Proud-pied April: I'm alive and I got work to do

You hear the words Jack Kerouac and you think road trip, right? You think the quintessential post-war male flip-the-bird-at-society drug-and-alcohol-propelled stream-of-consciousness adventure.

Well, okay. Does it kill your buzz to know that Kerouac was actually a devout Roman Catholic who also delved deeply into the introspection of Buddhism?

Propelled by drugs and alcohol, of course. But still.

And he wrote poetry that reflects all of this. Mexico City Blues is an example, written largely during a 1955 stay in Mexico City and the product of a whole lot of marijuana and morphine. It’s a collection of 242 pieces, which Kerouac called choruses, exploring what poets explore—existence, meaning, the whole megillah.

It’s really hard to choose just one to share for National Poetry Month, but today I’ll go with number 235. Close your eyes and imagine yourself in a cellar club on poetry slam night, breathing in cigarette smoke and drinking strong, bad coffee. You may express your appreciation with the snapping of fingers.

"235^th Chorus"

Dont camp,

You know very well

        What’ll happen to you

When you die

        and claim

           you dont know you’re dead

           when you die and you know

           “I know dont know that I’m dead”

Don’t camp. Death, the no-buzz,

        no-voices, is, must be, the same,

        as life, the tzirripirrit of thupsounds

        in this crazy world that horrifies my mornings

        and makes me mad wildhaired in a room

        like old metaphysical ogrish poets

        in rooms of macabre mysteries.

But it’s hard to pretend you dont know

That when you die you wont know.

I know that I’m dead.

I wont camp. I’m dead now.

What am I waiting for to vanish?

        The dead dont vanish?

                      Go up in dirt?

                How do I know that I’m dead.

                      Because I’m alive

                        and I got work to do

                                 Oh me, Oh my,

                                   Hello – Come in –

Proud-pied April: Waiting in a hot tureen

It’s not possible to have National Poetry Month without something from Lewis Carroll. Every time you think poets are going to disappear into their self-importance, Carroll keeps it real.

This year’s entry is from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, brought to us by the Mock Turtle. In case you, like Alice, don’t even know what a Mock Turtle is, here’s the illustration by John Tenniel:

Because the Mock Turtle is “the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from,” as the Queen informs us. The Mock Turtle's a rather melancholy creature, having once been a real turtle (although we’re never told how he transmogrified). Also, he’s a complete mish-mash of the animals that end up in the eponymous Victorian soup.

If you’ve got a strong stomach, here’s a recipe for it from a Mrs. Fowle (and I didn’t make that name up):

“Take a large calf's head. Scald off the hair. Boil it until the horn is tender, then cut it into slices about the size of your finger, with as little lean as possible. Have ready three pints of good mutton or veal broth, put in it half a pint of Madeira wine, half a teaspoonful of thyme, pepper, a large onion, and the peel of a lemon chop't very small. A ¼ of a pint of oysters chop't very small, and their liquor; a little salt, the juice of two large onions, some sweet herbs, and the brains chop't. Stand all these together for about an hour, and send it up to the table with the forcemeat balls made small and the yolks of hard eggs.”

(As an aside, a few years ago I was enjoying The Swamp in the California Academy of Science. You know—the one with Claude, the albino alligator. CalAcademy has a number of volunteer docents—mostly retired-looking folks—who really know their onions. Or, in this case, their reptiles. I was chatting with one of them and he told me that the terrapins there were rescue sea turtles: many years before, the fish and wildlife folks had got a tip about a shipment of sea turtles coming into SFO, apparently headed for a very upscale dinner party. It’s illegal to import them, so the feds scooped up the turtles and they ended up in The Swamp. Maybe the diners got mock turtle soup instead. It would serve them right.)

Anyway, back to Wonderland. The Mock Turtle, the Gryphon and Alice have one of those wonderlandish conversations, and there are a couple of musical interludes. “Beautiful Soup” is apparently Carroll’s parody of the popular song “Star of the Evening”. I find it slightly creepily charming that the Mock Turtle, presumably destined for the tureen himself, sings so eloquently about soup. But that’s Wonderland for you.

"Beautiful Soup"

BEAUTIFUL Soup, so rich and green,

Waiting in a hot tureen!

Who for such dainties would not stoop?

Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!

Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup!

Beau- ootiful Soo-oop!

Beau- ootiful Soo-oop!

Soo- oop of the e- e- evening,

Beautiful, beautiful Soup!

Beautiful Soup! Who cares for fish,

Game, or any other dish?

Who would not give all else for two

Pennyworth only of Beautiful Soup?

Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup?

Beau- ootiful Soo-oop!

Beau- ootiful Soo-oop!

Soo- oop of the e- e- evening,

Beautiful, beauti- FUL SOUP!

Proud-pied April: Fragrant-blossomed gifts

We’ve not had anything from Sappho for a couple of years of National Poetry Month, so let’s remedy that.

You’ll recall that very little of her work is around these days because in 380 C.E. the early Christian church fathers destroyed most of everything she produced. She had at least two strikes against her, being female and pre-Christian, so all that’s left is a couple of poems and fragments.

In “Girls, [you] be ardent”, we get some hard truth: so much of literature speaks of the strengths and beauties of youth, not so much of the ravages of age. Yet it’s mortals’ fate to grow old (if you’re lucky). Even if you marry into the family of gods.

(When Eos stole Tithonus to be her lover, she petitioned Zeus to grant the man immortality, but she forgot to specify that she wanted eternal youth. And she got precisely what she’d asked for.)

Girls, you be ardent for the fragrant-blossomed

Muses’ lovely gifts, for the clear melodious lyre:

But now old age has seized my tender body,

Now my hair is white, and no longer dark.

My heart’s heavy, my legs won’t support me,

That once were fleet as fawns, in the dance.

I grieve often for my state; what can I do?

Being human, there’s no way not to grow old.

Rosy-armed Dawn, they say, love-smitten,

Once carried Tithonus off to the world’s end:

Handsome and young he was then, yet at last

Grey age caught that spouse of an immortal wife.

Proud-pied April: Not this tide

As I noted a year ago, 1915 propelled us violently into the embrace of total war: unrestricted submarine attacks, chemical warfare, genocide as policy. You’d have thought that the leaders of the combatant nations had pretty well shot their murderous bolt with the decisions of that year.

But you’d be wrong.

The year 1916 seemed to increase the carnage of World War I by an order of magnitude on the Western Front. Between Verdun (ten months) and the Somme (four-and-a-half months) alone, you could have filled the 400,000 slots at Arlington National Cemetery and still have needed to dig another 150,000 graves.

So we’ll have some poetry from the First World War this month.

First up, let’s go with Rudyard Kipling, a man who believed so passionately in the war that he wrote propaganda for the British government. He viewed it as a crusade against (German) barbarism, although it cost him dearly.

Kipling’s only son John was 16 when the war started. He tried to join the Royal Navy, but failed the physical examination due to extremely poor eyesight. He failed that same physical twice for the British Army before Kipling pulled strings with Lord Roberts, and got John a commission in the Irish Guards (one of the premier regiments). Second Lieutenant John Kipling sailed for France the day after his 18^th birthday in August 1915 and was killed at the Battle of Loos a month later.

Well, technically he was reported wounded and missing, which set Kipling and his wife Caroline into that twilight of shattering grief and vicious uncertainty. Was John dead? Might he yet come back? Could there be hope? Is it better to hope for a clean death? They searched for months, calling in favors from the great and the good in search of definitive news. They never got it.

The poem “My Boy Jack” was written after John’s death. It was included in a book called Sea Warfare, about the Battle of Jutland, so it wasn’t specifically about John. The frequent mention of winds and tide are naval references, and you can hear Kipling’s belief that even terrible sacrifice was worthwhile.

“My Boy Jack”

'Have you news of my boy Jack? '

Not this tide.

'When d'you think that he'll come back? '

Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

'Has anyone else had word of him? '

Not this tide.

For what is sunk will hardly swim,

Not with this wind blowing and this tide.

'Oh, dear, what comfort can I find? '

None this tide,

Nor any tide,

Except he did not shame his kind-

Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold your head up all the more,

This tide,

And every tide;

Because he was the son you bore,

And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!

Following the war, Kipling joined the Imperial War Graves Commission (now the Commonwealth War Graves Commission), which built and maintains military cemeteries around the world. They’re beautiful places, like Arlington, gardens of the dead. Kipling chose the phrase “Their Name Liveth For Evermore”, which appears on the Stones of Remembrance in the larger cemeteries. It’s from Ecclesiasticus, 44:14.

He also chose the inscription “The Glorious Dead” on the Cenotaph in Whitehall, site of the annual Remembrance Sunday observance in London. Last November, Welsh singer Cerys Matthews recited “My Boy Jack” at that ceremony, prefaced by an excerpt from a Times report of October 1915 about the numbers of only sons lost that month.

Nearly 20 years ago, British actor/writer David Haig wrote a play called My Boy Jack about Kipling and the war; it was made into a BBC film in 2007. Haig does an excellent job of setting the stage with the poet’s war fervor, showing the measures he took to get his son (played by Daniel Radcliffe) into the war and his pride at the boy’s military position. When the notification comes that John is missing at Loos, Rudyard and Caroline enter into this frantic fugue of trying to get information from anyone—field marshal to private—of their son, hoping to find him, and find him safe.

What I really love about this film is that, even as they work their connections without compunction in search of news of John, they never seem to make that other connection, the one between Kipling’s work to get men and boys to enlist in their thousands and the grief that those thousands of families suffer. Never once do they think to console anyone else who’s suffered this loss.

John was numbered among the lost-but-never-found until this year. He was initially reported as wounded and missing, but the wound had apparently ripped off his lower jaw, and his body was not found on the field. In 1991, it was determined that a grave a couple of kilometers from the battle site was his. This was disputed in 2002 by very reputable battlefield historians, but in January of this year the identification was confirmed. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission now lists him as buried in St. Mary’s ADS (Advanced Dressing Station) Cemetery in Haisnes, France.

There are nearly 2000 other Commonwealth dead lying with him. More than two-thirds of them are unidentified.

Proud-pied April: The waters cannot forget me

For National Poetry month two years ago we traveled to Korea to savor some sijo—poems with restricted syllable counts and distinctive parts for exploring an idea. And we met Hwang Jin-i, a 16^th Century gisaeng, or officially-designated (but low status) entertainer. (It was a whole thing—gisaeng were thoroughly trained in fine arts, poetry and other writing, as well as in medical care and needlework. I suppose you’d call them the Korean equivalent of geisha.)

Hwang is considered one of the best writers of sijo ever. She apparently was good at other aspects of the gisaeng job; there’ve been novels, films, operas and TV shows built around her life and legend, on both sides of the DMZ. Her professional name was Myeongwol, or “Bright Moon”, so the second example may be a play on words, which is entirely consistent with the rules of sijo.

Blue mountains speak of my desire,

Green waters reflect my Lover's love:

The mountains unchanging,

The waters flowing by.

Sometimes it seems the waters cannot forget me,

They part in tears, regretting, running away.

Jade Green Stream, Don't boast so proud

of your easy passing through these blue hills

Once you have reached the broad sea,

to return again will be hard,

While the Bright Moon fills these empty hills,

why not pause? Then go on, if you will.

Proud-pied April: My heart gives you love

Since my Gratitude Monday post today is about the resting place of soldiers, let’s have a couple of National Poetry Month poems on the subject.

I gave you Carl Sandburg’s “The Grass” two years ago, but it’s worth another look. Because the grass is doing its work at Arlington, and at military cemeteries all over the world, and Sandburg captures that working in just a few, well-placed words. It blows me away every time.

“The Grass”

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.

Shovel them under and let me work—

                                          I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg

And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.

Shovel them under and let me work.

Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:

                                          What place is this?

                                          Where are we now?

                                          I am the grass.

                                          Let me work.

My other poem today is Walt Whitman’s “Dirge for Two Veterans”. Whitman had an up-close-and-personal view of the War Between the States; he volunteered as a nurse and witnessed some of the worst that could be seen, considering the carnage of that war and the state of medicine at that time.

(If you get a chance, you should visit Antietam National Battlefield, which has a display of some surgical instruments used during the war. It’s horrifying.)

The grave he describes is a double one: father and son, not an unheard-of event in that particular war. And how many sad processions like the one we see here have wound through Arlington’s drives? Way too many.

“Dirge for Two Veterans”

THE last sunbeam

Lightly falls from the finish'd Sabbath,

On the pavement here--and there beyond, it is looking,

Down a new-made double grave.

Lo! the moon ascending!

Up from the east, the silvery round moon;

Beautiful over the house tops, ghastly phantom moon;

Immense and silent moon.

I see a sad procession,

And I hear the sound of coming full-key'd bugles;

All the channels of the city streets they're flooding,

As with voices and with tears.

I hear the great drums pounding,

And the small drums steady whirring;

And every blow of the great convulsive drums,

Strikes me through and through.

For the son is brought with the father;

In the foremost ranks of the fierce assault they fell;

Two veterans, son and father, dropt together,

And the double grave awaits them.

Now nearer blow the bugles,

And the drums strike more convulsive;

And the day-light o'er the pavement quite has faded,

And the strong dead-march enwraps me.

In the eastern sky up-buoying,

The sorrowful vast phantom moves illumin'd;

('Tis some mother's large, transparent face,

In heaven brighter growing.)

O strong dead-march, you please me!

O moon immense, with your silvery face you soothe me!

O my soldiers twain! O my veterans, passing to burial!

What I have I also give you.

The moon gives you light,

And the bugles and the drums give you music;

And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,

My heart gives you love.

Gratitude Monday: Quiet in the neighborhood

Last Sunday, Easter, I took Metro a couple of stops and spent a few hours in Arlington National Cemetery. It’s one of my favorite places in the D.C. area, mixing the affairs of men with nature, and it always gives me both comfort and something to think about.

As a military cemetery, Arlington got its start during the War Between the States. The property was owned by the family of Robert E. Lee’s wife (handed down from the grandson of George Washington’s wife, Martha Custis). Arlington House is beautifully situated on a hill affording spectacular views of the capital of the United States, which made it an early target for Union troops, who occupied it in May of 1861.

(Here it is on Easter of this year.)

By 1862, the Federals were in the market for places to bury their dead, and Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs, eventually authorized the use of the property for military graves. A Georgian who loathed Lee for joining the Confederacy, Meigs thought it just that, by burying Union dead mere steps from Arlington House, the Lees could never live in the family home again.

Well, he was right. By the end of the war, there were hundreds of graves; these days there are 400,000. The preponderance of them are military, with spouses and children. A few politicians who felt that rooting in the Congressional trough entitled them to burial here; but no neighborhood is perfect.

I love walking among these graves, reading the markers and wondering about the stories they represent. Like this one:

Presumably, Roy van Dusen was Beatrice’s husband; the birth dates look about right. But he was a lieutenant colonel in the army and she a private first class. There are regulations against officers fraternizing with enlisted personnel; where and when did Roy and Beatrice meet?

My pal Google tells me that there was a Roy Reed van Dusen III born in 1945, and that his parents were married “between 1940 and November 1942. Roy III died in 1968, in Killeen, Texas; he’s buried in Arlington, too (although I didn’t notice his grave).

Nearby, another grave was being visited:

Not far from the robin's perch, there was another story being played out. An old man and two 30- or 40-something offspring (Son/daughter? Child and spouse?) spent considerable time beside one of the large tombstones, while I wandered about trying to track down former Secretary of State Alexander Haig's permanent resting place. (He was also a four-star general in the Army, and his middle name was Meigs, so he's entitled.) After they left, I looked at the stone, one of those large ones. The name on it was a woman's, with the "beloved wife" designator. The space for the service member was blank, so I'm deducing that the older man will at some point lie there as well.

Here’s another story of immeasurable grief, captured in just a few words and a date:

But you see other stories at Arlington. While I was meandering around Section 30, I heard the distinctive sound of a Harley and noted a lone motorcyclist wheeling past. Later on, I walked back along Section 36 and saw the bike parked in the road, with the rider midway down one of the rows, leaning against one gravestone and contemplating another. I didn’t get close enough to read the name; I’ll do that another time.

Because I plan on visiting regularly. And I'm grateful that I can do that, because it's my neighborhood.

Proud-pied April: We find our bliss

Since we’re marking the centenary of the Easter Rising, let’s have some Irish poems for National Poetry Month.

We’ll start out with one that’s been around a good while longer than a hundred years. “Pangur Bán” was written by an unknown Ninth Century monk; the exact circumstances have become partial legend in the intervening time. It was purportedly found in the margins (or on the back of a page) of a manuscript, with locations ranging from a copy of Saint Paul’s Epistles to the Book of Kells.

I myself don’t much care about that, because the sentiment resonates with anyone who’s ever had to do document research in study carrels of any library of any scholastic institution anywhere. Ever.

Do you mean to tell me that you never once penciled in some comment in the margin of some old tome you were bent over in the pursuit of some morsel of enlightenment that you thought might impress a professor?

Still, it’s the rare scholar who could toss off something like this, rounding up the pleasures of being a monk and being a cat.

“Pangur Bán”

I and Pangur Bán, my cat,

'Tis a like task we are at;

Hunting mice is his delight,

Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men

'Tis to sit with book and pen;

Pangur bears me no ill will;

He, too, plies his simple skill.

'Tis a merry thing to see

At our task how glad are we,

When at home we sit and find

Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray

Into the hero Pangur's way;

Oftentimes my keen thought set

Takes a meaning in its net.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye

Full and fierce and sharp and sly;

'Gainst the wall of knowledge I

All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den.

O how glad is Pangur then!

O what gladness do I prove

When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our tasks we ply,

Pangur Bán, my cat and I;

In our arts we find our bliss,

I have mine, and he has his.

Practice every day has made

Pangur perfect in his trade ;

I get wisdom day and night,

Turning Darkness into light.'