by hilzoy
From Sources
“The faithful drudging child
the child at the oak desk whose penmanship,
hard work, style, will win her prizes
becomes the woman with a mission, not to win prizes
but to change the laws of history.
How she gets this mission
is not clear, how the boundaries of perfection
explode, leaving her cheekbone grey with smoke
a piece of her hair singed off, her shirt
spattered with earth … Say that she grew up in a house
with talk of books, ideal societies —
she is gripped by a blue, a foreign air,
a desert absolute: dragged by the roots of her own will
into another scene of choices.”— Adrienne Rich
It’s April. The cruelest month.
The odds are pretty high that someone’s already made that joke, now that I think about it.
I’ll try to comment once in a while instead of the lurkage. Here’s a good poem by Pablo Neruda, excuse the full posting:
Orinoco
Orinoco, déjame en tus márgenes
de aquella hora sin hora:
déjame como entonces ir desnudo,
entrar en tus tinieblas bautismales.
Orinoco de agua escarlata,
déjame hundir las manos que regresan
a tu maternidad, a tu transcurso,
río de razas, patria de raíces,
tu ancho rumor, tu lámina salvaje
viene de donde vengo, de las pobres
y altivas soledades, de un secreto
como una sangre, de una silenciosa
madre de arcilla.
The Answer, Robinson Jeffers
Then what is the answer?- Not to be deluded by dreams.
To know that great civilizations have broken down into violence,
and their tyrants come, many times before.
When open violence appears, to avoid it with honor or choose
the least ugly faction; these evils are essential.
To keep one’s own integrity, be merciful and uncorrupted
and not wish for evil; and not be duped
By dreams of universal justice or happiness. These dreams will
not be fulfilled.
To know this, and know that however ugly the parts appear
the whole remains beautiful. A severed hand
Is an ugly thing and man dissevered from the earth and stars
and his history… for contemplation or in fact…
Often appears atrociously ugly. Integrity is wholeness,
the greatest beauty is
Organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty
of the universe. Love that, not man
Apart from that, or else you will share man’s pitiful confusions,
or drown in despair when his days darken.
cupid
i saw that fat little asshole
with his quiver and his twangy little bow
-like the kind you can buy
-down at K-mart for 2 bucks
and he saw me and shot me all full of arrows
he grinned and giggled
-devilish little turd
-take his bow and wrap it around his fat head
-shoot him full of stupidity
-how do you like it, chubby?
his curls shook like a bunch of grapes
-little circlets and locks
-like to cut those things off
i’ve been pulling those arrows out of me
for close to a year now
i discover another each day
little poisoned darts
-cherub
-love
-my ass
(me)
I PAINT WHAT I SEE
A Ballad of Artistic Integrity
“What do you paint, when you paint a wall?”
Said John D.’s grandson Nelson.
“Do you paint just anything there at all?
Will there be any doves, or a tree in fall?
Or a hunting season, like an English hall?”
“I paint what I see,” said Rivera.
“What are the colors you use when you paint?”
Said John D.’s grandson Nelson.
“Do you use any red in the beard of a saint?
If you do, is it terribly red, or faint?
Do you use any blue? Is it Prussian?”
“I paint what I paint,” said Rivera.
“Whose is that head that I see on my wall?”
Said John D.’s grandson Nelson.
“Is it anyone’s head whom we know, at all?
A Rensselaer, or a Saltonstall?
Is it Franklin D.? Is it Mordaunt Hall?
Or is it the head of a Russian?”
“I paint what I think,” said Rivera
“I paint what I paint, I paint what I see,
I paint what I think,” said Rivera,
“And the thing that is dearest in life to me
In a bourgeois hall is Integrity;
However . . .
I’ll take out a couple of people drinkin’
And put in a picture of Abraham Lincoln,
I could even give you McCormick’s reaper
And still not make my art much cheaper.
But the head of Lenin has got to stay
Or my friends will give me the bird today
The bird, the bird forever.
“It’s not good taste in a man like me,”
Said John D.’s grandson Nelson,
“To question an artist’s integrity
Or mention a practical thing like a fee,
But I know what I like to a large degree
Though art I hate to hamper;
For twenty-one thousand conservative bucks
You painted a radical. I say shucks,
I never could rent the offices—
The capitalistic offices.
For this, as you know, is a public hall
And people want doves, or a tree in fall,
And though your art I dislike to hamper,
I owe a little to God and Gramper,
And after all,
It’s my wall . . .”
“We’ll see if it is,” said Rivera
E. B. White
[About a real incident.]
About a real incident.
heh, i just saw that movie. (Frida)
Hmm: I Wonder What Month It Is?
My god it’s only the 6th.
My god it’s only the 6th.
which means it’s only two days till The Sopranos starts up again.
This was a superb poem. Forgive my ignorance, but what is Sources? I think I’d like to read it.
Everett: it’s a longish part of Your Native Land, Your Life. Not the best, but the best in that book are longer than I felt like typing. — Actually, last time I did this I posted a longer one, here.
YET DO I MARVEL
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
And did He stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors Him must someday die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are, and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand.
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
Countee Cullen
a classic, from my favorite poet:
e.e. cummings, of course
From the Southern Hemisphere, a little piece by Les Murray that works best read aloud. Even better when read aloud in a strong Australian accent, but that’s not a requirement.
Bats’ Ultrasound
(from The Rabbiter’s Bounty, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1991)
Sleeping-bagged in a duplex wing
with fleas, in rock-cleft or building
radar bats are darkness in miniature,
their whole face one tufty crinkled ear
with weak eyes, fine teeth bared to sing.
Few are vampires. None flit through the mirror.
Where they flutter at evening’s a queer
tonal hunting zone above highest C.
Insect prey at the peak of our hearing
drone re to their detailing tee:
ah, eyrie-ire, aero hour, eh?
O’er our ur-area (our era aye
ere your raw row) we air our array,
err, yaw, row wry—aura our orrery,
our eerie ü our ray, our arrow.
A rare ear, our aery Yahweh.