The Poem
May 13th, 2010
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A Distant Place
February 12th, 2010
I live here in a village house without
All that racket horses and carts stir up
And you wonder how that could ever be.
Wherever the mind dwells apart is itself
A distant place. Picking chrysanthemums
At my east fence, I see South Mountain
far off: air lovely at dusk, birds in flight
returning home. All this means something,
something absolute: whenever I start
to explain it, I forget words altogether
T’ao ch’ien
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Akhmatova’s White Stone
September 19th, 2009
Like a white stone in a well’s depths
A single memory remains to me
That I can’t, won’t fight against
It’s happiness – and misery.
I think someone who gazed full
In my eyes, would see it straight
They’d be sad, be thoughtful,
As if hearing a mournful tale
I know the gods changed people
To things, yet left consciousness free,
To keep suffering’s wonder alive still.
In memory, you changed into me
Anna Akhmatova
Photo of girl mummie National Geographic
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‘a lament heaven, with it’s own disfigured stars’
August 19th, 2009
Jean Dagnan-Bouveret
Orpheus Eurydice Hermes
That was the deep uncanny mine of souls.
Like veins of silver ore, they silently
moved through its massive darkness. Blood welled up
among the roots, on its way to the world of men,
and in the dark it looked as hard as stone.
Nothing else was red.
There were cliffs there,
and forests made of mist. There were bridges
spanning the void, and that great gray blind lake
which hung above its distant bottom
like the sky on a rainy day above a landscape.
And through the gentle, unresisting meadows
one pale path unrolled like a strip of cotton.
Down this path they were coming.
In front, the slender man in the blue cloak —
mute, impatient, looking straight ahead.
In large, greedy, unchewed bites his walk
devoured the path; his hands hung at his sides,
tight and heavy, out of the failing folds,
no longer conscious of the delicate lyre
which had grown into his left arm, like a slip
of roses grafted onto an olive tree.
His senses felt as though they were split in two:
his sight would race ahead of him like a dog,
stop, come back, then rushing off again
would stand, impatient, at the path’s next turn, —
but his hearing, like an odor, stayed behind.
Sometimes it seemed to him as though it reached
back to the footsteps of those other two
who were to follow him, up the long path home.
But then, once more, it was just his own steps’ echo,
or the wind inside his cloak, that made the sound.
He said to himself, they had to be behind him;
said it aloud and heard it fade away.
They had to be behind him, but their steps
were ominously soft. If only he could
turn around, just once (but looking back
would ruin this entire work, so near
completion), then he could not fail to see them,
those other two, who followed him so softly:
The god of speed and distant messages,
a traveler’s hood above his shining eyes,
his slender staff held out in front of him,
and little wings fluttering at his ankles;
and on his left arm, barely touching it: she.
A woman so loved that from one lyre there came
more lament than from all lamenting women;
that a whole world of lament arose, in which
all nature reappeared: forest and valley,
road and village, field and stream and animal;
and that around this lament-world, even as
around the other earth, a sun revolved
and a silent star-filled heaven, a lament-
heaven, with its own, disfigured stars —:
So greatly was she loved.
But now she walked beside the graceful god,
her steps constricted by the trailing graveclothes,
uncertain, gentle, and without impatience.
She was deep within herself, like a woman heavy
with child, and did not see the man in front
or the path ascending steeply into life.
Deep within herself. Being dead
filled her beyond fulfillment. Like a fruit
suffused with its own mystery and sweetness,
she was filled with her vast death, which was so new,
she could not understand that it had happened.
She had come into a new virginity
and was untouchable; her sex had closed
like a young flower at nightfall, and her hands
had grown so unused to marriage that the god’s
infinitely gentle touch of guidance
hurt her, like an undesired kiss.
She was no longer that woman with blue eyes
who once had echoed through the poet’s songs,
no longer the wide couch’s scent and island,
and that man’s property no longer.
She was already loosened like long hair,
poured out like fallen rain,
shared like a limitless supply.
She was already root.
And when, abruptly,
the god put out his hand to stop her, saying,
with sorrow in his voice: He has turned around —,
she could not understand, and softly answered
Who?
Far away,
dark before the shining exit-gates,
someone or other stood, whose features were
unrecognizable. He stood and saw
how, on the strip of road among the meadows,
with a mournful look, the god of messages
silently turned to follow the small figure
already walking back along the path,
her steps constricted by the trailing graveclothes,
uncertain, gentle, and without impatience.
Rainer Maria Rilke Tr. Stephen Mitchell
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Whose Idea Was it to Buy that Stupid T-Shirt ?
June 11th, 2009
I was looking for the way out of a department store recently. As I traipsed through the children’s’ wear section a t-shirt caught my eye. Short sleeved, black and with the word, ‘Creative’ on the front. Turning around I saw another t-shirt, white, with the words, ‘Poets and Writers’ written across it.
I stared at it. Poets and Writers are what? Are next to godliness? Are drunken nihilistic fools? Are given to terrible internecine bloodletting? Are dreamy and irresponsible? Are a financial burden on the taxpayer?
But it was not that sort of statement.
These clothing items, for pre schoolers, were particularly expensive and I wondered at the parent who might dress their child in these garments. Did the kindly t-shirt designer think if little Joss and Jasmine take creativity to chaotic levels and the finger paint hits the fan, it could be easier to slip the ‘Creative’ t-shirt on thus feeling you have done your bit for their intellectual development? Or are these a new line in parental aspiration t-shirts? But you don’t see t-shirts with ‘Mergers and Acquisitions,’ or ‘Financial Acumen,’ on the front. So what is it the parent is buying here?
Lest you think I am parent bashing, let me digress and state that I too am a parent. I’ve had my son, at age four, beg me to buy him t-shirts with a Superhero picture on the front. I have always disliked picture clothes for children. I’m not a stern parent, I’ve been free and easy with the chocolate frogs, but I can’t stomach my child being used to advertise the Big Entertainment Corp’s superhero. Oh, lighten up, Phillipa. But I can’t. It’s a fetish of mine, just as some parents are focussed on singlets, or vitamin supplements, for me it’s picture clothes. I bought him a plain t-shirt and told him Superhero wore similar shirts when off duty. He was happy with that.
We love to think of our children as creative. ‘Oh,’ we say, ‘Angus is SOOO creative…he makes these AMAZING designs with plastic straws and toilet rolls, and Alethea was composing Haiku at aged THREE.’ When you hear this you are suitably crushed and think wistfully of your own four year old who likes lying on the couch eating corn chips and watching Play School. Perhaps this is when a ‘Creative’ t-shirt comes in handy. When asked what ‘after school activity’ (code for ‘how good a mother are you?), your child engages in, you simply whack the t-shirt on said child and silence these competitive types.
I once bought myself a Teach Yourself French book. As the man behind the counter handed me my change he remarked, with an amused look in his eye, ‘Buying the book is not enough, you know, you have to read it and practice.’ I laughed with him but wandered back out into the street feeling a bit deflated. He was right. Like some sort of perverse cargo cult, we feel if we purchase the item - slogan emblazoned t-shirt, language book, ankh pendant, Taoist symbolic earrings, Chanel lipstick, ankle tattoo, - that somehow we will absorb the essence without the effort. How many parents long for t-shirts that say, ‘Silent,’ or ‘Vegetable Eater and Model Student’?
Charles Bukowski
And how many parents would really wish for their children the turbulent life that many creative people live? From the outside it may appear romantic and exciting, but the other side can be very painful. There is no such thing as a free lunch, as they say, get the creativity gene and chances are you’ll get another gene that is expressed in less pleasant ways. Poets and writers may have drinking problems, serial marriages, unusual and distressing compulsions or wild mood swings. These don’t come out in the wash – you can’t take these off and leave them on the bathroom floor for someone else to pick up.
Creativity of thought is essential for artists and scientists, and is important in all problem-solving situations. But many artists and writers are driven to creative activity through distress. ‘Writing is not a profession, but a vocation of unhappiness. I don’t think an artist can ever be happy.’
Sylvia Plath, self portrait
Creativity is a hard thing to quantify or pin down. Some people feel compelled to create - to write or paint or pursue a scientific conundrum – yet have little talent for it. Others who do have the ability do not use it, or lack the discipline or confidence to exercise their ability. It’s not an easy road by any means, and badly paid. In Western culture, music, literature, and visual art, at the highest level, are highly esteemed, but are relatively lowly paid. To be poor in Western society is to be on the margins of society – a tough place to be in such a material culture. Being in that position and pursuing the low paid lifestyle of a painter or poet requires a tenacious commitment.
When childhood is put away and serious study looms, most parents secretly panic if Olivia and Orlando persist in their creative pursuits. By this time the ‘Poets and Writers’ t-shirt will be out in the garage and covered in grease, and the recalcitrant youngsters refusing to even consider trying on the t-shirt with ‘Auditing,’ or ‘Teachers and Librarians.’
If Olivia wishes to pursue the life of an itinerant street poet, living off her wits and nourishing her creative soul, no doubt her parents will suffer agonies of worry for her. But they have the rest of their lives to regret that when Olivia scrawled her stories, while they looked on with teary pride - she wore that wretched ‘Poets and Writers’ t-shirt.
1 (Simenon, Writers at Work, The Paris Review Interviews, London, Secker and Warburg, 1958, Vol 1, P 132.)
Jack Kerouac
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Eurydice
May 30th, 2009
Eurydice
Be ahead of all parting, as if it were
behind you, like the winter you just weathered.
Because among the winters there is one so endless winter,
that, overwintering it, your heart recovers altogether.
Be always dead in Eurydice - rise up singing,
rise up praising, once again concerned with purer matters.
Be here, among the dwindling, in the realm of leaning,
be a ringing glass, that in sounding swiftly shatters.
Rainer Maria Rilke
The Orpheus Sonnets, II,13
Image - Bill Henson
For Ken and Elizabeth
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A Weeping Man
May 15th, 2009
An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow Analysis
the murmur goes round Lorenzinis
at Tattersalls, men look up from sheets of numbers,
the Stock Exchange scribblers forget the chalk in their hands
and men with bread in their pockets leave the Greek Club:
There’s a fellow crying in Martin Place. They can’t stop him. The traffic in George Street is banked up for half a mile
and drained of motion. The crowds are edgy with talk
and more crowds come hurrying. Many run in the back streets
which minutes ago were busy main streets, pointing:
There’s a fellow weeping down there. No one can stop him. The man we surround, the man no one approaches
simply weeps, and does not cover it, weeps
not like a child, not like the wind, like a man and does not declaim it, nor beat his breast, nor even
sob very loudly - yet the dignity of his weeping holds us back from his space, the hollow he makes about him
in the midday light, in his pentagram of sorrow,
and uniforms back in the crowd who tried to seize him
stare out at him, and feel, with amazement, their minds
longing for tears as children for a rainbow. Some will say, in the years to come, a halo
or force stood around him. There is no such thing.
Some will say they were shocked and would have stopped him
but they will not have been there. The fiercest manhood,
the toughest reserve, the slickest wit amongst us trembles with silence, and burns with unexpected
judgements of peace. Some in the concourse scream
who thought themselves happy. Only the smallest children
and such as look out of Paradise come near him
sand sit at his feet, with dogs and dusty pigeons. Ridiculous, says a man near me, and stops
his mouth with his hands, as if it uttered vomit -and I see a woman, shining, stretch her hand
and shake as she receives the gift of weeping;
as many as follow her also receive it and many weep for sheer acceptance, and more
refuse to weep for fear of all acceptance,
but the weeping man, like the earth, requires nothing,
the man who weeps ignores us, and cries out
of his writhen face and ordinary body not words, but grief, not messages, but sorrow,
hard as the earth, sheer, present as the sea -
and when he stops, he simply walks between us
mopping his face with the dignity of one
man who has wept, and now has finished weeping. Evading believers, he hurries off down Pitt Street.Les Murray
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