Come to no good

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

“Neither Bloody nor Bowed”

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

 

 

Gratitude Monday: Plying minstrelsy

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

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

“A Moment’s Indulgence”

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

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

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

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

 

 

Wear their brave state out of memory

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, it’s something.

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

Just not yours

Ukrainian poet Anastasia Dmitruk wrote “Never ever can we be brothers” after the Russian seizure of Crimea in 2014. She wrote it in Russian, possibly to make sure the message hit home; although apparently it didn’t.

Here it is, translated by Eugene Volokh:

“Never ever can we be brothers”

You and we will never be brothers
Not by our motherlands, nor our mothers
You lack the spirit to be free
We will not be even your stepsiblings.
You have christened yourself "the elder brothers,"
We're fine being the younger, just not yours.
You are a multitude but, sadly, faceless.
You are vast, but we are great.
You press us, you toil,
You will choke yourself on your envy.
Liberty is a word you do not know,
You from childhood are chained in shackles.
At home you say "silence is golden,"
But in our hands burn Molotov cocktails,
In our heart flows burning blood,
What sort of blind "family" are you to us?
We have no fear in our eyes,
Even without weapons we are a menace.
We grew up and became brave
While we are targeted by snipers.
The executioners pushed us to our knees;
We rose up and corrected that.
Pointlessly the rats hide and pray,
They will be washed in their own blood.
You are getting new orders,
But here we burn the fires of revolt.
You have the Czar, we have Democracy,
You and we will never be brothers.

 

All the flowers

Today’s earworm/National Poetry Month entry comes to us from Don Cossacks, via Mikhail Sholokov’s 1934 novel And Quiet Flows the Don. Pete Seeger wrote the first three verses in 1955, and it was rounded out five years later by Joe Hickerson.

It was big in my youth, referencing the Vietnam War, and it’s sadly so applicable now in its original backyard.

I’m giving you Joan Baez singing "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" for Pete at the 1994 Kennedy Center Honors. She’s singing it in a much lower register than her early recordings. But it, sadly, is still universal.

 

All folk who quack

I was introduced to the poems of Carmen Bernos de Gasztold when I worked in the Children’s Room of the Pasadena Public Library in high school. Gasztold was a Benedictine nun in France, and the two collections of her poetry I have carried with me most of my life were translated by the English novelist Rumer Godden.

Prayers from the Ark and The Creatures’ Choir comprise short poems from the perspective of a range of animals. Each one has its unique charm. The one I’m sharing today for National Poetry Month is from Prayers from the Ark.

“The Prayer of the Little Ducks”

Dear God,
give us a flood of water.
Let it rain tomorrow and always.
Give us plenty of little slugs
and other luscious things to eat.
Protect all folk who quack
and everyone who knows how to swim.
Amen

« Prière des petits canards »

Mon Dieu, donnez-nous beaucoup d’eau.
Faites qu’il pleuve demain et toujours
Donnez-nous beaucoup de petites limaces
Et autres bonnes choses à manger.
Protégez le peuple nasillard et tous ceux
qui savent nager.
Ainsi soit-il.

Low-hanging clouds

Though born in Odesa (in 1889) to a Ukrainian father and Russian mother, Anna Akhmatova is considered a Russian/Soviet poet. The family moved to a suburb of Saint Petersburg before she was a year old, and as far as I know she never returned to Ukraine. Her poems are vivid and powerful, and she was condemned and censored by Stalinist authorities for them.

As I have written many times, the outbreak of the First World War was a huge tear in the fabric of Western history. Akhmatova captures this in today’s entry for National Poetry Month, “July, 1914”. She certainly called it right.

We don’t yet know whether the current war in Ukraine will prove to be another great chasm in civilization. I wonder what the poets are saying?

“July, 1914”

1

The air reeks with smolder. For all of four weeks  
Dry peat in the bogs has been burning.
Even the birdsong is mute and discreet,
And the aspen tree’s tremble lacks yearning.  

Sunlight that sears speaks of Godly disfavor,
Not a sprinkle of rainfall since Easter.
In the courtyard alone stands a querulous raver,
A one-legged transient preacher.   

“Gruesome and hideous days are at hand;
The earth will be rife with fresh graves;
Pestilence, famine will lay waste our land,
Eclipses and earthquakes, pandemics in waves.

But the Foul Fiend who revels in earthly distress
Will not bring our homeland disaster.
The Mother of God in her grace and largesse
Will shelter us under Her veil alabaster.”

2

Smoldering juniper wafts its sweet scent
From woods that are burning nearby.
Soldiers’ wives tearfully weep and lament,
Widows-to-be raise a long keening cry.

Priests chanted evensong vigils of prayer,
For the dry earth was gasping with thirst.
Trampled-down fields lay wreathed in despair,
As a red-shrouded mist hung dispersed.

Low-hanging clouds in a sky dire and vacant,
A praying voice softly declaimant,
“They’ve ravaged Thy body so pure and complaisant,
And now they cast lots for Thy raiment.”

                                                                                    Translated by U.R. Bowie

 

Midnight in the schoolroom

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."

 

 

Gratitude Monday: Every morning a new arrival

I was at brunch with a friend on Saturday when I noticed that the restaurant’s patio décor included a big pot of mature rosemary. One of the overnight frosts we had last month fried my nascent rosemary plant and I hadn’t been able to find a replacement. And I was having lamb for Easter, so I required a couple of fistfuls of rosemary as well as considerable garlic. It occurred to me that the restaurant mightn’t mind if I pruned their substantial shrub discreetly, so yesterday I walked over with a plastic bag in my pocket for that purpose.

Well, it’s been well over a year since I’ve been on those paths, and I got a little lost on my way. I’m so grateful I did, because I came across a stunningly beautiful rock garden. I mean—just look:

I couldn’t capture the splendor in stills; I needed to go to video to provide a sense of visual flow, because the more I looked, the more there was to see:

The architecture is spectacular, balanced by the whimsy.

(And you’ll notice that there was a guardian keeping a watchful eye on my shenanigans.)

Well, that unexpected treasure leads me to today’s entry for National Poetry Month, “The Guest House”, by Rumi. The 13^th Century Persian mystic, scholar and poet was born in what is now Afghanistan; his family fled their home ahead of Mongol invaders and settled in Turkey. You might say that Rumi was a refugee. And we are lucky that the leader of the country where his family sought asylum didn’t ship them off to the 13^th Century equivalent of Rwanda for “processing”, because the world is so much better for his body of works.

In “The Guest House”, Rumi speaks to the need to welcome the unexpected into our lives—whatever that may be. It’s good advice, and that’s part of my gratitude today, too.

(Oh, I did get the rosemary, Easter Day was gorgeous and the lamb was delicious.)

“The Guest House”

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

 

 

Here's the knife

Boris Khersonsky is a Ukrainian poet who often writes in Russian; his day job is as a psychiatrist near Odesa. His poetry in both Russian and Ukrainian flourished after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He frequently tackles the subject of war, using Biblical imagery to get the job done.

Today’s entry for National Poetry Month, “Abraham is walking”, is not specifically for Easter, although the sacrifice of Christ features in it. But it was published just before Easter two years ago, when COVID-19 hit Odesa.

“Abraham is walking”

Abraham is walking—old, bearded, severe.
Behind him, Isaac, bent under a bundle of wood,
young, timid, trembling from the strain.
It’s an unbearable weight, a burden like this.
Here comes Abraham. Knife in hand.
Here’s the knife. Here’s the firewood. Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?
Carry this, Isaac, you’re the victim, you’re the two-legged lamb,
But the Lord isn’t all that bloodthirsty, His thoughts are pure,
relax, God’s only testing
the bearded ancient’s patience, your earthly father:
Will Abraham trust the Lord to the end?
How this senile face has changed!
His features have sharpened, his eyes grown dull.
Lie down on these logs, Isaac, pawn in a weird world.
Don’t be afraid—here’s an angel—he’ll intercept that hand and knife
and here’s the ram, horns caught.
The ram will be stabbed and burned before God.
It all ended well. But you’re still tense
youthful Isaac, a sacrifice for all the living.
You bent low under the firewood’s weight, Isaac, bent low, but carried it.
Like you, Christ too will carry his cross,
exhausted, thrice falling in the via dolorosa.
But Christ’s angel-savior didn’t fly from heaven.
He died, then he rose again, in that order.
Arose, and then ascended, according to that famous book.

Translated, from the Russian, by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk