7.22.09

The hatch shell was filled with Haydn

Clouds moving east above it

Growing as they did, roseate

Against the fading sky, and grey.

Brahms brought the waltzing night

And a flock of geese flew to the river

The fountain in Copley Square is still.

It's basin trembling with reflections

Of the tower of Old South Church

While 8 young women pass;

Tall as giraffes and lithe

Their silk dresses bright like jewels,

Short like flags above their heeléd legs.

Laughing, they wear plastic crowns

And party beads and two hold hands.

A bachelorette party they tell me,

I wish well and happy the bride.

The man making my meal

Is blond and wears a baseball cap.

And his skin is fine. Inside

His arm is a tattoo. Initials

And small dates rank up his arm.

As he hands me the bag

And says my name I see

The list is long. He wears it with grace.

Along the park the sky is deep

I see some stars, the horizon glows.

It is beautiful.

May Seventeenth

Would I had someone to wed this day

Too long in coming for my life’s pure love,

Snatched by fate and death from me

With nothing to keep my hope

And body from the winds of fortune,

Which too easily severed the tie we made.

Too long in coming to stay those fickle hearts

Left so free that whim could wreak

Destruction of a life and home.

Too long coming to give me future peace

Though I kept my bargains with care and toil

Loyal, faithful, beyond all calling, tending the

Heart and garden of my lovers’ lives,

Seeing in their happiness my own.

Now the parade of ghosts marches through my past;

Would wedded one of them have stayed at last? 

May 17,2004

Valentines Day

Some find love is like the violet's scent

Which, with it's fragrant, rich, delight

Overcomes and kills the nose's sense

As quick as darkness robs our eyes of sight.

I, while searching for a constant strength

In one who would stay married to my hopes,

Worry that my fickle fancy may at length

Chafe against love's most welcomed ropes.

This brings as much pain, I have to say,

To new love starting as does facing that 

Past love with passing time did fade away

And leave my hopes divorced from fact.

It matters not with which blame might lay

My fear is pain for both if either lacks.

So I here fret amongst these rhyming lines

In both dread and hope for Valentines.

This is from 1993, I wrote "Violets" in 1975 and "Roses" in it's original form in 1984; in 2005 I rewrote it in sonnet form. I have a love of the sonnet form, although I don't always stick to 14 lines, as in "Valentines Day." There is precedent for this 16 line form although you have to dig deep in the literature to find it. Whatever the form, I've always been rather happy about this one!

Riding The "T" with Valentines

I love riding the "T." I will explain the arcana of the Boston subway system in a following post, let me just say now that I have great and interesting adventures "beneath the streets of boston;" but that day, that year... ok, I'll stop with the allusions, one day, between the original and the current Charlie (I said I'd explain later, this is going to turn serious presently) I was riding the Orange line, and writing in my journal. It was a big journal. I write large. (note the tense, no allusion there.)

A women came up to me and said "What interesting handwriting you have!"

I was working on a poem. Writing poetry evokes the young calligrapher I once was, and I tend to write my poems in a very interesting italic hand. It was those years of studying Arrighi at RISD, I guess. The scrawl in my journal had a three line cap. It was conspicuous to my neighbor on the seat, and so she made her comment.

I thanked her, but said there was a small problem with it, which was, and is, that it was totally illegible, even to myself! ( I've lost more good lines because of this...)

She was nonplussed! "But, it is so beautiful! It doesn't matter!" I think she may have been French.

This little reminiscence is timely as it was just before Valentines Day, two years after the passing of  "the Mad Genius" and I had been nursing my lonely hart with an infatuation with a fickle man who I actually like very much but know too well to have thought romantically about. Ah me......

Here is what was in the journal:

Saint Valentine

On this day I’m all alone

The object of my heart has flown

To distant southern climes

Leaving me with art and rhymes

To host the ghosts and the daemons

Which these days attend your season.

I have given honor, written sonnets

Offered love, no conditions on it

True in body heart and mind 

All things men claim they want to find

But can not see, or will not trade

For selfish hollow lives they’ve made

Full of words but lacking deeds

Bereft of trust and full of needs

How many of your days must I endure

‘Till love, or death perhaps, becomes secure.

In my introduction to this blog I promised poetry- what better time of year to start! I promise something more cheerful for the day itself!

Kipling; Curtains; and clichés

In my news feed from NPR I find this article about Rod Blagojevich's use of the Poem "If" under the byline of Linton Weeks. This poem has been quoted, we are told, many times, and it has become trite, and even acquired a sense of irony. It has become a strand in the fabric of the curtain referenced in the entry "What is the curtain" in the blog of The Other Reader. 

"It's so familiar, says Thomas Pinney, professor emeritus at Pomona College and a Kipling scholar, "it's hard to escape a kind of irony about it."

"Pinney likens it to hearing Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. One. More. Time."

I am reminded of Alexander Woolcott's comment in a review of an "innovative, brand new Broadway musical" that the audience went into the theater humming all the tunes. Or better, the story of the man who took a pretentious but poorly educated friend to a performance of Shakespeare. After the play the host asked his friend what he thought of the play, and the guest responded that he was disappointed, he didn't understand why Shakespeare was so famous when his work was filled with so many clichés.

I like to draw parallels, you may be gathering that I like off beat parallels, and the parallel I'd like to draw is between having sex with someone you love and respect on the one hand, and listening to Beetoven's Fifth- "One. More. Time" on the other. (actually, to those who have the courage to really listen to Beetoven this isn't off beat at all!) It is my wish for you all that both should become frequent in your lives. I see it as a symptom of the addiction to the new, whatever it's quality, and the shortness of the collective attention span, that anyone could become bored with either. Obviously we do, to the impoverishment of our enjoyment of both our relationships and our musical understanding.

 Innovation is possibly the smallest of those things that give value to either a relationship or a work of art. To fully, deeply understand either takes years, takes focus and patience. Listening to the Fifth over and over again may possibly bring a sophisticated listener to the door of the place of understanding, just as having deeply sensual sex with another human being takes years of trust building and understanding. It is a grail that is only won with hard work and discipline, but once won is precious beyond expectation. It is only when all the aspects of a work, or a person, that are obvious and easily accessible are completely assumed that one can get into the meat of the matter. I am not proposing that "If" has a great deal of "Meat" for an adult, but Beetovan's Fifth most certainly has more than anyone can handle reasonably.

"For an adult" to quote myself, which I admit to enjoy doing. It amuses me not a little that the last words of "If" do not factor in the discussion- "my son." This poem was written to address the development of a youngster, showing him where virtue and strength lie. The guidance it gives to a young person is extremely sound. All stuff that adults such as Margaret Thatcher, Rod Blagojevich and, we hope, one's self should have incorporated and moved on from years ago. Discussing the cliché content of the poem is a symptom of the way "Art" and "Poetry" have been so removed from life that the purpose and audience a piece was composed for is completely lost sight of. ( some construction such as Kipling is famous, therefore this is "Art," therefore it is the province of educated adults, therefore I can use it! seems to be in place.)  I really think it a little funny that "IF" is being referenced by adults to their peers; but on the other hand, perhaps the assumption that Maggie, Rod, and their audience are still digesting "If" isn't that far off the mark.

Those who read this blog will know that I am a 60 year old man who has had some very hard knocks over the last decade. I have been challenged in the ways this poem anticipates. At fifty I perhaps would have joined in the collective highbrow chuckle, but now I see and appreciate the value of this advice. It resonates with my recent experiences in a way that I hope my readers never share; but don't be too smug- fate is a fearful foe, and has a very perverse sense of humor! 

Sorry if I sound cranky but mom has made my porridge yet...... 

on a winter's night some things never change

The pile of books beside my bed is getting very large. These are all the books that I bought as "Holiday Gifts" that I have to read before - which comes first this year, Chanukah or Kwanzaa?

life gets so complicated- in any case the pressure is distracting me from the book I would like to read just for myself which is David Park's "The Grand Contraption" In which I find this little ditty from Egypt before 1200 bce:

When my hair was half done

I remembered I love you

I forgot my hair

I ran to find you

Now let me finish

I'll only be a minute

Sound familiar? Some things never change.........

One of the reasons that I am lagging in all this reading is that just when I'm settled and have found the place where I left off I remember that the water glass is empty, and then I settle again and remember the chapstick, now that that's taken care of the pillows have shifted- oh! and this would be a good time to floss.....

Have I mentioned that the other reader gave me a copy of Italo Cavalo's "If on a winter's night a traveller?"

So tell me, does art follow life or does life follow art, or does life follow life or .........