The colors of nine crayons

We’re finishing up National Poetry Month this year with something from Margaret Atwood, because I’m looking for something hopeful.

“You Begin”

You begin this way:
this is your hand,
this is your eye,
that is a fish, blue and flat
on the paper, almost
the shape of an eye.
This is your mouth, this is an O
or a moon, whichever
you like. This is yellow.

Outside the window
is the rain, green
because it is summer, and beyond that
the trees and then the world,
which is round and has only
the colors of these nine crayons.

This is the world, which is fuller
and more difficult to learn than I have said.
You are right to smudge it that way
with the red and then
the orange: the world burns.

Once you have learned these words
you will learn that there are more
words than you can ever learn.
The word hand floats above your hand
like a small cloud over a lake.
The word hand anchors
your hand to this table,
your hand is a warm stone
I hold between two words.

This is your hand, these are my hands, this is the world,
which is round but not flat and has more colors
than we can see.

It begins, it has an end,
this is what you will
come back to, this is your hand.

 

 

Banisters and cannisters

Seems to me that the most appropriate earworm for the last Friday in National Poetry Month this year is “Give Peace a Chance”.

So here it is.

 

 

A passion for bones

I recently came across this early poem by the poetic giant Dylan Thomas. How early? He was 11 and “The Song of the Mischievous Dog” was his first published poem. (In his school magazine.) It certainly shows promise, but I’m rather glad he grew beyond it.

“The Song of the Mischievous Dog”

There are many who say that a dog has its day,
   And a cat has a number of lives;
There are others who think that a lobster is pink,
   And that bees never work in their hives.
There are fewer, of course, who insist that a horse
   Has a horn and two humps on its head,
And a fellow who jests that a mare can build nests
   Is as rare as a donkey that’s red.
Yet in spite of all this, I have moments of bliss,
   For I cherish a passion for bones,
And though doubtful of biscuit, I’m willing to risk it,
   And love to chase rabbits and stones.
But my greatest delight is to take a good bite
   At a calf that is lump and delicious;
And if I indulge in a bite at a bulge,
   Let’s hope you won’t think me too vicious.

 

 

 

Unknown higher beings

Sundown tonight marks the start of Yom HaShoah, Israel’s annual commemoration of the Holocaust. Amongst other ceremonies throughout the 24-hour period, tomorrow at 1000 local time, air raid sirens will sound and everyone in Israel will come to a halt for two minutes to reflect on the systematic attempt by Nazi Germany to eradicate the Jewish people on an industrial scale.

It seems to me that the entire world ought to be reflecting on this, given the rise of right-wing extremism who are becoming louder and more confident in their championing of racism, misogyny, xenophobia, christofacism, anti-Semitism, wealth inequity, homophobia and authoritarianism.

Well, today’s entry for National Poetry Month is ancillary to Yom HaShoah. Johan Wolfgang von Goethe’s “On the Divine” enjoins us to follow the better angels of our nature, which we all too frequently do not. But the poem was an initial thread between two people from different worlds, and the tapestry it wove became a love that bridged those worlds and endured for decades.

Gerda Weissman, a Polish Jew, was not quite 21 in May 1945 when she and 150 other young women—last survivors of a death march that initially included 2000 concentration camp inmates—were discovered in Czechoslovakia by American soldiers. She could barely stand up, but that put her in better condition than her companions, so she greeted the Americans. As she gestured to the interior of an abandoned factory where they lay, she said, “Edel sei der Mensch, hilfreich und gut!”

Kurt Klein, the soldier to whom she spoke was struck by the emaciated, barely-alive girl quoting Goethe, “Noble be man, merciful and good!” As she was treated in a field hospital (where 30 of her companions died), Klein visited her and a friendship grew, which blossomed into romance. Klein and Weissman married the following year, and built a life for decades in Buffalo before retirement took them to Arizona. They had three children, eight grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren. Klein (a Jewish immigrant whose parents were murdered in Auschwitz) died in 2002; Weissman on 3 April of this year.

They are an example of Goethe’s noble humanity, and I hold on to them as I look around me at the work of those who would destroy them.

“On the Divine”

Let man be noble,
Generous and good;
For that alone
Distinguishes him
From all the living
Beings we know.

Hail to the unknown
Higher beings
Of our intuition!
Let man resemble them;
Let his example
Teach us to believe in them.

For the realm of nature
Is unfeeling;
The sun sheds its light
Over evil and good
And the moon and the stars
Shine on the criminal
As on the best of us.

The wind and the rivers
The hail and the thunder
Storm on their way
And snatch one victim
After another
As they rush past.

So too does blind fortune
Grope through the crowd, now
Seizing a young boy’s
Curly-haired innocence
And now the bald pate
Of the old and guilty.

As great, everlasting,
Adamantine laws
Dictate, we must all
Complete the cycles
Of our existence.

Only mankind
Can do the impossible:
He can distinguish,
He chooses and judges,
He can give permanence
To the moment.

He alone may
Reward the good
And punish the wicked;
He may heal and save
And usefully bind
All that strays and wanders.

And we revere
The immortals, as if
They were human beings
Who do on a great scale
What little the best of us
Does or endeavors.

Let the noble man
Be generous and good,
Tirelessly achieving
What is just and useful:
Let him be a model
For those beings whom he surmises.

                        Translated by David Luke

Come to no good

I’ve been trying for something lighter on Tuesdays during National Poetry Month. Dorothy Parker is always on the bleeding cusp of humor; by which I mean she has sharpened her irony to the point that she could slice overripe tomatoes with it. But here's the thing: I identify so strongly with her sentiments. Viz:

“Neither Bloody nor Bowed”

They say of me, and so they should,
It's doubtful if I come to good.
I see acquaintances and friends
Accumulating dividends,
And making enviable names
In science, art, and parlor games.
But I, despite expert advice,
Keep doing things I think are nice,
And though to good I never come-
Inseparable my nose and thumb!

 

 

Gratitude Monday: Plying minstrelsy

I am mesmerized by bees; there’s something simultaneously peaceful and joyful in watching them. For weeks now I’ve been looking forward to seeing my neighbor’s garden begin to spring to life, because I’m anticipating seeing bees swarming his hollyhocks later in the year. I’m so grateful to have these little fellows in my life

So for today’s entry in National Poetry Month—for Poem in Your Pocket day, in fact—I’m giving you Bengali poet’s Rabindrath Tagore’s “A Moment’s Indulgence”.

“A Moment’s Indulgence”

I ask for a moment's indulgence to sit by thy side. The works
that I have in hand I will finish afterwards.

Away from the sight of thy face my heart knows no rest nor respite,
and my work becomes an endless toil in a shoreless sea of toil.

Today the summer has come at my window with its sighs and murmurs; and
the bees are plying their minstrelsy at the court of the flowering grove.

Now it is time to sit quite, face to face with thee, and to sing
dedication of life in this silent and overflowing leisure.

 

 

Wear their brave state out of memory

Oops! I got my calendar mixed up—yesterday I was meant to drag out the biggest poetic gun of them all, and I…well, I spent most of the week tangling with a 35k-line spreadsheet so by Friday I had no synapses firing in sequence.

Well, no mind—we only think that 23 April was William Shakespeare’s birthday, on account of him having been christened on 26 April 1564. But he did die on the 23^rd in 1616, so it’s kind of poetic to fix his start and finish on the same day.

It’s my custom to give a couple of pieces from the bard—something from one of his plays and a sonnet. So today

The play is Henry VI, Part 2; which is chockers with war, rebellion, individual combat, chicanery, deceit, ambition, witchcraft and a lot of other activity. We’re in Act V, Scene 2, when the young Lord Clifford is about to discover that York (father of the future Edward IV and Richard III) has killed his father. Here’s what he has to say:

Shame and confusion! All is on the rout.
Fear frames disorder, and disorder wounds
Where it should guard. O war, thou son of hell,
Whom angry heavens do make their minister,
Throw in the frozen bosoms of our part
Hot coals of vengeance! Let no soldier fly.
He that is truly dedicate to war
Hath no self-love; nor he that loves himself
Hath not essentially, but by circumstance,
The name of valor.

(Clifford goes on to support Henry VI’s queen (who ruled and led armies during his frequent bouts of insanity) Margaret in her unwavering fight against the Yorkists, which ended in defeat at Tewkesbury, in 1471.)

By way of balance, the sonnet for today is number 15. Here Shakespeare talks about the fleeting nature of our existence, and how he’s extending the life of his subject by writing about her.

Well, it’s something.

When I consider every thing that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment,
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;
When I perceive that men as plants increase,
Cheered and checked even by the self-same sky,
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
And wear their brave state out of memory;
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay
Sets you most rich in youth before my sight,
Where wasteful Time debateth with decay
To change your day of youth to sullied night,
And all in war with Time for love of you,
As he takes from you, I engraft you new.