...~* Poetry from my heart of hearts *~...

[Kätzchen]

In light of what appears to be incessant miscarriages of justice (in the US and elsewhere around the globe), I find myself thinking about the much beloved and well respected poet, Czeslaw Milosz: Born in Poland, having survived two Totalitarian government regimes and other atrocities of his era in life, poetry by Milosz provides a way for me to make sense of a world filled with corruption and in dire need of redemption.


A Magic Mountain

by: Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004)
translated by: Czeslaw Milosz & Lillian Vallee

I don't remember exactly when Budberg died, it was either two years ago or three.
The same with Chen. Whether last year or the one before.
Soon after our arrival, Budberg, gently pensive,
Said that in the beginning it is hard to get accustomed,
For here there is no spring or summer, no winter or fall.

"I kept dreaming of snow and birch forests.
Where so little changes you hardly notice how time goes by.
This is, you will see, a magic mountain."

Budberg: a familiar name in my childhood.
They were prominent in our region,
This Russian family, decendants of German Balts.
I read none of his works, too specialized.
And Chen, I have heard, was an exquisite poet,
Which I must take on faith, for he wrote in Chinese.

Sultry Octobers, cool July's, trees blossom in February.
Here nuptial flight of hummingbirds does not forecast spring.
Only the faithful maple sheds its leaves every year.
For no reason, its ancestors simply learned it that way.

I sensed Budberg was right and I rebelled.
So I won't have power, won't save the world?
Fame will pass me by, no tiara, no crown?
Did I then train myself, myself the Unique,
To compose stanzas for gulls and sea haze,
To listen to the foghorns blaring down below?

Until it passed. What passed? Life.
Now I am not ashamed of my defeat.
One murky island with its barking seals
Or a parched desert is enough
To make us say: yes, oui, si.
"Even asleep we partake in the becoming of the world."
Endurance comes only from enduring.
With a flick of the wrist I fashioned an invisible rope,
And climbed it and it held me.

What a procession! Quelles délices!
What caps and hooded gowns!
Most respected Professor Budberg,
Most distinguished Professor Chen,
Wrong Honorable Professor Milosz
Who wrote poems in some un-heard of tongue.
Who will count them anyway. And here sunlight.
So that the flames of their tall candles fade.
And how many generations of hummingbirds keep them company
As they walk on. Across magic mountain.
And the fog from the ocean is cool, for once again it is July.

Berkeley, 1975


"A Magic Mountain" from The Collected Poems: 1931-1987
(The Echo Press, 1988).




Poem found online ~>> HERE
Biography of Milosz found ~>> HERE

www.poetryfoundation.org

[Kätzchen]

The Peace of Wild Things
~ Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
And I wake in the night at the least sound
In fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake,
And great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
Who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the peace of still water,
And I feel above me the day-long stars,
Waiting with their light. For a time,
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

[Kätzchen]

[Kätzchen]

I have written lots of poems, the past few years, but lately, while having so much time on my hands, I found myself rearranging books I've kept, over the years. I came across a much loved literature studies book, found myself rereading portions of literature; then turned a page to find the poem written by Adrienne Rich. It's one of few poems that I absolutely love: Love, because it's rich with timeless wisdom, and an certain depth of agony, that I've known one or two times in life. Not something I think anyone should experience, but life often is the subtle teacher .... especially as seen and felt through the lens of Adrienne Rich.

Diving into the Wreck

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife blade,
I put on
(5) The body armor of black rubber,
the absurd flippers,
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this,
Not like Cousteau with his
(10) Assiduous team,
aboard the sun flooded schooner,
but here alone.

There is a ladder,
the ladder is always there
(15) hanging innocently
Close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
(20) it's a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down
Rung after rung and still
The oxygen immerses me
(25) The blue light
The clear atoms
Of our human air.
I go down
my flippers cripple me
(30) I crawl like an insect down the ladder
And there is no one
To tell me when the ocean will begin.

First the air is blue and then
(35) it is bluer and then green and then
Black. I am blacking out and yet
My mask is powerful
It pumps my blood with power
The sea is another story.
(40) The sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
To turn my body without force
In the deep element.

And now: it is not easy to forget
(45) What I came for
Among so many who have always
Lived here
Swaying their crenellated fans
Between the reefs
(50) and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
the words are purposes,
the words are maps.
(55) I came to see the damage that was done
And the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
Slowly along the flank
of something more permanent,
(60) than fish or weed.

The thing I came for
The wreck and not the story of the wreck.
the thing itself and not the myth.
The drowned face always staring
(65) Toward the sun.
the evidence of damage,
Worn by salt and sway into threadbare beauty.
the ribs of the disaster
Curving their assertion,
(70) Among the tentative haunters.

This is the place
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
Streams black, the merman in his armored body,
We circle silently,
(75) about the wreck,
we dive into the hold.
I am She: I am He.

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes,
whose beasts still bear the stress,
(80) whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
Obscure inside barrels
Half wedged and left to rot
we are the half destroyed instruments
That once held to a course,
(85) the water eaten log
The fouled compass.

We are, I am, you are
By cowardice or courage
The one who find our way
(90) back to the scene
Carrying a knife, a camera,
a book of myths
In which
our names do not appear.


~~~ Adrienne Rich (1972).

[Kätzchen]

Today seems like as perfect as a time to post about another favorite poem. I have always liked the poem The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost. In fact, thanks to a graduate level course I took a few years ago, we studied perplexing literature, literature that most always people think they understand, but actually don't.

Robert Frost's poem is, as articulately described in a blog post link that I'll leave below the poem, an poem that "...isn't a salute to can-do individualism: it's a commentary on the self-deception we practice when constructing the story of our own lives" and "the best example in all of American poetry of an wolf in sheep's clothing" and, as David Orr goes on to emphasize with profundity, that "It may be the best example in all of American culture of an wolf in sheep's clothing: -- David Orr (poetry columnist for the New York Times Book Review).



Here's the link to the blog post by The Paris Review, which speaks to the poem authored by Robert Frost and the book authored by David Orr, The Road Not Taken: Finding America in the Poem Everybody Loves and Almost Everyone Gets Wrong (Penguin Press, 2015).

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/...em-in-america/

[Kätzchen]

A Song On The End Of The World

On the day the world ends
A bee circles a clover
a fishermen mends a glimmering net
Happy porpoises jump in the sea
By the rain spout young sparrows are playing
And the snake is gold skinned as it should always be.

On the day the world ends
Women walk through fields under umbrellas
A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of the lawn
Vegetable peddlers shout in the street
And a yellow sailed boat comes nearer the island
The voice of a violin lasts in the air
And leads into a starry night.

And those who expected lightening and thunder
Are disappointed.
And those who expected signs and archangel's trumps
Do not believe it is happening now.
As long as the sun and moon are above
As long as a bumblebee visits a rose
As long as rosy infants are born
No one believes it is happening now.

Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet
Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy,
Repeats while he binds his tomatoes:

No other end to the world will there be,
No other end to the world will there be.

-- Czeslaw Milösz --

[Kätzchen]

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for an hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you about mine.

Meanwhile, the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clear blue air, are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like wild geese, harsh and exciting, over and over, announcing your place in things.

--- Mary Oliver
In Dreamwork
(Atlanta Monthly Press, 1986).