Even as I read one Dorsetshire author (John Cowper Powys), my mind goes to another who gave up writing novels and wrote nothing but poems for the rest of his life. I am thinking of Thomas Hardy. Here is a short poem by him:
Thoughts at Midnight
Mankind, you dismay me When shadows waylay me! — Not by your splendours Do you affray me, Not as pretenders To demonic keenness, Not by your meanness, Nor your ill-teachings, Nor your false preachings, Nor your banalities And immoralities, Nor by your daring Nor sinister bearing; But by your madnesses Capping cool badnesses, Acting like puppets Under Time’s buffets; In superstitions And ambitions Moved by no wisdom, Far-sight, or system, Led by sheer senselessness And presciencelessness Into unreason And hideous self-treason. . . . God, look he on you, Have mercy upon you!
Here is a poem by Jorge Luis Borges of Argentina that mentions the butterfly dream by Zhuangzi that I wrote about in yesterday’s post.
Signs
for Susana Bombal
Around 1915, in Geneva, I saw on the terrace of a museum a tall bell with Chinese characters. In 1976 I write these lines:
Undeciphered and alone, I know in the vague night I can be a bronze prayer or a saying in which is encoded the flavor of a life or of an evening or Chuang Tzu’s dream, which you know already, or an insignificant date or a parable or a great emperor, now a few syllables, or the universe or your secret name or that enigma you investigated in vain for so long a time through all your days. I can be anything. Leave me in the dark.
About that last line: Remember that for the last thirty or forty years of his life, Borges was blind.
Born in British India, Spike Milligan was a comedian, writer, musician, poet, playwright and actor. He is probably best remembered for his role in “The Goon Show,” the British radio program that spawned much of British comedy for decades to come.
Here is a little sample of his work which I hope will make you laugh. He was a very funny man.
The Lion
If you’re attacked by a Lion Find fresh underpants to try on Lay on the ground quite still Pretend you are very ill Keep like that day after day Perhaps the lion will go away.
Here is a prose poem from Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021). I remember going to a poetry reading which he gave at Dartmouth during my freshman year. He impressed me mostly because he was so clever at handling questions from smart-asses like Richard J. Dellamora, who was the teacher’s pet of the English Department.
This is a prose poem which was dated right at the time of my first trip to Mexico in November 1975. Ferlinghetti, however, was west of me in Mexico City and the State of Veracruz. I was in Yucatán. Later I was to visit all the places mentioned in his poem.
Beatitudes Visuales Mexicanas
October–November 1975
Autobus on Paseo de la Reforma with destination signs: bellas artes insurgentes. Exactamente. Just what’s needed: Insurgent Arts. Poesía Insurgente. This is not it …
1
Bus to Veracruz via Puebla + Xalapa … Adobe house by highway, with no roof and one wall, covered with words: la luz del mundo.
2
Passing through Puebla late Sunday afternoon. A band concert in a plaza next to a Ferris wheel — I have passed through many places like this, I have seen the toy trains in many amusement parks. When you’ve seen them all you’ve seen One.
3
Halfway to Xalapa a great white volcano snow peak looms up above the hot altiplano — White god haunting Indian dreams.
4
A boy and three burros run across a stubble field, away from the white mountain. He holds a stick. There is no other way.
5
Deep yellow flowers in the dusk by the road, beds of them stretching away into darkness. A moon the same color comes up.
6
As the bus turns + turns down the winding hill, moon swings wildly from side to side. It has had too many pathetic phallusies written about it to stand still for one more.
7
In Xalapa I am a head taller than anyone else in town — A foot of flesh and two languages separate us.
8
At a stand in the park at the center of Xalapa I eat white corn on the cob with a stick in the end, sprinkled with salt, butter, grated cheese + hot sauce. The dark stone Indian who hands it to me has been standing there three thousand years.
9
I’m taking this trip from Mexico City to the Gulf of Mexico and back without any bag or person — only what I can carry in my pockets. The need for baggage is a form of insecurity.
10
Two hours in this town and I feel I might live forever (foreign places affect me that way). The tall church tower tolls its antique sign: pray.
11
In early morning in the great garden of Xalapa, with its terraces and immense jacaranda trees, pines + palms, there are black birds with cries like bells, and others with hollow wooden voices like gourds knocked together. The great white volcano shimmers far off, unreached by the rising sun.
12
Brown men in white palmetto cowboy hats stand about the fountains in groups of three or four, their voices lost to the hollow-sounding birds. Along a sunlit white stone balustrade, student lovers are studying each other, novios awaiting the day. The sun beats down hot and melts not the mountain.
13
On the bus again to Veracruz, dropping down fast to flat coast. A tropical feeling — suddenly coffee plantation + palms — everything small except the landscape, horses the size of burros, small black avocados, small strong men with machetes — each still saying to himself Me llamo yo.
There are two ways of looking at the Barbarian Invasions of the Roman Empire. For the first, we have Orientius, said to be a cleric from Gascony, in his Commonitorium:
Look at how death has swept through the entire world, at how many peoples have been affected by the madness of war. What use are thick forests or high and inaccessible mountains, what use the raging torrents with violent whirlpools, carefully located fortresses, cities protected by their walls, positions defended by the sea, the squalor of hiding places, the darkness of caves and the hovels among the rocks; nothing has been of use in avoiding the barbarians hunting in a pack…. In the villages and the villas, in the fields and at the crossroads, in all the hamlets, on the roads and in every other place, death, suffering, massacres, fire-raising, and mourning: the whole of Gaul was burning in a single blaze.
Then there is the view of Greek poet Constantine Cavafy in his wonderful poem:
Waiting for the Barbarians
What are we waiting for, assembled in the forum?
The barbarians are due here today.
Why isn’t anything going on in the senate? Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today. What’s the point of senators making laws now? Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.
Why did our emperor get up so early, and why is he sitting enthroned at the city’s main gate, in state, wearing the crown?
Because the barbarians are coming today and the emperor’s waiting to receive their leader. He’s even got a scroll to give him, loaded with titles, with imposing names.
Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas? Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts, rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds? Why are they carrying elegant canes beautifully worked in silver and gold?
Because the barbarians are coming today and things like that dazzle the barbarians.
Why don’t our distinguished orators turn up as usual to make their speeches, say what they have to say?
Because the barbarians are coming today and they’re bored by rhetoric and public speaking.
Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion? (How serious people’s faces have become.) Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly, everyone going home lost in thought?
Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come. And some of our men just in from the border say there are no barbarians any longer.
Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians? Those people were a kind of solution.
Now which attitude do we take if Donald Trump and his incel hoards should regain the Presidency of the United States?
William Blake was not only a visionary artist, but also a visionary poet, whose works range from simple lyrical pieces to long, complicated prophetic books redolent of the Old Testament. For these latter, he invented his own mythology, with beings named Enitharmon, Los, Urizen, Albion, and such like.
The excerpt below is taken from my favorite Blake poem, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” In it the character of Rintrah appears as a personification of the just wrath of a prophet.
THE ARGUMENT
Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burden’d air; Hungry clouds swag on the deep.
Once meek, and in a perilous path, The just man kept his course along The vale of death. Roses are planted where thorns grow, And on the barren heath Sing the honey bees.
Then the perilous path was planted, And a river and a spring On every cliff and tomb, And on the bleached bones Red clay brought forth;
Till the villain left the paths of ease, To walk in perilous paths, and drive The just man into barren climes.
Now the sneaking serpent walks In mild humility, And the just man rages in the wilds Where lions roam.
Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burden’d air; Hungry clouds swag on the deep.
Here is a link to an interesting video called The Otherworldly Art of William Blake: YouTube Video.
I have never understood why people buy those overstuffed recliners. Is it because they are tired of living and just want to sink into something soft while their body functions shut down? Never forget the old Monty Python episode in which the Spanish Inquisition uses comfy chairs as a form of (not unwelcome) torture.
All the seating in my apartment tends to be on the firm side. In fact, I refer to them as my uncomfy chairs. To that I attribute the back that, at my advanced age, my back doesn’t hurt; and I am more agile than most of my age cohort.
This brings to mind one of my favorite poems by Dylan Thomas entitled “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.”
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right, Because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And so I continue to burn and rave at close of day from my uncomfy chair.
Jack Kerouac spent many years studying the Dharma of Buddhism. It shows up in many of his earlier works, particularly in his The Scripture of the Golden Eternity, from which the following excerpts are taken:
11.
If we were not all the golden eternity we wouldn’t be here. Because we are here we cant help being pure. To tell man to be pure on account of the punishing angel that punishes the bad and the rewarding angel that rewards the good would be like telling the water “Be Wet”—Never the less, all things depend on supreme reality, which is already established as the record of Karma-earned fate.
16.
The point is we’re waiting, not how comfortable we are while waiting. Paleolithic man waited by caves for the realization of why he was there, and hunted; modern men wait in beautiful homes and try to forget death and birth. We’re waiting for the realization that this is the golden eternity.
22.
Stare deep into the world before you as if it were the void: innumerable holy ghosts, buddhies, and savior gods there hide, smiling. All the atoms emitting light inside wavehood, there is no personal separation of any of it. A hummingbird can come into a house and a hawk will not: so rest and be assured. While looking for the light, you may suddenly be devoured by the darkness and find the true light.
I am not sure that Kerouac’s Buddhism is the genuine article, but in a way it doesn’t matter. His questing had its value and brushes against the truth at a wide number of places.
The period between Christmas and New Years Day has always been strange. Even among the ancient Mayans, the last five days of the 365-day Haab calendar were called Uayeb, just to fill out the remainder of the year after the 18 months of 20 days each had transpired.
In much of the English-speaking world—but not the United States—today is Boxing Day. It has nothing to do with pugilism and is more a commemoration of certain Victorian practices regarding gifting servants.
It’s also Kwanzaa, a made-up holiday for African-Americans to celebrate their origins and serve as an alternative to that White persons’ holiday known as Christmas.
I was delighted to find a Scottish poem that also celebrates (or debunks) this period. It is “The Daft Days” by Robert Fergusson (1750-1774), written in a broad Scots dialect:
The Daft Days
Now mirk December’s dowie face Glowrs owr the rigs wi sour grimace, While, thro’ his minimum of space, The bleer-ey’d sun, Wi blinkin light and stealing pace, His race doth run.
From naked groves nae birdie sings, To shepherd’s pipe nae hillock rings, The breeze nae od’rous flavour brings From Borean cave, And dwyning nature droops her wings, Wi visage grave.
Mankind but scanty pleasure glean Frae snawy hill or barren plain, Whan winter, ‘midst his nipping train, Wi frozen spear, Sends drift owr a’ his bleak domain, And guides the weir.
Auld Reikie! thou’rt the canty hole, A bield for many caldrife soul, Wha snugly at thine ingle loll, Baith warm and couth, While round they gar the bicker roll To weet their mouth.
When merry Yule-day comes, I trou, You’ll scantlins find a hungry mou; Sma are our cares, our stamacks fou O’ gusty gear, And kickshaws, strangers to our view, Sin fairn-year.
Ye browster wives, now busk ye braw, And fling your sorrows far awa; Then come and gie’s the tither blaw Of reaming ale, Mair precious than the well of Spa, Our hearts to heal.
Then, tho’ at odds wi a’ the warl’, Amang oursels we’ll never quarrel; Tho’ Discord gie a canker’d snarl To spoil our glee, As lang’s there’s pith into the barrel We’ll drink and ‘gree.
Fidlers, your pins in temper fix, And roset weel your fiddle-sticks; But banish vile Italian tricks Frae out your quorum, Not fortes wi pianos mix – Gie’s Tulloch Gorum.
For nought can cheer the heart sae weel As can a canty Highland reel; It even vivifies the heel To skip and dance: Lifeless is he wha canna feel Its influence.
Let mirth abound, let social cheer Invest the dawning of the year; Let blithesome innocence appear To crown our joy; Nor envy wi sarcastic sneer Our bliss destroy.
And thou, great god of Aqua Vitae! Wha sways the empire of this city, When fou we’re sometimes capernoity, Be thou prepar’d To hedge us frae that black banditti, The City Guard.
Tarnmoor 
You must be logged in to post a comment.