Hearts with one purpose

We can’t have National Poetry Month without something by William Butler Yeats, one of the heavy hitters in any poetic all-star game. Since this is Easter weekend, let’s have his “Easter 1916”.

The Easter he’s talking about, though, is the Irish uprising that began in Dublin on 24 April, Easter Monday. The poem It’s the one that has, in its closing lines, come to define modern Ireland.

Yeats was an Irish nationalist, but not a revolutionary. He decried the use of violence, until the Brits began summary executions after the rebellion failed. He was so appalled by the response that he was even willing to count John MacBride as a hero/martyr, naming him in the litany that also includes Pearse and Connolly. MacBride was the "drunken, vain-glorious lout" who married Maude Gonne, the woman Yeats loved hopelessly his whole life, thus twice-loathed by the poet. But in the face of the institutional barbarism of the British authorities, he was willing to give his rival some props.

You can see Yeats trying to feel his way through his reaction to the rising—moving through chitchat at the club, speculating on what contributions the individual Fenians might have made and wondering if such a blood sacrifice was necessary, because "England may keep faith". In the end, though, what's done is done, and nothing will be the same.

“Easter 1916”

I have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words,
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

That woman's days were spent
In ignorant good will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our winged horse.
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vain-glorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter, seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute change.
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim;
And a horse plashes within it
Where long-legged moor-hens dive
And hens to moor-cocks call.
Minute by minute they live:
The stone's in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is heaven's part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death.
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead.
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse –
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

 

Tremble, tremble, tremble

Today is Good Friday, which always seemed quite the misnomer to me. Commemorating a particularly cruel and inhuman form of execution by calling it “good” just does not compute. Maybe it’s “good” because if you want a resurrection, you first need a death.

Tonight also marks the first night of Pesach. Jews around the world will be sitting down to Seder celebrations marking the Exodus from Egypt, as they have done for thousands of years.

In short, it’s a big day.

I’m going with the Crucifixion theme for the National Poetry Month earworm. Here’s Three Mo’ Tenors singing “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord”.

Feast on your life

Love, they say, conquers all. Make love, not war. Love is all you need. Whole lotta talking about love over the centuries.

Here’s something that the rector of the local Episcopalian church said weeks after the 9/11 attacks: the opposite of love is fear. Not hate—fear. And that resonates with me as I look around and see all the slavering outrage from those who want to drive us back, whether “back” means ante-bellum southern United States, the days of Muhammad or Imperial Russia. They’re desperately fearful of the world about them and that terror shapes their every thought and every action. What a miserable life that is.

Really—we could do with a bit more love. So today’s entry for National Poetry Month is Derek Walcott’s “Love after Love”. Walcott, born in Saint Lucia, received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992. Here he advises us to create within ourselves, each of us, the building blocks of strength that will form the foundation of resistance. He may be speaking of recovery from a love affair, but he could also be speaking of learning to love oneself, without which there can be no love of other, or love of principle.

(In fact—when you think about it, those who claim to love principle without that underlying sense of care for self, are pretty much the ones who take us all down. They substitute the abstract for the particular and have no empathy at all.)

“Love After Love”

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

 

 

yes mam

e.e. cummings wrote “plato told” in 1944. It is a poem of such universality that it could have been composed 2000 years earlier, or probably another 2000 in the future. Not only does it state the fucking obvious about war, which we are seeing all over again in Ukraine, but it also takes a sly dig at the profiteers who never pass up an opportunity to do a little business. Which we are again seeing.

(The United States was selling the raw materials of war—including scrap metal—to the Japanese practically right up to the attack on Pearl Harbor.)

That's why it's my entry today for National Poetry Month.

plato told

him:he couldn’t
believe it(jesus

told him;he
wouldn’t believe
it)lao

tsze
certainly told
him,and general
(yes

mam)
sherman;
and even
(believe it
or

not)you
told him:i told
him;we told him
(he didn’t believe it,no

sir)it took
a nipponized bit of
the old sixth

avenue
el;in the top of his head:to tell

him

 

Fiend in feline shape

I made the mistake yesterday of reading an account by a New York Times team of reporter and photographer of what they’ve seen in the past week in Bucha, the suburb of Kyiv that was occupied by Russians for a month. I have no words.

But I do need something to wash some of the horror away, so how about T.S. Eliot’s “Macavity: the Mystery Cat” for today’s National Poetry Month entry?

"Macavity: the Mystery Cat"

Macavity's a Mystery Cat: he's called the Hidden Paw—
For he's the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He's the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad's despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime—Macavity's not there!

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime—Macavity's not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air—
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity's not there!

Macavity's a ginger cat, he's very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
And when you think he's half asleep, he's always wide awake.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
For he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square—
But when a crime's discovered, then Macavity's not there!

He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard's
And when the larder's looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke's been stifled,
Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair
Ay, there's the wonder of the thing! Macavity's not there!

And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty's gone astray,
Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair—
But it's useless to investigate—Macavity's not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
It must have been Macavity!'—but he's a mile away.
You'll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumb;
Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place—MACAVITY WASN'T THERE !
And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!

 

 

 

Gratitude Monday: love entwined in tendrils

I think I love every plant that starts as a bulb. Starting with crocus on the cusp of spring and working my way to iris in summer, I just can’t get enough of them. I’ve already posted about daffodils; this week I’m being grateful for #tulipmania.

One of my neighbors has them in his front garden, and I cannot walk by without stopping to admire and shoot them.

But for the past two Sundays I’ve schlepped into the District They Call Columbia to revel in the tulips at the Omni Shoreham hotel. I mean—just look:

En masse:

In the mid distance:

And close up:

(I've never seen these purple stars before:)

Even this one guy all by himself is spectacular:

In keeping with the floral theme, let’s have something from Robert Merrick for today’s National Poetry Month entry. The Elizabethan and Jacobean poets are so much more meaningful to me than their Romantic heirs. Herrick here compares his lover to flowers, running through the seasons and wrapping it all up with death.

If that’s not the essence of poetry, I do not know what is.

“A Meditation for his Mistress”

You are a tulip seen today,
But (dearest) of so short a stay
That where you grew scarce man can say. 

You are a lovely July-flower
Yet one rude wind or ruffling shower
Will force you hence, and in an hour. 

You are a sparkling rose i’th’bud,
Yet lost ere that chaste flesh and blood
Can show where you or grew or stood. 

You are a full-spread, fair-set vine,
And can with tendrils love entwine,
Yet dried ere you distil your wine. 

You are like balm enclosed (well)
In amber, or some crystal shell,
Yet lost ere you transfuse your smell. 

You are a dainty violet,
Yet wither’d ere you can be set
Within a virgin’s coronet. 

You are the queen all flowers among,
But die you must (fair maid) ere long,
As he, the maker of this song.

 

 

Bless your freedom

The Ukrainian artist-poet Taras Shevchenko was born a serf in 1814 near Kyiv. Ukraine then was part of the Russian empire, but both his paintings and his poems spoke to his passion for Ukraine.

It is frankly weird reading about how Shevchenko and his fellow serfs passed from one owner to another, along with the land to which they were attached, but that’s what the life of a serf was. From an early age (like around 10 years old) he got into trouble for painting Ukrainian (anti-Russian) heroes. When he was 17, his master brought him to Saint Petersburg and sent him to study with the Russian painter Vasiliy Shiriayev. While there he met with other Ukrainian artists; one of them donated a painting for a raffle, the proceeds of which were used to buy Shevchenko’s freedom in 1838.

Shevchenko embarked on what seems like a furious career as both painter and poet, turning out works in both genres with great frequency. But his love of his homeland got him in trouble with imperial authorities. Tsar Nicholas I read one of Shevchenko’s poems (“Dream”); he was okay with the Ukrainian taking shots at him, but not with the ridicule of his wife. (The poem was written in Ukrainian, but sadly Nicholas could read it.) Initially imprisoned in Saint Petersburg, Shevchenko was sentenced to exile in as a private in a military garrison in the Urals. Nicholas personally certified the sentence and stipulated that the Ukrainian was absolutely not to paint or write.

During his exile, he took part in a lengthy naval expedition along the coast of the Aral Sea; his job was to sketch what he saw. His next residence was not so salubrious: the fortress of Novopetrovsk in Kazakhstan. He was there for seven years, until he received amnesty from the new tsar, Alexander II (known as “The Liberator”).

He returned to Saint Petersburg, but his health had been broken during exile, and he died in 1861, aged 47, just seven days before Alexander announced the emancipation of all serfs.

Initially interred in Saint Petersburg, his remains were subsequently removed to Ukraine, as he requested in today’s entry for National Poetry Month.

“Testament”

When I die, then make my grave
High on an ancient mound,
In my own beloved Ukraine,
In steppeland without bound:
Whence one may see wide-skirted wheatland,
Dnipro's steep-cliffed shore,
There whence one may hear the blustering
River wildly roars.
Till from Ukraine to the blue sea
It bears in a fierce endeavor
The blood of foemen — then I'll leave
Wheatland and hills forever:
Leave all behind, soar up until
Before the throne of God
I'll make my prayer. For till that hour
I shall know naught of God.
Make my grave there — and arise,
Sundering your chains,
Bless your freedom with the blood
Of foemen's evil veins!
Then in that great family,
A family new and free,
Do not forget, with good intent
Speak quietly of me.

Translated by Vera Rich