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