Pilgrimage of poems: Like a penknife in my heart

Is today’s National Poetry Month entry a poem? Well, yes. I mean, it rhymes, like that Mother Goose stuff.

And, like the Korean Sijo that I shared with you on Saturday, the images just flow from line to line. If you wanted to, you could probably keep going on and on.

Until the last line, of course. That one’s kind of final.

“Man of Double Deed”

There was a man of double deed,

Who sowed his garden full of seed.

When the seed began to grow,

Twas like a garden full of snow,

When the snow began to fall,

Like birds it was upon the wall.

When the birds began to fly,

Twas like a shipwreck in the sky.

And when the sky began to crack,

Twas like a stick upon my back.

And when my back began to smart,

Twas like a penknife in my heart,

And when my heart began to bleed,

Then I was dead and dead indeed.

But I asked the question because I first knew this as a song, a children’s nonsense song. And of course I heard it from the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. There’s no way I can ever come across this in a collection of poems, or on a website, and not hear them starting out with the single voice, and layering on harmony after harmony, giving depth and substance to it.

Well, in fact, I don’t really know whether I noticed the transitions in the middle, because I got so wrapped up in the beauty of the song. I was a kid, after all.

(I could never figure out why you’d want to sing a song to your child about sticking penknives in your heart. But then, there’s that whole bough-breaking and baby-falling schtick in lullabies, so whatever.)

If you'd like the Clancy experience, here they are singing it at the Newport Folk Festival—so long ago it was shot on film; black-and-white film.

Gratitude Monday: Unexpected help

I’m grateful today that someone I met once a year ago at a product management meet-up responded to one of my “blonde” tweets on my professional account and offered to help me with the job search.

He spent more than an hour with me yesterday giving me ideas, encouragement and concrete leads to people who may be able (and willing) to help me find my next gig. There’s really nothing in it for him to do this, and I can’t tell you how much this means to me in a business where everyone is always calculating your potential ROI in every conversation they have.

Really grateful.

Pilgrimage of poems: Mithridates, he died old

I first encountered today’s entry for National Poetry Month in high school. I revisit it periodically because I’ve always loved it.

A. E. Housman’s “Terence, This Is Stupid Stuff” is from his A Shropshire Lad collection. I suppose the more famous one from that book is “When I Was One-and-Twenty”, in which he expresses an older man’s understanding of how love works that he did not have when he was a youth. I actually find that a bit facile.

But “Terence”? This one’s got meat on its bones. The Terence referred to is the Roman playwright. The first section of the poem is one of his friends moaning about how Terence is always producing such grim fare, and asking for something with a bit more sparkle.

The poet replies by pointing out that life is not all skittles and beer, and then gives the example of an ancient king who outlived all his would-be assassins by embracing the ills they have to offer.

The last line always gets me. Always.

'Terence, this is stupid stuff:

You eat your victuals fast enough;

There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,

To see the rate you drink your beer.

But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,

It gives a chap the belly-ache.

The cow, the old cow, she is dead;

It sleeps well, the horned head:

We poor lads, 'tis our turn now

To hear such tunes as killed the cow.

Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme

Your friends to death before their time

Moping melancholy mad:

Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.'

Why, if 'tis dancing you would be,

There's brisker pipes than poetry.

Say, for what were hop-yards meant,

Or why was Burton built on Trent?

Oh many a peer of England brews

Livelier liquor than the Muse,

And malt does more than Milton can

To justify God's ways to man.

Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink

For fellows whom it hurts to think:

Look into the pewter pot

To see the world as the world's not.

And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:

The mischief is that 'twill not last.

Oh I have been to Ludlow fair

And left my necktie God knows where,

And carried half way home, or near,

Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:

Then the world seemed none so bad,

And I myself a sterling lad;

And down in lovely muck I've lain,

Happy till I woke again.

Then I saw the morning sky:

Heigho, the tale was all a lie;

The world, it was the old world yet,

I was I, my things were wet,

And nothing now remained to do

But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still

Much good, but much less good than ill,

And while the sun and moon endure

Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,

I'd face it as a wise man would,

And train for ill and not for good.

'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale

Is not so brisk a brew as ale:

Out of a stem that scored the hand

I wrung it in a weary land.

But take it: if the smack is sour,

The better for the embittered hour;

It should do good to heart and head

When your soul is in my soul's stead;

And I will friend you, if I may,

In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:

There, when kings will sit to feast,

They get their fill before they think

With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.

He gathered all the springs to birth

From the many-venomed earth;

First a little, thence to more,

He sampled all her killing store;

And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,

Sate the king when healths went round.

They put arsenic in his meat

And stared aghast to watch him eat;

They poured strychnine in his cup

And shook to see him drink it up:

They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:

Them it was their poison hurt.

I tell the tale that I heard told.

Mithridates, he died old.

Pilgrimage of poems: One long soundless scream

I first read about Babi Yar in high school, about the same time I first heard some of Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s poems. It was a novel notion to me that some guy, in the Soviet Union, long before Glasnost, could be a poet. You know, like Ferlinghetti or Ginsburg or Plath.

I had pretty limited notions of both poets and current events back then. I lived in the suburbs.

When I finally got interested in poetry, one of the first books I bought was one of his collections. I don’t now recall which one, or any of the poems in it; so it didn’t have a lasting effect on me. It was probably a “Hey-I’m-sophisticated-I’m-reading-a-Soviet-poet” kind of statement.

Much later, I picked up a copy of Anatoly Kuznetsov’s Babi Yar at a used book shop. And at that time I had no bleeding idea of what I was getting myself into—the book cover was extremely sparse in the summarizing blurb department. I just knew it was a novel about a massacre of Jews by the Nazis that took place in Kiev in 1941.

Much later still, when I finally got around to cracking it open to read, a steady tide of horror and disbelief rose over me until I nearly drowned. It turns out that Kutznetsov’s book is a “documentary novel” of his experience witnessing the two-day bloodbath in which nearly 34,000 men, women and children were murdered and shoved layer upon layer into the ravine called Babi Yar.

Kuznetsov says, “"Let me emphasize again that I have not told about anything exceptional, but only about ordinary things that were part of a system; things that happened just yesterday, historically speaking, when people were exactly as they are today."

Yevtushenko also wrote about the atrocity; it’s one of his most famous works. Like Kuznetsov’s, his account is searing. But he uses the poem to point out that the Soviet state is not much of an improvement on the Nazis, and to denounce anti-Semitism in any garb. It was a pretty ballsy move back in 1961, when it was first published.

And I don’t need to make any connection for you between his “Union of the Russian People” and current events. History, baby—if you miss it once, it comes around again.

Babi Yar

No monument stands over Babi Yar.

A steep cliff only, like the rudest headstone.

I am afraid.

Today, I am as old

As the entire Jewish race itself.

I see myself an ancient Israelite.

I wander o'er the roads of ancient Egypt

And here, upon the cross, I perish, tortured

And even now, I bear the marks of nails.

It seems to me that Dreyfus is myself.

The Philistines betrayed me - and now judge.

I'm in a cage. Surrounded and trapped,

I'm persecuted, spat on, slandered, and

The dainty dollies in their Brussels frills

Squeal, as they stab umbrellas at my face.

I see myself a boy in Belostok

Blood spills, and runs upon the floors,

The chiefs of bar and pub rage unimpeded

And reek of vodka and of onion, half and half.

I'm thrown back by a boot, I have no strength left,

In vain I beg the rabble of pogrom,

To jeers of "Kill the Jews, and save our Russia!"

My mother's being beaten by a clerk.

O, Russia of my heart, I know that you

Are international, by inner nature.

But often those whose hands are steeped in filth

Abused your purest name, in name of hatred.

I know the kindness of my native land.

How vile, that without the slightest quiver

The anti-Semites have proclaimed themselves

The "Union of the Russian People!"

It seems to me that I am Anna Frank,

Transparent, as the thinnest branch in April,

And I'm in love, and have no need of phrases,

But only that we gaze into each other's eyes.

How little one can see, or even sense!

Leaves are forbidden, so is sky,

But much is still allowed - very gently

In darkened rooms each other to embrace.

-"They come!"

-"No, fear not - those are sounds

Of spring itself. She's coming soon.

Quickly, your lips!"

-"They break the door!"

-"No, river ice is breaking..."

Wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar,

The trees look sternly, as if passing judgment.

Here, silently, all screams, and, hat in hand,

I feel my hair changing shade to gray.

And I myself, like one long soundless scream

Above the thousands of thousands interred,

I'm every old man executed here,

As I am every child murdered here.

No fiber of my body will forget this.

May "Internationale" thunder and ring

When, for all time, is buried and forgotten

The last of anti-Semites on this earth.

There is no Jewish blood that's blood of mine,

But, hated with a passion that's corrosive

Am I by anti-Semites like a Jew.

And that is why I call myself a Russian!

Pilgrimage of poems: Draw out the night

Okay, last Saturday I gave you examples of two forms of Japanese poetry, so how about today we hop over the Sea of Japan to Korea?

It turns out that there’s a form of poem related to both haiku and tanka, the sijo. Like its Japanese cousins, sijo are constrained by syllable count; in this case three lines totaling 44 to 46 of them. It’s interesting to me that each line has a purpose: first is introduction of a theme; second elaborates on it; third provides a twist and an end. They can use metaphors, puns and other forms of word play.

You gotta love a tight format that messes with your head and makes you giggle.

Also, I really like the notion that sijo were meant to be sung.

Take a look (and remember that sometimes translations don’t adhere to the syllabic constraints):

Where pure snow flakes melt

Dark clouds gather threatening

Where are the spring flowers abloom?

A lonely figure lost in the shadow

Of sinking sun, I have no place to go.

                                                Yi Saek (1328-1395)

I will break the back of this long, midwinter night,

Folding it double, cold beneath my spring quilt,

That I may draw out the night, should my love return.

                                                Hwang Jin-i (1522-1565)

Oh that I might capture the essence of this deep midwinter night

And fold it softly into the waft of a spring-moon quilt

Then fondly uncoil it the night my beloved returns.

It turns out that Hwang Jin-i’s nom de plume was Myongwol, or Bright Moon, so her “spring moon” could also be a reference to herself. Little play on words there.

Pilgrimage of poems: Ocelot serre chypre

Yay—it’s Friday, and it’s Friday in National Poetry Month. And today I’m getting as silly as it’s possible to be without aid of chemical substances.

There’s this collection of, uh, well, you know—rhymes—by a fellow called Luis d’Antin van Rooten (and, no, I am not making that name up). The book is Mots d’Heures: Gousses, Rames. And no, I am not making that title up, either:

See, this is a, um, scholarly presentation and deconstruction of these very interesting poems from, oh, way, way back. I mean—it has footnotes and everything. Yeah, okay, I’ll show you.

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.

By the way, though this is a slim volume, I’ve been extremely hard put to choose which gems to share, because they all cry out to be known by the wider world. It’s a tough job to blog during National Poetry Month, so I’ll just suck it up and get on with it.

2

Eau la quille ne colle

Oise à me rest haulte de soles

Aîné marié au sol, vas-y!¹

École vorace paille

Pain école vorace boule

En école vorace fille de loterie. ²

Et vérifie d’allure, ah! des fidèles

En avarie faille ne fille te l’a dit

Et puis, tu lui dis, tu lui dis, tu lui dis, vingt-deux filles de loure.³

Oh! d’hère, se nom soeur erre

Ascain compère

Huit qui ne collent et ne se fient de loterie.⁴

1. An eldest son, wedded to the family estates by primogeniture, is here urged to seek adventure. The general area in which he lives is clearly identified by the Oise River, a tributary of the Seine, navigable for most of its length. A truly poetic image is created by the first line and the promise of a sea teeming with Channel sole in the second line.

2. Here he is warned of fish that will rise to any lure, but also of voracious schools of lottery girls. Evidently, he is to seek adventure and a wife.

3. He is told to study their bearing, so many having failed or come to grief, who might have been faithful. He is particularly warned against twenty-two dancing girls, perhaps some notorious corps de ballet of the period.

4. The country boy is told not to give his name to an erring sister. The good example of his pal from Ascain (small Basque town in the foothills of the Pyrenees, not far from St.-Jean-de-Luz) is set before him. He didn’t get stuck because he didn’t trust to luck.

35

Lille¹ beau pipe

Ocelot serre chypre

Endouzaine aux verres tuf indemne

Livre de melons un dé huile qu’aux mômes

Eau à guigne d’air telle baie indemne.²

1. Lille is one of the great industrial cities of France and must be assumed to be the residence of the subject of this little poem.

2. We are dealing with a chemist or alchemist, since this can’t be anything but a recipe for an ointment or perfume of doubtful magical qualities. The scent sac of an ocelot which produces a disturbingly penetrating odor is squeezed with a quantity of chypre (which ditto) in a dozen containers of flawless volcanic glass. To this is added a pound of melons, a thimbleful of oil (1/2 oz.), a sweet cherry and the fragrance of unspoiled berries, any kind will do. The verse, unfortunately, gives no clue as to its application. We must, of course, suspect an aphrodisiac.

* * *
Transliteration—only reveal by highlighting the space below with your mouse after you’ve really tried (and I'm being nice by giving it to you; van Rooten doesn't let slip a dicky bird on this):

2

Old King Cole was a merry old soul,

And a merry old soul was he.

He called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl,

And he called for his fiddlers three.

Every fiddler, he had a fiddle,

And a very fine fiddle had he.

Oh there's none so rare, as can compare

With King Cole and his fiddlers three.

 *          *           *

35

Little Bo-Peep

Has lost her sheep

And can’t tell where to find them

Leave them alone, and they’ll come home

Wagging their tails behind them.

Il n'y à pas de quoi

Pilgrimage of poems: I choose day

I was never much of an Emily Dickinson fan. I mean—yeah, she churned ‘em out in her little Amherst hermitage, and pushed quite the range of topics. Her poems are intense expressions, with vivid imagery; I just find it hard to get into them.

So it was interesting to me that my literary hero, Reginald Hill, built one of his Dalziel and Pascoe novels around Dickinson’s poetry. But instead of making me like her, in fact, Good Morning, Midnight kind of reinforces my disconnect from Dickinson.

Perhaps it’s because the character who’s the biggest fan of Dickinson in the novel is a self-absorbed, distant, calculating woman who pretty much destroys everyone she touches. Yes, she’s damaged goods, and suffered a terrible loss in her early adulthood. So she spends the rest of her life running through men and family like tap water, and can only focus on one single thing, being a “mother” to her youngest stepchild. Whatever the cost to anyone and everyone else, that’s what she does.

It’s interesting that one of the men she’s able to scam is Andy Dalziel, because she has just the right mix of control, nobility, dispassion and pseudo-warmth. And perhaps that’s my objection to the eponymous poem, “Good Morning—Midnight”: I just want it to get over itself.

I’m giving it to you anyway, on account of Hill, and this way I get it out of the way so we can move on to poems more to my liking.

Good Morning—Midnight—

I'm coming Home—

Day—got tired of Me—

How could I—of Him?

Sunshine was a sweet place—

I liked to stay—

But Morn—didn't want me—now—

So—Goodnight—Day!

I can look—can't I—

When the East is Red?

The Hills—have a way—then—

That puts the Heart—abroad—

You—are not so fair—Midnight—

I chose—Day—

But—please take a little Girl—

He turned away!

All the history that fits

A friend sent me the link to this story by the BBC—it’s supposedly to provide historical background for the British public for the visit of Irish president Michael Higgins to the UK this week. It’s a big deal because this is the first time ever an Irish head of state has set official foot there.

(It was also a big deal when Queen Elizabeth II paid a state visit to Ireland in 2011. I had a few observations on that occasion, too. Well, it freaked me out to hear “God Save the Queen” at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin.)

I have no squawk about this diplomatic exchange or the notion of not letting yourself be hobbled for all eternity by the past. I say, make up, drink up and grow up, and I hope a very good time is had by all.

What I do object to here is the fact that this alleged political reporter, Gavin Stamp, is an idiot, and the BBC slapped this up on their website.

First off—“700 years of shared history”? Shared freakin' history? What the hell?

That would be “shared history” in the sense that the USSR had “shared history” with Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Romania from 1945 to 1989.

And that whole “sporting rivalry” fluff—what is up with that? Is it supposed to be somehow more significant than the rivalry between England and Germany? Or, for that matter, between Celtic and Rangers?

But what caused me to snort tea all over my keyboard is the notion that, while (Irish) literary giants such as Joyce and Beckett “preferred Paris to London”, these days the fact that the likes of Graham Norton and Terry Wogan are in residence in the British capital indicates it’s now a “literary destination”.

Oh, yeah—Norton and Wogan: the very heart and soul of, uh…TV. But, of course, Wogan does work for the BBC, so that would explain his elevation to the status of Joyce.

Plus—“Ireland leads the UK by seven victories to three in the Eurovision song contest.”

Well, then, say no more.

Pilgrimage of poems: Lonely impulse of delight

Okay, look—you knew you weren’t going to get out of National Poetry Month without William Butler Yeats, didn’t you? Yeats is my go-to guy for exquisite use of language, for strength of form and for just all-around delight.

Last year I gave you two of his poems, “Easter 1916” and “Second Coming”. I still recommend them both. The imagery—particularly in “Second Coming” is about as powerful as you’ll find in the English language.

Yeats wrote today’s poem upon the death of Robert Gregory, beloved son of Lady Gregory, who—with Yeats—was a major force in the Irish Literary Revival at the turn of the last century. Robert, an artist in his own right (and a cricketer, which earned him some renown, although I of course have no take on that), was a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and served in Italy when he was killed (age 36) by “friendly fire” from an Italian ally.

Yeats wrote several poems about Gregory’s death, including this one, in which he attempts to understand why the young man volunteered to serve in the war. (In “Easter 1916” the poet tries to do the same regarding the Irish nationalists who tried to seize control of the political infrastructure while Britain was involved in the war.) Because Gregory—an artist and sportsman, remember—didn’t “love” those he served, nor “hate” those he fought. He was Irish and whatever happened on the fields of Flanders or in the air over Italy or in the oceans of the world was not likely to change Ireland’s condition in any respect.

(Well, that was certainly the expectation in 1918, when Gregory died and Yeats wrote the poem. The reality was that World War I shook loose Britain’s death grip on a lot of its empire.)

Yeats ascribes Gregory’s decision to serve to a “lonely impulse to delight”, which is a little confusing to me. I mean, I could see that if he’d gone straight into the RFC; being a flyer in that war was viewed as chivalric and romantic in a way that the ground war was not. (At least it wasn’t after the first few months in the trenches.) But Gregory initially served in the 4^th Connaught Rangers and didn’t transfer to the RFC until 1916.

Well, in the end, the poet/airman seems to be saying that the choice to serve—knowing that it’s assuredly gong to lead to death—is the right, possibly the only, course to follow. And I’m not seeing a “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” side to this. It wasn’t pubic pressure or civic obligation that persuaded him to take the king’s shilling. We’re back to that impulse of delight.

I’m really trying to get my head around this. Any thoughts?

“An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere among the clouds above;

Those that I fight I do not hate,

Those that I guard I do not love;

My country is Kiltartan Cross,

My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,

No likely end could bring them loss

Or leave them happier than before.

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,

Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,

A lonely impulse of delight

Drove to this tumult in the clouds;

I balanced all, brought all to mind,

The years to come seemed waste of breath,

A waste of breath the years behind

In balance with this life, this death.

Pilgrimage of poems: Sufficient champagne

Dorothy Parker is one of my favorite poets. She’s brittle and cynical and powerful. And she can pack more meaning into the fewest syllables of any writer I know.

Last year I gave you two of her poems, the two I probably love the best. But here are a couple more—see what you think.

Inventory

Four be the things I am wiser to know:

Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.

Four be the things I’d been better without:

Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.

Three be the things I shall never attain:

Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

Three be the things I shall have till I die:

Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.

“One Perfect Rose” also distills modern life pretty well. And it gives you an idea why it’s not a good idea to read a lot of Parker in one go. Just a couple of poems, and maybe a short story; then out into the sunshine for a brisk walk.

One Perfect Rose

A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.

All tenderly his messenger he chose;

Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet –

One perfect rose.

I knew the language of the floweret;

'My fragile leaves,' it said, 'his heart enclose.'

Love long has taken for his amulet

One perfect rose.

Why is it no one ever sent me yet

One perfect limousine, do you suppose?