Paschal moon: haiku to Percocet

Well, here’s a thing. My surgery appears to have gone well, but the attempt at a regional block was unsuccessful. So I had to have the dreaded general anesthesia. Also, the post-op pain is higher than I’d hoped (whole lotta nerves in the hand).

I submit in evidence, two crappy shots of my right arm. Soft cast goes up to my elbow.

My friends took me by Baskin Robins on the way home; so a milkshake was my first post-op meal.

Today’s entry is the worst one ever:

GWU surgery

Recovery pain;

Soft cast, fentanyl

Loopiness, milkshake

There’s a prescription for Percocet, but I’ve not got round to filling it.

Paschal Moon: pomegranate flower

There’s nothing like facing being cut open (even on an out-patient basis) to make one a little…introspective. So I’m turning to Rumi, the 13^th Century Sufi mystic poet.

Last year I gave you “The Guest House” from him, instructing us to be a guest house to all the possibilities. This time the entry is another kind of invitation, one in keeping with Gratitude Monday.

“What Was Told, That”

What was said to the rose that made it open was said

to me here in my chest.

What was told the cypress that made it strong

and straight, what was

whispered the jasmine so it is what it is, whatever made

sugarcane sweet, whatever

was said to the inhabitants of the town of Chigil in

Turkestan that makes them

so handsome, whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush

like a human face, that is

being said to me now. I blush. Whatever put eloquence in

language, that’s happening here.

The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude,

chewing a piece of sugarcane,

in love with the one to whom every that belongs!

Gratitude Monday: manual dexterity

Today I go in for surgery to treat basal joint arthritis. As my surgeon has explained it to me, he’ll remove the trapezium bone at the base of my thumb, extract part of a tendon in my arm (“which you don’t really need”) and bunch it up in the place of the missing bone.

(I’ve already cycled through all the other treatments—NSAIDs, a splint, cortisone.) I’d been putting this off, but the cortisone has stopped working, so that’s where I am.

I’m not looking forward to having my wrist in a cast—which you can’t get wet—for a month, and then in a splint for another one. But I’ve hit the point where the pain is pretty constant, and is midway along the scale; it’s also becoming increasingly difficult to do regular old things—use scissors, or a stapler; open or tighten jars; pour wine. (Passing platters around the table at Seder a couple of weeks ago was a crap shoot; I was relieved that I didn’t send brisket or soufflés flying onto my neighbors’ laps.)

I spent the weekend prepping the house for going a couple of months one-handed (and off-handed, at that; naturally this is on my dominant hand)—vacuuming, scrubbing the kitchen and bathrooms, laying in groceries that I can prepare without dipping my hand in them. (Dunno how that’s going to work, actually—I can’t make salad dressing without needing to be hosed off afterward.)

So what am I grateful for in all this? That there is treatment for this condition. My surgeon tells me that this is very successful surgery, and since I’ve exhausted all other treatments, it’s good to know that my chances are good with this.

I’m grateful that my surgeon is a very good communicator. After trying out two other orthopedic surgeons (both of whom seemed more interested in racking up insurance payments than in dealing with the condition), this guy is careful, clear and consistent. I believe I’m in good hands.

I’m grateful that I have insurance. It’s not stellar, but even so, it’s better than paying for this thing out of pocket.

I’m grateful that the surgery nurse is on the ball—she’s been competent and clear about what I need to do to prepare for this. She’s also made notes for the anesthesiologist to give me a little some-some to ward off post-op nausea and puking.

I’m grateful that friends will be on call to take me home afterward and get me settled. And I’m grateful that there’s an end in sight for all this pain.

Paschal Moon: All these liberations

Today’s entries for National Poetry Month come from Audre Lorde. Early on Lorde found poetry her channel for communicating the complexities of being as intersectional as you can get: American-born to black Caribbean parents, lesbian, wife, activist, mother—basically an outsider no matter where she found herself at any given time. This may have been a reason why she continually defined herself in terms only of herself. 

In high school in New York City, Lorde participated in poetry workshops run by the Harlem Writers Guild, which she described as not accepting her because she was “both crazy and queer.”

At age 20, in 1954, she spent a year studying at the National University of Mexico; she returned to New York and graduated from Hunter College. She embarked on an academic career, teaching and writing, drawing on her experience as being “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet.” She held that binary divisions of male and female are simplistic, and that, while feminists have found it necessary to present a united front, there are many subdivisions of women.

Lorde’s poetry ranges everywhere she did; I’ll give you a couple of examples.

“Hanging Fire”

I am fourteen

and my skin has betrayed me   

the boy I cannot live without   

still sucks his thumb

in secret

how come my knees are

always so ashy

what if I die

before morning

and momma's in the bedroom   

with the door closed.

I have to learn how to dance   

in time for the next party   

my room is too small for me   

suppose I die before graduation   

they will sing sad melodies   

but finally

tell the truth about me

There is nothing I want to do   

and too much

that has to be done

and momma's in the bedroom   

with the door closed.

Nobody even stops to think   

about my side of it

I should have been on Math Team   

my marks were better than his   

why do I have to be

the one

wearing braces

I have nothing to wear tomorrow   

will I live long enough

to grow up

and momma's in the bedroom   

with the door closed.

“Who Said It Was Simple”

There are so many roots to the tree of anger   

that sometimes the branches shatter   

before they bear.

Sitting in Nedicks

the women rally before they march   

discussing the problematic girls   

they hire to make them free.

An almost white counterman passes   

a waiting brother to serve them first   

and the ladies neither notice nor reject   

the slighter pleasures of their slavery.   

But I who am bound by my mirror   

as well as my bed

see causes in colour

as well as sex

and sit here wondering   

which me will survive   

all these liberations.

Paschal moon: bears, gowns & sarpints

Even though antics of the Klown Kar swirling around the White House provides sufficient laughs for a couple of decades, I think it’s time for something genuinely, harmlessly silly.

So, Edward Lear.

There was an Old Man on a hill,

Who seldom, if ever, stood still;

He ran up and down,

In his Grandmother’s gown,

Which adorned that Old Man on a hill.

(TBH, going all round the town in women’s clothes isn’t that much of a big deal where I come from. In fly-over country, though…)

There was an Old Man with a flute,

A sarpint ran into his boot;

But he played daay and night,

Till the sarpint took flight,

And avoided that man with a flute.

And here’s a version of the one about the Old Person from Ware (which my great-grandmother used to recite to us)—used in one of those periodicals for kids, Puzzle-Fun Comics, Spring 1946:

Paschal Moon: pacified rage

Friday the 13^th is considered inauspicious by a lot of people. Those people are most likely also the ones who steer clear of black cats, broken mirrors and spilt salt.

That black cat one is weird. In many places, a black cat is considered a harbinger of good luck. (In England, weddings often include an appearance by a chimney sweep with a black cat on his shoulder, to ensure a happy marriage. I honestly don’t know about cats of any color riding around on anyone’s shoulder in a crowd of people hitting the champagne, but it’s definitely A Thing.) But in large swathes of Western Europe and the United States, black cats have a hard life. They’re often the first to be abandoned and the last to be adopted.

I don’t think I’ve done a poem by the Austrian-Czech poet Rainer Maria Rilke before. He’s quite fascinating, because he was basically in love with all the arts—sculpture, painting, music, writing; they all shaped his sensibilities. He traveled and lived all over Europe, soaking up what each community had to offer and adding the influences to his writing. He also had passionate relationships with a number of women of all ages, and managed to maintain good relationships with most of them.

So for Friday the 13^th, let’s have Rilke’s “Black Cat”, whose beautiful fur absorbs all than a human can project, and in whose eyes turn us all into specks.

“Black Cat”

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place

your sight can knock on, echoing; but here

within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze

will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

just as a raving madman, when nothing else

can ease him, charges into his dark night

howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels

the rage being taken in and pacified.

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen

into her, so that, like an audience,

she can look them over, menacing and sullen,

and curl to sleep with them. But all at once

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;

and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,

inside the golden amber of her eyeballs

suspended, like a prehistoric fly.

Paschal moon: the thunder from Sinai

Yom HaShoah, the annual commemoration of the millions of lives lost in the Holocaust, began at sundown yesterday. At 1000 local time, everything will come to a halt across Israel, and people will stand silent and still, remembering those deaths. It’s an astonishing thing to watch on my computer screen; I cannot imagine it in real life.

(Possibly the two minutes of silence at 1100 on 11 November every year in the UK is the closest approximation. But in the years I lived there, I never saw the kind of universal participation—traffic kept moving, people chattered—so, no.)

Today’s poem for National Poetry Month is by Maria Skobtsova, née Elizaveta Yurievna Pilenko in 1891 in Riga, then part of Russia. She embraced atheism in her youth, married for the first time at age 20 (to a Bolshevik), and got involved with pre-war literary circles. For a while—during and after the Russian Revolution, Skobtsova had quite the adventurous life, including a planned assassination of Leon Trotsky, from which she was dissuaded by friends. Following her divorce, she was drawn to the (Orthodox) Church; she married a second time (to a man named Skobtsov), divorced this husband and moved to Paris with her children. The short version of this journey is that she took religious vows (assuming the name Maria) and found her calling in social work and theological studies. Her home became a center for refugees, geographic, economic and spiritual; her doors were open to anyone in need of help.

I don’t know whether it was a residue of her early years as an atheist, but somewhat unusually for a follower of Eastern Orthodoxy (the term “pogrom” and its practice originated in tsarist Russia), Skobtsova welcomed Jews to her refuge (without expectation of needing conversion), including during the time following the German invasion and occupation of France. Her spiritual advisor, Father Dmitri Klepenin, issued baptismal certificates to Jews, and she both sheltered those who came to her and helped many escape the country.

Eventually the Nazis came for her. In 1943 she was sent to Ravensbrück, the concentration camp for women, where she was gassed on 31 March 1945, five weeks before the end of the war. In 2004, the Eastern Church declared Skobtsova a saint; in 1985, she was recognized as Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

Skobtsova’s poetry covered a lot of ground, but for today I’ll give you this one.

“Israel”

Two triangles, a star,

The shield of King David, our forefather.

This is election, not offense.

The great path and not an evil.

Once more in a term fulfilled,

Once more roars the trumpet of the end;

And the fate of a great people

Once more is by the prophet proclaimed.

Thou art persecuted again, O Israel,

But what can human malice mean to thee,

who have heard the thunder from Sinai?

Paschal Moon: like a relic

The most common picture that comes to mind when we hear “First World War” is probably trenches snaking across Belgium and Northern France. We may have some vague notion of activities on the Eastern Front, or along the Dardanelles—or even Jerusalem and Damascus. But the war along the Italian Alps almost never makes the headlines (unless you’re a Hemingway fan).

And yet the Isonzo River was the scene of no fewer than twelve distinct, ghastly battles. Historian Mark Thompson sets the stage: “Imagine the flat or gently rolling horizon of Flanders tilting at 30 or 40 degrees, made of grey limestone that turns blinding white in summer.” And imagine the futility of launching attack after attack against entrenched fortifications across the seasons in that terrain.

From December 1915, Giuseppe Ungaretti served in the Brescia Brigade along the Isonzo—in his late 20s, he’d already absorbed the cultures of Egypt (where he was born to immigrants from Tuscany), Paris (where he went to study, and was influenced by Rimbaud, Apollinaire and other modernists) and Turin (where he’d trained to be a teacher). His poems are distilled down to the bare essence of his observations and experiences.

In today’s National Poetry Month entry, Ungaretti frames the confluence of the flow of his life in terms of the rivers symbolic of his experiences, converging on the Isonzo, which polishes him like a stone. It was written in August, 1916.

“Rivers”

I cling to this mangled tree

Left to lie in the crevasse

That has all the indolence

Of a circus

Before or after the show

And I watch

The tranquil passing

Of clouds across the moon.

This morning

I stretched out

In an urn of water

And like a relic

Rested.

The Isonzo rushing

Polished me

As one of its stones.

I pulled

My bones together

And off I went

On the water

Like an acrobat.

I squatted down

Beside my clothes

Filthy with war and like a Bedouin

I bowed to receive

The sun

This is the Isonzo

And here I best

Acknowledged myself

A pliant fiber

In the Universe.

My torment

Comes when

I think myself

Out of harmony. But those hidden Hands

That immerse me

Give me freely

An uncommon

Happiness.

I have gone

Through the stages

Of my life

These are my rivers.

This is the Serchio

From which perhaps two thousand

Years of my own country folk

And my father and my mother

Have drawn their water

This is the Nile

That saw me born

And saw me grow

In unawareness

On the expansive plains.

This is the Seine

And in its swirl I mingled

And I came to know myself

These are my rivers

Tallied in the Isonzo.

This is my nostalgia

That in each of them

It comes to me

Now that night has fallen

That my life to me seems

A flower

Of shadows.

Paschal moon: miracle and cures and healing wells

Today’s entry for National Poetry Month comes from Seámus Heaney. Two years ago I gave you his heartbreaking “Requiem for the Croppies”, and mentioned his linguistic mastery, which included lyrical translations from Irish, Latin and Greek. For this round, I’ve chosen “The Cure at Troy”, which is Heaney’s take on Sophocles’ Philoctetes.

All you need to know about Philoctetes is that he was one of the approximately 72 squillion suitors for Helen, and thus honor-bound to help Menelaus retrieve her from Troy. He was stranded on the island of Lemnos on the way (different versions give different reasons, but all seem to involve some kind of suppurating wound whose putrescence offended the Greeks). After many years of siege, the Greeks were told they wouldn’t win the war until they possessed the weapons of Heracles, which were…on Lemnos. As you might imagine, Philoctetes (reduced to a solitary animal-like existence in the intervening time) wasn’t exactly overjoyed at the prospect of handing over the sacred weapons to the very men who’d abandoned him (he was particularly pissed off at Odysseus), but Heracles appeared and told him to give up the artifacts and his wound would be healed by Asclepius, and he would become a great hero, a key driver of winning the war. (Some versions have him killing Paris, the little toerag who started the whole thing; others put him in the actual Trojan Horse. Either way he was instrumental in driving a stake through it.)

So there are a lot of symbolic moving parts to this one—the festering wound that won’t heal and leads to the debasement of a warrior; only by a series of redemptive decisions is he given a permanent cure, which leads to the end of a long, exhausting war.

Heaney wrote his version in 1990 as a tribute to Nelson Mandela, and an indictment of apartheid. (Its relevance to the situation in Northern Ireland is also obvious.) Note that—like Mandela—Heaney urges the reader to move beyond revenge, to the “further shore” with “cures and healing wells.” I believe these are thoughts we should keep before us in these times.

“The Cure at Troy”

Human beings suffer,

They torture one another,

They get hurt and get hard,

No poem or play or song

Can fully right a wrong

Inflicted and endured.

The innocent in gaols

Beat on their bars together.

A hunger-striker’s father

Stands in the graveyard dumb.

The police widow in veils

Faints at the funeral home.

History says, don’t hope

On this side of the grave.

But then, once in a lifetime

The longed-for tidal wave

Of justice can rise up,

And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change

On the far side of revenge.

Believe that further shore

Is reachable from here.

Believe in miracle

And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:

The utter, self-revealing

Double-take of feeling.

If there’s fire on the mountain

Or lightning and storm

And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing

The outcry and the birth-cry

Of new life at its term.

Paschal Moon: uninvited stain

My National Poetry Month entry today is by Mary P. Pettigrew, a woman who lives with Multiple Sclerosis, who could have been any of the participants I’ve seen in the WalkMS events I’vebeen to.

In another poem, about Annette Funicello, Pettigrew refers to sufferers as members of the MSketeer Club. This one is about the internal workings of the disease.

“Scars”

This brain, my brain

Reveals an unwanted, uninvited stain

Stealthy invaders placed an ugly mark

Though visually unseen, it's there...a permanent scar.

A tattoo, if you will

An indelible marking, perplexing until

Courageous, yet daunting intervention begins

Presenting theoretical ideas, invasive needles and pins.

The monster's mastery takes hold, you see...

Internally stalking, exploring ways to manipulate me

Wicked, determined to strike and knock me down

A bully in hiding, deploying trickery like a devious clown.

This brain, my brain

With this extraordinary, devastating stain

Brings clarity, unexpected strength, possibility

Now, determined, striving to re-define my disability.