History has yet to start

Eleven years ago I gave you a poem by Iraqui-American poet Dunya Mikhail. (Wow—I’ve been doing National Poetry Month for 11 years?!) I’d heard her read “The War Works Hard” on NPR years before and bought her first collection that same day. It was one of the four books I carried with me when I moved to Seattle that were meant to tide me over until my shipped household goods arrived.

A Chaldean Catholic and a critic of the regime of Saddam Hussein, Mikhail fled Iraq in 1995 at age 30, eventually settling in Michigan, where she works as a lecturer in Arabic at Oakland University.

“Another Planet” is from The War Works Hard, which was published in 2005. But its themes and wishes are eternal. That’s poetry’s job—to remind us of how much or little we’ve progresses.

“Another Planet"

I have a special ticket
to another planet
beyond this Earth.
A comfortable world, and beautiful:
a world without much smoke,
not too hot
and not too cold.
The creatures
are gentler there,
and the governments
have no secrets.
The police are nonexistent:
there are no problems
and no fights.
And the schools
don’t exhaust their students
with too much work
for history has yet to start
and there’s no geography
and no other languages.
And even better:
the war
has left its “r” behind
and turned into love,
so the weapons sleep
beneath the dust,
and the planes pass by
without shelling the cities,
and the boats
look like smiles
on the water.
All things
are peaceful
and kind
on the other planet
beyond this Earth.
But still I hesitate
to go alone.
                     Tr: Kareem James Abu-Zeid

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Where I stand

Today for National Poetry Month we’re having something from singer-songwriter Don McLean. No—not “American Pie”. Also, not “Starry Night”. Not even “And I Love Her So”. It’s one that cut to my heart from the moment I first heard of it.

No one can listen to this and tell me McLean is not a poet.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

The silly walls

Langston Hughes was one of the many vibrant and eloquent voices of the Harlem Renaissance. And like Yeats and Hopkins and Owen and Marlowe, I just can’t get enough of him.

Today we’re having “I Look at the World” because I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be the out-of-place ones in our society. Hughes always captures that viewpoint concisely.

“I Look at the World” 

I look at the world
From awakening eyes in a black face—
And this is what I see:
This fenced-off narrow space   
Assigned to me.

I look then at the silly walls
Through dark eyes in a dark face—
And this is what I know:
That all these walls oppression builds
Will have to go!

I look at my own body   
With eyes no longer blind—
And I see that my own hands can make
The world that's in my mind.
Then let us hurry, comrades,
The road to find.

 

 

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Satan ne te fête

We last saw poems from Mots d’Heures: Gousses, Rames eight years ago, so we’re due for more. They are so very funny.

Keep in mind that, as with all poetry, these verses are meant to be read aloud to get the full appreciation. This may be difficult if you don’t speak French. It might be a challenge even if you do. So I have included the, erm, phonetic transliteration of the poems at the bottom of this post, in invisible electrons. If you really, really need it, just highlight the space and the text will become visible. As will the reason why this is a Friday set of poetry.

The poems don’t have titles; they are helpfully numbered, like Shakespeare’s sonnets. Or the Psalms. Or items on a Chinese menu.

“10”

Lit-elle messe, moffette,1
Satan ne te fête,
Et digne somme coeurs et nouez.
À longue qu’aime est-ce pailles d’Eure.
Et ne Satan bise ailleurs
Et ne fredonne messe. Moffette, ah, ouais!2

1. Moffette. Noxious exhalations formed in underground galleries or mines.
2. This little fragment is a moral precept addressed to a young girl. She is advised to go to mass even under the most adverse conditions in order to confound Satan and keep her heart pure until the knot (marriage) is tied. She is warned against long engagements and to stay out of hayfields be they as lush and lovely as those of the Eure valley, for Satan will not be off spoiling crops elsewhere. She must not mumble at mass, or the consequences will make the noxious fumes of earth seem trivial.

“1”

Un petit d’un petit¹
S’étonne aux Halles2
Un petit d’un petit
Ah! degrés te fallent3
Indolent qui ne sort cesse4
Indolent qui ne se mène5
Qu’importe un petit d’un petit
Tout Gai de Reguennes.6

1. The inevitable result of a child marriage.

2. The subject of this epigrammatic poem is obviously from the provinces, since a native Parisian would take this famous old market for granted.

3. Since this personage bears no titles, we are led to believe that the poet writes of one of those unfortunate idiot-children that in olden days existed as a living skeleton in their family’s closet.  Am inclined to believe, however, that this is a fine piece of mis direction and that the poet is actually writing of some famous political prisoner, or the illegitimate offspring of some noble house. The Man in the Iron Maask, perhaps?

4, 5. Another misdirection. Obviously it was not laziness that prevented this person’s going out and taking himself places.

5. Another misdirection. Obviously it was not laziness that prevented this person’s going out and taking himself places.

[1] He was obviously prevented from fulfilling his destiny, since he is compared to Gai de Reguennes. This was a young squire (to one of his uncles, A Gaillard of Normandy) who died at the tender age of twelve of a surfeit of Saracen arrows before the walls of Acre in 1191.

 Highlight the area below to reveal the poems.

 

Little Miss Muffet
Sat on a tuffet,
Eating her curds and whey;
There came a big spider,
Who sat down beside her
And frightened Miss Muffet away.

 

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Dive, thoughts, down to my soul

It’s that time again—yes, Will Shakespeare’s birthday—when we bring out a couple of selections from the master. Always a highlight of National Poetry Month.

Much of Shakespeare’s life would have been spent amidst pestilence; smallpox, typhus, cholera were just some of the diseases swirling about. It’s surprising that his works aren’t more drenched with catastrophic events beyond the making of man. And here’s the thing about Shakespeare: all his plays about Big Men (Legends-in-Their-Own-Minds Bigly Men) end badly for the eponymous heroes. Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Titus Andronicus, Lear, Othello, Richard III (and probably I and II, too; I haven’t looked)—these guys all disappear up their own tailpipes and do not die of old age. 

(Well, Lear. Technically he was an old man. But turned out by his daughters to wander the moors with his Fool, descending into madness, his one loyal daughter executed...he drops dead in Act V. Not what he had planned, so I think my point stands.)

Today we’re taking on Richard III, the last of the kings from the House of York.

As you recall, Shakespeare’s Richard is deformed in body, mind and soul. As you’ll also recall, Shakespeare was getting his material from Tudor historians; all of them were in the pay (or patronage) of one Tudor or another, starting with the one (Henry VII) whose army killed Richard. (Think of it as being a historian or playwright with Stalin looking over your shoulder.)

Shakespeare’s Richard would strike us as a sort of incel, living in the Late Medieval equivalent of his mom’s basement while quill-scratching out whiny rage screeds on velum about how the hotte ladyes won’t give him the hourglass of day.

Yes, Richard is presumed to have ordered the murders of his nephews in the Tower of London in 1483; sons of Richard’s late brother Edward IV, they were alleged to have been got rid of to remove any question of legitimacy to his wearing the crown. There’s a whole lot of hoo-ha about this—whether Edward’s marriage to the princes’ mother was actually legal, whether the boys were legitimate heirs, and who would benefit most from their deaths. There’s also a lot of hoo-ha about Richard being a tyrant, a madman and a disastrous ruler. But I don’t believe the facts that have come down to us bear that second lot of hoo-ha out, and I do believe that the hoo-hawers ought to take a good look at the early years of Henry VII’s reign when he was solidifying the throne.

Bear in mind that despite his physical limitations (modern scholars speculate that he suffered from scoliosis, a sideways curving of the spine which would have made any Medieval means of transportation very painful for him), Richard rode a horse into battle more than once and inspired men to follow him. Unlike current incels who dress up like Meal Team 6 and shuffle into Subway shops in Kevlar vests and draped with long guns and AR-15s, Richard was both a warrior and an effective administrator.

Anyhow, Shakespeare sets up Richard’s wickedness right at the opening scene, which begins with his soliloquy, as Duke of Gloucester:

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish'd, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up,
About a prophecy, which says that 'G'
Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes. 

There’s nothing at all subtle about this: Richard flat out says that—since he’s physically deformed and therefore no one will love him regardless of his actions—he’s fitting his morals to his ugliness. And, by the way, even though the Yorks have only just ascended to the throne (in the form of his tall, hunky brother Edward), he’s already mapping out how to kill the one brother and blame the other for regicide. 

Yikes! 

So let’s have something different by way of mitigation, then. I’m giving you Sonnet XXX, which speaks to the bonds of friendship, a concept utterly foreign to Shakespeare’s Richard.

“XXX”

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:
Then can I drown an eye, unus'd to flow,
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,
And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe,
And moan th' expense of many a vanish'd sight;
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
Which I new pay as if not paid before.
   But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
   All losses are restor'd, and sorrows end.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Gratitude Monday: Next year in virtue and justice

Pesach begins at sundown today. Pesach is the celebration of that time when the Angel of Death passed by Jewish households when it spread calamity across Egypt. It also marks the joyful but speedy exit of the Jews from their captivity; in too much of a hurry to let bread rise. Ergo matzoh.

Pesach is a time for huge family gatherings around the table, recounting the whole Exodus story, eating (but nothing leavened) and drinking, talking and singing. Essentially, giving thanks for release from slavery, for escape from plagues, for the grace of God. It’s kind of the Ur-Gratitude celebration, and it lasts for eight days (seven if you’re in some Reform congregations). The meal follows a script set down centuries ago for both the menu and the conversation.

(It has been said that the totality of Jewish holidays is: they tried to kill us; we won; let’s eat.)

I definitely get behind having a ritual meal with roots more than 2000 years old, where traditions flow seamlessly into the new generation along with matzoh ball soup, brisket and charoset. There will be many households in both Israel and Ukraine whose celebrations will be muted: no latkes for 20; no kitchens piled up with the food and wine brought by family and friends. Elijah will find many empty chairs to choose from. But that will not stop the remembrance and the gratitude.

So today my entry for National Poetry Month is a poem about this holiday by one of my all-time favorite writers, Primo Levi. The second line is highly appropriate.

“Passover”

Tell me: how is this night different, from all other nights?
How, tell me, is this Passover, different from other Passovers?
Light the lamp, open the door wide, so the pilgrim can come in,
Gentile or Jew; under the rags perhaps the prophet is concealed.
Let him enter and sit down with us; let him listen, drink, sing and celebrate Passover;
Let him consume the bread of affliction, the Paschal Lamb, sweet mortar and bitter herbs.
This is the night of differences, in which you lean your elbow on the table,
Since the forbidden becomes prescribed, evil is translated into good.
We will spend the night recounting, far-off events full of wonder,
And because of all the wine, the mountains will skip like rams.
Tonight they exchange questions: the wise, the godless, the simple-minded and the child.
And time reverses its course, today flowing back into yesterday,
Like a river enclosed at its mouth. Each of us has been a slave in Egypt,
Soaked straw and clay with sweat, and crossed the sea dry-footed.
You too, stranger. this year in fear and shame,
Next year in virtue and in justice.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Tourists do not venture

For today’s National Poetry Month poem, we’re going to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where Adisa Bašić is a professor of literature and creative writing at the Sarajevo Faculty of Philosophy. She was born in 1979 and lived through the Siege of Sarajevo, from April 1992 to February 1996.

The neighborhood she’s writing about here was constructed in the 1970s. Like the rest of the city, it suffered death and destruction from Serbian airstrikes and bombardments. Which—if tourists came to the area, they’d probably see. But, as she notes, they don’t.

Alipašino

We’re the kids from the neighborhood
that will never end up
on postcards.
To our parts tourists do not venture.
We don’t win presidential elections in a run-off.
And no language do we speak better than our mother tongue.
We do not know that our twin brothers live
in all of the cities of the world.
To our parts tourists do not venture.
There is nothing well known here:
an elementary school,
a supermarket, and an old walnut tree long cut down.
To our parts tourists do not venture.
And we have nothing to show them.
Except ourselves.

                                Translated by Una Tanoviĉ  

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Pawn your intelligence

First off, you knew we weren’t going to get out of National Poetry Month without anything by e. e. cummings, right? Does anyone else cover the range of what we might call “word play” with such power and so few actual, you know, words?

Second—I’ll just get right to today’s entry, because I don’t need to ‘splain to you the power of his images of the crimes of and against Humanity. This is poetry, folks.

“Humanity i love you”

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

©2024 Bas Bleu

Two gentlemen

Like Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell is one of the great poets of my lifetime. Like Simon, she also writes music around her poems.

If he’s the poet of a hustling New York City and of men beaten down by it, she’s all about the secluded canyons of LA and relationships seen from the female perspective. Her apogee might in fact be her Ladies of the Canyon album. It’s certainly my favorite.

The poetry Mitchel's songs seem to go best with her open tuning of the guitar and her ethereal voice. There have been some good covers (Eva Cassidy; Judy Collins; Crosby, Stills & Nash), but there's something haunting about Mitchell singing her own compositions.

For National Poetry Month today I was going to give you “Willy”, from Ladies. But then there was “Woodstock”, also from Ladies. Or “Big Yellow Taxi”, from Ladies. And the eponymous “Ladies of the Canyon”…

Yeah, okay—Ladies is the best.

So I’m just going for two of my all-time favorites from the album. First up, “The Circle Game”, which pops into my head every single time I see a dragonfly.

And “For Free”.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Et je m'en vais au vent mauvais

I first made the acquaintance of today’s National Poetry Month poem through reading about D-Day.

Throughout the war (WWII, if you’re in any confusion), the BBC broadcast messages to resistance organizations in Nazi-occupied countries. Things like, “Baby needs new shoes” or “Uncle Ralph lost his eyeglasses”. There would be a whole string of this sort of thing, and the “baby” one might mean “blow the bridge tonight” to a group in Bruges, and “Uncle Ralph” could announce “arms drop tomorrow” to a cell in Bordeaux.

As the buildup to the invasion of France progressed, it was decided to use the opening lines from Paul Verlaine’s “Chanson d’automne” to signal resistance groups in France to engage in specific acts of sabotage—destroy lines of communication, railroads, bridges, etc., to hinder the German ability to counterattack in the early days of acquiring a toehold on the continent.

Broadcasting the first three lines meant: invasion is coming within two weeks; get ready. It went out over the airwaves on 1 June, 1944. The next three lines meant: invasion within 48 hours; start the destruction. That was broadcast 5 June, 1944, 45 minutes before midnight, when the armada was on its way.

I’ve read other French poets since then (I was in junior high when I started studying WWII), but—leaving aside the historical reference—I really like the imagery in this one. “Les sanglot longs des violons de l’automne blessent mon coeur”… The long sobs of the violins of autumn wound my heart—doesn’t that just strike home?

“Chanson d’automne”

Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne
Blessent mon coeur
D'une langueur
Monotone.

Tout suffocant
Et blême, quand
Sonne l'heure,
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure

Et je m'en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m'emporte
Deçà, delà,
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.

If you’d like the English, here you go:

The long sobs
Of the violins
Of Autumn
Wound my heart
With a monotonous
Languor.

All choked
And pale, when
The hour chimes,
I remember
Days of old
And I cry

And I’m going
On an ill wind
That carries me
Here and there,
As if a
Dead leaf.

  

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

They say he cheats at cards

If you’re a young person looking for existential angst and despair, T.S. Eliot’s your man. I mean, really—if “The Waste Land” doesn’t do it, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" will. There’s no better description of what youth fears (when youth thinks about it) in old age than “I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.”

(He also perfectly described the academic environment when he said of his time at Merton College, “I hate university towns and university people, who are the same everywhere, with pregnant wives, sprawling children, many books and hideous pictures on the walls… Oxford is very pretty, but I don’t like to be dead.”)

But there’s another side to Eliot, as evidenced by Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, a collection of light verse. You’ll know a lot of the pieces if you’ve heard anything by Andrew Lloyd Webber. But if you can divorce yourself from those earworms, tuck into “Macavity: The Mystery Cat”.

I’ve got an edition of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats illustrated by Edward Gorey. Here’s the one for Macavity:

This is a great poem to read with kids, especially with all the repetition of his name. The notion of a cat outwitting the best that grownups have to offer (Scotland Yard, the Foreign Office) is just so delicious. The descriptions link Macavity to Professor Moriarty and the Scarlet Pimpernel; you know—elusive, triumphant scofflaws. Precisely what you’d expect from a Feline of the World.

This is definitely one you should read aloud.

“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!

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

Cratered like the moon

We are two years into one declared war and six months into another one, with probably dozens of undeclared border incursions, terror attacks and sundry “incidents” having gone on for more than a decade. Which is to say, we do not live in a peaceful world and—like global warning—that’s down to homo sapiens.

Poets have been writing about war for millennia; since before writing, actually, when their poems were passed down the generations via song. Most of them through the ages have played up the nobility and valor of the warrior and the glory and wealth to be acquired in the practice of combat. They became propaganda for the tribes, societies and states they depicted as noble and brave—playing to the common folk more than the soldiers, who knew the truth and didn’t have much time for the dressed-up version.

(Same thing in the visual arts—paintings and sculptures wreathed in testosterone: spectacular and inspiring, and almost antiseptically clean.)

This held true pretty much until about a year or two into the First World War. Moving pictures were in their infancy, television was decades away and if you’d told anyone about mobile phones and social media they’d have locked you up. People at home depended on newspapers for information on how it was going; interestingly, poetry was a fairly regular element in coverage. Governments had a vested interest in shaping how it was reported.

World War I was the first conflict where all of the armies were conscripted (although Britain didn’t introduce the draft until 1916), so governments had a vested interest in portraying the war as a noble venture, sanctified by God and with a guaranteed victory by Christmas. By 1916, two years in, this was becoming increasingly difficult. If you, as a soldier, published anything that didn’t support the official line, you would be locked up. In prison, if you were without connections; in a looney bin, if you did.

Of course, you could end up in the latter anyhow; that’s how what we now know as PTSD was addressed. (At the time, mental breakdowns among the military were charitably called “shellshock”. When they weren’t called “lack of moral fiber”. Research in the past decade or so into PTSD suggests that it’s cause may actually literally be shellshock—as in traumatic brain injury.) The job of the mental hospital (just as any other military healthcare facility) was to patch you up enough so you could return to the front.

One such patient, at Craiglockhart War Hospital in Scotland, was Wilfred Owen. He was suffering from severe headaches probably from concussion(s), having been blown literally into the air by artillery strikes, but was diagnosed with shellshock in June 1917. While there, he met Siegfried Sassoon, who encouraged his interest in poetry as a means of expression. Most of Owen’s poems were written in the year between Summer 1917 and his death in November 1918. Only three were published while he was alive.

In past years of National Poetry Month, I’ve given you “Dulce et Decorum est”, “Dreamers” and “Strange Meeting”. This time around it’s “The Show”, whose images seem like they would resonate with anyone in Ukraine or Gaza (or Syria or Sudan or…). It’s not for the faint of heart.

“The Show”

My soul looked down from a vague height with Death,
As unremembering how I rose or why,
And saw a sad land, weak with sweats of dearth,
Gray, cratered like the moon with hollow woe,
And fitted with great pocks and scabs of plaques.
Across its beard, that horror of harsh wire,
There moved thin caterpillars, slowly uncoiled.
It seemed they pushed themselves to be as plugs
Of ditches, where they writhed and shrivelled, killed.
By them had slimy paths been trailed and scraped
Round myriad warts that might be little hills.

From gloom's last dregs these long-strung creatures crept,
And vanished out of dawn down hidden holes.

(And smell came up from those foul openings
As out of mouths, or deep wounds deepening.)

On dithering feet upgathered, more and more,
Brown strings towards strings of gray, with bristling spines,
All migrants from green fields, intent on mire.

Those that were gray, of more abundant spawns,
Ramped on the rest and ate them and were eaten.

I saw their bitten backs curve, loop, and straighten,
I watched those agonies curl, lift, and flatten.

Whereat, in terror what that sight might mean,
I reeled and shivered earthward like a feather.

And Death fell with me, like a deepening moan.
And He, picking a manner of worm, which half had hid
Its bruises in the earth, but crawled no further,

Showed me its feet, the feet of many men,
And the fresh-severed head of it, my head.

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Gratitude Monday: Ditch and bog

While on my walk yesterday morning, I noticed that the Virginia bluebells in mini-park on my route were in bloom. So I went home, got my camera and walked back to get some shots.

When time came to upload them to my computer, I discovered these photos that have been on the memory card for eight months.

This is unusual because it’s my practice to delete pix from the camera as soon as I upload them. And it was a reminder of how heartbreakingly beautiful the ponds on the corporate campus behind me are. (Heartbreaking because the developers who own the property are in the process of erecting 82 three- and four-story townhouse units there.)

I’m grateful for the unexpected discovery of these photos and the beauty of the sacred lotus. So for National Poetry Month today let’s have a poem about welcoming beauty where we find it from 20^th Century poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.

“Still I Will Harvest Beauty As It Grows”.

Still will I harvest beauty where it grows:
In coloured fungus and the spotted fog
Surprised on foods forgotten; in ditch and bog
Filmed brilliant with irregular rainbows
Of rust and oil, where half a city throws
Its empty tins; and in some spongy log
Whence headlong leaps the oozy emerald frog. . . .
And a black pupil in the green scum shows.
Her the inhabiter of divers places
Surmising at all doors, I push them all.
Oh, you that fearful of a creaking hinge
Turn back forevermore with craven faces,
I tell you Beauty bears an ultra fringe

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Despite expert advice

Dorothy Parker is another mainstay of my National Poetry Month; I couldn’t get through it without her. She’s not someone you want to binge-read, because poem after poem of biting wit begins to feel like the death of a thousand cuts. She's like the very best Courvoisier: sip a little and savor it.

Parker’s life wasn’t happy; she repeatedly loved not wisely but too well, and her longest relationship was with booze. So it’s not surprising that her short stories are deeply depressing and that her poetry is bitter. Still—like Courvoisier—in moderation, there’s nothing like a bit of her verse to say what you’d like to; if you only had both the skill and the nerve.

“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!

 

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Wounded with his wounded heart

You could spend the entire National Poetry Month on various Elizabethan poets. Shakespeare, Marlowe, Spenser, Donne, Jonson…the age doesn’t get more golden as far as English lit goes.

So let’s have Sir Philip Sidney for today. Like Marlowe and Raleigh, Sidney was one of those utility players: soldier, courtier, poet, politician. He was part of the Dudley family, which put him in close proximity to Elizabeth, and embarked on diplomatic missions before he was 20; at the age of 22 he was in Paris and witnessed the Saint Bartholomew Day Massacre, which must have shaped his already strong Protestant convictions.

By age 25 he wrote an open letter the Queen detailing why she should not marry the (French Catholic) Duc d’Alençon. Among his objections was the fact that d’Alençon was a son of Catherine de Medicis, “the Jezebel of our age”, who of course had been critical to the Saint Bartholomew Day events of five years earlier. Pretty bold for a young single guy, although of course it was a different age, and he’d already paid a lot of dues.

Sidney was as bold a military leader against Spain as he was a matrimonial advisor. He was wounded at the Battle of Zutphen. I have to think that the 26 days it took to die from gangrene must have been ghastly. He was not yet 32 years old.

As a man of letters, Sidney held that the purpose of poetry is “to lead and draw us to as high a perfection as our degenerate souls, made worse by their clayey lodgings, can be capable of.” He wrote in a variety of formats. Here’s an example.

“My true love hath my heart”

My true-love hath my heart and I have his,
By just exchange one for the other given:
I hold his dear, and mine he cannot miss;
There never was a bargain better driven.
His heart in me keeps me and him in one;
My heart in him his thoughts and senses guides:
He loves my heart, for once it was his own;
I cherish his because in me it bides.
His heart his wound received from my sight;
My heart was wounded with his wounded heart;
For as from me on him his hurt did light,
So still, methought, in me his hurt did smart:
Both equal hurt, in this change sought our bliss,
My true love hath my heart and I have his.

 

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

 

A halfway decent man

I am of the opinion that Paul Simon is among our greatest living poets. And his songs aren’t bad, either. I think of him as a late-20^th Century John Donne, commenting on our current world and all its quirks.

The problem for today’s National Poetry Month post is choosing which of his massive oeuvre to share. Do I go really early—“Mrs. Robinson” (from The Graduate), “59^th Street Bridge Song”, “Homeward Bound”, “I Am a Rock”? Or “Kodachrome”, “Bridge over Troubled Water”, “The Boxer”, “Still Crazy after All These Years”, “Mother and Child Reunion”? And then there’s “Slip Slidin’ Away”, “You Can Call Me Al”, “Time Is an Ocean”.

Okay, I’m giving you two. Simon and Garfunkel recorded “The Sound of Silence” in 1964; it got them a recording deal with Columbia Records. It’s quintessential Simon as Angsty Young Man, and it resonated so deeply with me when I first heard it.

Forty-two years later, Simon released an album that included “Wartime Prayers”, which seems pretty appropriate today.

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

 

Frog and pee

It’s fairly easy to take a pop at haiku, the Japanese poetry form. Three lines of 17 syllables (five, seven, five) make a good target for mockery—possibly because of the semi-obligatory Zen component that can seem pretentious.

Viz: these examples from Kate Miller-Wilson

On yoga:

I’d go to yoga,
But they don’t serve donuts there.
Namaste right here.

On a road trip with kids:

Music on, windows down,
We’re not even late yet, but...
Someone has to pee.

On cats:

In the morning light,
You sleep despite my meow.
I stand on your face.

And yet—even these spoofs carry haiku-like universal truths, distilled to their pure essence because of the limitations of the form.

Poetry always wins, folks.

But let’s also have some more, ah, kosher examples from a master, Matsuo Bashō, perhaps the most famous poet of the Edo period in 17^th Century Japan. Here’s one of his in the original transliteration, with several translations. Note that getting the sense of the poem in English sometimes results in violating the syllabic strictures:

Furu ike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto

The old pond,
A frog jumps in:
Plop!
       Alan Watts

The old pond —
a frog jumps in,
sound of water.
        Robert Hass

dark old pond
:
a frog plunks in
        Dick Bakken:

Listen! a frog
Jumping into the stillness
Of an ancient pond!
        Dorothy Britton

 

 

 

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

 

Tut-tut

Spike Milligan is more famous for his long career as an entertainer—actor, comedian, musician on stage and screen—than for his poetry, but it’s mixed in there, along with being a writer and playwright. In keeping with his puckish nature, his poems are generally silly.

We see that in today’s entry for National Poetry Month, where Milligan imagines a sort of Gingham Cat and Calico Dog nocturnal discussion among the letters along a schoolroom wall. It’s a nice respite from everything that’s going on, and harkens back to a day when classrooms weren’t political and ideological battlefields.

Happy days, eh?

“The ABC”

'Twas midnight in the schoolroom
And every desk was shut
When suddenly from the alphabet
Was heard a loud "Tut-Tut!"

Said A to B, "I don't like C;
His manners are a lack.
For all I ever see of C
Is a semi-circular back!"

"I disagree," said D to B,
"I've never found C so.
From where I stand he seems to be
An uncompleted O."

C was vexed, "I'm much perplexed,
You criticise my shape.
I'm made like that, to help spell Cat
And Cow and Cool and Cape."

"He's right" said E; said F, "Whoopee!"
Said G, "'Ip, 'Ip, 'ooray!"
"You're dropping me," roared H to G.
"Don't do it please I pray."

"Out of my way," LL said to K.
"I'll make poor I look ILL."
To stop this stunt J stood in front,
And presto! ILL was JILL.

"U know," said V, "that W
Is twice the age of me.
For as a Roman V is five
I'm half as young as he."

X and Y yawned sleepily,
"Look at the time!" they said.
"Let's all get off to beddy byes."
They did, then "Z-z-z."

 

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu