambergris.

I sing of Time’s trans-shifting; and I write

How roses first came red, and lilies white.

I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing

The court of Mab, and of the fairy king.

I write of Hell; I sing (and ever shall)

Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all.

In the interests of balancing the lyricism of Herrick, here’s a slightly different approach from the 20^th-Century Ogden Nash, known for his light verse. But you see the similarities, don’t you? 

“Always Marry an April Girl”

Praise the spells and bless the charms,

I found April in my arms.

April golden, April cloudy,

Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;

April soft in flowered languor,

April cold with sudden anger,

Ever changing, ever true—

I love April, I love you.

Cyber pounding

You may have missed one of the more stupefying performances to come out of Congress last week. Congress being the scene of more concentrated ignorance, idiocy and intransigence than anyplace on the planet.

The event this time was occasioned by FBI Director Jim Comey coming before the House Appropriations committee, filling the poor dears full of sky-is-falling tales of the dangers of (I’m lowering my voice here, so lean in) encrypting data on things like, you know, anything that can record, store or transmit data. Seems like (lowered voice) encryption is a bad, bad thing—in anyone’s hands—and therefore Congress needs to ensure that no one can have it, without but what the good guys (meaning the NSA, the FBI, maybe GCHQ, the CIA and…well, no—no one else, really) can get a back door into the repository.

This specific dog fight has been going on for decades between the NSA in particular and every thoughtful technologist who is serious about the need to protect information for any number of reasons, not least being the protections afforded citizens of the United States by at least two amendments to our Constitution that I can think of off the top of my head.

But—while that argument is becoming kind of tiresome--that’s not why I’m here.

No, the stupefaction to which I referred in my opening graf comes to us courtesy of Congressmoron John Carter (you guessed it: R-Tex.). Because in one of the few bits of C-SPAN footage that will ever go viral, Carter jams his hoof so thoroughly down the front end of his gastro-intestinal tract that it must be currently lodged in his stomach. (And I’m not discounting the possibility that he has more than one of those.)

Because Carter—who (God help us all) chairs the subcommittee on Homeland Security appropriations and who sits on other defense-related subcommittees—declared that he just doesn’t know what to think about this here cyber stuff. In fact, he moaned, “Cyber is just pounding me from every direction.”

Which—in all fairness—he prefaced by admitting that he doesn’t know spit about any of this pounding cyber stuff. Well, at least I think he did—I’m having difficulty unravelling the snarl of words he actually used. Viz. “Every time I hear something, or something just pops in my head -- because I don't know anything about this stuff.”

(Imagine—something just popping into his head! Because there must be a whole lotta emptiness in that space.)

And thence the source of my stupefaction, dear readers. Because this jumped-up pig-ignorant fuck-witted lump has been elected to an office that puts him in the position of deciding policies that will shape the freedoms we enjoy or the tyrannies we endure.

A good 30 years ago, comedian Dick Shawn was asked in an interview why his routine didn’t take shots at the revelations that the Department of Defense was being charged through-the-roof prices for supplies and equipment. Shawn said, “You can’t make a joke about a $600 toilet seat. The $600 toilet seat is the joke.”

I have no doubt that Carter has cost the taxpayers and his corporate contributors heaps more than $600. And he is indeed (along with his colleagues in the House and Senate) the joke. Sadly, he’s not in the least bit funny.

And neither is the idea that any government should have master-key access to every data repository on the planet.

Gratitude Monday: Even here

Can I be grateful for Spring if I’m in an area that doesn’t really have what you could call a change of seasons? Especially in an area where Spring marks the end of the “rainy season”, and we’re smack in the middle of a multi-year drought and we hardly had any rain at all this winter?

Well, deciduous trees are in leaf and ornamental fruits are beginning to bloom.

Bulbs have been in flower for a few weeks; soon irises will be out. I am absolutely cuckoo for bulbs. 

And the spring camellias are getting down to business.

Finches are crowding my feeder and soon the babies will join them, squawkingly demanding to be fed by their parents. And the parents will ignore them, because they’re clinging to the flipping feeder and all they have to do is shut their little beaks and poke them through the mesh to get the seed.

So, yes—I can be grateful for the promise of Spring.